Nigeria and Ethiopia
ln...@columbia.edu
To put the Ken Saro-Wira question into some kind of context
appropriate to a Trotsky newsgroup, we should take note of Trotsky's
position on Italian invasion of Ethiopia which he opposed.
Haile Selasse was the extremely cruel and corrupt emperor of Ethiopia
who ruled over extremely backward feudal-like social relations. Even
though Mussolini represented a more advanced stage of property
relations, this was not a basis for supporting his invasion. Between
Mussolini and Selasse on the criterion of who is a better human being,
the decision is up for grabs. But that was not what Trotsky was
looking toward as a way of figuring out which side to support.
The big question was colonialism. Trotsky and the Bolsheviks viewed
the rights of peripheral nationalities worthy of support against
imperialist powers despite the quality of the leadership in place.
They also didn't think that imperialism had a "civilizing" mission in
places like India, Ethiopia, Egypt, etc. In his 1851 Herald Tribune
articles, Marx argued that England was introducing capitalist property
relations in India 1851 that were ultimately progressive no matter how
brutal the short-term effects were. Marx pulled back from these views
in the 1870s and Lenin had no use for them at all. They did however
prevail in the Second International. The Social Democracy has often
used this sort of bastardization of Marxist theory to support
imperialist adventures in the third world. The Israeli labor Zionists
for example make a big point of how "progressive" Israel is in
comparison to the backward Arab countries all about it such as Jordan.
The approach of Living Marxism is quite slippery on these sorts of
questions. They will point to their support of Irish nationalism as
proof of their revolutionary credentials. While this position is quite
legitimate on conventional socialist grounds, it is much more offset
by their reactionary positions on the struggles of such peoples as the
Yanomami and Ogoni. Capitalism can coexist fairly easily with a united
Ireland. It will have a much tougher time reconciling itself to
Yanomami sovereignty over the fabulously wealthy resources of the
Amazon rainforests, or Ogoni sovereignty over Nigerian oil.
The positions socialists should take on these struggles is one of
support. We do not hold it against the Ogonis that they prefer farming
and fishing and traditional village life. We do not hold it against
them because they elected Ken Saro-Wira to lead them, who supported
one side against another in the Nigerian civil war of two decades ago.
If this is his greatest sin, then he should be forgiven. The statute
of limitations has been passed. Also, he has been executed for his
trouble-making, which should presumably satisfy groups like Shell Oil,
the Nigerian military and Living Marxism.
Louis Proyect
Justin Flude
ln...@columbia.edu wrote in message <34899615...@news.columbia.edu>...
>The approach of Living Marxism is quite slippery on these sorts of
>questions. They will point to their support of Irish nationalism as
>proof of their revolutionary credentials. While this position is quite
>legitimate on conventional socialist grounds, it is much more offset
>by their reactionary positions on the struggles of such peoples as the
>Yanomami and Ogoni.
Er, Louis, you've yet to present any evidence at all what the "reactionary
position" of LM on this. Please do so, or desist these idiotic ramblings.
>Capitalism can coexist fairly easily with a united
>Ireland.
LOL! You're not so hot on this "imperialism" thing, are you?
Justin
Louis N Proyect
On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
>
> Er, Louis, you've yet to present any evidence at all what the "reactionary
> position" of LM on this. Please do so, or desist these idiotic ramblings.
>
The reactionary position is that when genocide is being inflicted on the
Yanomami people, you attack the human rights group in Brazil that comes to
their aid. This is the same thing as attacking human rights groups in the
1930s who were defending Jewish survival. Your position on the Yanomami is
that it is okay for "outside civilization" to encroach on their existence.
This is apologetics for mass murder. You have basically the same position
on the Ogoni. This is not Marxism, it is barbarism.
Louis Proyect
Justin Flude
Louis N Proyect wrote in message ...
>On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
>
>>
>> Er, Louis, you've yet to present any evidence at all what the
"reactionary
>> position" of LM on this. Please do so, or desist these idiotic
ramblings.
>>
>
>The reactionary position is that when genocide is being inflicted on the
Reread the above, and then provide some *evidence*.
After all, you've claimed in the past that I'm Jamaican and like dressing up
in stormtrooper uniforms. How can we believe anything you say, without real
evidence to back it up?
Justin
Louis N Proyect
Justin Flude wants to know which of their positions on the third world is
reactionary, so I am posting LM's attack on a human rights group in Brazil
which has been campaigning for the Yanomami people. You characterize what
they are doing as trying to create a "human zoo." This is a reactionary
lie. Such groups are trying to save lives and a valuable culture. I post
from a group that has an opposing viewpoint. I stand with them. You stand
with the corporations who are ruining the rainforests and killing innocent
people, all in the name of capitalist progress.
Living Marxism:
I think Fiona Watson, Survival's Brazil campaign officer, has got one hell
of a cheek to write disapprovingly that 'sadly not all Yanomami groups
have been able to resist encroaching white society'. Why exactly is she so
horrified that in one area 'some of the Yanomami have slung their hammocks
around the stilts supporting the abandoned [government agency] post'?
Perhaps it makes it harder for her to get picturesque photos. Fiona
believes we should protect the Yanomami from the advances of civilisation
by declaring their lands a national park where their culture could be
preserved. It sounds like a human zoo to me.
IN FOCUS: THE YANOMAMI (From Rainforest Action Network Homepage)
Five centuries ago there were somewhere between six and nine million
indigenous people living in Brazil. Today, approximately 250 thousand
remain, resisting encroachment by loggers, gold miners, cattle ranchers,
and state sponsored development projects. Ranking within these numbers are
the Yanomami with an estimated population of 8,500 in Brazil and 12,500 in
Venezuela. Their territory covers about 19 million hectares of Amazon
rainforest spanning across the two countries.
The Yanomami people are one of the truly Neolithic-age human groups in the
world. The remoteness and sheer ruggedness of the region encompassing
their traditional homelands allowed these people to develop in almost
complete isolation from the outside world. Consequently, the Yanomami live
more like their ancient ancestors than any tribal people surviving in
Brazil today. The Yanomami, like many Amazonian forest dwellers, are a
semi-agrarian hunter-gatherer people. They depend upon the forest for all
their needs. These Indians cultivate about 80 percent of their food and
also grow numerous plants for medicinal purposes. They live in large
communities centered around a donut-shaped shelter called a 'yano'. A
single yano may be shared by as many as 400 people.
The Yanomami territory had been left relatively undisturbed in the decades
preceding 1970, when Brazil's then military government launched the first
large-scale development scheme in the region. At this time a series of
roads were constructed throughout Amazonia in order to make valuable
forest resources accessible to multinational corporations and to allow
settlement by landless migrants from the country's overcrowded cities,
where political dissent was growing. In conjunction with these projects,
the Brazilian government carried out the first aerial surveys of the
forest. The data gathered from the Yanomami area revealed that these lands
contained valuable cassiterite ore, uranium, and gold.
Shortly after this discovery 'garimpeiros' (gold miners) began invading
the Indian territory by the thousands. By 1987, 45,000 gold miners were in
Yanomami territory. The gold miners engaged in armed conflicts with the
Yanomami, introduced malaria and other diseases to which the Indians have
no natural immunity, and generated internal strife between Yanomami
groups. Furthermore, gold prospecting has led to serious damage of the
natural environment. Rivers are contaminated with mercury used in the
identification and purification of gold, while the existing fauna is
ransacked to support the multitude of miners. In a short period of time
several thousand Indians perished.
Legally protected under the constitution of 1988, the Yanomami territory
in Brazil has, recently, been safeguarded by a military surveillance
operation. In 1996, however, the operation was suspended. Once again the
territory is being invaded and the disastrous results of the gold rush of
the 80s could be repeated if no measures are taken. Already, many Indians
have either been murdered or are dying of malaria. The sole health care
program organized by the Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY) is in jeopardy due
to insufficient funding. Funds for these projects which, in fact, are
available through the Amazon Pilot Program are not being used, possibly
due to lack of political will on the part of the Brazilian government.
Necessary steps for the preservation of the Yanomami culture should
include the re-institution of surveillance programs, comprehensive health
assistance strategies, and the collaboration between the Brazilian and the
Venezuelan governments in developing protection projects that are not
conflicting. As it stands, the Venezuelan stricter protection program only
leads to an exodus of gold miners across the border into Yanomami
territory in the Brazilian side.
What You Can Do
Send the following letter to the President of Brazil:
Sr. Presidente da Republica Fernando Henrique Cardoso Palacio do Planalto
Praca dos Tres Poderes 70.160-900 Brasilia, D.F. BRASIL or e-mail
him:p...@cr-df.mp.br
Mr. President, I am aware that the Yanomami territory is being invaded by
gold prospectors. This invasion has led to a series of grave problems that
threaten the Indian community. Many Yanomami have already died in
conflicts with gold miners or from diseases to which they have no natural
immunity.
I urge you to release the funds necessary to re-install the surveillance
program of the Yanomami territory. Also, it is necessary to maintain the
health program conducted by the Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY) which is
now in serious jeopardy due to lack of funds. The lives of the Indians and
the preservation of their culture might be in your hands. Please act
expediently on this matter. Sincerely,
creb...@antares.com.br
In article
<Pine.SUN.3.95L.97120...@vanakam.cc.columbia.edu>,
>
> Justin Flude wants to know which of their positions on the third world is
> reactionary, so I am posting LM's attack on a human rights group in Brazil
> which has been campaigning for the Yanomami people. You characterize what
> they are doing as trying to create a "human zoo." This is a reactionary
> lie. Such groups are trying to save lives and a valuable culture. I post
> from a group that has an opposing viewpoint. I stand with them. You stand
> with the corporations who are ruining the rainforests and killing innocent
> people, all in the name of capitalist progress.
>
> Living Marxism:
>
> I think Fiona Watson, Survival's Brazil campaign officer, has got one hell
> of a cheek to write disapprovingly that 'sadly not all Yanomami groups
> have been able to resist encroaching white society'. Why exactly is she so
> horrified that in one area 'some of the Yanomami have slung their hammocks
> around the stilts supporting the abandoned [government agency] post'?
> Perhaps it makes it harder for her to get picturesque photos. Fiona
> believes we should protect the Yanomami from the advances of civilisation
> by declaring their lands a national park where their culture could be
> preserved. It sounds like a human zoo to me.
There is a lot of intersting things in the LM group political thinking,
which they, however, spoil by their cavalier attitude. Of course there is
not a problem of Yanomami hanging their hammocks on "whitemen" buildings,
but a problem of a swarm of lumpenproletarians ransacking the forest,
specially by spilling huge amounts of *mercury* - used to make gold
amalgm- in the rivers and so exposing the whole native population to a
poisonous metal whose effects where fully felt, viz. in Japan's Minamata
Bay.Also, since gold in extracted by way of huge water hoses that bore
the clay at riverbanks, the aquatical fauna is drowning in mud and once
pristine rivers are becoming sewers for a sauce of the said mud and
mercury bound to stay dormant at the river bottons for centuries.
