Towards higher order shit (was the list..)

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

A year ago we were lamenting the intrusions of aol visitors who
had only to duplicate shit and fuck in twelve multiple posts
to trigger off a series of fucks and shits among the regular
posters. Conflict was dealt with by personal abuse.

It is a mark of our progress towards quality that recent polemics
at their most vicious have ranged from imaginative insults about
various members of the animal kingdom, to baroque constructions
testing whether it is possible to prove a subscriber is a cop.

This l'st thrives on conflict, and has been created by conflict.
Side by side with good quality threads in which conflict is
explored, positions challenged, with some insight and good
humour, there will, I suggest, always be conflicts that teeter on the
edge of being out of hand. We test the boundaries.

Unlike Gary I am not at all in despair. I see a pattern. Broadly
it is taking shape, and can to some degree be influenced by each one
of us. The Social Practice I see ( with acknowledgements to Gina)
is the collective practice of a network, not a democratic
centralist hierarchical structure.  Largely unconscious of
the motivation of the next poster, nevertheless each makes his/her
contribution. Carrol's pithy lists of all those he deletes, Matt D's
variable signature line. Godena as a most independent-thinking
member of the CPUSA. Rolf as a Nordic soothsayer. Adolfo
as a Latin-American marxist version of Falstaff.

The strategy of many subscribers is rightly to punish poor or
destructive posts by ignoring them. Good threads have emerged as a
result, have been fostered, and have grown.

My own strategy is that the areas of conflict which get out of hand
must be addressed actively. One of the methods is triangulation, for
someone else to go in, risk being burned, and put another angle on
what the conflict is about. It is entirely in conformity with
conflict management theory. It is also ironically in conformity with
Mao's injunctions about handling criticism not in a personal way,
but concentrating on politics. [Why the Maoist tradition has
given us a sustained lesson in vicious sectarianism even worse than
those from the Trotskyist tradition, is food for thought, and another
question].

It is also consistent with Gramscian theories of the development of
global civil society. A accuses B of stealing revolutionary donations.
C comments. B accuses C of acting like a cop either by literally
obliging B to reveal details that will be vacuumed up by the
security services, or by metaphorically acting as l'st police
constable. Tempers flare, there is a standoff, but something gets
learned. The culture, the civil society of this l'st gets enriched.

There are now two other marxist forums. That challenges the role
of this l'st as market leader. Yesterday the combined total of
regular and digest subs was 264. This figure probably already
discounts academics signing off for the summer. But it is a
shakeout of 80 compared to the peak of this l'st before
the birth of M2.  Another stat: the last index in the archives
suggests that 50% of posts in that period were created by 4 or 5
subscribers.These stats convinced me that unproductive patterns of
posting had to be broken up. And indeed other subscribers have made
varied initiatives to do so.

IMO by being alert to the weaknesses, we can continue to develop
this forum as an informed marxist contribution to the emerging
Gramscian global civil society. Or if you prefer, towards a higher
order of shit.

Chris Burford.
London.


     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---