Russian crisis - what now?
Ken MacLeod
Could we be days or weeks away from a revolution in Russia?
Today (Thursday) The Times carries articles seriously considering the
possibility of a showdown between the Duma and Yeltsin detonating mass
action and a split in the armed forces, whose majority are unwilling to
roll out a tank, let alone shed blood, for Yeltsin.
The current political crisis could just possibly be resolved, but the
next one can't be far down the line, and the next after that, until the
whole thing blows.
In The Independent (Wednesday 2 August) the Labour MP Ken Livingstone,
who whatever else he may be is no fool, spoke quite highly of the
Communist leader Zyuganov and the 'left-patriotic bloc' (i.e. what
Western press calls the 'red-brown alliance'). The policy Livingstone
advocates could be summarised as Russian independence of the West, with
a strong state sector in a market economy - no return to the command
economy, but a radical reversal of the comprador policy of letting the
industrial sector collapse and relying on raw material exports which go
to fill Swiss bank accounts.
There's no doubt that such a reversal, especially if carried out by a
'Red' government with a mass mobilisation behind it, would shake the
world. Even if it 'only' resulted in something like China-with-
democracy, it would be seen as a socialist revolution.
Is there an alternative to this which is immediately feasible, and would
it benefit the working class?
--
Ken MacLeod
redflag
> There's no doubt that such a reversal, especially if carried out by a
> 'Red' government with a mass mobilisation behind it, would shake the
> world. Even if it 'only' resulted in something like China-with-
> democracy, it would be seen as a socialist revolution.
>
> Is there an alternative to this which is immediately feasible, and would
> it benefit the working class?
I would like to think not but I am afraid that there is another
possibility that is frightening, to say the least.
Former General Lebed could eventually come to power, especially if
a revolutionary situation finds the working class unprapared to
do anything significant on its own behalf.
Already the American media are trying to sell us Lebed by asking him the
"right" questions. On NBC, one interviewer asked Lebed if the West
should be afraid of him in charge of the Kremlin because he was
once a General in the Red Army. With his pasted on smile and narrow,
squinty-eyed stare he replied, "Why should they? The United States had
Eisenhower for President, wasn't _he_ a former general?"
As far as the report went, he was never challenged on that ridiculous
comparison. Eisenhower did not get to the presidency as a result of
a total collapse of government.
I don't know of any genuinely revolutionary party or group in Russia
that can explain to the working class what it needs to do to sieze
power. The Communists are thouroughly bankrupt. In fact, Boris Yeltzin
himself, a former CP aparatchnik, is the product of the Russian CP's
political mediocrity. The CP represent a _reactionary_ force in
Russian society.
--
"Nowadays, atheism is itself *culpa levis*, as compared
with criticism of existing property relations."
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Claude de Paris
Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
>
>Could we be days or weeks away from a revolution in Russia?
>
>Today (Thursday) The Times carries articles seriously considering the
>possibility of a showdown between the Duma and Yeltsin detonating mass
>action and a split in the armed forces, whose majority are unwilling to
>roll out a tank, let alone shed blood, for Yeltsin.
>
>The current political crisis could just possibly be resolved, but the
>next one can't be far down the line, and the next after that, until the
>whole thing blows.
>
>In The Independent (Wednesday 2 August) the Labour MP Ken Livingstone,
>who whatever else he may be is no fool, spoke quite highly of the
>Communist leader Zyuganov and the 'left-patriotic bloc' (i.e. what
>Western press calls the 'red-brown alliance'). The policy Livingstone
>advocates could be summarised as Russian independence of the West, with
>a strong state sector in a market economy - no return to the command
>economy, but a radical reversal of the comprador policy of letting the
>industrial sector collapse and relying on raw material exports which go
>to fill Swiss bank accounts.
>
>'Red' government with a mass mobilisation behind it, would shake the
>world. Even if it 'only' resulted in something like China-with-
>democracy, it would be seen as a socialist revolution.
>
>Is there an alternative to this which is immediately feasible, and would
>it benefit the working class?
I think that Russia is poised on top of a pyramid where it could topple in
either direction. I have no doubt that the imperialists are at this very
moment hatching plots to try and 'stablize' the situation. In the present
context this can only mean the establishment of a more or less open
dictatorship. Boris Kagalitsky (who by the way has had some influence on
Livingstone's thinking) many years ago characterized the Yeltsin regime as a
transitional one attempting to move russia from being a dictatorship with a
welfare state to a dictatorship without a welfare state.
It is quite clear now that the plans of the imperialists to return Russia to
its 'natural' place in the world economy as a supplier of cheap resources
and labor cannot be implemented within the confines of a bourgeois
democracy. This transition requires enormous attacks on the living standards
of its population and on its industrial infrastructure. The opposition it
provokes can not be contained within a stable liberal democracy. The
imperialists' preferred option is probably to move towards a compliant
dictatorship a la Latin America. Whether Lebed is the vehicle for this we
will see.
The CP, on the other hand, remains the most progressive *mass* force in
Russia. Politically it is way ahead of the remnents of the CPs in other
Eastern European countries. There are within the CP many political currents
ranging from unreconstructed Stalinists to people we could properly
characterize as Trotskyists. A CP government that re-introduces some basic
measures to protect the Russian economy through exchange and export
controls, import tariffs and centralised control of heavy industry would be
an immense step forward in the right direction. How it evolves subsequently
will be determined by the tempo of the class struggle and the ideological
struggles in Russian society and inside the CP.
We can be sure that should events move in that direction the imperialists
will be screaming for blood. We can expect a barrage of propaganda about the
reemergence of 'communism'. Let us hope that the Left in the West does not
fall prey to this and maintains its most elementary duty of solidarity with
the Russian people. Unfortunately our recent history demonstrates that many
on the Trotskyist fringe will succumb to knee-jerk 'anti-Stalinism' and line
up with the imperialists. Just as they mistook the social counter-revolution
led by Yeltsin for a political revolution. Just as they consistently refused
to take sides as Yeltsin bombed his way to power.
I still have Tariq Ali's book on Gorby which is dedicated to Boris Yeltsin!
Claude de Paris
redflag wrote in message <35EF3510...@bellsouth.net>...
>
>I don't know of any genuinely revolutionary party or group in Russia
>that can explain to the working class what it needs to do to sieze
>power. The Communists are thouroughly bankrupt. In fact, Boris Yeltzin
>himself, a former CP aparatchnik, is the product of the Russian CP's
>political mediocrity. The CP represent a _reactionary_ force in
>Russian society.
This is a dubious conclusion. In my opinion the CP represents the nearest
thing to a mass progressive force in Russian Society. It is not surprising
that Yeltsin emerged from the CP. ALL the leading politcal players emerged
from it. I think it was Trotsky who pointed out that the Stalinist CPs
contain within them ALL political currents ranging from fascism to
socialist.
It is interesting that Yeltsin has so far not issued his previous threats to
dissolve the Duma and call elections if it does not approve chernomyrdin.
Could this be because an election now would return a Duma with a massive
communist majority? This would be disasterous for the imperialists as they
try to paint the communist resurgence as an undemocratic dictatorship -
which they will undoubtedly attempt to do.
We are witnessing the death throes of the the imperialists first attempt to
re-introduce capitalism into Russia. It opens up tremendous progressive
possibilities. The CP will, like it or not, play a major role in that.
