Take Henry's comments:
From: Henry C.K. Liu <hliu at mindspring.com>
>This is a classic example of class struggle.
>The owners of lists against the list participants.
This is silly and embarasses real discussions of class struggle. If I hold a seminar, no one has the right to speak on the panel or even ask questions from the audience. If a political organization is launched, no one has to be allowed in or asked to join.
It might be good to have more email lists run with democratically elected moderators and rules. I've run lists where I take ballots on expulsion of list participants. Lists run by both DSA and Solidarity have various organizational rules on how they are moderated.
But frankly, if Louis or Doug or anyone plunks down $$$ per month (just as if they had rented a hall for a political meeting) and invites others to join the party, they have the right to ask people to be good guests. Otherwise, any group is free to take up a collection and set up a rival list (or rent a rival meeting hall).
I've spent time on the Solidarity email list and occasionally have been involved in discussions around the Democratic Party. Since Solidarity has a firm stance against such participation, whenever I've ventured an opposing opinion, I've always assumed the right of the moderator to tell me to lay off that issue since it is already established policy in the organization. That's normal moderation to keep an email list on topic for its main purpose for existence.
Cluttering a list with posts most members don't want to read or pay to download is even more undemocratic than a moderator working to keep the list on target to the purpose for which the participants subscribed.
This issue is not just one about email lists but about a whole range of sectarian practices, usually (although not exclusively) used by white male "Marxists", to silence majorities through wrecking ball tactics.
A month or so ago I described the way members of the Revolutionary Workers League sought to destroy the student affirmative action movement at Berkeley. While I emphasized their physical assaults and attempts to shout down speakers, they also used the more subtle tactics of coordinated disruption of meetings, derailing agendas, then crying "free speech" when they were ruled out of order (notably free speech they do not extend to others trying to attend their own meetings).
Many progressive activists have developed an antipathy to socialism and Marxism largely because they associate it with a style of disruptive speech that they find unpleasant to be around.
Civility/moderation of email lists is not a proto-capitalist plot or an element of class struggle, but a needed corrective to the tendency of hyper-expressionism by the few to destroy a list's usefulness and pleasure for the many.
Doug is paying for this microphone but the legitimacy of his moderation comes not from that fact (since there are a lot of other microphones on the Internet) but from the fact that his LBO work and his general participation in other Internet forums has developed a degree of trust in his integrity. Which is why so many people came onto this list when he announced it.
If you joined Louis's list, I assume you joined for a similar reason.
If you want uncensored discussions, I still maintain LEFT-L at cmsa.berkeley.edu as an unmoderated list where nut Marxist Bob Malecki rants at will. Anyone is free to join him if they find Doug or Louis oppressive.
--Nathan Newman