Carlos Rebello
>
> IN
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Justin Flude
On Tue, 9 Dec 1997 16:15:35 -0500, Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu>
wrote:
>Justin Flude wants to know which of their positions on the third world is
>reactionary, so I am posting LM's attack on a human rights group in Brazil
>which has been campaigning for the Yanomami people. You characterize what
>they are doing as trying to create a "human zoo." This is a reactionary
>lie. Such groups are trying to save lives and a valuable culture. I post
>from a group that has an opposing viewpoint. I stand with them. You stand
>with the corporations who are ruining the rainforests and killing innocent
>people, all in the name of capitalist progress.
>
>Living Marxism:
>
>I think Fiona Watson, Survival's Brazil campaign officer, has got one hell
>of a cheek to write disapprovingly that 'sadly not all Yanomami groups
>have been able to resist encroaching white society'. Why exactly is she so
>horrified that in one area 'some of the Yanomami have slung their hammocks
>around the stilts supporting the abandoned [government agency] post'?
>Perhaps it makes it harder for her to get picturesque photos. Fiona
>believes we should protect the Yanomami from the advances of civilisation
>by declaring their lands a national park where their culture could be
>preserved. It sounds like a human zoo to me.
Louis's idiotic attempts to slander LM are getting very wearisome, so
here's the *full* text of this short article, allowing readers to make
up their own minds as to the position of LM. You will note that Louis
has deliberately snipped from the article all the references to the
"positive" aspects of the life of the Yanomami, in his stupid and
dishonest attempt to portray LM as in favour of "killing innocent
people, all in the name of capitalist progress." In fact, what really
seems to have annoyed Louis is the criticisms made of the middle-class
liberals in the Survival group. I wonder why?
Ann Bradley
Why envy Yanomami Indians?
Compared to the life of a regular commuter on the Victoria Line, it
seems Amazonian Indians have a pretty good time. Not for them endless
delays on a decrepit transport system, choking pollution and worries
about inflation and unemployment. According to the literature of
Survival, a campaign for the rights of tribal peoples, the Amazonian
Indians enjoy a balanced, ecologically sound existence. The
implication is that we should be so lucky.
The Yanomami of Brazil have no equivalent to the stresses, strains and
deprivations of inner-city life. According to Survival they 'live well
in comfortable dwellings; warm at night and cool in the day. They have
a varied and healthy diet. They live in a close community where
loneliness is unknown. And they do it all on three or four hours work
a day and have plenty of time for their children, philosophy and
religion'.
It sounds great, and from the pictures in the Survival campaign
brochure, not only do they live an idyllic existence but they look
idyllic too. The pictures of honey-skinned beautiful people playing
with their bright-eyed children are enough to prompt even the most
hardened Eurocentric to draw a deep breath and exclaim 'ahhhh wouldn't
it be lovely to live like that?'
And, of course, in one sense it would. If the Indian peoples' lot was
as shown in the Survival campaign literature - an island of
self-sufficiency and natural harmony in the middle of a cold cruel sea
of progress, civilisation and domination - life would be sweet. But
the reality for most tribal people is rather more bitter.
As tribal life goes the Yanomami have struck lucky. Their way of life
hasn't developed or progressed, because they've been able to get by as
they are. They live in a fertile area which is naturally rich in
wildlife. Until recently there has not been a 'struggle' for survival
nor a problem of scarce resources.
Anthropologists marvel at the lack of selfishness and the communal
spirit of the Yanomami, but in truth, if resources are plentiful,
generosity doesn't represent a sacrifice. Circumstances allow the
Yanomami to be 'good-natured', 'welcoming' and 'selfless'. Life for
most tribal people is rather different - a constant battle against
starvation and deprivation.
But even the supposed benefits of Yanomami life over our own
technological rat race depend on your point of view. When you're stuck
on the tube between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Circus in the rush
hour, Yanomami life seems good. If you need your appendix whipped out,
or your dental cavities filled, I'd lay money that a Brazilian
rainforest would not be your chosen place of residence.
Survival claim that 'there is nothing superior about our way of life.
Tribal people have their own technology, their own medical
systems...and they work well. If they didn't they would change them'.
I doubt if a Yanomami woman with an ectopic pregnancy would hold to
that.
It's fashionable these days to stand in awe of the 'natural way of
life'. The Survival literature wonders at the fact that tribal peoples
'get all their food, medicines, building materials and spiritual
meaning from what is around them'. The truth is that they don't have
any choice! Trendy Europeans and Americans may choose to reject the
material way of life and 'turn to nature', but these people have never
had a choice. And while rich Westerners can go back to the Hilton even
if they choose not to, the tribal peoples have no means to opt into
another way of life.
I think Fiona Watson, Survival's Brazil campaign officer, has got one
hell of a cheek to write disapprovingly that 'sadly not all Yanomami
groups have been able to resist encroaching white society'. Why
exactly is she so horrified that in one area 'some of the Yanomami
have slung their hammocks around the stilts supporting the abandoned
[government agency] post'? Perhaps it makes it harder for her to get
picturesque photos. Fiona believes we should protect the Yanomami from
the advances of civilisation by declaring their lands a national park
where their culture could be preserved. It sounds like a human zoo to
me.
The hard truth is that, whether we value them or not, you can't
preserve cultures in the way that you can preserve jam. The Yanomami,
even if they wish to, cannot remain isolated from the world system.
Even if they have no interest in going into the developed world, the
developed world will come to them.
Already capitalist development is having its effect on tribal people.
Over the last 20 years an increasing number of gold and tin miners
have moved into Yanomami's lands bringing diseases and infections to
which they have no immunity. Waste from the mining processes have
poisoned the water supplies and the noise and disruption of the mining
itself has scared away the animals which the tribal peoples hunt.
Contact with other cultures necessarily challenges the views of
primitive peoples. As they face new problems to which tradition has no
answer, so the tradition is itself discredited. Change is inevitable,
and I think desirable. Why should we keep the benefits of penicillin
and antibiotics to ourselves?
My argument with the current method of industrialisation of the third
world is that it fails to bring about civilisation or progress. The
industrialised world uses countries like Brazil as a source of raw
materials and cheap labour. What the Western nations call development
has in fact been the systematic denial of any pattern of development
that could benefit the indigenous populations of third world
countries.
Survival's literature calls on us to 'stop civilisation and progress'.
I'd say that capitalism is doing a pretty good job of stopping
civilisation and progress all by itself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reproduced from Living Marxism issue 42, April 1992
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM42/LM42_Ann.html
Justin Flude
On Wed, 10 Dec 1997 06:52:12 -0600, creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
>There is a lot of intersting things in the LM group political thinking,
Your input on this issue would be particularly welcome, Carlos, but if
you haven't already, I'd ask that you read the whole article referred
to before making up your mind as to LM's position, as it acknowleges
the problems that development has brought - though you'd never know it
from Louis's dishonest, one-sided, cuttings.
It's at:-
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM42/LM42_Ann.html
You can also read a letter from Survival International protesting
Bradley's article at:-
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM43/LM43_Letters.html
Justin
creb...@antares.com.br
In article <348fd763...@news.xara.com>,
jfl...@hotmail.com (Justin Flude) wrote:
>
> On Wed, 10 Dec 1997 06:52:12 -0600, creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
> >There is a lot of intersting things in the LM group political thinking,
>
> Your input on this issue would be particularly welcome, Carlos, but if
> you haven't already, I'd ask that you read the whole article referred
> to before making up your mind as to LM's position, as it acknowleges
> the problems that development has brought - though you'd never know it
> from Louis's dishonest, one-sided, cuttings.
> Justin
I've done it, and, Justin, when I talked about your cavalier attitude,
that means that I was struck by your failing to realize the urgency of
this precise issue. The onslaught of the gold-diggers means that raping
and prostitutionof Yanomami woman is proceeding at unabated speed, that
hundreds of Yanomami are being blinded by oncocerosis transmited by
disease - carrying mosquitos that thrive in the pools of mud crated by
gold-digging.
Of course, no one thinks that the Yanomami can be kept apart as a human
zoo. The kayapos os Southern Para, who have profitted from selling Brazil
nut oil as a cosmetic to the Bodyshop chain of stores, have in a few
years made the transition from primitive communism to a most opressive
class society, where chieftains have private planes, own real state
property in the neighboring towns, etc. while the "Indian in the street"
is reduced to the condition of a casual workers in oil producing
plants.The problem with the Yanomami is the same as with the inhabitants
of Sarajevo- they must be salvaged as a distinct culture before the
surrounding world proceeds with the ethnocide. The rest, for the moment,
is an academic debate.
Carlos Rebello
Hunter Watson
> Of course, no one thinks that the Yanomami can be kept apart as a human
> zoo. The kayapos os Southern Para, who have profitted from selling Brazil
> nut oil as a cosmetic to the Bodyshop chain of stores, have in a few
> years made the transition from primitive communism to a most opressive
> class society, where chieftains have private planes, own real state
> property in the neighboring towns, etc. while the "Indian in the street"
> is reduced to the condition of a casual workers in oil producing
> plants.The problem with the Yanomami is the same as with the inhabitants
> of Sarajevo- they must be salvaged as a distinct culture before the
> surrounding world proceeds with the ethnocide. The rest, for the moment,
> is an academic debate.
This is (or was) a common view among cultural anthropologists. It suggests
that there is no independent basis upon which a culture's value may be
judged and that all primitive cultures, no matter what their
characteristics, "must be salvaged". I held this view for many years. I'm
not quite so sure anymore and the Yanomami, "The Fierce People" are the
example I might use to show why. Of course the Yanomami need to be
protected from the prospectors and speculators but an argument can be made
that the people might well benefit from being liberated from some aspects
of their culture, too. (See Chagnon, Napoleon A., "Yanomamo, The Fierce
People")
Hunter Watson
P.S. Carlos, I have now gotten your book to the office. It is *really*
going to be sent.
Louis N Proyect
On 14 Dec 1997, Hunter Watson wrote:
> example I might use to show why. Of course the Yanomami need to be
> protected from the prospectors and speculators but an argument can be made
> that the people might well benefit from being liberated from some aspects
> of their culture, too. (See Chagnon, Napoleon A., "Yanomamo, The Fierce
> People")
>
This is really an interesting question and I am glad to hear from somebody
who doesn't take the usual (genocide against the Yanomami + turning the
Amazon rainforest into coffee tables) = civilization.
For a good description of what pre-capitalist peoples want, read "I
Rigobertu Menchu." She makes the point that Guatemalan Indians like
herselves want the right to follow their rituals and customs in peace.
They also want to be able to read and write and have access to medicine.
She is no Marxist but is definitely socialist-minded.