It would also be interesting to debate the issue of the working class
'seizing power'. This statement begs the question as to what type of state
exists in Russia today. The attempt to dismantle the Soviet state and
replace it with a bourgeois state did not succeed with the election of
Yeltsin. On the contrary that was only the *beginning* of the process. I
would argue that that process was never completed successfully. Powerful
forces such as the military and the layers of managers of major enterprises
represented enormous opposition to this process and were never finally
defeated. Consider this from the imperialists' point of view: Has a
bourgeois state been stablised in Russia? I don't think so.
Big Mac
<Clau...@juno.com> wrote:
>redflag wrote in message <35EF3510...@bellsouth.net>...
>
>>
>>I don't know of any genuinely revolutionary party or group in Russia
>>that can explain to the working class what it needs to do to sieze
>>power. The Communists are thouroughly bankrupt. In fact, Boris Yeltzin
>>himself, a former CP aparatchnik, is the product of the Russian CP's
>>political mediocrity. The CP represent a _reactionary_ force in
>>Russian society.
>
>This is a dubious conclusion. In my opinion the CP represents the nearest
>thing to a mass progressive force in Russian Society.
Haven't you learnt _anything_ from your century-long dalliance with
the British Labour Party?
creb...@antares.com.br
> on the Trotskyist fringe will succumb to knee-jerk 'anti-Stalinism' and line
> up with the imperialists. Just as they mistook the social counter-revolution
> led by Yeltsin for a political revolution. Just as they consistently refused
> to take sides as Yeltsin bombed his way to power.
Well, for some reason Trotsky moved from the idea of being a faction of the
CP to the position of creating the IVth International-namely, the idea that
the CP- although still a legitimate working class party, was unrecoverable,
already in 1933, to revolutionary politics. What you propose reminds me of
the idea of "entrism sui-generis" of Pablo's.
Carlos Rebello
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Ken MacLeod
>We can be sure that should events move in that direction the imperialists
>will be screaming for blood. We can expect a barrage of propaganda about the
>reemergence of 'communism'.
Or 'national socialism' for audiences who might be quite susceptible to
'communism'.
> Let us hope that the Left in the West does not
>fall prey to this and maintains its most elementary duty of solidarity with
>the Russian people. Unfortunately our recent history demonstrates that many
>on the Trotskyist fringe will succumb to knee-jerk 'anti-Stalinism' and line
>up with the imperialists. Just as they mistook the social counter-revolution
>led by Yeltsin for a political revolution. Just as they consistently refused
>to take sides as Yeltsin bombed his way to power.
>
>I still have Tariq Ali's book on Gorby which is dedicated to Boris Yeltsin!
>
Well this is true enough but it was not just the fringes of the
Trotskyist movement it was the majority as far as I know. It is rather
ironic that after so many years of denouncing this and that minor
deviation as counter-revolutionary they actually supported an actual
counter-revolution, they were literally on the capitalist side of the
barricades when the counter-revolution came. They enthused about Gorby
in part because although they had a fairly clear idea of the political
changes that they wanted they had only the vaguest notions as to
economic policy, and imagined that with the political repression lifted
the workers would spontaneously move in a leftist direction or at least
hold onto the factories ('wouldn't give the Lenin shipyard back to the
Lenin family' as the joke went about Poland).
Part of the reason for this insouciance was an amazing ignorance of the
depth of Trotsky's critique of Stalinism as on the *economic* level an
insane bureaucratic left adventurism. In fact what most Trotskyists saw
as an economic programme for Soviet society could be characterised as
'insane democratic left adventurism' more worthy of the Situationist
International than the Fourth International.
An English Trotskyist called John Ross documented all this in 1991 in a
big article in a wee journal, called Socialist Action I think (no
relation to the bomb-the-Serbs US rag of that ilk), where he showed that
the Left Opposition in the 30s had actually advocated something more
like Nove's 'feasible socialism' (state industry in a market economy
with wide scope for small and medium private enterprise, co-ops etc)
than the fantasies of 'Brezhnevism with real multi-party Soviets and no
dissidents in psychiatric hospitals and a comprehensive down-to-the-
last-rivet Five Year Plan that this time actually works' which made up
the notion of a political revolution in the heads of members of the IMG,
SWP et al. Trotsky said a lot when he said: 'Economic accounting is
unthinkable without market relations'; but not many of his followers
took the hint.
Similarly there was an amazing ignorance of Trotsky's opinions on what
should be done after the fall of the Stalinist regime, how the CPSU
contained many political currents from fascism through bourgeois
democracy to Bolshevism (which turned out to be quite literally true)
and what sort of united fronts he recommended for when the apparent
monolith of Stalinism cracked. Ross documented all this as well, and
supported a united front with the CP and the left-patriotic bloc while
most of the Trotskyist left wouldn't touch the Communists or the
patriots with a barge-pole.
Perhaps you've come across Ross's articles?
--
Ken MacLeod
Louis N Proyect
From: Mark Jones <Jon...@netcomuk.co.uk>
X-Accept-Language: ru
To: mar...@lists.panix.com
Subject: Re: "Russian crisis - what now?"
Sender: owner-...@lists.panix.com
Reply-To: mar...@lists.panix.com
James Farmelant wrote:
> Us folk here may be cognizant of the weaknesses of the Chinese model
> but I wouldn't underestimate the ability of the Western press to
> latch onto a convenient buzzword like the "Chinese model" for
> describing Zyuganov's economic program.
Zyuganov indeed has a kind of dirigiste economic programme, but it's
already overtaken by events. I think we need to be clear what's happening
in Moscow. The idea that anyone has some kind of a programme for the
reintegration of Russia into the world market is wrong. Maybe such a
programme will emerge in time but there is none now. Even Chernomyrdin is
now talking about extreme interventionism, but this is not a programme so
much as a recognition of brute facts. The reality is the country faces a
cold, dark and hungry winter; people in the major towns can not buy food,
and that is already a factor. Politically it is obviously significant that
it is the urban middle classes who've been hit hardest by the collapse of
the monetary economy. Yeltsin has lost his natural constituency of
support. They will go next to Luzhkov and Lebed, in that order. However
neither person is capable of leading Russia out of the impasse. Luzhkov
made his fortune exploiting a similar but much less serious collapse in
1991, when the EU sent in much food aid and when the west put in place the
financial and market structures which have now collapsed. What can he or
they offer that is new? Nothing. Certainly food aid will be needed this
winter, but beyond that there is a need for drastic solutions to radical
problems, and for a reconstruction of industry and especially of
agriculture from the ground up. The enormity of the crisis is expressed by
the fact that capitalism and markets have been tried and have failed:
socialism has again become a life-necessity for the ex-Soviet peoples, and
this is a result of the weakness and decadence of late-imperialism, not of
the failings of the Soviet people. No half-way solutions will work.
Half-baked nationalisations which leave untouched the central question of
institutional political and social arrangements and abopve all, viable
markets and financial systems, will not work. But the markets and banks
have *already* collapsed; there is now just a gaping hole at the heart of
post-Soviet Russian society. Only the most radical methods of mass
mobilisation along the lines of the War Communism which Lenin intriduced
at the height of the Civil War in the early 1920s, will enable the hungry
cities to survive. Within months, the thin veneer of markets, consumerism
and modern banking, will simply vanish. What we should remember is that
ex-Soviet people are not like Indonesians, for example: they have deep
folk memories of surviving such crises -- and if they might have forgotten
there are plenty of Soviet-era films and books to remind them. And they
also have an existing, powerful Communist Party which does have a
tradition and whose rank and file are more than half familiar with the
legacy and political inheritance of Lenin. In fact, Luzhkov or Lebed would
end up having to liquidate the Communist Party and I submit that they will
that an impossible task, if they are ALSO obliged to cope with famine and
epidemics and general social breakdown.
