Update with Robert

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

Hi Robert,

At the moment we find ourselves on the same side. Perhaps it wasn't
always so and perhaps it will not always be so in the future but
I wanted to check in with you where you, I and the l'st have got.

Both of us face the problem of what to do about Adolfo's
psychological bullying, which IMO is certainly connected with his
political line of endorsing physical threats to people he
regards as revisionists.

I thought you were wise to react with self-restraint in the
number of your postings in recent days. IMO Adolfo degraded
himself much more than you by his "mantra" attempts to
command you to dance in public, because he had decided you
had overstepped the mark. But these psychological assaults
are designed to be damaging and sometimes do real damage.
Hope you are OK. I think I am.

Under the rules of this l'st you would not have got far with
your call for his expulsion, and he was bound to retaliate
against it. But you put your finger on the politics of the
question, namely that Adolfo was treating anti-revisionist
polemics as primary, while a man faces real deportation.
This helped to pressure him into changing his position in
public.

Your challenge about whether he approves of allying
 with a national bourgeoisie is a major continuing strategic
question.

Your vulnerability was in the frequency of your posts, which
others had found irritating. This made it easier for Adolfo
to present you as some sort of irritating sub-human pest, who
should be squashed. Bouncing back repeatedly, ironically
also helped to re-inforce the image.

At the moment I think we both have to avoid that, while standing
our ground firmly. It doesn't help that some people
like Gary are sure that Adolfo has won, but we have to
live with the fact that there will be a whole range of opinions
and impressions.

As a heavy poster myself I hesitated to challenge you
until the day there were 10 posts from you in one digest. IMO
you have now listened to specific feedback/criticism when people
have tried to make it constructive, eg Zeynep.
I think it helps that you have dropped the "malecki in exile"
signature line. You are not in exile here. You are
part of a community, even if it is against some people's will.
You have checked out your typing more carefully before you
press the send button. It is a technical point. Impressions
make a difference. Reading a post through and thinking of
the readers, isn't just something that intellectuals do.

Doug gave you feedback by pointing to the speed of your
comments. This l'st can be quite a trap because it can
feel like an extension of your own brain. But it consists of the
contributions of potentially 250 people, and if too many posts
feel dominated by a sort of stream of consciousness of just one or
two people, it is not a truly interactive, collective activity.
Because you have written an autobiography, I am sure you
can appreciate the difference.


Everyone is free to post here, but no one has to be read.

If people get into the habit of deleting your posts automatically
they may not stand up for you when it is politically important.

You will compete for people's serious attention with fewer posts
that definitely bring something new to the l'st, that widen the
range of the l'st. Although you reacted to Jon and
assumed he was some trade union bureaucrat, I think
he had a good point. There is information we need now about
how the working class and democratic movement in Sweden is
responding to the destruction of social democratic politics.
There may be issues about campaigns against deportation. etc.

You heartily dislike liberal intellectuals who show off
their intellectual knowledge, and compromise with the establishment
repeatedly. Non-intellectual voices that avoid pretentious
allusions of the sort that I and Adolfo can indulge in, come
over with far more real authority, when they are talking about real
struggle, even though this l'st is biassed towards the
intelligentsia. Marxism ought to be able to deal with,
analyse and transcend that bias.

Let each stand in his/her/their place.

Chris






     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---