[Marxism] Marxmail is ten years old

[Louis Proyect]

This is the tenth anniversary of the Marxism mailing list (also known as 
Marxmail, the name of the accompanying website http://www.marxmail.org/) 
that was launched on May 1, 2008. It started off with about sixty 
subscribers (it now numbers 1103) who were fleeing the Marxism list that 
preceded it, which had been hijacked by supporters of the Shining Path 
in Peru, including one Adolfo Olaechea. Adolfo and his co-thinkers soon 
lost interest in the mailing list and went on to other projects. Adolfo, 
bless his soul, successfully defended himself recently against trumped 
up charges of terrorism in Peru and continues to rally people around the 
Maoist banner.

With all due respect to the Maoist left, it was not the kind of 
political culture that lent itself to a free and open exchange of ideas. 
After the Maoist comrades had seized the moderator’s reins, they began 
expelling people left and right—yours truly was the first to go. 
Ironically, I had written a defense of the Shining Path a few months 
before I was 
booted.(http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/indian/sendero.htm)

That did not save me from being punished as a “Trotskyite”. Those stormy 
days of 1998 seem like a century ago, while my genuine Trotskyist past, 
  from 1967 to 1978 now seems like a millennium ago. History marches on, 
to use a cliché.

The Marxism list now has 1103 subscribers. I serve as moderator and Les 
Schaffer serves as technical moderator. I have had a long and fruitful 
collaboration with Les whose solid grasp of subscribers’ psychologies, 
including my own, helps to keep the list on an even keel. To a large 
extent, my ideas about how to build a non-sectarian and non-dogmatic 
left are reflected in the way I moderate the list. Most of all, this 
involves a firm hand when it comes to any attempts to divide the list 
between 'Bolsheviks' and 'Mensheviks'. Since Internet mailing lists tend 
to operate as pressure cookers to begin with, the worst thing for a 
Marxism mailing list would be to artificially raise the temperature. 
Labeling people as “revisionists” or “reformists” is an invitation to 
the kinds of flame wars that destroyed the mailing lists that preceded 
Marxmail.

While the list does not have nearly as many female subscribers that it 
needs, the global representation is pretty good—including many 
subscribers from the Third World. On a typical day, there will be posts 
from subscribers in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Germany, and 
Great Britain. The political representation is also pretty good, with 
subscribers reflecting Trotskyist, Communist, state capitalist, and 
syndicalist traditions.

The mailing list has grown by about 100 new subscribers per year and I 
expect that it will continue at this rate unless there is a qualitative 
change in the political situation. If there was a radicalization as deep 
as that of 1968 (another anniversary now being celebrated) I can easily 
imagine adding 3 or 4 hundred subscribers per year. Given the economic 
crisis we are now entering, as well as the prospect of continuing 
imperialist war and environmental degradation, that could be in the cards.

Nearly 40 years ago, the Trotskyist sect that I belonged to embarked on 
a major infrastructure expansion campaign in anticipation of the same 
kind of future radicalization. Members gave millions of dollars to 
purchase an office building near the Hudson River and an expensive Web 
Press, which prints on continuous rolls of paper. The offices were seen 
as necessary to administer an explosive growth in membership and the Web 
Press would allow the massive circulation of party organs as the 
radicalization deepened. Although there were opportunities for the group 
after the 60s radicalization came to an end, they did not understand how 
to take advantage of them. Instead of growing, they shrank. The building 
and all the contents, including the Web Press, were sold a couple of 
years ago.

Although there will obviously always be a need for “dead tree” media 
such as books and newspapers, the Internet—which is a Web Press after a 
fashion—is as geared to our epoch as the Gutenberg press was geared to 
the epoch of peasant revolts. I like to think of the Marxism mailing 
list as the same kind of investment in infrastructure as the SWP’s 
office building and Web Press, even though it costs very little. In the 
  coming years and decades, even after my ashes have been scattered in 
the Hudson River, Marxmail will enable revolutionaries worldwide to 
exchange information and debate ideas all through the auspices of a 
technology that originated in the American military’s research into how 
state power could be maintained after a nuclear war! Talk about 
contradictions…

The Marxism list remains grateful to the support of Professor Hans 
Ehrbar of the University of Utah Economics department, one of the few 
schools in the country that allows scholarly critiques of the capitalist 
system to be mounted. Our mailing list operates on a computer that Hans 
donated and his technical support, along with Les’s, allows our 
communications to run smoothly.

I would also wish our comrade Doug Henwood well, whose LBO-Talk mailing 
list was launched on the very same day as Marxmail. 
(http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/lbo-talk.html) Doug was a survivor 
of the early wild and woolly days of Marxism mailing lists on the 
Internet as well as senseless provocations from your moderator before I 
(and Doug) had reached our current Zen-like state of equanimity.