> I think that will depend on whether or not the political process
> completelely breaks down over the next few weeks.
It already has, and in fact there is a complete collapse of everyday life
in Moscow which was really the only truly westernised city with a true
functional salariat. There are perhaps several hundred thousand middle
class professional who spend their time queueing for one thing or another
now, and many of whom will soon be laid off as foreign businesses up
stakes and leave. As for political process, what political process?Not
only has THE government collapsed, but government in general is sinking
like a scuttled boat; the bureaucracies are already essentially out of
work, dysfunctional. This is a crisis of governance, not just government.
Even iof by some mystery Yeltsin and Zyuganov make a deal and a
Chernomyrdin/coalition govt comes into beign next week, it will face the
same unresolved problems and is surely certain to be torn apart. In the
end, only a 'strong hand' will work but what is generally not at all
understood is that the only possible strong hand which can keep the
Russian Federation alive and in being, is one of the *extreme* ie
communist left, for all other solutions are bound to end up more or less
swiftly in the same ungovernable impasse; and the more this process
continues, the more power will end up in the street and the more will the
general paralyses of the ruling strata deepend: thus quite literally 'the
worse the better' right now.
What we need to remember is that ALL sides are steeped in and are products
of the Soviet order and the generational ideological hegemony of Leninism
and of stalin's bolshevik methods. Recourse to that tradition is extremely
easy and partly explains the deep roots and continuing popular support for
the the KPRF.
> If Yeltsin
> refuses to agree to a cabinet that is acceptable to the Communists
> and especially if he tries to resolve the political crisis by using
> force (i.e. dispersing the Duma with troops like he did in 1993)
> then we can start talking about a revolutionary situation. I am
> not sure that the situation has quite reached that level yet.
I think we would then be discussing coups and putsches. But this IS a
revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation: the state and existing
society is in an impasse, but forces exist which can exit this impasse.
These forces are the KPRF on the one hand and the majority of workers on
the other. Whether the leadership of the KPRF is capable of carrying thru
the seizure of power remains to be seen.
> If Zyuganov is propelled to power as the result of a revolution
> as Mark suggests might well happen then I think a new Cold War
> is likely. On the other hand if he takes power as the result of a
> deal with Yeltsin I think that at least in the short run a new Cold War
> will be less likely.
But this 'solution'is no solution at all and it can only result in a
deepening of the crisis and in the appearance of new leaders,
revolutionary vanguards, popular alliances and forces.
> As far as Zyuganov building alliances with Iraq,
> Iran, Cuba and China. Isn't it the case that Russia under Yeltsin
> already
> enjoys relative friendly relations with first two countries.
But we are talking about a revolutionary commune forging anti-imperialist
alliances in the miodst of a deepening world crisis of capitalism, which
will be wholly new.
Mark
--
http://www.geocities.com/~comparty
claude de paris
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
>
> An English Trotskyist called John Ross documented all this in 1991 in a
> big article in a wee journal, called Socialist Action
Yeah. Wot an excellent journal that is.
> Perhaps you've come across Ross's articles?
I wouldn't be at all surprised............
claude de paris
creb...@antares.com.br wrote in article
<6sp28i$1fd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> In article <#1W$ot719GA.169@upnetnews03>,
> "Claude de Paris" <Clau...@juno.com> wrote:
> >
> > Ken Unfortunately our recent history demonstrates that many
> > on the Trotskyist fringe will succumb to knee-jerk 'anti-Stalinism' and
line
> > up with the imperialists. Just as they mistook the social
counter-revolution
> > led by Yeltsin for a political revolution. Just as they consistently
refused
> > to take sides as Yeltsin bombed his way to power.
>
> Well, for some reason Trotsky moved from the idea of being a faction of
the
> CP to the position of creating the IVth International-namely, the idea
that
> the CP- although still a legitimate working class party, was
unrecoverable,
> already in 1933, to revolutionary politics. What you propose reminds me
of
> the idea of "entrism sui-generis" of Pablo's.
2 things spring to mind.
1. Trotsky was dragged kicking and screaming out of the CP. IE he held on
until it was absolutely positively completely impossible to function inside
the CP.
2. Schemas are eternal, the real class struggle is in a constant state of
flux. The CP in Russia today is not, cannot be, the same beast that existed
under Stalin. If it was possible for a healthy CP to evolve, under the
hammer blow of events, into the disgusting Stalinist monstrosity it is also
possible for this bastard offspring of the Marxist movement to move, under
the hammer blows of the last decades, into a healthy organisation. You talk
as if this party and its members had not lived through the final
ingnomonious collapse of Stalinism, the re-evaluations of their history,
the re-founding of the party as a mass popular organisation, the re-reading
of previously banned works by Trotsky et al. Is it possible that under the
influence of these events, something progressive may have evolved? Or is
the Stalinist CP to be considered immune to material events, an immutable
beast? If so, it does not follow the normal laws of materialism.
claude de paris
Big Mac <who...@speed.com> wrote in article
<35efbb70...@news.xara.com>...
> On Fri, 4 Sep 1998 00:33:11 -0400, "Claude de Paris"
> <Clau...@juno.com> wrote:
> >redflag wrote in message <35EF3510...@bellsouth.net>...
> >
> >>
> >>I don't know of any genuinely revolutionary party or group in Russia
> >>that can explain to the working class what it needs to do to sieze
> >>power. The Communists are thouroughly bankrupt. In fact, Boris Yeltzin
> >>himself, a former CP aparatchnik, is the product of the Russian CP's
> >>political mediocrity. The CP represent a _reactionary_ force in
> >>Russian society.
> >
> >This is a dubious conclusion. In my opinion the CP represents the
nearest
> >thing to a mass progressive force in Russian Society.
>
> Haven't you learnt _anything_ from your century-long dalliance with
> the British Labour Party?
>
Actually having followed the advice of a great (ex) Marxist called Frank
who leads an (ex) revolutionary party called the (non) RCP I have learned a
lot.
I think it goes like this: In Russia today there is only one party which
has a mass following and which has anything progressive to say on the
crisis in that country and that is the CP. Therefore we should set up a
small sect whose main purpose will be to oppose, expose and fight the CP at
every turn. Also we should publish a magazine with some sort of trendy
title like, oh, i dunno, how about 'the next step'. We should ensure that
it contains long, boring academic articles in very small type since it will
be aimed at students who have radical and intellectual pretensions. We
should base ourselves in a nice cosy university so we don't have to mix
with real icky workers.
To ensure that we continue to appeal to our core constituency we should
habitually set ourselves up in opposition to any and every campaign that
looks like it might gain a mass following, always taking care to denounce
it with ultra left rhetoric.
After carrying on like this for a few years, our denunciations having made
less than no impact on the CP, we should quietly disband but carry on
publishing an equally trendy but more glossy magazine which will at least
ensure that the core leadership can retire with a little nest egg.
Yeah. I think that will work.
By the way, I am not that old.
Joseph A. Tomaras
>
>
>redflag wrote in message <35EF3510...@bellsouth.net>...
>
>>
>>I don't know of any genuinely revolutionary party or group in
Russia
>>that can explain to the working class what it needs to do to sieze
>>power. The Communists are thouroughly bankrupt. In fact, Boris
Yeltzin
>>himself, a former CP aparatchnik, is the product of the Russian
CP's
>>political mediocrity. The CP represent a _reactionary_ force in
>>Russian society.
