Re: [OPE-L] Marxist internet archive

[David Yaffe <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul,

I have no idea what is happening to MIA. Personally I find it a very
important source of material.  However you cannot get away with your
gratuitous insult against Che Guevara. Che was a Marxist of international
standing who had a deep knowledge of Marx's Capital and wrote an
important critique of the Soviet Manual of Political Economy, so
contributing very significant theoretical insights to our understanding
of the process of constructing socialism. Orthodox Marxists cannot be
equated with 'Stalinists' either. Neither Castro nor Guevara are/were
Stalinists. Perhaps this kind of comment reflects the appalling state of
the left movement in imperialist countries, but one expects higher
standards in OPE-L to be maintained.

David Yaffe

'At 22:13 04/05/2007 +0100, you wrote:
> Has the Marxist internet archive
> been taken over by the SWP or some
> similar Trotskyist sect?
>
> The content of the archive seems to have changed significantly
> recently.
> There are now a large number of relatively minor American and
> British
> Trotkyists included, which is probably fair enough, but what is
> more insidious is that orthodox communist writers are being
> systematically dropped from the index.
>
> Mao, Chou-en-lai, Stalin, Castro have all be edited out of the main
> web
> site index. Geuvara is the only orthodox communist or Stalinist
> still
> retained in the index - presumably because his romantic appeal is
> taken to redeem his Stalinism.
>
> Whoever is running the archive now is airbrushing out politically
> unacceptable marxists just as was done in the USSR, all that has
> changed is the particuluar set of marxists who are deemed
> unacceptable.
>
> Paul Cockshott
>
> www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc
> reality.gn.apc.org
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging
> Program.