[PEN-L:1935] Re: Something completely different

[akliman@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

I left the "Marxism" list.  I work as an academic, but I'm a Marxist and
 an activist.  I resent the notion that one is not much of a Marxist or
 an ivory-tower type if one leaves the list because of its "grittiness"
 and "informality."  I do not think that Dana Thorpe and MIM are just
 examples of "informality."  They are the worst examples, but a lot of
 junk clogged up my mailbox.  It became too *time-consuming* to sort
 through all the junk in order to find the one or two messages of the
 day (out of maybe 30) that had something interesting to say.  And once
 a good discussion did get going, it would tend to degenerate very
 quickly--sometimes through name-calling, but mostly because some
 people on the list were so unserious as to fixate on a tangent in other
 people's discussions and divert the whole thing.

It took Marx nearly 25 years to write _Capital_.  It's a great expression
 of his serious concern with ideas and his patience in *developing* thought
 in a painstaking, methodical way.  The Marxism list was not very
 conducive to that.  Marx was by no means retreating or becoming an ivory-
tower "academic" because he sat in the library and thought and read and
 wrote--he certainly did not do it *instead* of political work, but as
part of his political work, and to suggest that everyone who left the
 Marxism list did so because they're retreating from politics is ludicrous
 (although in some instances it's undoubtedly true).  Had Marx thought
  of spending his time on things like the Marxism list, would there have
 been _Capital_?  Would there have been an International?  Or would the
 whole thing have gone up in flames ;-)?

Andrew Kliman