>
>
>This is a dubious conclusion. In my opinion the CP represents the
nearest
surprising
>that Yeltsin emerged from the CP. ALL the leading politcal players
emerged
>from it. I think it was Trotsky who pointed out that the Stalinist
CPs
>contain within them ALL political currents ranging from fascism to
>socialist.
>
And the Russian CP still contains the fascist currents. In fact
they're more than just currents: Zyuganov makes Brezhnev look like a
principled internationalist. If there are any actual Trotskyists in
that gang, they'd better bust out soon.
>It is interesting that Yeltsin has so far not issued his previous
threats to
>dissolve the Duma and call elections if it does not approve
chernomyrdin.
>Could this be because an election now would return a Duma with a
massive
>communist majority? This would be disasterous for the imperialists
as they
>try to paint the communist resurgence as an undemocratic
dictatorship -
>which they will undoubtedly attempt to do.
>
As Ken rightly pointed out in the post that began this thread, the
Russian CP's economic program is much like the Chinese CP's: currency
controls and heavy market regulation combined with concessions to
foreign capitalists, all with an eye to maintaining both low wage
rates, and a good share of surplus value for the statum they
represent, namely the managers of the remaining state-run industries.
If they have managed to rally the support of some Russian workers, it
is because Russian workers recognize that Yeltsin's programme meant
the final obliteration of the last few remaining gains of October.
The problem is that Zyuganov and his cronies are no more fond of
those gains than the Yeltsinites.
>We are witnessing the death throes of the the imperialists first
attempt to
>re-introduce capitalism into Russia. It opens up tremendous
progressive
>possibilities. The CP will, like it or not, play a major role in
that.
>
"Progressive"--every popular-frontist's favorite word.
>It would also be interesting to debate the issue of the working
class
>'seizing power'. This statement begs the question as to what type of
state
>exists in Russia today. The attempt to dismantle the Soviet state
and
>replace it with a bourgeois state did not succeed with the election
of
>Yeltsin. On the contrary that was only the *beginning* of the
process. I
>would argue that that process was never completed successfully.
Powerful
>forces such as the military and the layers of managers of major
enterprises
>represented enormous opposition to this process and were never
finally
>defeated. Consider this from the imperialists' point of view: Has a
>bourgeois state been stablised in Russia? I don't think so.
>
Ah the "indeterminacy" of class rule. Something unknown to Marx,
Lenin and Trotsky, but revealed by the great Michel Pablo. Claude
can't tell us whether the Soviet Union is a workers' state, or a
bourgeois state, it's--a pyramid. Just like the "degenerated workers
state" supposedly managed to remain a ball balanced on a pyramid for
a good fifty years. That's not good physics, and its not good
politics either. As for the "stability" argument, Italy hasn't had a
stable bourgeois government for fifty years. The current pop-front
set-up is the closest it's gotten, thanks largely to the venal role
of Rifondazione Communista (including its so-called "Trotskyists" in
Proposta). Does this make the Italian state any less bourgeois?
Anyway, as was mentioned before on the group, I think the
Soviet state was toppled some time around when the Bolshevik party
was exterminated and the Red Army eviscerated in Stalin's purges.
Claude ranks the heirs of their assasins as among the "progressive"
forces in Russia today.
Louis N Proyect
> Anyway, as was mentioned before on the group, I think the
> Soviet state was toppled some time around when the Bolshevik party
> was exterminated and the Red Army eviscerated in Stalin's purges.
> Claude ranks the heirs of their assasins as among the "progressive"
> forces in Russia today.
The choice before the Russian people is not one of a socialist republic
based on Tony Cliff's teachings and Yeltsin's gangster-famine regime. It
is rather between the latter and something that is all too imperfect. This
all too imperfect solution might for the time being involve
renationalization, a monopoly on foreign trade and reinstitution of the
safety net (food, medicine--all those boring things). Meanwhile the
bourgeoisie is pissing in its pants because it looks like some sort of
return to the status quo ante is in the works. No freedom to invest and
exploit Russia--that's what accounts for the stock market dip. Repudiation
of the Yeltsin regime and a return to Soviet economic institutions would
be a major step forward for the world revolution. Claude is completely
correct and in the Trotskyist tradition.
Louis P.
creb...@antares.com.br
"claude de paris" <clau...@juno.com> wrote:
> 1. Trotsky was dragged kicking and screaming out of the CP. IE he held on
> until it was absolutely positively completely impossible to function inside
> the CP.
>
> 2. Schemas are eternal, the real class struggle is in a constant state of
> flux. The CP in Russia today is not, cannot be, the same beast that existed
> under Stalin. If it was possible for a healthy CP to evolve, under the
> hammer blow of events, into the disgusting Stalinist monstrosity it is also
> possible for this bastard offspring of the Marxist movement to move, under
> the hammer blows of the last decades, into a healthy organisation.
But remember: In Trotsky's writings, one of the main factors of degeneration
of the various CPs was its absorbing a nationalist-messianic ideology
expressed in the Stalinist theory of "Socialism in one country". This
ideology has become, in the absence even of the formal internalionalism of
the late CPSU, even more influent in Zyuganov's CPRF, that has made peace
with the Orthodox Church and accepts openly market economy. The CPRF, in
fact, has transformed itself into a kind of supporter of state-led capitalist
development of a national Russia 'til some undefined future moment when the
spontaneous demise of capitalism will be possible- in short, something like
the various populist political movements that flourished 'til recently in
Latin America, with Zyuganov as a kind of Russian-speaking Getulio Vargas. I
would place my bet more on Boris Kagarlitsky and his Party of Labour, but
also in the possibility of Anpilov getting rid of a Stalinist mithology in
which he still believes. Those two, between them, are the most fascinating
figures the Russian Left has put forth 'til now.
Carlos Rebello
Claude de Paris
creb...@antares.com.br wrote in message
<6sq0t5$csq$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>In article <01bdd844$ecb7b4c0$e6be43ce@instructor2>,
>
>But remember: In Trotsky's writings, one of the main factors of
degeneration
>of the various CPs was its absorbing a nationalist-messianic ideology
>expressed in the Stalinist theory of "Socialism in one country". This
>ideology has become, in the absence even of the formal internalionalism of
>the late CPSU, even more influent in Zyuganov's CPRF, that has made peace
>with the Orthodox Church and accepts openly market economy.
I am not claiming that the CP has become a revolutionary party. However it
is the most progressive *mass* party active in Russian politics today. It
does contain many contradictory currents within it.
It may well be true that it has not broken with Socialism in one country and
it may have a less than perfect economic policy but its declared policy of
defence of social welfare provisions, protection of the Russian economy from
'free market' predators and the control of the mafiosi-bourgeoisie is very
progressive.
Whether it has 'made peace' with the church is much less important. The
evolution of a socialist foreign policy is more so. But the first step
necessary is that the CP actually takes power.
>I would place my bet more on Boris Kagarlitsky and his Party of Labour, but
>also in the possibility of Anpilov getting rid of a Stalinist mithology in
>which he still believes. Those two, between them, are the most fascinating
>figures the Russian Left has put forth 'til now.
In the years following the Yeltsin counter-revolution I followed events in
Russia much more closely. Indeed I met Kagarlitsky just after the assault on
parliament, during which he was imprisoned for several days (incidently he
attributed the speed with which he was released in part to the international
solidarity generated via email and the internet) and I have a lot of respect
for him. I have not followed events as closely lately but I imagine that the
Party of Labor is very small and largely irrelevant during the present
turmoil.