There are literally millions of peoples like this around the world (Mayan,
Yanomami, Ogoni, etc.) and while they are not on the front ranks of the
organized proletariat, it is *very* important for socialists to defend
their human rights. For a good example of what labor activists should be
doing in relation to such peoples, just look at the martyred Chico Mendes
who defended the rights of rubber-tappers and indigenous peoples in the
rainforest against predatory lumpen-capitalism of the kind that LM
identifies with.
Louis Proyect
creb...@antares.com.br
In article
<Pine.SUN.3.95L.97121...@vanakam.cc.columbia.edu>,
To Hunter Watson: Chagnon's book on the Yanomami is a very controversial
one, and is under heavy fire from the Brazilian academic
community.Anyway, even Malinovsky, in his letters published after his
death, expressed comtempt of the Trobriand. In fact, most aboriginal
people have disgusting features of behavior in our eyes, but since - as
Marx wrote in the *German Ideology*, since *all* societies- even preclass
ones- are based on one kind or other of unequality, they cannot help but
to appear disgusting before the eyes of strangers. Anyone who takes
Leninism seriously, however, is bound to defend the rights of peoples to
dispose of themselves as the most important basis of group emancipation;
the fact that there is an oppsition before the liberal idea of individual
liberties and the leninist one of group liberties is a problem whose
solution will depend on future historical circunstances.
As to Chico Mendes, he has been portrayed to the public of the developed
countries as a Mother Theresa, "martyred" type, when in fact he was a
former memeber of the Maoist CP of Brazil that went to the PT and had a
picture of Leon Trotsky's hung on the wall of his house in Xapuri.In
fact, I think that he made much about turning what appeared to be an
special group concern into a general political issue of worldwide
concern.
In fact, my interest in LM is exactly that they seem to have realized
that Labor politics - in the tradeunionist sense- is- and always was -
too narrow a base to the Socialist reordering of the whole of society(in
fact, no socilist revolution erupted over Labor and Trade Union
questions; The October Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban
Revolution, all strated over more general issues that had to do with
society as a whole). Whether they are using the right means to the end in
view or not is, of course, another question.
sayan bhattacharyya
<creb...@antares.com.br> wrote:
>fact, no socilist revolution erupted over Labor and Trade Union
>questions; The October Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban
>Revolution, all strated over more general issues that had to do with
>society as a whole).
But all of the abovementioned were, ultimately, *failed* revolutions.
creb...@antares.com.br
In article <678qng$51h$1...@news.eecs.umich.edu>,
As Trotsky has written, no *national* socialist revolution cannot
ultimatelt but fail.
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>On 14 Dec 1997, Hunter Watson wrote:
>
>
>For a good description of what pre-capitalist peoples want, read "I
>Rigobertu Menchu." She makes the point that Guatemalan Indians like
>herselves want the right to follow their rituals and customs in peace.
>They also want to be able to read and write and have access to medicine.
>She is no Marxist but is definitely socialist-minded.
>
>There are literally millions of peoples like this around the world (Mayan,
>Yanomami, Ogoni, etc.) and while they are not on the front ranks of the
>organized proletariat, it is *very* important for socialists to defend
>their human rights. For a good example of what labor activists should be
>doing in relation to such peoples, just look at the martyred Chico Mendes
>who defended the rights of rubber-tappers and indigenous peoples in the
>rainforest against predatory lumpen-capitalism of the kind that LM
>identifies with.
>
>Louis Proyect
>
OK Louis: <They also want to be able to read and write and have access
to medicine>.What does that mean?
It means that in order to have access to modern medicine,
communication, transportation and all the things that give the
"Western" countries a higher level of culture--they must do what? They
must have a higher level of PRODUCTION!
Short of a world of workers states and centrallly-planned world
economy, the only way this is going to happen, is for these stone-age
peoples to be brought into the main stream of capitalism.
The alternative is relegating them to "reservations" (Bantustans),
such as exist in the USA for impoverished American Indians, where they
wallow in extreme poverty with astronomically high rates of alcoholism
and drug-addiction.
Capitalism's need for ever-greater markets and ever cheaper sources
of raw materials *means* that these peoples will be invaded,
super-exploited and--ultimately, assimilated.
Fraternally,
Fred Ferguson
Nick
Fred Ferguson: mpri...@earthlink.net wrote:
> Short of a world of workers states and centrallly-planned world
> economy, the only way this is going to happen, is for these stone-age
> peoples to be brought into the main stream of capitalism.
>
What a grear idea, it worked so well in the USSR,North Korea, Cuba, East
Germany and therest of the communist world, that you want to do it in a global
scale.
Geez, were you born stupid or did you study hard to become one.
> The alternative is relegating them to "reservations" (Bantustans),
> such as exist in the USA for impoverished American Indians, where they
> wallow in extreme poverty with astronomically high rates of alcoholism
> and drug-addiction.
Tell me Oh Wise one! Who stopped those impoverished Indians from leaving the
reservationand joining the mainstream way of life.
Unless you infer that they are so stupid and inferior that they need the state
to do something special for them.
I got news for you, I work, know and have friends who are Indians. There is
nothing wrong with them as a people. If some of them decide to take the easy
way out and sit on their ass and
get money and free medical benefits from the government, and instead of working
spend their
time drinking and killing each other, it is their choice. All they have to do
is get off their butt
and join the rest, where they have MORE rights than white Americans.
You heard me right, anywhere they go the system is set to give them a
prefference over other Americans. Considering the special laws favoring them,
the oil producing lands they own and the mineral rights on lands they don't
own, I dream of the day when we the non Indians will rise
and demand equal rights with them.
>
>
> Fraternally,
>
> Fred Ferguson
The rewriting of history is as old as history itself.
Robert Malecki
Nick skrev i meddelandet <34A2B3AB...@busprod.com>...
>
>
>Fred Ferguson: mpri...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
>> Short of a world of workers states and centrallly-planned world
>> economy, the only way this is going to happen, is for these stone-age
>> peoples to be brought into the main stream of capitalism.
>>
Fred is almost right on this stuff. But why mainstream capitalism? Is it a
new era of bougeois revolutions we are looking at here? Capitalism can not
solve the problems of indigous peoples anywhere. But socialist revolution
under the dictatorship of the proletariat can..
Warm Regards
Bob Malecki
-------------------------------------------------------
Check Out My HomePage where you can,
Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!
And Now the International Communist League Page!
Just push on the "Spartacist" Button.
Or Get The Latest Issue of,
COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people.
NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob
Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Straitfacts
Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these
reports now on line.
http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/
-------------------------------------------------------
Nick
Robert Malecki wrote:
> Capitalism can not
> solve the problems of indigous peoples anywhere. But socialist revolution
> under the dictatorship of the proletariat can..
>
> Warm Regards
> Bob Malecki
Socialist revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve these
problems.I am sure that you believe so, but could you give me a reason to
believe it besides having to take your word for it?
Look Bob, the world is screwed up. Show me a government any where in the world
and I will show you a bunch of power hungry megalomaniac assholes, regardless
of their political system.
Those people don't go in to government for you, me and the rest of the people,
they do it because they love power. The more power they have the more they
like it. Human nature. We may evolve out of it in time, but I doubt that it
will happen in our life time. Many political theories have been
created and they all share some common elements, one of which is the promise
to better the lives of the people under that system. In theory they are great,
but when you try to put them to work, our old nemesis human nature resurfaces
to screw everything up.
I never believed that Communism made sense but I knew that I could be wrong as
we all can.
But now that it has run its course, look at the results. Millions and millions
of people killed tortured
or both, wrecked economies, ruined futures.
Tell me Bob was the experiment worth the price? Do we dare try to repeat it,
because we may feel that this time we'll do it right? How many more millions
of people should we be willing to sacrifice before we call it quits and try
something else?
Merry Christmas
--
"The second amendment is not
about duck hunting, it is about protecting an individual's
freedom from those who want to take that freedom."
Turtle.
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
Bob:
Nothing would please me more than one small, but successful world
socialist revolution. However, in the absence of that event, there are
three choices open to primitive peoples whose territories are being
invaded by world imperialism (or their compradore agents), in the
never ending search for raw materials. Those two choices are:
1. Reservations (Bantustans), which reduce them to the level of the
lumpen proletariat on the dole in cities with the attendant endemic
levels of drug addiction and alcoholism;
2. They can fight and be wiped out (genocide)or;
3. Assimilation and entry into the working class.
Assimilation will inevitably mean the destruction of their native
culture. But it will at least open them to the possibility of having
access to modern medicine, communication, transportation, not to
mention education for them and their children.
If not, electrification, mass-produced foods and a rudimentary health
care program are all more than they had in the stone age culture they
"enjoyed" in the past.
The following is a quote from Marx dug up by Justin Flude. It sums up
the situation very well:
>"Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of
>industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations
>disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of
>woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their
>ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of
>subsistence, we must not forget that those idyllic village
>communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the
>solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human
>mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting
>tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules,
>depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies."
"Robert Malecki" <mal...@robertsfors.mail.telia.com> wrote:
>
>Nick skrev i meddelandet <34A2B3AB...@busprod.com>...
>>
>>
>>Fred Ferguson: mpri...@earthlink.net wrote:
>>
>>> Short of a world of workers states and centrallly-planned world
>>> economy, the only way this is going to happen, is for these stone-age
>>> peoples to be brought into the main stream of capitalism.
>>>
>
>Fred is almost right on this stuff. But why mainstream capitalism? Is it a
>new era of bougeois revolutions we are looking at here? Capitalism can not
>solve the problems of indigous peoples anywhere. But socialist revolution
>under the dictatorship of the proletariat can..
>
>Warm Regards
>Bob Malecki
Louis N Proyect
On Mon, 29 Dec 1997, Fred Ferguson: mpri...@earthlink.net wrote:
> 1. Reservations (Bantustans), which reduce them to the level of the
> lumpen proletariat on the dole in cities with the attendant endemic
> levels of drug addiction and alcoholism;
>
The level of ignorance coming from Ferguson takes my breath away. 60
percent of all energy resources in the USA are on Indian reservations. If
you want to come to terms with the political economy of Indian society, a
good place to start is "Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian Control of Energy
Development" by Marjane Ambler (U. of Kansas, 1990). The Pine Ridge
reservation has been a site of extensive uranium mining. Overseas the
wealth on Indian lands is even more ample. The Yanomami are sitting on
huge gold and petroleum reserves. Bantustans are not like this at all.
They are miserable plots of land that Africans are corralled into. Pine
Ridge, the Amazon, etc. are *ancestral* lands that the capitalist class
wants to corral Indians *out of*, not *into*. The big question facing
Indians is how the wealth should be used, if it is successfully seized out
of the hands of the multinational corporations.
>
> Assimilation will inevitably mean the destruction of their native
> culture. But it will at least open them to the possibility of having
> access to modern medicine, communication, transportation, not to
> mention education for them and their children.
