Re: List size and form

[Marcus Strom <MSTROM@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is my first posting. I've just been away and have had to get
through all the (hundreds of) postings. Most of which I just dumped. I have
proposals as to sorting out this list.

First, an introduction.

I currently work for the state based New South Wales (an Australian
state) Teachers Federation - one of the biggest 'white collar' unions
in Australia. I am placed here in the 'Organising Works' Program -
similar to the US's AFL-CIO Organising Institute Program. The program
is about shoring up the failing union bureaucracies inability to
maintain the union movement's membership. In Australia, this has
meant a fall from around 50% in the early 1980s, to now when there is
union membership of around 34%. All this under the Australian Labor
Party's (ALP) class 'consensus' Accord -- unions don't strike, accept
wage freezes and real wage drops so that the bosses can reap profits,
which the social democrats *hope* they will invest for jobs. Pie in
the sky. There has been a real drop in militancy in the class
struggle, the liquidation of the 'offical'  communist party (which controlled
one third of the union's in the early 1950s) and the capitulation of
the left to social-democracy, liberalism, populism or just sheer
nationalism.

I was in Britain for a while looking at the menagerie of  'socialist'
organisations. Before that,  I was a student at Rutgers University,
beginning a PhD program in Political and Economic Geography under
Neil Smith. I dropped out after one semester - I could not see the
relevance of struggling in the academic zoo; publish or persih - even
if only three other people read your paper - academia seemed a dead
end for revolutionaries in the absense of revolutionary organisation.
Prior to this I travelled in China, the Philippines (I'm *not* a
maoist). After completing a science degree in sydney, I worked for
the Central Land Council in the deserts of central Australia - a
semi-government Aboriginal land rights organisation.

So, to the list. There seem to be two main areas of concern: academic
orientation and more relevant stuff. I'm sure all the stuff on the
subject-object contradiction of class ontology is important - it
needs its own list. But it seems more related to people's individual
academic careers and their dissertations, (mostly) male point scoring
and breast-beating.

The stuff that I find more gripping is theory and
discussion that relates to the class struggle as it unfolds - debates
on national self-determination, just/unjust wars and the break up of
the former Yugoslavia; problems of communist organisation with the
collapse of the then existing bureaucratic 'socialist' states;
questions of intervention in the union movement, et cetera. I think an applied
marxism list would be relevant.

Could people post their opinions on this and could the moderators put
in place a way that we, the subscribers could vote on such a
proposal. With on-going debate, I would be prepared to move a more
formal proposal on this, maybe with someone else.

In solidarity


     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------