From: Michael Schauerte (mikeschauerte@GMAIL.COM)
Date: Sun May 06 2007 - 21:23:31 EDT
Perhaps I don't fit your sterotype Paul, but I'm a volunteer for the MIA. Not a Trotskyist (or a Stalinist), but they let me in with no questions asked. I'm free to post whatever I like for the Marxism in Japan page I administer, and since most Marxists in Japan were supporters of the JCP until the late fifties, many of the Marxist scholars I have translated were more or less supporters of that party for at least a period of their lives. I will admit that I have generally steered clear of the party ideologues, not because they were poliltically committed but because it tended to have a negative effect on their scholarship (such as the belief that commodity production can continue and even expand under "socialism"). (I should add, to avoid a fruitless debate with you, that I recognize that even some of the more dogmatic JCP supporters did carry out good work in certain fields, just as a historian who votes for the Democrats or Republicans might do so today, so I take everything on a case by case basis.) At any rate, my point is that the MIA has not issued me with a check list to determine which authors can be considered genuine Marxists, or told me that supporters of the Communist Party are not welcome. There has been debate, apparently, over the need to categorize certain writers as Marxists, and this categorization process is carried out democratically by a vote among the volunteers. For instance, I plan to put the case for Kuruma once I have uploaded a few more things. If the other members vote to approve, that would simply mean that he would be included on the page of "Marxists" but otherwise it would not change a thing, nor would he be "airbrushed" out of the site. I'm not sure if this categorization is really necessary, personally, but currently a majority of the volunteers thing it is. And if that majority becomes a minority opinion, a change will be made. Obviously the decisions made reflect the ideas of the volunteers, who are granted equal voting rights from the first day of becoming members. If you find the current state of affairs appalling, I would recommend that you become a volunteer and contribute to the site. My experience in the past year has been that the MIA functions in a refreshingly democratic manner and welcomes anyone willing to put in the time to expand the site. Most of the members are using valuable free time to contribute to the MIA, and in recent months some of the more technically endowed volunteers have spent countless hours fending off attacks on the site and getting a new server up and running. All of this unpaid and at times incredibly tedious labor is done not for the evil plans of some secret Trotskyist cabal that runs things, but simply because the volunteers (perhaps I should put that word in all caps to emphasize it) think it is worthwhile. So don't be surprised if a few of us volunteers take offense at your obnoxious and unproductive comments. Michael
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