Charles, I am the moderator of the Marxism mailing-list, as Doug is the moderator of the lbo-talk mailing-list. If Doug told me to stop bickering with Chris, I'd honor his request. On another moderated list, PEN-L, Michael Perelman occasionally advises me privately or the list publicly that it is time to move on. His timely interventions have made PEN-L a top-quality list.
I thought the "hate crime" discussion had degenerated. It was turning into the sort of empty breast-beating that typified the 1960s. Analyzing peoples email posts for their racial sensitivity is just a waste of bandwidth. Furthermore, people were repeating arguments that they made already. I have seen this sort of failure to come to finality on other Marxism or left-wing mailing lists and it is a source of deep frustration for people who are looking for solid information in the form of well-researched posts.
I pay $70 a month for the privilege of hosting a Marxism mailing list. I find it deeply satisfying because the seriousness of the participants and the high quality of the posts competes favorably with print journals. I have a bias toward contributions that represent people's own thinking on a subject rather than attempts to refute what other people are saying. That being said, I don't particularly mind when such an exchange breaks out. I do, however, reserve for myself the right to state that the discussion has hit a brick wall. People were discussing "hate crimes" over a five day period and nobody showed signs of budging an inch from their original positions. This becomes a sterile exercise that discredits Marxism.
I think that both you and Henry are brilliant thinkers. I do think, however, that you both seem to have trouble following the initiatives of cyberchairs like Doug and me. The other day you posted 11 times to LBO-Talk. I know for a fact that you would have kept getting warnings that you had exceeded the 3-post limit. For these forums to be effective, there has to be some direction from a moderator. I have seen one Marxism list after another trashed over the past four years because participants thought that the rules didn't apply to them. That will not happen in marxism at panix.com.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)