From owner-marxism-international  Thu Apr 10 00:28:17 1997
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 00:27:44 -0400
Message-Id: <199704100427.AAA314830@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU>
From: Keith Alan Sprouse <kas3f@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFT-6

At 08:07 PM 4/9/97 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Revolutionary Marxist Collective/SUNY Buffalo
>
>************
>PANIC LEFT-6
>************
>
>In the small petty bourgeois universe of Doug Henwood to place in the
>public space a text for public critique and discussion "takes nerve". It
>is, in short an act of "personal" courage. This is only one of the
>symptoms of cyberfascism that we have pointed out: it is a cult of
>personality and secrecy and a buddy system that has made any exchange of
>ideas and views other than the ones that support the net left clique
>almost impossible.  We are Revolutionary Marxists: we believe not in buddy
>systems or the pedagogy of support (Holstun)  but in open discussion. 

"Cyberfascism" and "the net left?"  I really have to wonder who you think
your audience is?  To begin with, I just can't take such a term as
"cyberfascism" seriously.  To even use such a term as "fascism" to describe
your self-marginalization on the internet seems ludicrous, not to mention an
insult to any of the comrades (remember, this is marxism-international,
where some people live in very different situations than we do in the US)
who have actually suffered under oppressive regimes.  In short, get a clue.

>speaking out in this fascist climate is all about "nerve" and "guts". 
>In his response to us he doubts if we even have the "guts to write back at
>all".  

Well, all I can say is that you and I must have very different ideas of what
"nerve" and "guts" are about.  It takes "nerve" and "guts" to be an active
marxist in Turkey (like Zeynep), when you physical and mental well-being are
continuously threatened.  But then, it would take some "nerve" to go out and
talk to some real-live factory workers the way that you have been to the
list here, but not any "guts" -- just an over-inflated sense of yourselves.

>Henwood and Holstun--net-left and academic left

While I certainly appreciate the valuable contributions of Doug Henwood, I
would have a hard time substituting him for the ENTIRE net-left.  Or maybe,
this is a case of "synecdoche," where the part stands for the whole (see, I
know my terms!).

>The reason Henwood and Sprouse (and undoubtedly many many others) find >his
text interesting is not simply because it echoes their politics back to
>them.  

Hmm... well, never having met the man, nor having heard anything about his
political activities, I couldn't really comment on this one.  Maybe you
could tell us about the various political activities that your group is
involved in?  (Feel free to leave out "arguing with other grad students in
our program.")

>Srouse says he is a student of literature: he, then should know that the
>very form of our text which is an intertextual (oops big words again)

Hey...wait... are you trying to make fun of me?  I have to admit that I'm
probably not a good barometer of what constitutes "jargon" anymore, but I
think we could probably all make that one out.  Thanks for the apology,
though.  
>Sprouse himself says he has never seen the entire net left so united
>against anything as they are now against us.

Oh, you must have misread my post.  What I said was that I had never seen
the marxism-international listmembers so united against you.  I certainly
can't speak about PEN-L, the newsgroups, the various country-based leftists
mailing lists and newsgroups, or the many net-related groups of which I know
nothing.  I am not making this distinction just to nit-pick, rather, I think
that it is exemplary of a major problem that I have with your texts thus
far:  after having elected a prose style guaranteed to limit your audience
to a tiny handful of academics (and to alienate any of the non-academics
with whom you might have otherwise entered into a productive dialogue), you
began to bemoan your fate as an oppressed group, victims of an enormous
conspiracy on the net, an organized "cyberfascism" in which the whole world
unites against you.  So this sound megalomaniacal to the rest of you, or
just to me? 

And this is where you REALLY go overboard:

>We are showing you the way you are all wrapped up in your
>petty professional concerns (Sprouse says his exams are more important to
>him than participation in public debate, and while attacking the academy
>is getting ready a job there ...

I said that I am busy preparing for my exams, true enough.  But, had you
asked, I would have told you that my free time is spent in other ways than
cybermasterbation.  I am one of the founders of the UVa SLAC (student labor
action committee), which has been active around our campus in the first
stages of a struggle against the Virginia anti-labor laws.  The classified
staff (read, non-academic workers, whom you probably only know on YOUR
campus as the people that clean your offices) is under attack and  we have a
group of students have been writing letters, getting signatures on
petitions, and in general trying to drum up support for their plight -- not
a particularly easy task on the campus of a fairly conservative university.
I am a volunteer at the Women's Center, and since I don't come from a
wealthy family, I also work a part-time job in addition to my teaching load,
etc.  Forgive me then if I find REAL political activity a bit more important
than cyberwanking right now.  When I have time for it, I'll do more.  At
this point, however, I am mainly on this list to learn from the informative
posts made by Louis P (the king of the cyberseminar, when he's not fighting
with Jerry), Louis G., Doug, Zeynep, Gay, Jerry (makes real contributions,
when he's not fighting with Louis P.), and so on.  And I'll start paying my
freight soon.

So, my questions for your group can be summed up in the following:

1)  What political activity have you been involved in (see above)?

2)  How do you ever hope to reach the workers if you can't even enter into a
productive dialogue with a group that is favorably pre-disposed to a marxist
approach?  If you can't preach to the converted, to whom will you preach?
You want to see antagonism, run some of your stuff be some "all-American,
anti-commies" group of factory workers somewhere.  I promise you that they
won't be impressed.

If you really are interested in dialogue, as your last post said, then maybe
this would be one place to start?  If all your interested in is playing the
role of self-rightous martyr, then don't expect any more responses from me.

Keith

___________________________________________________________
Keith Alan Sprouse			e-mail:  kas3f@virginia.edu
Dept. of French Language and Literatures	office:  804.924.4626
University of Virginia			home:  804.979.3961
Charlottesville, VA 22903		fax:  804.924.7157



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