This will be my last communication to WSN (World Systems Network mailing list). I simply do not want to be abused by right-wing students. I put up with enough abuse living in imperialist America on a daily basis without receiving an extra helping from list members in a discipline nominally in the Marxist tradition. I strongly urge Christoper, Immanuel and Andre to think deeply about what's going on here. The rest of the left-wing lists on the Internet are completely consumed with trying to understand the causes and meaning of the war in Yugoslavia. Attempts to open up a discussion here on the topic have resulted in the following: --A request from a contributor to the Journal of World Systems Research to stop "bombarding" him with information about the war. --Mailbombs and obscenities from the president of a "World Systems" campus club. I came to this list to find out more about world systems theory as such. I had never encountered anything directly written in its name, but am very familiar with the work of Braudel, A.G. Frank and Janet Abu-Lughod. Andrew Austin can back me up on this. My presence in both print journals and on the Internet is to defend a version of Marxism that owes much to this theory, as much as I understand of it. If Marxism can not relate to the oppression of "peripheral" peoples like the American Indian, then it is worthless. I suspect that the cause of the strong reaction against me is rooted in the "theoretical" turn of world systems away from the more class-oriented roots of dependency theory. People like A.G. Frank knew what it meant to be a citizen of a third world country from their direct involvement in places like Allende's Chile. When this kind of experience becomes detached from the theory, what you end up with is a very sophisticated form sociology that unfortunately shares the "value free" assumptions of western social science, no matter how many times you genuflect before Marx the "social theorist". If this theory can not engage with the key question of core-dependency relations in this moment of history--the Balkans War--then it is worthless. A war of this kind should be an acid test for this branch of knowledge. I am afraid that by the evidence of this mailing list, it has not passed it. For the dozen or so people who have been supportive, especially the Cuban comrades, all I can do is urge you to check out the Marxism mailing-list that I moderate. Information on its goals, and how to join can be found at http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