Once again we are called upon to take sides in the struggle in Russia. I
fear that once again Trotskyists are being found wanting.
Claude de Paris
Joseph A. Tomaras wrote in message <6spn49$stt$1...@netra-news.ntrnet.net>...
>"Progressive"--every popular-frontist's favorite word.
Whether an alliance represents a popular front is not decided by which
political forces are present within it but by the program advocated by that
alliance. IE if it subordinates the interests of the working class to those
of the bourgeosie. The fact that it includes "progressive" (ie
non-revolutionary) forces does not make it a popular front. Are the policies
advocated by the CP today those of the bourgeosie? Certainly the imperialist
bourgeosie doesn't think so!
>>It would also be interesting to debate the issue of the working
>class
>>'seizing power'. This statement begs the question as to what type of
>state
>>exists in Russia today. The attempt to dismantle the Soviet state
>and
>>replace it with a bourgeois state did not succeed with the election
>of
>>Yeltsin. On the contrary that was only the *beginning* of the
>process. I
>>would argue that that process was never completed successfully.
>Powerful
>>forces such as the military and the layers of managers of major
>enterprises
>>represented enormous opposition to this process and were never
>finally
>>defeated. Consider this from the imperialists' point of view: Has a
>>bourgeois state been stablised in Russia? I don't think so.
>>
>
>Ah the "indeterminacy" of class rule. Something unknown to Marx,
>Lenin and Trotsky.
Really?
>can't tell us whether the Soviet Union is a workers' state, or a
>bourgeois state, it's--a pyramid.
I have my opinion on what type of state it is. I wanted to hear other
opinions. Is that not acceptable on this newsgroup? By the way my comments
about the pyramid did not refer to class nature of the state. Re-read it.
>Just like the "degenerated workers
>state" supposedly managed to remain a ball balanced on a pyramid for
>a good fifty years.
Not at all. That theory states quite clearly that it was a workers state.
>That's not good physics, and its not good
>politics either. As for the "stability" argument, Italy hasn't had a
>stable bourgeois government for fifty years. The current pop-front
>set-up is the closest it's gotten, thanks largely to the venal role
>of Rifondazione Communista (including its so-called "Trotskyists" in
>Proposta). Does this make the Italian state any less bourgeois?
Your entire reply is based on a confusion which is exposed in the above
paragraph. There is a difference between a socialist (or even revolutionary
marxist) party in goverment and the class nature of a state. Despite the
fact that a myriad of different coalitions have been in government in Italy
and its political superstructure has been somewhat unstable, the class
nature of the state has never been in question. And no, the election of even
a 'revolutionary marxist' government would not mean that the class nature of
the Italian state would change. Just as, I don't think, the election of
Yeltsin suddenly changed the class nature of the Russian state. Or did it?
> Anyway, as was mentioned before on the group, I think the
>Soviet state was toppled some time around when the Bolshevik party
>was exterminated and the Red Army eviscerated in Stalin's purges.
Oh gawd. Hoary old state capitalism again. So this new capitalist class that
organized the counter-revolution in the USSR. Perhaps you would like to
explain its genesis?
>Claude ranks the heirs of their assasins as among the "progressive"
>forces in Russia today.
Rhetoric and dogma and emotion. It really is toooooo boring, darling.
Joseph A. Tomaras
<Pine.GSO.3.95qL.9809...@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu>,
ln...@columbia.edu says...
>
>The choice before the Russian people is not one of a socialist
republic
>based on Tony Cliff's teachings and Yeltsin's gangster-famine
regime. It
>is rather between the latter and something that is all too
imperfect. This
>all too imperfect solution might for the time being involve
>renationalization, a monopoly on foreign trade and reinstitution of
the
>safety net (food, medicine--all those boring things). Meanwhile the
Mr. Proyect has amply proven his gift for sarcasm--and little else.
The point of my posts was not to deny that the immediate tasks facing
the Russian working class consist in such "boring" (your word, not
mine) things as nationalization and the restablishment of the
monopoly of foreign trade. But those were accomplished in the first
place by the October revolution, and the last thing Zyuganov wants to
see is a reprise of that. It is simply utopian to believe that any
wing of the Russian ruling class is going to attempt that when you
still have miners shutting the country down. As Trotsky pointed out,
nationalized property would form "too tempting an object for social
revolution" with a still-undefeated working-class. The Russian
working class would have to get the stuffing knocked out of it even
more thoroughly than has already happened. Chernomyrdin's plan for
"economic dictatorship" is just that, and the KPRF has made it clear
that they will sign on to the plan provided Yeltsin agrees to a bit
of power sharing. What it amounts to is hiding an iron fist (massive
inflation and free-market currency controls) in a velvet glove
(apparently succumbing to miners' and others' demands for payment of
back wages). They want to buy some time out of their present
confusion to prepare a final assault on the Russian working-class,
which will make Yeltsin's brutal bonapartism look like a picnic, a
fascist dictatorship led perhaps by Lebed, with ample "power-sharing"
for the likes of Zhirinovsky and Zyuganov.
The Russian ruling class is backed into a corner, wedged
between the demands from their imperialist brothers in arms for
"reform" and the increased organization of the working-class. In the
face of the developing world crisis, the upper hand may be
temporarily gained by sections of the ruling class (such as the
factory managers, for whom Stalinist decentralization provided
increasing autonomy from any semblance of economic planning) for whom
deliberate obsolescence and national autarky represent a preferable
state of affairs to rule by the mafia-comprador upstarts. But they
can only gain this upper hand after having posed a united class
response to the workers' demands, and crushed them. That would
immediately be a signal for renewed imperialist war as more countries
(not just the ex-Stalinist ones) back away from globalism and attempt
to purchase a ticket out of crisis by their own efforts. The Russian
working class needs to raise the slogan of "Proletarian Dictatorship"
to counter the bourgeois slogan of "Economic Dictatorship," which is
nothing more than the dictatorship of capital. From what I know about
the Russian far left, it seems that the most advanced workers already
realize this.
As for the KPRF, any party that includes both workers and a
section of their bosses is "progressive" only in the sense that
"progressive" Popular Fronts have denied workers their class
independence and smothered any hope of proletarian revolution again
and again. (Spain? Chile? Indonesia in 1965?) The most advanced
Russian workers recognize in both Yeltsin and Zyuganov their class
enemy. If the "Trotskyist" tradition advises these workers to
sacrifice themselves to one or another, then those workers will
rightly reject the "Trotskyists" who give that kind of advice.
That the positions I put forward here are emphatically NOT
Cliffite (and why I consider that a slander, despite my
organizational history) is evident from the fact that the Cliffites
are habitual Popular Frontists. They're not alone on the left in this
respect. Their coverage of Indonesia, for example, has been wholly
uncritical of the PRD--as has most of the rest of the left. The
breakdown only seems to come in Russia, and even there the breakdown
is not simply Cliff/Schachtman vs. Pablo/Cannon. Even some of the
Pabloites backed up Yeltsin; ultimately it was a matter of taste. "Is
democracy more important to the workers, or nationalization?" This
false question shows a fundamental lack of faith in the ability of
the workers to mobilize around their own program and build their own
revolutionary party. The common centrist method on both sides
consists in calling on the leaders of the preferred bourgeois camp to
deepen their roots among the workers (i.e. their ability to mislead)
and take a more militant stance (fight more decisively for their
pro-capitalist programs). I can just imagine it: Lenin and Trotsky
entreating Kerensky to take a harder line against Miliukov! In
failing to draw a clear class line between themselves and the
protagonists of Russia's daily parliamentary drama, each side of the
debate fails to see either that a. Yeltsin never stood for any kind
of democracy and b. Zyuganov never stood for any kind of defense of
the gains of October.