>
No, destruction of native culture goes hand in hand with denial of modern
medicine, etc. Read Vine DeLoria's "Custer Died for Our Sins" for the data
on this. Why do you LM supporters believe that assimilation into
capitalist society is such a good thing? Is this something that you
learned from reading Rush Limbaugh? Ayn Rand? Julian Simon? Why do you
hate the left so much?
> If not, electrification, mass-produced foods and a rudimentary health
> care program are all more than they had in the stone age culture they
> "enjoyed" in the past.
More ignorant crap. All conquering capitalist societies have decreased the
health and welfare of the conquered. It is only in the pages of LM that
the natives get lifted up by the benign hands of missionaries and other
good-hearted white people. What a burden Europe has had to bear in Africa,
Latin America and Asia. Makes me want to read Rudyard Kipling for
inspiration.
> The following is a quote from Marx dug up by Justin Flude. It sums up
> the situation very well:
>
> >"Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of
> >industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations
> >disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of
Yeah, and Marx also said that Great Britain was bringing civilization to
India, and Engels said that France was doing similar good deeds for
Algeria. You LM supporters take the worst elements of Marx's and Engel's
poorly theorized writings and mesh them with Cato Institute position
papers. What an odious combination.
Louis Proyect
Robert Malecki
Fred!
OK! I could almost by your reasoning. But the problem is that
capitalism/imperialism can not solve their problems. I find your three
points understandable but also stagest in conception. And the fourth
choice based on the permanent revolution you leave out entirely.
As communists, as the tribune of all the oppressed I certainly don't
think that we would go out to these peoples with your three points and
post them up on the local totem pole or what ever..
Saying "look, you got these three choices".....
We are dealing with living organisms with a real culture, language and
not in the least in many cases peoples who occupy certain land areas..
Thus the necessity of seeing it from the aspect of permanent
revolution and that their freedom can only come by either becoming
part of the proletariat or allying itself with the proletariat..The
proletariat and its party would have a program of bringing these
peoples into the 20th century not by surpressing their culture or
drawing up boundaries for "bantustans" but clearly saying that the
land will belong to all of the people, language and cultural rights
will be defended and collectivized production and distribution forms
will be introduced ....
Your choices I feel are the choices of despair! And the old saying in
reverse would be the best slogan for these peoples. "Better dead then
red!" Where as with a communist program the slogan would mean "better
red then dead!"
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
Bob:
If you read that posting carefully, I said that the third alternative
was to assimilate, join the working class and then there was at least
the chance that they would get access to the benefits of civilization.
Besides, the thread was about whether or not to preserve (in
formaldehyde?) these primitive societies. Not so that they could be
studied and examined by social scientists, but because they
represented a separate (and superior?) culture.
The truth is that with or without a socialist revolution, these
cultures can not survive the onslaught of civilization. This is not
the white man's burden, but the plain unvarnished truth any romantic
notions of the eco-freaks notwithstanding.
The mere fact that westerners are there, will change those societies
forever. Factor in the greed (and racism) of the gold speculators and
the needs of subsistence farming--and it is practically guaranteed
that you will not recognize this group in ten years.
Would a socialist revolution produce a difference, more humane
scenario? Undoubtedly. But, to my knowledge, there is no revolutionary
party in Brazil worth the name and nothing on the horizon that looks
vaguely like one. That is not the "choice of despair"--that is
material reality.
Fraternally,
Fred Ferguson
Louis N Proyect
On Wed, 31 Dec 1997, Fred Ferguson: mpri...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> The mere fact that westerners are there, will change those societies
> forever. Factor in the greed (and racism) of the gold speculators and
> the needs of subsistence farming--and it is practically guaranteed
> that you will not recognize this group in ten years.
>
Should socialists attack human rights groups who are on the front-line
defending the land rights of indigenous peoples, like LM does? That is
really the question that I have been hammering away at for months now.
When I first took a peek at their archives, I was astounded to find a
bitter attack on Survival International, the group that has done more than
any other to defend Yanomami rights. Groups like Survival International,
Rainforest Action Network, etc. are not trying to preserve
hunting-and-gathering societies in amber. They are simply trying to stop
genocide. I invite people to look at the web pages for these groups and
find even the whisper of a suggestion that the goal is to keep people in
primitive circumstances. The emphasis is on land rights. Socialists
absolutely have to defend the land rights of the Oglala Sioux, the
Yanomami, the Maori and the Ogoni. It just stupefies me that this has to
be defended to a group of people who are for socialism, at least
theoretically. Although I despise Malecki, I have to give him credit for
circulating word about the struggle in Bougaineville. This is a classic
fight between indigenous peoples and multinational corporations.
If we can't put up a defense of the land rights of such peoples, then we
might as well just dump Marxism as Frank Furedi has. Marx was on the side
of the downtrodden, the oppressed and the enslaved. He never would have
used some kind of "productivist" logic to provide a philosophical cover
for the extermination of "primitive" peoples. It is one thing for Flude to
quote all the unfortunate comments by Marx to this effect, it is another
for people like ourselves to discriminate between right and wrong. We have
a century of experience with colonialism and imperialism to know that
land-based peoples of color can not benefit from capitalist property
relations, no matter what Marx said in 1853 about India. Marx was wrong.
It is doubly wrong to build a political program around these unfortunate,
misinformed articles as LM does.
Louis Proyect
Robert Malecki
On Wed, 31 Dec 1997 18:25:07 GMT, mpri...@earthlink.net (Fred
Ferguson: mpri...@earthlink.net) wrote:
>Would a socialist revolution produce a difference, more humane
>scenario? Undoubtedly. But, to my knowledge, there is no revolutionary
>party in Brazil worth the name and nothing on the horizon that looks
>vaguely like one. That is not the "choice of despair"--that is
>material reality.
Well, my original letter basically critized you for not seeing the
need of the theory of permanent revolution in regards to this stuff.
You advice was along the lines of being integrated into the capitalist
system.
Your last paragraph sounds like a cover for arguing this kind of
stuff. There is no revolutionary party in Brazil, therefore the best
thing these Indians can do is get a job and be integrated intoo
capitalist society. I still think this stagest in concept.
The point in arguing this stuff is the *need* to create that party in
Brazil as elsewhere and with the great disaster that the demise has
brought to the Proletariat in the destruction of the now ex-Soviet
Union also destroyed Stalinism as a political force in the workers
movement. At least in the form of Stalinism in state power..I think
that we must fight for the creation of that "material" reality which
does not exist today..Actually the material exists it is just the
subjective factor which is lacking..
The conditions for creating a party is by as quickly as possible
removing and destroying the left overs of these parties and their new
left hangers on.. Who these days have found all kinds of new crusades
to express their moral condemnation and liberal guilt feelings...
Fred, Why don't we start a new thread. Instead of "fox-hunting" We
could call it "head-hunting" with the goal of destroying politically
these heros claiming to be "leftists" and who are tailing the Greens,
the feminists, and animal lovers of the world..Or perhaps "Apocalyps"
as we see the new left self destruct or totally absorbed into pro
capitalist politics...
Because this is what I have been watching here the last two months.
In fact with the fox debate I almost wanted to take up a campaign in
defense of the fleas on the foxes...Or we could use some dirty tactics
like saying that the envionmental activists out saving the rain forest
all are carrying the "Ebola" virus back to western Europe and America!
And not the other way around as usally was the case with missionaries!
But the this would only add to the turmoil and wringing of hands now
presently going on here at Asp as well as the lists..
Warm regards
Bob Malecki
Robert Malecki
>On Wed, 31 Dec 1997, Fred Ferguson: mpri...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
>>
>> The mere fact that westerners are there, will change those societies
>> forever. Factor in the greed (and racism) of the gold speculators and
>> the needs of subsistence farming--and it is practically guaranteed
>> that you will not recognize this group in ten years.
>>
>
>Should socialists attack human rights groups who are on the front-line
>defending the land rights of indigenous peoples, like LM does?
No! This is not how communist put the question..Communists take sides
in these struggles, but we do not give political support to "human
rights" groups just because of their "activities".. There activities
in the final analisis go no futher then trying to reform capitalism at
best. And in this case it appears to be in a very utopian way..
Fred is right when he says that these Indians have no future now that
the whiteman including these human rights activists finally are
getting to this part of the world..
In fact this goes for Bougainville also. Bougainville proves that
capitalism and imperialism will sooner or later get that fucking mine
whether they become independent or not.. It is only world socialist
revolution which can save any semlance of culture, language that these
peoples have the right to. But it is either a planned economy or in
this case imperialist plunder and colonialism in one way or another
that awaits these people..
And the only social power capable of solving this stuff is the
proletariat..It seems that both sides in this conflict Proyect and the
other side LM are using this stuff in and extremely opportunist way.
Proyect wants to tail the various human and envionmental activists in
defending something that is already historically dead. LM wants to
play the other end of the stick by using a profile that appeals to the
middle class with the basic message "calm down" the world is not going
to end tomorrow what with the envionment, oil, aids, and mad cow dease
scares..
Both want to appeal certainly not to the poor and working class, but
more to bourgeois and petty bourgeois public opinion on the pros and
cons of this stuff..I think the debate which has "raged" here a couple
of months quite absurd when we see what is really going on.
South East Asia, Asia falling apart. Not in the least capitalist
counter-revolution developing very fast in China--the demise of the
Soviet Union and all of what that means--growing inter-imperialist
rivilry which this stuff is a minute part of--when you look at what is
going on in Africa--Not to mention Latin America and Mexico..
And our leftist heros are yapping at each others heels about the
"Yanomami people" and "fox hunting"..
It is a good thing that the lists on Internet and Usenet do not
reflect the real situation in the world today. But mostly the new
left-neo Stalinist and Mensheviks of varying degrees creating a cyber
war over something which is tragic (the Indians) and something quite
hillarious (the foxes) in order to either tail various "movements"
Proyects case or build their own around these rather perifial
questions LM's case..
For example over 100 people are dying every week in a civil war in
Algeria and Africa is being redevided by roving bands of armed
ex-Marxists who are being bought up by or selling themselves to
various imperialist interests as black frontmen to exploit this
continent much in the same way that the Yanomami people
history will come to and end..
But these Internet opportunists are ridiculous with the big "war"
going on...I guess with the demise of the Soviet Union and the death
of Stalinism and the leap to the right by the Social Democracy has
dragged all of these new left hangers on over the cliff into all kinds
of "movements" and making them profound..
In fact our one time leftists who marched under all kinds of
"anti-imperialist" popular front slogans have now leaped to the right
and at best appear to be supporting all kinds of campaigns which have
developed mainly out of middle class fear of and envionmental
catastropy and or taking up the cross for movements that at best want
to reform capitalism.
I thibnk much of this has to do with how the new left was shaped
during the 60ties and 70ties based on the me generation and students
of the post war baby boom..It was also linked to the Stalinist and
reformist line of creating all kinds of popular fronts to at best of
peaceful co-existence or a peaceful way to socialism.
