Subject: LL9804274 Louis Paulsen: 
         re LL9804213 Ben Seattle's Internet idea
Date:    Monday, April 13, 1998 11:10 AM


Ben writes:
> My own views on this question were expressed 
> in LL9804.039 (excerpt reproduced below).
> 
> The decisive task *in practice* is to create an electronic 
> news service for workers which will be open to all 
> progressive (ie: including social-democratic and reformist) 
> political trends.  Such a common news service would 
> function as an arena of both *cooperation* and *competition* 
> between various trends (including between revolutionary 
> and reformist trends), would lead to clarity on the 
> similarities and differences between the various trends, 
> would bring activists of different trends into contact 
> with one another in the context of useful practical work 
> and would bring *real news* (as well as a better 
> understanding of the controversies involved in the creation 
> of a communist movement) to a large audience (that 
> would eventually number in the millions).  The clear 
> analogy here is the creation of Iskra.

I certainly don't oppose cooperative Internet ventures, but
I do have some questions:

- What would this "news service" provide for people that will be
  better than we can do right now with a web browser, mailing lists
  like leninlist, USENET groups, and multi-link sites like Jay's
  List of Progressive Resources?

- As there are hundreds (at least) of parties and organizations
  with access to the Net, who is going to be the 'editor' of
  this news service and reduce the millions and millions of words
  down to a number which people can reasonably consume?

- How does your analogy of Iskra work?  Iskra was formed very early
  in the history of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, at
  a time when many questions regarding the application of Marxism
  to the situation in Russia had not even been addressed.  It is
  now 100 years later.  The Leninist, Social-Democratic, and reformist
  parties have traditions and have developed their theoretical lines
  to an incomparably greater extent.  There are splits among these
  trends and there are REASONS for the splits.  It would have been
  unrealistic to try to publish a single "Iskra" for the RSDLP
  as late as 1910, let alone 1920, so how can there be a single
  "Iskra" for all the descendants of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
  in 1998?   


On the other hand I could readily see the establishment of cooperative
websites with input from several parties representing more or less
coherent or fraternal international trends.  

And, on the general topic of the Internet, it seems to me that we are not
using it NEARLY as well as we could be using it for the purposes of
education.  We could be holding on-line meetings and discussions using IRC
or IRC-like software.  I've never used IRC myself, but if there were good
on-line meetings I would seriously consider it.  

We could be conducting an
organized on-line program of socialist education in soc.politics.marxism .
We could agree that during the week of April 12 there will be
presentations on (a) the Leninist view of the national question, (b) 
the Australian dockworkers struggle and what we can do to support it, (c)
thru (f) some other important topics.  Or is USENET obsolete now?  It
could be done on a website too.  I'm not convinced that USENET
is really obsolete yet, though.  (What do you think?)

In unity,

Louis Paulsen
member, Workers World Party, Chicago
http://www.workers.org