Censorship etc. / list purpose

[Lisa Rogers <eqwq.lrogers@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I say, JMA, where do _you_ go to talk to 'proper communists'?
This is not a rhetorical question, I'd like any recommendations for
our WWW page list of left-resources.

But this is all so ironic.  Some people have been afraid that this
list might be or become so 'intellectual' that 'regular' people might
be 'intimidated' by all the over-educated language and topics.  Well,
okay, nobody has expressed that concern that I know of during the
last two weeks...

It was supposedly a real worry to some.  But this list was created
with philosophy in mind, as a place to discuss relations of marxism
to other areas, to encourage cross-ovulation of ideas and broad
discussion.  Good stuff happens like marxism/anthropolgy,
marxism/darwinism, marxism/ecology, marxism/ethics,
marxism/subjectivity, but all this other stuff is mixed in with it.

Talk of strategy, heated debate, discussions of history, that's all
fine, but the sect-baiting and flame wars are completely useless and
out of place.

The proportions of the mix vary, and lately it is largely rotten,
useless dreck, IMO.  Some of us are still having some great
conversations, but it seems to take longer and longer to sort through
delete all the dreck.  [That's the only way to get much out of it
lately, to try to be very selective, like reading only a few columns
out of a big newspaper, you know, headlines, cartoons and the op-ed
page.]

Sometimes it is very discouraging.  Yet no _one_ has control, because
of the self-selecting membership and no censorship of posts.

Collectively, we all create this list.

Please, please, will each one of you ask yourself what it is that you
are contributing to here?  BEFORE you send a post?

You should try to contribute to an atmosphere that encourages
discussion, which can include just ignoring some people as soon as
you figure out that you really hate their stuff, rather than
re-re-re-quoting it and complaining about it several times over
again.

Most members are not a problem, and most of you have heard all this
before from me many times.  But it doesn't always seem to help.  Do
some of these newbies look at the info sheet they receive at all?  Or
does 'no censorship' mean 'welcome to jerks-R-US, show off how
obnoxious and useless you can be'???

Feeling a bit burned out,
Lisa Rogers
Spoons-liaison [admin]


>>> J.M.A. Grenfell-Gardner <jmgh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  2/17/96, 04:09pm
Comrades-
I only joined this list recently, and was hoping for something
slightly  intellectual... but instead I think I've happened along
another group of  marxist-leninist-maoist-***ist folk who would
rather fight each other  than talk about the means to the end... if
we even know what that is.

So... time to pull out the old unsubscribe command again and deal
with  proper communists than to listen to pseudo-intellectualism on a
topic so  few people really know anything about.

Best wishes-

J.M.A. Grenfell-Gardner




     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

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