All of this envionment have one thing in common and that his their
utter contempt for the working class as being the only social power
with the clout to really change the world..This dying breed of new
leftists who were raised under extremely special conditions in the
post war boom are now going to the grave. Proyect as others in their
dying breathe are still trying to convince people that they are
"Marxists" with all kinds of handstands around this rather perifial
stuff that has nothing to do with the economic and living and social
reality we are now heading for..
A whole new generation or generations of youth and not in the least
the young and extremely combative proletariats in third world
countries, but also the youth and younger generations in the first
world countries have far more to worry about then the present "great"
debate of our aging new leftists..
The whole petty bourgeois envionment of the new left and its campaigns
to save the world, fight for feminism, sexual liberation or what ever
only reflects the narrow anti-working class base that it has happily
existed on for quite a number of years..
Well, those days and times are over! We are heading very quickly
towards a new period of imperialist war and possibe revolutions and
both LM and Proyect are yapping about some rather insignificant
struggles basically carried out by the left overs of the new left and
ex-Stalinists, reformists and liberals to at best clean up the world..
I think that any serious militant should see this lastest round from
the "new left", Proyect and LM as the dying breathe of a dying breed..
They are trying to be the supporters and best builders of something
which will be very quickly moved to the side lines as imperialist
contradictions grow and deepen.. These people with their whining will
play no significant role in anything with their handstand activities
based on mobilizing petty bourgeois moral opinion on one side or the
other. The real class forces of history are preparing to enter the
stage..Because they will be forced to do so in one way or another..
So chirp on my friends. But this stuff has nothing to do with any kind
of reality outside of the enormous things awaiting the younger people
on this planet.. Nor will this "great" cyber war mainly based on moral
indignation rather then any kind of class analisis be long lasting.
Because enormous forces are now in motion which will determine the
future. And it is hardly the Greens, nor the Yanomami people, or the
feminists, that the left appears to be tailing today as Stalinism and
reformism leave the stage of history..
creb...@antares.com.br
In article <34ab8a7...@news.earthlink.net>,
mpri...@earthlink.net wrote:
> Would a socialist revolution produce a difference, more humane
> scenario? Undoubtedly. But, to my knowledge, there is no revolutionary
> party in Brazil worth the name and nothing on the horizon that looks
> vaguely like one. That is not the "choice of despair"--that is
> material reality.
Of course, no one intends that the Yanomami should become a seedbed for
some time of small scale model of a Socialist society; the jesuitic
missions of Paraguay were destroyed by the Portuguese some 200 years ago.
I should say that, given effective protection, the Yanomami will develop
a native bourgeoisie of wealthy traders and a native proletariat of
casual labourers, as happened with the Kayapos of S. Para.Nonethless,
since the national question is "one of the most labyrinthine and complex
but at the same time extremely important forms of class struggle"
(Trotsky,Writings 1939-40, Pathfder ed., pg.50), and not the opposite of
class struggle, as some bourgeois theorists like to ascertain, the
authonomous development of native culture and language of the Yanomami
will 1st. function as a legitimation of the rule of the native
bourgeoisie, but will neverthless function as a ferment for distinct
working class strivings among the Yanomami - and also in the entire
Brazilian society, as happened already in the case of Chico Mendes.
Carlos Eduardo
> >Warm Regards
> >Bob Malecki
> >-------------------------------------------------------
> >Check Out My HomePage where you can,
> >
> >Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
> >Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!
> >
> >And Now the International Communist League Page!
> >Just push on the "Spartacist" Button.
> >
> >Or Get The Latest Issue of,
> >
> >COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people.
> >
> >NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob
> >Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Straitfacts
> >Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these
> >reports now on line.
> >
> >http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/
> >
> >-------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
Louis N Proyect
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Robert Malecki wrote:
> Fred is right when he says that these Indians have no future now that
> the whiteman including these human rights activists finally are
> getting to this part of the world..
>
> In fact this goes for Bougainville also. Bougainville proves that
> capitalism and imperialism will sooner or later get that fucking mine
> whether they become independent or not.. It is only world socialist
This is not revolutionary socialism, it is fatalism: capitalism and
imperialism are too strong so resistance is futile. This is exactly the
message they want to project: "There is no alternative". Of course, unlike
Malecki, LM and their supporters, we reject this message. We say that a
picket line should be put around the Amazon rainforest, Bougainville, the
Pine Ridge reservation and Ogoniland: no capitalists allowed here!!!
That's our slogan, not that capitalism is irresistible and we'd better get
used to it. Furthermore, socialists should make common cause with human
rights groups. It was human rights groups who campaigned for the life of
Ken Saro-Wira, the Ogoni leader who the Nigerian colonels crucified for
the profits of Shell Oil. Trade unions, socialists should have organized
demonstrations for his freedom in concert with Survival International and
the Rainforest Action Network instead of attacking such groups. This is
elementary.
When Marx gave his support to the Russian populist movement in 1880, he
understood that capitalist pressures were mounting against the rural
zemstvos. What did he say? Did he say that capitalism will sooner or later
get that fucking communally owned land? No, this type of statement is a
violation of everything he believed in. He advocated struggle without any
guarantee of the outcome. Marx told Zasulich that "What threatens the life
of the Russian commune is neither a historical inevitability nor a theory;
it is state oppression, and exploitation by capitalist intruders whom the
state has made powerful at the peasants' expense."
His recommendation to his populist co-thinkers? Fight the capitalist
intruders with all means at their disposal, including revolutionary
violence. That is exactly our task with regards to land-based peoples like
the Yanomami today.
Louis Proyect
John Holmes
To APST:
This is a particularly excellent posting from Bob Malecki, that
says most of what needs to be said about the absurd debate between
LM and the Proyectiles that has ravaged APST for the last couple
months. I am therefore reposting it with additional comments of my own,
under a new thread, in the hope that those who have actually been
following this debate will pay attention to the posting and read
it carefully, and not be put off by his grammatically and orthograph-
ically-challenged Swenglish.
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Robert Malecki wrote:
> ...
> In fact this goes for Bougainville also. Bougainville proves that
> capitalism and imperialism will sooner or later get that fucking mine
> whether they become independent or not.. It is only world socialist
> revolution which can save any semlance of culture, language that these
> peoples have the right to. But it is either a planned economy or in
> this case imperialist plunder and colonialism in one way or another
> that awaits these people..
>
> And the only social power capable of solving this stuff is the
> proletariat..It seems that both sides in this conflict Proyect and the
> other side LM are using this stuff in and extremely opportunist way.
>
> Proyect wants to tail the various human and envionmental activists in
> defending something that is already historically dead. LM wants to
> play the other end of the stick by using a profile that appeals to the
> middle class with the basic message "calm down" the world is not going
> to end tomorrow what with the envionment, oil, aids, and mad cow dease
> scares..
>
> Both want to appeal certainly not to the poor and working class, but
> more to bourgeois and petty bourgeois public opinion on the pros and
> cons of this stuff..I think the debate which has "raged" here a couple
> of months quite absurd when we see what is really going on.
(JH) Precisely.
In a certain sense, the debate between LM and the Proyectiles boils down to:
Should radicals orient to the backward-looking petty bourgeoisie
(Proyect), or to the "progressive" big industrial bourgeoisie (LM)?
In the era of imperialism, the industrial bourgeoisie is no longer
progressive. As LM does not realize that, their advocates on APST
haul out old Marx quotes from a time when it *was,* which are now
irrelevant. And, as in that TV program, the LM finds itself in
a bloc with talking heads from corporate foundations funded by big
business, Rush Limbaugh, etc. (not necessarily deliberately, at least
Proyect has done a miserable job of trying to prove his dubious
conspiratorial allegations against them.)
(The LM's pioneer here is the pro-imperialist British pseudo-
Marxist Bill Warren, as their pioneer on the Russian question is
the latter-day "bureaucratic collectivism backwards" theoretician
Hillel Ticktin.)
Meanwhile, Proyect is forced to try to deny the undeniable reality
that the environmentalist petty-bourgeois types *he* wants to
tail, in good Stalinist Popular Front fashion, have a very
significant "eco-fascist" fringe. Trotsky pointed out long ago that
the petty bourgeoisie was the mass basis of fascism, and it would
be strange indeed if a movement as utterly and purely petty-
bourgeois as environmentalism did not have some overlap with
fascism.
On the scientific debate, both sides are obviously allowing their
position on environmental questions to be determined by politics,
not science. My impression is that LM are actually worse offenders
on this count than Proyect, but I could be wrong, and anyway I'm
no expert on the scientific issues involved anyway, so what do
I know? Actually, this is the wrong newsgroup for the argument,
it should be argued out on "sci.environment" or something, where
you'd have people who would actually know what they're talking about.
IMHO, when you have a world-wide workers government, it will probably
have a multi-party system, and the prime issue in dispute could be
precisely the issues about economic growth vs. environmental protec-
tion, etc. that Proyect and the LM folk have politically manipulated.
Till then, best stick to things we can actually *do* something about,
like socialist revolution, instead of this "think locally, act
yokelly" obsession about the environment, pro or con. (Naturally,
where workers and the general population are concretely suffering the
consequences of ruling class poor stewardship of the environment,
these issues should be taken up.)
The basic trouble about socialist orientation to environmental issues
is that the environment *is not a class issue.* Whether or not the
ozone layer or global warming or the Cassini flight or whatever are
genuine menaces to the human race affects all humans alike, of what-
ever class. So Marxists do not and cannot necessarily have any super-
ior wisdom on issues like this to anyone else.
>
> South East Asia, Asia falling apart. Not in the least capitalist
> counter-revolution developing very fast in China--the demise of the
> Soviet Union and all of what that means--growing inter-imperialist
> rivilry which this stuff is a minute part of--when you look at what is
> going on in Africa--Not to mention Latin America and Mexico..
>
> And our leftist heros are yapping at each others heels about the
> "Yanomami people" and "fox hunting"..
>
(JH) exactly! Talk about fiddling while Rome burns...
Right now, capitalists all over the world are *seriously* worried about
whether the economic collapse of the phony "Great Asian economic boom"
will be the touchpoint for a 1929-style Great Depression! I mean, just
look at the Wall Street Journal! And APST wastes time on this stuff...
Bob may be overestimating how fast all this develops (the current social
system survives to a considerable degree on inertia, but does have a
lot of it, and currently visible left alternatives are not too visible
to most people, and, except for the quite small ICL, all worthless) but
all of the above is very much to the point.
-John Holmes-
Victor Khomenko
From time to time I force myself to read this type of pseudo-intellectual kasha and
strange memories come back.
When I was five or so, my friends and I would sometimes play war games. We would pull
my farhter's old military uniforms out of the old trunk and dress up. We would put
some chairs on their sides and pretend they were fighting vehicles. We would be making
"war noises" with our lips and do "tra-ta-ta-ta-ta" at each other. We would fall on
the floor and play dead. I felt oh-so-real to us. To a sudden observer it looked much
less so. He would quickly realize we were just kids and only in our minds were we
dangerous to each other. We had as little chance of really winning any "real" war as
one ever gets.