Some of those gains did survive the counterrevolution (pace
Cliff), but not for lack of trying by the Stalinists to
systematically undermine them. Hence Boris did represent a step
backwards, not sideways, for the working class. But, Joe, Nicky,
Leonid, Yuri, and Mickey the hunchback had been walking backwards
already. Any hope for the "Soviet" state to defend the centralization
of the economy was dead by the end of the thirties, and it was only
the risk of sparking the workers back into battle that held back the
inevitable last steps. Capitalism's crisis and its redoubled effects
on the Soviet economy in the 1970's and 80's saw to it that even
though a fightback (like we're seeing now) was inevitable, the
austerity measures had to be taken regardless of the consequences.
Communists don't campaign for currency controls; we call for
the expropriation of the banks and industries. We don't call for the
reactionary utopia of "withdrawal" from the world economy; we show
how the crisis demonstrates that capital has proved to be its own
limit, and that the real solution is world revolution and
international socialization of production carried out by the working
class. We don't pin our hopes on the nattering of Duma councilors,
but propagandize for building workers' councils (which already exist
embryonically in some parts of Russia!) and the arming of the
workers. A real workers revolution in Russia would bust things wide
open in Korea, South Africa, China, and Indonesia, and expose the
current reformist leadership of the workers movement in those places
for what they are. And the Russian workers do have an advantage: many
clearly recognize Lenin as their own and have been busily engaged in
unearthing him from the crap flung on him by the "sovbours." The last
thing we need, though, is another palace coup such as those that
brought the Stalinists to power in Eastern Europe passing itself off
as a "socialist revolution." It would only sow more confusion.
With your definition of "communism," though, you might as
well pin the red flag onto Mahathir Mohammed. He's done more so far
to flout the IMF than Zyuganov has, and that seems to be your sole
criterion.
Louis N Proyect
> The point of my posts was not to deny that the immediate tasks facing
> the Russian working class consist in such "boring" (your word, not
> mine) things as nationalization and the restablishment of the
> monopoly of foreign trade. But those were accomplished in the first
> place by the October revolution, and the last thing Zyuganov wants to
> see is a reprise of that. It is simply utopian to believe that any
It is not utopian to think that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
might act to reinstate the status quo ante. The bourgeois press is filled
with such speculation. It is also possible that the CP might try to pull
together a government that functions like the newly reinstated CPs in
Eastern Europe, which are a milder version of Yeltsinism. What's different
about Russia is that there is revolutionary ferment. I would try to
explain revolutionary ferment to you, but it would be impossible. Have a
nice day.
Mr. Proyect
Stephen R. Diamond
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> There's no doubt that such a reversal, especially if carried out by a
> 'Red' government with a mass mobilisation behind it, would shake the
> world. Even if it 'only' resulted in something like China-with-
> democracy, it would be seen as a socialist revolution.
Would such a develop raise a terror in the bourgeoisie, as Proyect claims,
and any consistent Marxist ought to claim? It seems, at least on the
surface, that the bourgeoisie is more worried about the collapse of the
Russian economy, than about its stabilization under a quasi-Red
government. Rather than the increased scope for the investment of capital
helping the capitalist economies, the disorder in the world economy
terrifies it.
Stephen R. Diamond
Louis N Proyect
El 6 Sep 98 a las 10:01, Louis Proyect nos dice(n):
> One of the things that gets lost in the discussion about
> the possibility of a return to status quo ante under
> Communist Party rule in Russia is that the world is a much
> different place than it was in the WWII period where
> "socialism in one country" and "peaceful coexistence"
> seemed feasible. The only way that an anticapitalist
> government can survive in Russia today is if it carries
> out both internationalist and revolutionary policies.
> Zyuganov seems ill-prepared for such a course.
>
[follows an accurate -though IMO unfair to China- account
of the differences between the post-WWII world and the one
we are facing now, and of the structural changes necessary to
build a (_non-colonial_, my stress) capitalist economy and
the impossibility of such a road nowadays under the
dominion of imperialism powers]
Then, Louis Pr goes on saying:
> In order for the Communist Party in Russia to govern, it
> must confront this changed world. Its only possibility for
> survival is to join forces with insurgencies such as in
> Colombia and those that are beginning to surface in the
> industrialized world, such as South Korea. A revolutionary
> Communist Party would assist the North Korean government
> in pressing for reunification of the two Koreas, while
> providing all the solidarity to the South Korean union
> movement it could muster.
>
> Is Zyuganov capable of leading such a bold anti-capitalist
> struggle. The answer is no. But every initiative he takes
> in that direction should be supported by Marxists. If
> Zyuganov proves incapable of leading such a struggle, then
> other forces will have to. It none prove forthcoming, then
> we face ever more dangerous situations involving war and
> fascism, just as we did in the 1930s.
I think that Louis Pr, right as he sounds in general, has
missed something important: every major uprising in a
heavyweight country implies immediate response from the
Third World. The Russian Revolution was immediately
followed by a wave of inchoate though interesting revolts.
Most had a petty bourgeois or peasant character, or of
isolated proletariats like that of Buenos Aires during what
was finally known as the _Semana Tragica_, and so on; I
admit, however, that the Buenos Aires working class of the
late 1910s was very bound, ideologically and somehow also
materially, with Europe and European politics rather than
with local politics. But those were the times.
The weakening of the grip of imperialist countries on the
colonial world during the WWII strengthened and encouraged
a very large wave of new struggles (in Asia, BTW, the image
of a yellow-skinned army defeating white British and French
stalwarts was no little encouragement for the oppressed).
This was the age of Nasser, Sukarno, Peron, Gandhi (who
was a master of politics, and chose to fight through
"peaceful resistence" because the British Raj had left the
Indians without even the strength to engage in another kind
of struggle, IMO), the now overtly nationalist Vargas, Peron,
Gaitan, the Ba'ath, the Phillipino guerrillas, Villarroel
in Bolivia, and so on. And, of course, last but by no means
least, of Mao and Ho. All of these were anticolonial
fighters (and I am forgetting many, of course) who thrived
in the relative weakness of the colonial powers after the
crisis and counted with the objective backing of the USSR.
I do not mean that the USSR gave so much effective support
to Third World revolutions, an issue that would deserve
deep debate. Since I am no chicken, but please let us not
begin a flame -not even a thread yet- on this, I will state
this bluntly: pacific coexistence meant, among others,
that the USSR would _not_ help revolutions and would
try to engulf within its own "area of influence" those
that would, in spite of everything, eventually triumph.
There are many examples of national liberation movements,
even socialist movements, that the USSR tried to dissuade
or simply let down, and even betrayed, due to "greater
politics".
But the very _existence_ of the Soviet Union was an
objective counterweight, and with this you had more chances
to struggle and win.
Now, if Zyuganov attempts to reassert the place of the SU
under the Sun, it will be an inevitable consequence that
the Third World will enter in turmoil sooner than anyone
imagines. The ingredients are all ready, including some of
a subjective character. I will -as boringly always do- give
an example of Argentina, nay, two examples.
