22 posts in one day

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I write to object to  Louis Proyect posting 22 times to this list in one day.

He wrote on 21 June:

> It is very difficult to
> create a space where tenured professors and upstarts like myself can
> exchange views. Michael has been doing this for the better part of a decade
> and I tip my hat to him.

This apparently humorous, but actually sectarian, polarisation ignores the
fact that tenured professors who have left wing views also have to work
hard to study, themselves, and hold their own in an an unfavourable
competitive environment, as much as non-academic audodidacts do. It is
self-pitying for an autodidact to describe himself as an upstart and fail
to think that the same rules apply to him/her of accountability, integrity
in handling sources, ability to argue effectively, perhaps strongly, but in
a way that advances the science of the argument

But e-mail lists are vulnerable to be swamped by volume. It would ironical
if a e-mail list that attempts to be a bridge for people seriously
interested in left wing political economy, whether they are tenured,
semi-tenured, untenured, or committed people outside the academic world
were to be swamped by someone who is somehow apparently tenured in such a
way as to have the time to post 22 times to one list.  Apparently a  full
time e-mail poster.

I suggest that is foolish to rely on quantity rather than quality to win an
argument, but if the individual is unable to moderate his own incontinence,
it is not unreasonable to comment on the group dynamics.

This is particularly so if in what is apparently a direct quote forwarded
by Michael Pugliese on 28th, Louis Proyect describes his aims as

> mainly to demolish the
> kind of Kautskyism that permeates a certain sector of the left.


Such a perspective cannot be considered by definition out of order on a
left wing list. It really has to be expected, just as the fact that others
may be as motivated by a prejudice against left wing opportunism, or the
evasiveness summed up by the old expression that your cannot catch an
opportunist with a formula.

But a mission to "demolish" ( a word likely to signal "nastiness")
"Kautskyism" on sister lists including this one which he has described as
being top heavy with liberals and social democrats, appears to imply a
claim to defend a more correct version of Marxism. I therefore find it
surprising that despite being able to post 22 times in one day, Louis
Proyect has not, out of self-respect, apparently thought it worth
responding to my criticism in the post on Marxism and Ecology, that he has
seriously trivialised the important marxist concept of dialectical
materialism and reduced it to a sort of (undoubtedly progressive) ecologism.

Of course that is his prerogative not to reply, and Michael has deterred
people from making challenges. I merely make the observation, that unless I
have overlooked a reply in the volume of material [in which case I
apologise, and please can it be forwarded to me] this individual apparently
can work full time posting to a list like this up, to 22 posts in one day.

I do object to someone being so incontinent as to post 22 times in one day.
Perhaps nothing should be done. If he wishes to go for quantity rather than
quality, this is a very transparent medium, and everyone is constantly
forming and modifying their impressions of everyone else. Good luck to him!
He has 24 hours each day to use as he thinks best.

Chris Burford                  (not a tenured professor)