Managing our culture

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The post below illustrates something I would like to keep on
banging away at from time to time. There is a frequent contradiction
between the culture of the self-organising community that
keeps on struggling to emerge in *marxism* and the superficial
culture that can appear on the surface all too rapidly as
a result of transient visitors.

Clearly our problems are deeper than that: we are still facing
the challenge of how to argue seriously about Stalinism and
about Maoism, two currents that cannot be ignored in the
marxist movement. Clearly also the arrival of the PCP supporters
would have been felt like a hostile invasion by many even
if their conduct had been impeccable.

But these contradictions of substance, I think I have observed,
often interact with random arrivals of butterflies just ready to
flap to fan the storm. When patience is needed to plug away
at clarifying serious differences, a mood of impatience,
hopelessness and despair sweeps over the character of the posts.

Now I have checked these two addresses below against the period checks
I make on "who" subscr'bes. Neither were subscribed on 31st March.
The Evil Hzoontah's address only had subscribed by 1st April.

If Spoons puts the responsibility on us to be a self-organizing
community, a very difficult but, IMO very creative, challenge,
we have the right to ask for assistance not in the form of
censorship of political ideas, but once again I would
ask procedurally, could a simple rule not be in place
before a new subscriber clocks on, could there not be a gap
of one week in which they can read the l'st or the archives
to pick up useful threads or correspondents names, before
people can start posting?

Would anyone be in favour of forwarding this request to Spoons?

Chris B
London.





________________________________________________________________

From: The Evil Hzoontah <hhuhtane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 11:32:16 +0300 (EET DST)
Subject: Re: A.O.

On Thu, 4 Apr 1996 Kryten1458@xxxxxxx wrote:

>  ADOLPHO-LEAVE NOW-ENOUGH!
>
>
>
>      --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---


  Is this your way of keeping this list alive - sending the same mess-age
n+1 times? If this is the way things are dealt with here, well, at least
I'm leaving.
  No more anything for the spoilt moderates and democrates.
  Good bye and have a "nice" easter everyone.

                                Henry Zalkin


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