Most of us have grown up and left such games behind. Then some day you see someone
seriously talking about the upcoming "socialist revolution" and you just smile. That
little kid feels so serious about what he is doing. In reality it is just bunch of
that old "tra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta...."
Maybe I just should fall down and play dead for few seconds. Maybe this is the only
type of reassurance they need. Maybe this will make them feel more real.
Maybe, but maybe I don't want them to feel any more real. Their time is long gone and
the world social revolution is not coming. Poor souls, homeless and restless. No
wonder their ideas smell like my farhter's old military clothes. Stale, dusty and.....
irrelevant.
As I walk away, I can still hear the ringing of those dreadfull chains, the ones Mr.
Malecki is so afraid of loosing. Does anyone realy believe he has got nothing else?
I will just be keeping my eyes on this game to make sure the little kids don't get
dangerous to each others. They are not dangerous to anyone else.
Victor, the former "proletarian tovarisch".
Stephen R. Diamond
<posted & e-mailed>
In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.980101...@igc.apc.org>, John
Holmes <jdho...@igc.apc.org> wrote:
> (The LM's pioneer here is the pro-imperialist British pseudo- Marxist
> Bill Warren, as their pioneer on the Russian question is the latter-day
> "bureaucratic collectivism backwards" theoretician Hillel Ticktin.)
What exactly does the "backwards" part mean?
Stephen R. Diamond
Louis N Proyect
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, John Holmes wrote:
>
> Meanwhile, Proyect is forced to try to deny the undeniable reality
> that the environmentalist petty-bourgeois types *he* wants to
> tail, in good Stalinist Popular Front fashion, have a very
> significant "eco-fascist" fringe. Trotsky pointed out long ago that
Holmes, who are eco-fascists precisely? Are they the deep ecologists who
worship Gaia? These people generally are in the habit of chaining
themselves to redwoods and things like that. Is this fascism? Are you as
sloppy and ignorant in your formulations all the time, or does your brain
cease to work soley on the subject of ecology?
> IMHO, when you have a world-wide workers government, it will probably
> have a multi-party system, and the prime issue in dispute could be
> precisely the issues about economic growth vs. environmental protec-
> tion, etc. that Proyect and the LM folk have politically manipulated.
>
World-wide workers government? Oh sure, why not. When we have such a
thing, the Danube will be drinkable, dodo birds will return and Daniel
DeLeon's blueprints will be made law. It's interesting how a "transitional"
approach is lost on sectarians of the Spartacist mold. Why grapple with
problems like the ecological crisis when you can claim that socialism will
take care of everything. This is called maximalism and it is the product
of backward and conservative minds.
>
> The basic trouble about socialist orientation to environmental issues
> is that the environment *is not a class issue.* Whether or not the
It *is* a class issue, Holmes. Toxic dump sites are in working-class and
minority neighborhoods. Workers are the victims of relaxed EPA and OSHA
regulations. You should read Tom Athanasiou's "Divided Planet" to find out
more. On second thought, you seem like somebody content in his prejudices,
so never mind.
>
> Bob may be overestimating how fast all this develops (the current social
> system survives to a considerable degree on inertia, but does have a
> lot of it, and currently visible left alternatives are not too visible
> to most people, and, except for the quite small ICL, all worthless) but
> all of the above is very much to the point.
>
The ICL is the most worthless of all the groups I can think of. How else
would you explain a group that has had zero influence on American politics
in the past 3 decades? It is just the sort of outfit that would attract
bullshit artists like Malecki whose major accomplishment before fleeing to
Sweden was getting caught up in an obvious counterintelligence type
provocation.
Louis Proyect
John Holmes
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
> Date: Thu, 01 Jan 1998 15:30:58 -0800
> From: Stephen R. Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com>
> To: John Holmes <jdho...@igc.apc.org>
> Newgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
> Subject: Re: the environment, the Third World, LM and Proyect
>
> (A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups:
> alt.politics.socialism.trotsky)
Simple.
The "bureaucratic collectivism" idea is that the Soviet Union represents
a whole new historic form of class society, either progressive (Bruno
Rizzi, the original inventor, regarded Nazism as also "bureaucratic
collectivism" and also "progressive") or reactionary, as Shachtman
concluded.
LM, following Ticktin, does also, and, to the Furediites, the main
point is that Stalinism is "not progressive" (apparently,
according to the RCT [British SWP splitoff] they originally split from,
Stalinism *is* progressive.)
But, whereas the Shachtman vision of "bureaucratic collectivism" was
a Marxist version of "totalitarianism," i.e. "Big Brother Is Watching
You," the all-powerful, all-seeing state, the Ticktin-Furedi version
is the exact opposite, the pitiful, incompetent state that can't
tie its own shoelaces and can't plan its way out of a paper bag.
Shachtman's idea reflected impressionism circa the late '40s and early
'50s, the height of High Stalinism, blamed by the West for almost every
conceivable sin *except* incompetence, in fact the Truman/McCarthy/
Shachtman vision was of Communism as a rising tide about to overrun
the world, unstoppable except through extreme measures like Hiroshima.
Ticktin-Furedi's impressionism reflects Stalinism in its Brezhnev/
Gorbachev deathbed dotage, whose worst sin is its utter helplessness
and incompetence.
They both boil down to the same idea, but Ticktinism is Shachtmanism
backwards and inside-out.
-John Holmes-
Robert Malecki
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998 11:33:33 -0500, Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu>
wrote:
>On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Robert Malecki wrote:
>
>> Fred is right when he says that these Indians have no future now that
>> the whiteman including these human rights activists finally are
>> getting to this part of the world..
>>
>> In fact this goes for Bougainville also. Bougainville proves that
>> capitalism and imperialism will sooner or later get that fucking mine
>> whether they become independent or not.. It is only world socialist
Proyect wrote!
>This is not revolutionary socialism, it is fatalism: capitalism and
>imperialism are too strong so resistance is futile. This is exactly the
>message they want to project: "There is no alternative". Of course, unlike
>Malecki, LM and their supporters, we reject this message. We say that a
>picket line should be put around the Amazon rainforest, Bougainville, the
>Pine Ridge reservation and Ogoniland: no capitalists allowed here!!!
Sure Proyect a picket line! Well, in Bougainville they actually did
have more then a picket line almost the entire island was armed and
prepared to fight little imperialist Australia, Rio Tinto and its
colonial puppets on Papua..But it certainly did not help because the
leadership basically wants to make a deal.. But the real point is that
these struggles are pretty much on the perifery and with leaderships
and outside support with a program which basically says "Stop the
world, I want to get off!"..Which is quite utopian. However, this is
not how the real world works and as long as the struggle is based not
on class struggle all the wailing in the world will not stop
capitalism from wripping of these places in their own interests and
usually with the support of at least part of the people and leaders
who they can find who are prepared to administrate these kinds of
Bantustans...
>That's our slogan, not that capitalism is irresistible and we'd better get
>used to it. Furthermore, socialists should make common cause with human
>rights groups. It was human rights groups who campaigned for the life of
>Ken Saro-Wira, the Ogoni leader who the Nigerian colonels crucified for
>the profits of Shell Oil. Trade unions, socialists should have organized
>demonstrations for his freedom in concert with Survival International and
>the Rainforest Action Network instead of attacking such groups. This is
>elementary.
Well, Nigeria is a good example. Not so much because the Human rights
groups or envionmental activists intervened in this case and against
shell oil. But that capitalism actually has and did help to create the
class in Nigeria which could and should be its gravediggers, just
through oil which created the base and need for other industries and
workers to run them.. And naturally Communists should have fought to
save Ken Saro.Wiras life, but not so much for the envionmental crusade
nor human rights groups campaign against shell oil. But to strengthen
and mobilize the working class and its mass organizations in a
campaign not to shut down Shell Oil but expropriate it under workers
control and make perhaps the first African workers revolution a fact.
This would have been far more effective then whining about Shell Oil
drilling for oil at all being the big crime. In fact a Bolshevik Party
worth its name would not only expropriate the oil industry but exploit
it to the fullest to revolutionize and modernize this part of the
world connected to trying to spread the revolution to places like
South Africa and to the north where their are sizeable proletarian
centers which really could change the African map. Not in the least it
could have had a profound impact on American and its powerful black
proletarian core..
>
>When Marx gave his support to the Russian populist movement in 1880, he
>understood that capitalist pressures were mounting against the rural
>zemstvos. What did he say? Did he say that capitalism will sooner or later
>get that fucking communally owned land? No, this type of statement is a
>violation of everything he believed in. He advocated struggle without any
>guarantee of the outcome. Marx told Zasulich that "What threatens the life
>of the Russian commune is neither a historical inevitability nor a theory;
>it is state oppression, and exploitation by capitalist intruders whom the
>state has made powerful at the peasants' expense."
To take up this arguement where both the European Continent and Russia
were in a sea of peasants and connecting to a few leftovers of society
today is just ridiculous. This is using "Marx" to justify your own
absurd idea that these struggles can be compared to Russia in the 1890
and onwards. And you would still be wrong even in countries and
continents where this stuff could be at least applicable.
Africa..Because the Russian revolution proved that the only real hope
for the peasantry was the October revolution..This is especially the
case in places like Nigeria today. New Octobers led by the young
African proletariat. And as far as Bougainville, the need for a
October Revolution in Australia is the only real garantee of any kind
of "self determination"..And as far as the Indians, well the best
expression of resistance to capitalist/imperialist exploitation is
perhaps the "Chiapas" these days. But this shows that armed groups of
Indians or peasants fighting a guerilla war at best might be able to
delay their penetration and sujucation, but can not stop it. Because
they have nether the Social power or clout to do this. Only the
industrial proletariat with a revolutionary leadership who act as the
tribune of all the oppressed can do that. In the case of these Indians
we would defend not only their language and culture, but patiently
explain that the land will belong to all of the people. Not in the
least those who work the land..
>
>His recommendation to his populist co-thinkers? Fight the capitalist
>intruders with all means at their disposal, including revolutionary
>violence. That is exactly our task with regards to land-based peoples like
>the Yanomami today.
Becoming a Norodnik in your old days Proyect.. Well, go ahead.get out
their with your gun and defend these Indians or what ever. They will
probably get these Indians wiped out far quicker then the capitalist
even dreamed of. The program above would pass much better in a Detroit
ghetto or in Mexico city but you actually are telling the Indians here
to commit suicide! Because these Indians hardly can take on the might
of the modern bourgeois state and its armed fist--Only the Industrial
Proletariat can do that..
By the way I am going to post mine from yesterday, your above reply
and my answer to Thaxis so that Jim H. the LM hero can see this
stuff..
Warm Regards
Bob Malecki
-------------------------------------------------------
Check Out My HomePage where you can,
Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!
And Now the International Communist League Page!
Just push on the "Spartacist" Button.