The first one is the report on a recent strike of the
railwaymen. The second is a conversation I had with a taxi
driver.
Thursday last, the suburban line of the former Mitre
railroad became chaotic. Some train conductors had been
fired by the American-owned railroad, and the conductors
decided to demonstrate. They simply organized a sit-in on
the tracks, at San Isidro station (the detail is
meaningful). The trains were stopped, and a judge in San
Isidro yielded to the immediate claims from the company,
and ordered the Federal Police to disband the conductors
(in this, please recall the article by Pozzi et al. on the
tendency to resort to police or military police to confront
with demonstrators). The policemen began to charge, along
the tracks, against the conductors. But all the public
there, the passengers in the first place, began to boo them
and the conductors discovered that they were supported by
the customers of the railroad. The meaningful detail is
that San Isidro station serves an area of well-to-do
bourgeoisie or higher petty bourgeoisie, one fraction
of the Argentine's privileged 3 million people (10% of total
pop.) who have benefitted with the model! The conductors
stood firm, and they forced the arch-corrupt Jose Pedraza,
the national leader of the railway union, to head the
demonstration! So, the idiotic and repugnant decission of
the San Isidro judge had to be annuled (to give formal
coverage to what had been annuled in the facts), and the
company had to conciliate, hire the conductors again, and
bow to the hate of both conductors and passengers.
This would not have happened a few months ago. The
passengers would have certainly put the blame on the
conductors, and would have applauded the decission of the
judge as well as police repression. The fact is that the
crisis is beginning to haunt the lower ranks of the
privileged: their young children, professionals with titles
of private universities that cost thousands of dollars,
cannot find jobs, and business is getting tougher by the
hours!
On Friday, I was late to get to the office, so I took a
cab. It should be noted here that taxi drivers in Buenos
Aires are mostly people who have lost their lifelong jobs,
and who are now eking out a living by hiring themselves as
taxi drivers. You can easily find engineers or architects
driving a taxi (well, not so easy now: this was more usual
years ago, and in the meantime all these professionals have
been leaving the country), or -as the case was- a high rank
employee of a factory that went bankrupt and paid no
indemnizations to the people they laid off (the bankrupcy
law that Cavallo had passed allows this). So, the guy was
driving a taxi for a filthy living. We began to talk while
he drove me to my job.
"Did you see what happened with the train yesterday?", he
said, watching me on the car's looking glass.
"Yes", I retorted, expecting some hollow comment on the
consequences this had had on the city's traffic.
"Well, it's like in Russia", he said. "People don't stand
this any more. This is too much".
"It's like in Russia". The most timid of the movements,
made by a SOB as Chernomyrdin, has immediately been
captured by a half-unemployed, middle class taxi driver in
Buenos Aires, as a sign of the new times.
Imagine another kind of gesture, by Zyuganov or whoever. I
believe that if he adopts a bold path, he will find out
that the whole world will be set in turmoil, and that (oh,
never forget dialectics!) this that today _is_ a problem
may suddenly become a blessing. IMO, there are thousands of
millions in the world waiting for the Signs of the Times.
The question is not whether Zyuganov can lead such a
struggle. The question is what scenario will imperialism
have to confront if Zyuganov and his people timidly begin
to restore some of the power of Russia. Zyuganov himself
may very probably be surprised by this. He (or whoever
follows if he does not) will _have_ to head this movement,
foster it and help it to gain momentum. Even if only to
finally sell us out!
Because some years of exposition to international politics,
and to the Soviet Union world policies, have made me very
careful:
He can sell us out, of course, but unless he does first
blow the flames high in order to scare the West the sell
out would be of no avail. So that perhaps we shall also
keep an eye on what will these Russian leaders do if they
get to power and we begin to show that we are fed up, on
massive terms. Who knows, the old wheels of the machine of
history are already stopped in their backward movement, and
they are going to turn clockwise again.
Nestor.
Louis N Proyect
> If the leadership of the RCP have nest-eggs it would be because they are
> successful: Keith Teare started easynet.uk, Frank Furedi is a successful
> historian and sociologist, etc. Poor, sad-green-eyed Claude.
>
> Poor old John Ross - completely unknown and pretty much unpublished.
>
> What a sad spectacle envy is.
Is Mike de Marseilles actually a pen-name for Scott Solomon?
Claude de Paris
Philip Ferguson wrote in message <35F3CA...@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>...
>Carlos Rebello is basically right about the Russian CP not being
>supportable.
>
>"Claude Paris"'s position that the CP has/can change its spots is
>typical impressionism. Always looking for someone other than the
>working class and its Marxist party to do the job.
The problem for our purists is that no 'Marxist' party exists in Russia
today that would satisfy them. They could, of course, set up a Russian RCP
but I fear it would suffer the same ignomonious fate the British one did. By
the way the Russian working class is today very surely behind the CP and, if
given the chance to vote, will return them to power with an overwhelming
majority. So if anyone is divorced from the working class there it is you.
>One thing I will agree with Paris on, however, is that the Russian CP
>has undergone a major change. But not in the direction he suggests.
>It's programme is now more like a social democratic formation than the
>veteran Stalinist outfit of yore. The corrollary of this is that the CP
>is not about to get rid of the market and revert to a pre-Gorbachev
>style set-up, even if that was considered desirable by people like
>"Paris".
This sounds more like a serious discussion point. However the question
remains that given the real, concrete choices between the CP and Yeltsin's
mafiosi-bourgeosie which side do we take. Your virtual 'Marxist' party
exists only in your imagination not as a fact on the ground.
>The European CPs have not undergone any profound leftward transformation
>in the wake of the implosion of Stalinism. The implosion made it
>impossible for them to carry on in the same old way - so they have
>evolved towards social democratic positions, just like the Spanish and
>Italian CPs did. In other words, their evo,tuion has not bheen driven
>by a break with Stalinism and desire to come to grips with revolutionary
>Marxism: it has been driven by the pure untenability of holding onto the
>old views.
Actually the parties have splintered in various directions. Many have
completed the evolution towards social democracy, some have moved beyond
that to pure liberalism (eg in England) while others have moved leftwards.
Reality is more complex than you imagine. By the way the social
democratization of the Stalinist parties has been underway for a couple of
decades and was precisely predicted by Mandel in a series of essays
collectively published in the book From Stalinism to Eurocommunism.
>In Italy, Rifondazione - the 'new' 'left-wing' CP in which USec
>supporters are involved - is currently propping up a completely
>bourgeois regime which continues to erode workers' position.
>There is certainly no indication that the Russian CP would be any better
>than the Italian CP which is in power, or the 'left' of the Italian CP
>regrouped in Rifondazione.
Nor is there any indication that the Russian CP would evolve in the same
direction. This is real impressionism. You might as well have drawn an
analogy between any bourgeois nationalist movement and the July 26th
movement in Cuba to 'predict' that it would not complete the revolution.
Claude de Paris
>Carlos Rebello writes of "Claude Paris":
>
>> What you propose reminds me of
>> the idea of "entrism sui-generis" of Pablo's.
>
>
>BTW, Claude and his co-'thinkers' (I use the expression 'thinkers' in a
>loose way) tried this for 20 years in the British Labour Party.
You fail to mention that the RCP tried it their way and concluded the best
thing they could do for the working class was to wind themselves up. It was
probably the first sensible decision they ever took.
Claude de Paris
Mike de Marseilles wrote in message <35F3CB...@marseilles.red>...
