From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Apr 10 2007 - 11:02:12 EDT
Hi Alejandro, It's cool. I'm quite happy actually if Andrew Kliman writes his bit on TSSI, I mean he's the authority, though my own style is a bit less pugnacious, and more grateful of other views (I am usually very grateful of other views). I just don't have the same kind of missionary zeal. And to be honest, I have not yet read Kliman's book to which I referred, which I am still keen to do, even although, as a socialist, I usually tend to avoid Marxists like the plague these days. In fact, I am going to order it today. Asa far as I know, Dave Laibman the guitarist is a different person from David Laibman the economics professor, so a disambiguation page should be made. I hold David Laibman the economics professor in high regard, he's a good man, and I hope to discuss with him one day, if I live long enough (I just quit smoking, which should lengthen my days if this keeps up). I don't know Dave Laibman the guitarist. It is not true, as Paul Zarembka contends, that edits in wikipedia are totally anonymous. You can usually trace the address of the person making the changes, and trace all the specific changes he or she has made. For example, my address is 82.169.203.180 and if you check that, you can see all the changes I ever made. What Andrew Kliman did was, that he edited the TSSI wiki article a lot of times in one session, as is shown by the editing record. But you could also simply write the article offline, and then insert it in one go, which is really what should happen. Suppose Paul Zarembka hated the "capital accumulation" article in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation (to which I contributed quite a bit as can be verified from the record). Well, what he could do, is write another article, titled for example, "Marxist theory of accumulation of capital" which would exist side-by-side with the firstmentioned article, and could be crossreferenced. Discussion could then take place on the talk page, e.g. about if the two articles should be merged, and how. In reality, wikipedia is a whole lot more flexible than critics believe, because it almost always provides yet another option to put your own valid meanings across. The limit is really your own imagination and inventiveness. Of course, this implies an attitude quite foreign to many "little Marxist Hitlers" who consider that there is a Right and a Wrong way to think, a Correct and an Incorrect way, which should be stipulated in advance of any meaningful discussion, or be a precondition for any discussion to take place at all. The Hitlers want to make the rules, for others to obey. The inventive people use the rules to do their own thing. I have written quite a few Marxian entries in wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jurriaan), simply because I found the existing entries were rather terrible, and wikipedia is heavily used, so, if you can refer all the people that access it to at least a halfway correct understanding of Marx and his interpreters I think that you are doing well already - the treatment of Marx is so mangled and godawful in the social sciences, I often wish I had never heard of Marx at all. Of course, all of my entries are eternally open, and susceptible, to change - but most of them have stayed pretty much as they were, suggesting that they weren't so bad anyhow. Jurriaan Even my friends say to me sometimes And make out like I don't understand You know what they say, They say, "daddy you're a fool to cry" You're a fool to cry You're a fool to cry And it makes me wonder, why... I'm a fool, baby I'm a fool, baby I'm a certified fool, now I want to tell ya Gotta tell ya, baby I'm a fool baby I'm a fool baby Certified fool for ya, come on I'm a fool I'm a fool I'm a fool - Rolling Stones, "Fool to Cry"
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