Or Get The Latest Issue of,
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NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob
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Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these
reports now on line.
http://algonet.se/~malecki
http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/
-------------------------------------------------------
Robert Malecki
On 1 Jan 98 22:53:14 GMT, Victor Khomenko <bala...@dca.net> wrote:
>
>From time to time I force myself to read this type of pseudo-intellectual kasha and
>strange memories come back.
>
Recently over on M-thaxis a good answer to this kind of drivel coming
from Victor was taken up by Hugh Rodwell..He talked about our
"leftist" like Victor who in *deed* has left all that tired old stuff
about Leninism and the proletariat in back of themselves..
These days becoming the synical defenders of the present system albeit
with some sort of "new" left veneer.. In Victors case no left veneer
at all but arguing in most cases on the bases of out right
pro-imperialist politics from the McCarthy era and insuing Cold War
afterwards when looking at his contributions on other threads on thjis
list. Victor appears to have the line of communism is dead! Lets bury
it..Anyhow Hugh...
He pointed out that not only "potential revolutionaries" get tired and
warn down and in other cases desert to either alien petty bougeois
ideology or outrightly the class enemy of the Proletariat.
In their places in the ranks are whole new generations of militants
and youthwho will take up the cause and try to carry the banners of
Communism of the Bolshevik Leninist Trotskyist model into the future.
Victor like myself are getting old. He admits quite openly that he has
deserted the cause. Probably because he never had any good hard
Leninist positions in the first place. On the other hand Malecki is
getting old and a bit tired but supports the politics of the Bolshevik
Leninists/Trotskyists in the form of the ICL..
Victors message is not directed at Malecki, but is directed at the
proletariat and poor people whom he has deserted. He presents no line,
no politics, no nothing but I am against the Leninists..
The Trotskyists on the other hand have both a program, a history and
ideology to march with their heads high into the future and seperate
the reds from the blues..
Victo has his "dusty" toy soldiers to play with..
We shall see. But I believe that I support and Internation
organization which certainly has a program, tactics and foremost the
WILL to fight in the intersts of poor and working class people..
Victor has nothing, but whining and telling us how he is above all
that nity gritty class struggle stuff. Amazingly admitting that he is
now and "ex.czarovich" of something or other..
A question Victor. Were you born with a silver spoon up your ass? or
did it get their by taking part in the capitalist rat race and you
know find yourself above and beyond all this stuff?
Warm regards
Bob Malecki
-------------------------------------------------------
Check Out My HomePage where you can,
Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!
And Now the International Communist League Page!
Just push on the "Spartacist" Button.
Or Get The Latest Issue of,
COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people.
NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob
Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Straitfacts
Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these
reports now on line.
http://algonet.se/~malecki
http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/
-------------------------------------------------------
Robert Malecki
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998 13:51:40 -0800, John Holmes <jdho...@igc.apc.org>
wrote:
>To APST:
>
>This is a particularly excellent posting from Bob Malecki, that
>says most of what needs to be said about the absurd debate between
>LM and the Proyectiles that has ravaged APST for the last couple
>months. I am therefore reposting it with additional comments of my own,
>under a new thread,
Nice post John. But seeing the answers to your attempt to start a
"new" thread I think my suggestion to build a "headhunting" thread
would be much better..that I made to Fred Fergerson..
These people are desperately trying not only to make these questions
profound but a *real* me generation lifestyle..
I think that they have real material and fake intellectual interests
outside of any real class struggle to defend and thus become a serious
obstacle to any serious debate..
Talking about serious debates I just saw a report this morning which
says that the middle class buying power has been reduced by 20% in the
last ten years! Connected to this is that the ruling classes income in
these years can be compared to being more then 80% of the entire
industrial proletariat in the United States!
And these people want to talk about "Fox hunting" and the "Yanomami
people"!
The best way to deal with these currents is to take out the heavy
Leninist guns and point them directly at their heads and blow them
away. Make them look like the piecemeal anti-poor and working class
psuedo "marxists" that they really are.. No quarter given as we board
the ship cut them into small pieces and feed them to the sharks..
Warm regards
Bob Malecki
-------------------------------------------------------
Check Out My HomePage where you can,
Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!
And Now the International Communist League Page!
Just push on the "Spartacist" Button.
Or Get The Latest Issue of,
COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people.
NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob
Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Straitfacts
Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these
reports now on line.
http://algonet.se/~malecki
http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/
-------------------------------------------------------
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
mal...@robertsfors.mail.telia.com (Robert Malecki) wrote:
OK Bob. Now you're on the right track.
I would add Algeria. Ben Bella allied himself with the "progressive"
Algerian bourg;. and was lucky to end his days under house arrest.
Proletarian revolution was on the agenda of the day in Algeria when
FMLN first humiliated and then threw out the French. The same lesson
was posed in the starkest terms with the sell out by Joe Slovo and his
buddies in S. Africa.
It is a lesson heart-sick liberals like Proyect and the other greens
never learned either. Liberal reformism is finished! Dead as a
doornail! There is a new world-wide economic crisis brewing that will
make any further tinkering with capitalism too expensive to be
tolerated.
Right! Sooner or later "Sub-Commander whats-his-name" doesn't agree to
sell out, either the Mexican bourg or the USA will lose patience, and
instead of sending in some two-bit, small-town mayor and few local
thugs to massacre innocent civilians--they will resort to napalm and
carpet bombing. Only the Mexican and American proletariat coming to
the aid of the Indians can same them now.
With the very real possibility that Mexico may be the next
Thailand/So. Korea/Burma etc., the objective conditions for a shift in
the political tectonic plates in North America will be there.
That will be *some* earthquake.
>
Fraternally,
Fred Ferguson
Louis N Proyect
On Fri, 2 Jan 1998, Robert Malecki wrote:
> Proyect wrote!
No offense, Malecki, but I have no plans to debate you. LM is a different
story. It is a group of 500 people in England who are in the process of
building a coalition with right-wing think-tanks in the USA. They make
their views know on Channel 4 television. They are a menace. Meanwhile,
you are a completely ignorant unaffiliated crank living near the North
Pole with his two donkeys who represents nothing.
Louis Proyect
Victor Khomenko
mal...@robertsfors.mail.telia.com (Robert Malecki) wrote:
>On 1 Jan 98 22:53:14 GMT, Victor Khomenko <bala...@dca.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>strange memories come back.
>>
>
>from Victor was taken up by Hugh Rodwell..He talked about our
>"leftist" like Victor
Oh, Robert, Robert, please don't you ever insult me again by calling me a "leftist".
I am many things, but two things I am not: child molester and leftist. I am a
conservative.
who in *deed* has left all that tired old stuff
>about Leninism and the proletariat in back of themselves..
Let me clarify something. Do you remember the movie "The French Connection?" In that
film the hero was forcefully fed drugs. It took him then a very long and painful time
to recover from this.
Just like him, I was forcefully fed the shit I didn't feel like swallowing. Even when
I was still young, I didn't like being a part of a "socialist collective". I was an
outsider and they (that ugly "they", the group opressors scumsuckers) would beat me
up. As I developed, things had become more clear and yes, I left all that Leninism
horseshit behind me. Notice, that I never left my people behind, only their
opressors, the bloodthirsty murderers of the Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin kind, may they
all rot in a big pile of shit. None of them, unfortunately, had died too soon.
>These days becoming the synical defenders of the present system albeit
>with some sort of "new" left veneer.. In Victors case no left veneer
>at all
Oh, good, I would hate it if there was still any left. Again, I am a conservative.
but arguing in most cases on the bases of out right
>pro-imperialist politics from the McCarthy era and insuing Cold War
Now, this is more kasha. Those three are so different from each other. Each one
deserves a separate discussion.
>afterwards when looking at his contributions on other threads on thjis
>list. Victor appears to have the line of communism is dead!
This is not what I have been saying. The very fact that you exist and others like you
exist proves that the communism is not dead. But it im my belief that it doesn't have
any real chance of becoming a dominant political form in any developed country. It
can still take over some small country and murder a lot ot its citizens, though.
Lets bury
>it..
Sounds good to me. But not going to happen. Too many blind people. Some smart
political opportunists, too.
>
>
>He pointed out that not only "potential revolutionaries" get tired and
>warn down and in other cases desert to either alien petty bougeois
>ideology or outrightly the class enemy of the Proletariat.
>
>In their places in the ranks are whole new generations of militants
>and youthwho will take up the cause and try to carry the banners of
>Communism of the Bolshevik Leninist Trotskyist model into the future.
This is always going to happen to small degree. There will always be few young folks
with clear eyes and underdeveloped brains, the type that had marched oh, so well under
both Stalin and Hitler songs.
On the positive side is the fact that their numbers are shrinking, as well as their
significance in the world affairs.
>Victor like myself are getting old. He admits quite openly that he has
>deserted the cause.
Hah? He does? Like hell I do! I found my cause and I am dedicated to it.
Probably because he never had any good hard
>Leninist positions in the first place.
Oh, don't pontificate me on that Leninist crap, I lived inder it. I may have some
patience for the so-called "socialists" who operate within the capitilist strutures,
but for the Leninists? Cut me a fucking break. Most socialists are smart enough to
completelly disassosciate themselves from that Lenin/Trotsky/Stalin murderers bunch.
They usually say that those bastards were not true marxsists. I see some logic in
such explanation, even if I don't accept it.
On the other hand Malecki is
>getting old and a bit tired but supports the politics of the Bolshevik
>Leninists/Trotskyists in the form of the ICL..
No surprize you are getting tired. You can never wash off all the blood.
>
>Victors message is not directed at Malecki, but is directed at the
>proletariat and poor people whom he has deserted.
And this is garbage. I have done more for working people than most whiners here. I
see myself as one of them.
He presents no line,
>no politics, no nothing but I am against the Leninists..
"Against the Lininists" is a good start, but I do have a lot of other things I could
discuss.
>The Trotskyists on the other hand have both a program, a history
That they do have. And what a bloody one at that. Few tyrants had spilled more blood
and created more lies.
and
>ideology to march with their heads high into the future and seperate
>the reds from the blues..
And like many of those original "Leninists" they may end up marching "with their heads
high" right into the executioner's chambers in the basements of various Lubianka's,
the very one's they had originally built for others. Their comrads may continue their
favorite scumbag way of murdering them with one surprize bullet in the back of the
head.
Good history they have, indeed...
>Victo has his "dusty" toy soldiers to play with..
>
>We shall see. But I believe that I support and Internation
>organization which certainly has a program, tactics and foremost the
>WILL to fight in the intersts of poor and working class people..
I don't think that describes the modern communists.
>Victor has nothing, but whining and telling us how he is above all
>that nity gritty class struggle stuff.
I am just busy creating something real.
Amazingly admitting that he is
>now and "ex.czarovich" of something or other..
Nothing shameful about it. I was raped before by people with ideal similar to yours,
but who actually had much more real power in their hands. I have recovered and
hardened.
