Re: [Marxism] Attaching letter received from Walter Lippmann

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Lause wrote"
Walter's note says, "Louis clearly removed me for political reasons'
and "Obama's presidency should be a topic open for discussion on a
Marxist e-mail list."

Obama has never not been open for discussion here and the first
assertion is patently untrue, as is, I think, the assumption that
someone might be unsubbed for passing on Walter's untruthfulness.

Fred comments:

I certainly agree with Mark that no one should "be unsubbed for passing on
Walter's untruthfulness." However, since Walter was truthful and not
untruthful and Mark is inaccurate and not accurate (also not an unsubbing
offense), I want to set the facts straight.

This can be done quite simply. Following is the entire statement Louis made
in unsubbing Walter. As you see, the criteria is exclusively political from
start to finish and it centrally includes alleged "apologetics for Obama"
which in the specific case consisted of citing two Obama measures that most
list members no doubt agree were positive for our team. It was because of
the exclusively political character of his action, I think, that Louis used
the term "removal" rather than "unsubbing" to describe his action, although
in practice it amounts to the same thing. 

Given the debate over Obama that has been and is taking place on the list,
this sounded an alarm bell to those of us who were in the considered --
among the supposedly "orthodox" (I basically consider myself as orthodox as
all getout) to be "Obamaphiliac" ("Obama-lovers"), "apologists for Obama,"
and "Marxists for Obama."

The best summation of the problem that I have seen on the list is nothing
that I have written but Joaquin Bustelo's "Self=criticism and criticism"
(shorthand title) submission, available at.

And since then, Louis has stressed that Walter's unsubbing need not be
permanent, though he has not yet made it clear if Walter changing his
politics to approach closer to Louis' is a precondition. I hope not.

Anyway, here, in full, is is Louis' exclusively political justification for
unsubbing Walter

Louis wrote:

"Walter Lippmann wrote:
> More changes under the Obama administration:
> The family planning gag rule is gone and now
> stem cell research has been approved.
> 

"I have decided to remove Walter Lippmann from the Marxism list. After 
having 4 years worth of sterile debate about supporting Thabo Mbeki or 
Lula, the terrain has now switched apparently to apologetics for Barack 
Obama. Walter can join the people at Portside if those are his politics. 
This mailing list has to be a forum for people with a different kind of 
politics. We have far too many serious differences within our 
neighborhood of the left to waste time replying to troll bait over 
family planning gag rules, stem cell research, etc. You can read this 
kind of crap on Huffingtonpost or the Nation Magazine. We need to focus 
on what the working class and its allies have to do to challenge the new 
administration that is a continuation of the evils that came before it 
going all the way back to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson."




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