Ben, I like the impulse behind this — transparency as a solvent for the sectarian and cultish patterns Marv and I have been circling. A record that everyone can see, instead of a leader's account of what happened, would make a real difference to how newer people evaluate groups instead of having to take founders' word for it.
But I don't think the platform gets at what's binding here. The isolation from the class that Marv and I agree on wasn't primarily an information problem—it was capital mobility, deindustrialization, a scattered and insecure workforce, and a labor movement institutionally closed to the left. None of that is friction that better communication tooling reduces. WeUser-generated, algorithmically mediated platforms operate at massive scale but primarily sort users into ideological silos and elevate performative voices, rather than encouraging patience or accountability.o the mechanism needs spelling out: what specifically about user-controlled algorithms breaks that pattern rather than reproducing it in a new venue? There's also a category problem. "Democratic centralism" is a decision structure — it's how a group decides where to put its people and what to do next. "Democratic communication" is an information structure. Transparency can expose incompetence and hypocrisy, which are real and useful, but it doesn't resolve the actual disputes on this list: entry versus independence, reform work versus revolutionary preparation, and how to allocate scarce cadre. Those are strategic disagreements that don't dissolve once everyone can see them clearly. If anything, full transparency just makes the disagreements more visible without adjudicating them. Last thing, and I say this as someone making a version of the same move: "A newer generation will build the platform that solves what we couldn't" has the same shape as the promise Marv and I have been arguing about—a breakthrough on the horizon that will make the current impasse retroactively make sense. I'd prefer to hear what you think existing groups should do differently in the meantime, whether there is a platform or not. -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42381): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42381 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120158195/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
