Civility

At 08:42 AM 3/30/99 -0500, you wrote:
>dear louis,
>i have had a lot of complaints about your language on wsn.  please come
>it a bit higher on civility. i like your stuff but we dont want to run
>people off.
>chris chase-dunn
>wsn list-owner

My dear professor, are you aware that "civility" is a highly politicized
question today? Two years ago, 200 members of Congress and their families
trooped off to Hershey, Pa., to hold their first conference on civility.
The aim was to improve the courtesy level in the United States House of
Representatives. In 1997, that was perceived as being at an all-time low.
American Online has just taken action against certain of its Irish
discussion groups because of a lack of "civility". Politically, it is
linked to the communitarian movement and its demands for "civil society"
and "civility" which includes President Clinton in its ranks. One might say
that the bombing of Yugoslavia is an attempt to restore civil society
there. In some cities, civil society proponents argue that supposedly minor
urban irritants like petty vandalism, graffiti, blaring car radios,
aggressive panhandling and unruly behavior by teen-agers foster a larger
sense of neglect and hopelessness on which serious crime can feed.  

As to the specifics of my participation on this list, you have to realize
that I am here not as somebody who identifies with world systems, but as
somebody studying it like Alan Sokal studied postmodernism. As a Marxist
for the past 35 years, I have a responsibility to answer challenges to
Marxism such as world systems theory represents. In fact there seems to be
an inordinate amount of confusion about the relationship between the two
schools of thought. I hadn't paid much attention to it in the past until I
read A.G. Frank's broadside against it in a Communist Manifesto cyberseminar.

I have no interest in being a day-to-day participant on the list, since I
really have little to offer. The question of why capitalism could or
couldn't have started elsewhere a thousand years ago, while interesting,
seem of little value to people trying to change society today. My mind
might change after further study, but that's the way it seems now.

During the outbreak of the Balkan war, I innocently crossposted news about
the conflict from other lists, just as A.G. Frank's statement was
crossposted far and wide. This is what the Internet is about, isn't it?
When a member in good standing of the world systems fraternity wrote me to
complain about how this was a burden on him, it was an epiphany to me. It
first of all confirmed my suspicions about the rather cloistered nature of
the fraternity, and it tipped me off that it was a waste of time to
crosspost here any longer, which I have indeed stopped doing.

In the meantime, when anybody sends me a communication--as you have-- I
will reply, as is my right and duty.. I can not promise "civility", but I
can certainly promise sharp and to-the-point responses. If members of the
world systems fraternity anticipate a less than civil response, then the
solution is simple. Do not send me private posts or public posts
challenging my ideas. Down the road, I plan to post a series of articles
dealing with the differences between world systems theory and Marxism,
which I assume will generate a lot of discussion. In the meantime, I plan
to do nothing but lurk.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)