I first became active in socialist politics in 1967, the beginning of my 11 years in the American Trotskyist movement. Despite my profound respect for Leon Trotsky as a Marxist thinker, I view the Trotskyist movement as such a sectarian mistake. Throughout most of the 80s, I was active in the Central American solidarity movement, first with CISPES and then with Tecnica, an organization that sent computer programmers and other skilled professionals to Nicaragua. The project eventually took root in southern Africa as well, where it worked with SWAPO and the ANC. More recently I have given workshops on the Internet to community and union groups, as well as moderating a Marxist mailing list on the Internet that can be linked to above.
I have been strongly influenced by the example of The Socialist Union, a group led by Bert Cochran and Harry Braverman who left the Trotskyist movement in 1953 in order to create an alternative to the sectarian "vanguard" model. For six years they published a magazine called The American Socialist and worked to regroup the left. Marxmail is a conscious attempt to link up with their traditions.
My articles, many of which appeared originally as postings to the Marxism list, have appeared in Sozialismus (Germany), Science and Society, New Politics, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Organization and Environment, Cultural Logic, Dark Night Field Notes, Revolutionary History (Great Britain), New Interventions (Great Britain), Canadian Dimension, Revolution Magazine (New Zealand) and Green Left Weekly (Australia).
I have also created a small archive of the writings of James M. Blaut, who died in November, 2000. Jim was an outstanding scholar and revolutionary whose contributions to our movement are best commemorated through his work.