>
>A question Victor. Were you born with a silver spoon up your ass?
A good question deserves a good answer. No. But sometimes I wish I were.
or
>did it get their by taking part in the capitalist rat race
I presume this is how you call the participation in free economy.
and you
>know find yourself above and beyond all this stuff?
What stuff? Communism? Yes, beyond, very much so. Above? I don't know what that
means.
>
>Warm regards
>Bob Malecki
>-------------------------------------------------------
>Check Out My HomePage where you can,
Is that the one that opens with that "We have nothing to lose..." empty crap? No,
thanks. I have seen the shit and I know its smell.
But have a nice day,
Victor.
Hunter Watson
In article
<Pine.SUN.3.95L.98010...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
Meanwhile,
> you are a completely ignorant unaffiliated crank living near the North
> Pole with his two donkeys who represents nothing.
>
> Louis Proyect
So LM's got 500 people on its list and a periodical in the UK. It still
represents nothing. No one on apst does either, that's certain. It doesn't
make a bit of difference whether a particular "notes from the underground"
isolate hangs out in some basement at Columbia or at the North Pole (as
long as they both have decent libraries). So, Malecki, how do you handle
the library problem?
Hunter Watson
Robert Malecki
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998 21:55:32 -0500, Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu>
wrote:
>The ICL is the most worthless of all the groups I can think of. How else
>would you explain a group that has had zero influence on American politics
>in the past 3 decades? It is just the sort of outfit that would attract
>bullshit artists like Malecki whose major accomplishment before fleeing to
>Sweden was getting caught up in an obvious counterintelligence type
>provocation.
>
>Louis Proyect
Proyect when politically cornered with his neo-Stalinist politics
turns to slander and cop baiting as usual.. Like all Stalinists he
finds it necessary to draw a blood line. While running with their tail
between their legs..
The only thing missing is his organizational manuvers to get people
banned from various lists..
Something he can't do on USEnet..YET!
Warm Regards
Bob Malecki
-------------------------------------------------------
Check Out My HomePage where you can,
Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!
And Now the International Communist League Page!
Just push on the "Spartacist" Button.
Or Get The Latest Issue of,
COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people.
NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob
Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Straitfacts
Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these
reports now on line.
http://algonet.se/~malecki
http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/
--------------------------------------------------
Robert Malecki
On 2 Jan 98 21:59:46 GMT, Victor Khomenko <in...@balanced.com> wrote:
>Oh, Robert, Robert, please don't you ever insult me again by calling me a "leftist".
>I am many things, but two things I am not: child molester and leftist. I am a
>conservative.
Oh I see. Thanks for the tip! Another Scott Solomon who turns up on
this list with is anti-communist garbage..
Bob Malecki
-------------------------------------------------------
Check Out My HomePage where you can,
Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!
And Now the International Communist League Page!
Just push on the "Spartacist" Button.
Or Get The Latest Issue of,
COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people.
NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob
Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Straitfacts
Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these
reports now on line.
http://algonet.se/~malecki
http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/
--------------------------------------------------
Robert Malecki
On Fri, 2 Jan 1998 11:09:51 -0500, Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu>
wrote:
>On Fri, 2 Jan 1998, Robert Malecki wrote:
>
>> Proyect wrote!
>
>No offense, Malecki, but I have no plans to debate you. LM is a different
>story. It is a group of 500 people in England who are in the process of
>building a coalition with right-wing think-tanks in the USA. They make
>their views know on Channel 4 television. They are a menace. Meanwhile,
>you are a completely ignorant unaffiliated crank living near the North
>Pole with his two donkeys who represents nothing.
>
>Louis Proyect
Yes Proyect we know you don't want to debate because you have left
marxism far behind you and begin to look like the pink version of
Scott solomon. In fact Scott is probably less viscious then our
synical ex-SWPer who now as gone into envionmental orbit with the
liberals and various human rights groups with a touch of Russian
"terrorist" nostagia of the Norodniks he wants to help the Yanomami
people commit Hari Kari!
I suggest that you retire from the scene Proyect because you move
futher and futher to the right as the months go by here on the
Internet. You have lost any kind of grasp of any political reality
that has something to do with poor and working class people..
Just a tired old anti-communist professor spending his days and nights
before a computer and making a complete ass of himself..
Warm regards
Robert Malecki
On 3 Jan 1998 01:18:20 GMT, hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
>In article
><Pine.SUN.3.95L.98010...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
>N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> Meanwhile,
>> you are a completely ignorant unaffiliated crank living near the North
>> Pole with his two donkeys who represents nothing.
>>
>> Louis Proyect
>
>So LM's got 500 people on its list and a periodical in the UK. It still
>represents nothing. No one on apst does either, that's certain. It doesn't
>make a bit of difference whether a particular "notes from the underground"
>isolate hangs out in some basement at Columbia or at the North Pole (as
>long as they both have decent libraries). So, Malecki, how do you handle
>the library problem?
>
>Hunter Watson
Well, it is a fairly small library, but my book is in it! Otherwise
one can order any book in any library in Sweden and get it at our
little local library. Here up in the North by the artic circle they
have a book bus that travels the huge areas up here with relatively
few people...It is a long tradition going back to the days of the
building of independent trade unions up here in the powerful base
industries of Scandinavia mining and paper..Agitators carried wooden
boxes on their backs and newspapers and books were read in every small
town and village throughout the region..
Hunter Watson
In article <34ae5e07...@news1.telia.com>,
mal...@robertsfors.mail.telia.com (Robert Malecki) wrote:
> On 3 Jan 1998 01:18:20 GMT, hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
>
> >In article
> ><Pine.SUN.3.95L.98010...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
> >N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Meanwhile,
> >> you are a completely ignorant unaffiliated crank living near the North
> >> Pole with his two donkeys who represents nothing.
> >>
> >> Louis Proyect
> >
> >So LM's got 500 people on its list and a periodical in the UK. It still
> >represents nothing. No one on apst does either, that's certain. It doesn't
> >make a bit of difference whether a particular "notes from the underground"
> >isolate hangs out in some basement at Columbia or at the North Pole (as
> >long as they both have decent libraries). So, Malecki, how do you handle
> >the library problem?
> >
> >Hunter Watson
>
> Well, it is a fairly small library, but my book is in it! Otherwise
> one can order any book in any library in Sweden and get it at our
> little local library. Here up in the North by the artic circle they
> have a book bus that travels the huge areas up here with relatively
> few people...It is a long tradition going back to the days of the
> building of independent trade unions up here in the powerful base
> industries of Scandinavia mining and paper..Agitators carried wooden
> boxes on their backs and newspapers and books were read in every small
> town and village throughout the region..
We're not quite at the Arctic Circle but we have a pretty good system too.
Most of the University libraries in Michigan have catelogues on line and if
you are patient you can use the inter-library loan system. I'm usually so
eager to get them that I have to buy rather than borrow. I use the
libraries for out-of-prints.
The only question remaining is whether Proyect reads more hours of the day
than we do. If he can prove that then he's still superior but I think it's
doubtful if only because of our reader's advantage in having so few hours
of daylight. His location in that basement in NYC is pretty much
irrelevant.....except if we change the subject to restraunts. Speaking of
restaurants, has exile at the Arctic Circle improved your cooking skills? I
can't imagine Swedish food day in and day out.
One thing's for sure. Proyect doesn't understand the spiritual aspects of
the free standing, un-plumned, wood fired sauna in February.
By the way, the dominant ethnic group here is "Finn", as we tend to put it.
They and the Scandanavians who came to the Upper Peninsula to mine and
homestead in a familiar countryside roughly a century ago were by and large
socialists of a rather advanced degree of radicalism. Do you know anything
of what underlay those politics a century ago?
Best regards,
Hunter
Hunter Watson
In article
<Pine.SUN.3.95L.98010...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> Holmes, who are eco-fascists precisely?
I figured it out, Louis. Its Marxist, pure and simple. Eco-fascists are
"social-fascists" brought forward from 1928 to the late 90's. In other
words they are simply social democrats or whatever passes for them today,
i.e., liberals. Ask Diamond. He knows all about native eco-fascists.
Hunter
Robert Malecki
On 4 Jan 1998 23:01:07 GMT, hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
>We're not quite at the Arctic Circle but we have a pretty good system too.
>Most of the University libraries in Michigan have catelogues on line and if
>you are patient you can use the inter-library loan system. I'm usually so
>eager to get them that I have to buy rather than borrow. I use the
>libraries for out-of-prints.
Well, being on the subject. Swedish libraries are actually or were
actually important. Esoecially the "Workers Movement archives"
historically run by the Social Democrats. Because they had enormous
information and still do about history of the workers movement. It is
also one of the few places in Europe where the libraries were not
destroyed or sabotaged by the war.. So here one can find lots and lots
of material on just about every tendency (including the Trotskyist) up
to and including material produced during the war! Must be a goldmine
even for the fake Trotsky FAQ. But these people are just assholes and
deserve no help what so ever..
>
>The only question remaining is whether Proyect reads more hours of the day
>than we do. If he can prove that then he's still superior but I think it's
>doubtful if only because of our reader's advantage in having so few hours
>of daylight. His location in that basement in NYC is pretty much
>irrelevant.....except if we change the subject to restraunts. Speaking of
>restaurants, has exile at the Arctic Circle improved your cooking skills? I
>can't imagine Swedish food day in and day out.
Well, just now we have 4 hours of dayight. Sun comes up at 10 and goes
down at two..Yeah, there are some very special "swedish" kinds of food
that can only really be enjoyed by cooking them.. But there are some
debates about some of these foods. If they are really "Swedish" for
example the "Swedish" dumpling i doubt is Swedish but picked up in the
days when Sweden was the major military power in this part of the
world occupying Poland and vast regions of Russia.. I think that these
long periods of occupation by armies recruited from the whole length
of this country brought back a mixture of food culture that today is
called "Swedish..
>One thing's for sure. Proyect doesn't understand the spiritual aspects of
>the free standing, un-plumned, wood fired sauna in February.
Well, I do not understand it either! In fact ( have been to the
Finnish side with friends in February and sat once in a Sauna and then
into the snow and a hole chopped into the ice. After which we beat
each other with the branches of pine trees. Since then, almost 15
years ago I take a glass of wine and a hot shower after a sking tur..
>
>By the way, the dominant ethnic group here is "Finn", as we tend to put it.
>They and the Scandanavians who came to the Upper Peninsula to mine and
>homestead in a familiar countryside roughly a century ago were by and large
>socialists of a rather advanced degree of radicalism. Do you know anything
>of what underlay those politics a century ago?
Yes! Quite a lot. It is all in the archives. Not only the Finns, but
the Swedes also. Not to mention the "Vallons" from Belgium Holland who
immigrated to this part of the world and set up the primative versions
of mining ang glass production.. But it is also a history of Finnish
and swedish misery and forced migration or starve to death in the
early part of this century. A quarter of the population migrated from
here under this period!
Warm regards