Letters
(Red Menace #2)

Dear Red Menace:
I just saw your first issue. Although I don't much like the title, I do like the contents, in particular the article on your editorial policy. My particular hope is that feminists find in your pages a forum for grappling with the theoretical connection, if any, with socialism.
With hope,
Alison Sawyer

Dear Red Menace Friends,
We would like to exchange subs with you - saw your first issue and I find your questions, probes, plans really encouraging.
Margaret for the collective
at Liberation magazine

The following is a Red Menace Condensed Edition of a form letter that we have entered a relationship with:

Hi there!
I'm your first Re-invention of Everyday Life form letter! I'm laying right here in your hands talking to you with all the reified warmth & friendliness of a plumbing fixture because my files indicate that you have an active interest in social revolution &/or are a personal acquaintance. But before I make my special limited time offer just for you, Mr./Ms. Red Menace, let me explain the reasons for my existence:

I'm here due to a unique set of circumstances involving the human who (along with the post office box, publications, correspondence files & now myself, this letter) also just happens to be a member of REL. Before vacating his normal work-a-day existence for a chaotic month of summer travel, JNB was almost caught up on REL correspondence, & was dutifully pursuing a coupla projects. But the correspondence found in the box on his return seemed even more so of the two usual types: 1) letters & printed matter from other P.O. boxes who publish & mail things to each other as a form of revolutionary activity, & 2) notes from either faceless people or Boxes, (with no indication of who they are, or of what JNB might have in common with them), saying "What's REL?". ... I (this letter) will try to get JNB to continue to keep in touch with REL correspondents, but he'll probably have more interest in who they are than in lengthy discussions. He'll probably use me awhile for initial contacts... He'll still, however, want to continue a sharing of publications & mutual encouragement...
Re-Invention of Everyday Life
(JNB)
P.O. Box 282
Palo Alto, Calif. 94302,
U.S.A.

To The Red Menace

Wow, neat, peachy keen, I just got my copy of Red Menace. What a thrill to know there is a sinister communist conspiracy of freaks and ordinary workers like me who will use plain language and short articles and all that great stuff.

But a few problems - what is wholistic, dialogical pedagogy, salient, nascent surrealism hegemonic? Answer - a group of lefties practising intellectual masturbation - talking to themselves.

In other words you are going to grind out every month or so a paper to argue amongst yourselves till you split off into your different groups. Do you seriously think you are saying anything relevant to what's going on in the world or saying anything that a worker, mental or manual, housewife, teacher whatever would bother reading? Do you think that except for a slightly different theoretical point of view you are different in any way from any other left group?

Or maybe you want to be like other left groups? Do you want to talk about what people should he doing or talk about talks people had where they talked about what people should be doing? Your workers centre, education conference and all that were all structured from above for an inner group that either got invited there or had the fortune, may Marx and the LIP bless us all, of being subjects in a fun little experiment for the kids from the big city.

I think the independent left should get together. So, have a party. Phone up everybody you know, have them phone up everybody they know and everybody brings their own. Most people will get drunk and/or stoned, some will get their rocks off, and we can all argue with each other about 1917 and what happened to the left.

Thank you
Peter Cassidy

Comrades:
Thanks for sending the first issue - we're encouraged!
Revolutionary greetings
Steve Landstreet
for Philadelphia Solidarity

Dear Bros. and Sis.,
Keep on conspiring.
Fraternally
Allan Moscovitch

First published in Volume 2, Number 1 (Summer 1977 issue) of The Red Menace.

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