>If the leadership of the RCP have nest-eggs it would be because they are
>successful: Keith Teare started easynet.uk, Frank Furedi is a successful
>historian and sociologist, etc. Poor, sad-green-eyed Claude.
>
>Poor old John Ross - completely unknown and pretty much unpublished.
>
>What a sad spectacle envy is.
>
>Mike de Marseilles
You are such a childish pratt Justin.
Mike de Marseilles
> Whether an alliance represents a popular front is not decided by which
> political forces are present within it but by the program advocated by that
> alliance.
Of course, this was not Leon Trotsky's view.
Trotsky held that political composition was the decisive question in
determining whether a formation political was a popular front or not.
If it was determined by program, then two (pro-capitalist) social
democratic parties would be a popular front.
But my feeble-minded cousin/e Claude has never been strong on Trotsky.
He preferes to go whichever way the biggest wind is blowing. If a big
wind is coming from the Labour Party, then Claude will attach himself to
that and try to become even more of a social democrat than the social
democrats; if the big wind is from the Russian CP, then Claude would be
a Russian CP big winder.
Is called petty-bourgeois opportunism, I think.
Mike de Marseilles
Pete de Paris
> We
> should base ourselves in a nice cosy university so we don't have to mix
> with real icky workers.
This was always Claude's position. Claude is university-trained and has
never been anywhere near 'icky workers'. He was always much more
conmfortable in the bowels of the middle class Labour Party.
Claude's idea of a revolutionary organisation is one that goes along
with whatever pressure is being exerted at the time. When 'workerism'
was in, during the late 1960s and 1970s, Claude's lold alma mater, the
IMG, was a group of student workersists, sneeering at the women's
liberation movement etc. When workerism was out of fashion and feminism
was in vogue, the IMG went all feminist.
In the early 1970s the IMG approach to the Labour Party was summed up by
Robin Blackburn, who said "Let it bleed". (At least a heallthy
response, if not very political.) But when the liberal middle class
joined the LP in droves in the late 1970s and 1980s, the IMG followed
the posterior of this section of society and disappeared up the anus of
the Labour Party. Many of them got permanently lost there.
The IMG split three ways, three microscopic germs which have no impact
on anything in politics in Britain.
Pete de Paris
Mike de Marseilles
> we should quietly disband but carry on
> publishing an equally trendy but more glossy magazine which will at least
> ensure that the core leadership can retire with a little nest egg.
>
Mais, le RCP subsidised the "Living Marxism"! Now that the RCP is no
more, the Living Marxism has to fund itself.
So it would be impossible for the RCP leadership to "retire with a
little nest egg" from the LM.
Logic has never been the strength of my pauvre cousin; he lets his
pathological impulsion to lie about other people get always in the way.
Philip Ferguson
supportable.
"Claude Paris"'s position that the CP has/can change its spots is
typical impressionism. Always looking for someone other than the
working class and its Marxist party to do the job.
One thing I will agree with Paris on, however, is that the Russian CP
has undergone a major change. But not in the direction he suggests.
It's programme is now more like a social democratic formation than the
veteran Stalinist outfit of yore. The corrollary of this is that the CP
is not about to get rid of the market and revert to a pre-Gorbachev
style set-up, even if that was considered desirable by people like
"Paris".
The European CPs have not undergone any profound leftward transformation
in the wake of the implosion of Stalinism. The implosion made it
impossible for them to carry on in the same old way - so they have
evolved towards social democratic positions, just like the Spanish and
Italian CPs did. In other words, their evo,tuion has not bheen driven
by a break with Stalinism and desire to come to grips with revolutionary
Marxism: it has been driven by the pure untenability of holding onto the
old views.
In Italy, Rifondazione - the 'new' 'left-wing' CP in which USec
supporters are involved - is currently propping up a completely
bourgeois regime which continues to erode workers' position.
There is certainly no indication that the Russian CP would be any better
than the Italian CP which is in power, or the 'left' of the Italian CP
regrouped in Rifondazione.
Philip Ferguson
Mike de Marseilles
> What you propose reminds me of
> the idea of "entrism sui-generis" of Pablo's.
You have hit the nail on the head, Carlos.
BTW, Claude and his co-'thinkers' (I use the expression 'thinkers' in a
loose way) tried this for 20 years in the British Labour Party. Many of
them are still lost in Blair's party and completely undistinguishable
from liberal social democrats.
Mike de Marseilles
Mike de Marseilles
> Repudiation
> of the Yeltsin regime and a return to Soviet economic institutions would
> be a major step forward for the world revolution. Claude is completely
> correct and in the Trotskyist tradition.
Louis, I think this is wrong. Trotsky would have had higher horizons.
In the West the bourgeoisie has limited the discussion of economic
matters to, at most, whether there should be a 'free market' or state
intervention. It is necessary to go beyond this and talk about putting
human needs first and explain how this can only be done outside of any
capitalist framework.
In Russia, the job of Marxists is surely not to accept the limited
framework of Yeltsin or old-style Stalinism, but to point to the
inadequacy of both and explain patiently that there is an alternative.
When Lenin arrived back in Russia in April 1917 he did not say, 'Well
the choice is between the tsar and the provisional government; therefore
we are for the provisional government'. That was Stalin's position.
Lenin said, neither the tsar nor the provisional government - and
patiently set about winning over the working class (and many of his own
comrades) to that position.
As long as the framework is as limited as Yeltsin vs CP, there will be
no progress, just a continuation of the pain. It is time for higher
horizons!
Mike de Marseilles
Claude de Paris
Mike de Marseilles wrote in message <35F3E2...@marseilles.red>...
>Louis Proyect writes in response to Joseph Tomaras:
>
>> Repudiation
>> of the Yeltsin regime and a return to Soviet economic institutions would
>> be a major step forward for the world revolution. Claude is completely
>> correct and in the Trotskyist tradition.
>
>
>Louis, I think this is wrong. Trotsky would have had higher horizons.
>
Poor old Lenin and Trotsky. Whilst they spent their lives trying to train
their followers in the art of strategy and tactics, their present day
'defenders' daily shit on their heritage.
>In the West the bourgeoisie has limited the discussion of economic
>matters to, at most, whether there should be a 'free market' or state
>intervention. It is necessary to go beyond this and talk about putting
>human needs first and explain how this can only be done outside of any
>capitalist framework.
>In Russia, the job of Marxists is surely not to accept the limited
>framework of Yeltsin or old-style Stalinism, but to point to the
>inadequacy of both and explain patiently that there is an alternative.
Trotsky actually said:
'..But that does not at all mean that by simple repitition one can solve the
problems of the day. An idea, correct from the point of view of revoluionary
strategy as a whole, is converted into a lie, and at that into a reactionary
lie, if it is not translated into the language of tactics. Is it correct tht
in order to destroy unemployment and misery it is first necessary to destroy
capitalism? It is correct. But only the biggest blockhead can conclude from
all this, that we do not have to fight this very day, with all of our forces
against the measures with whose aid capitalism is increasing the misery of
the workers.'
Would Trotsky have recognized you as the 'blockhead' or a Trotskyist? Hum?
Whaddya think?
>When Lenin arrived back in Russia in April 1917 he did not say, 'Well
>the choice is between the tsar and the provisional government; therefore
>we are for the provisional government'. That was Stalin's position.
>Lenin said, neither the tsar nor the provisional government - and
>patiently set about winning over the working class (and many of his own
>comrades) to that position.
Well actually... Trotsky again:
''a section of the Bolsheviks brought out the slogan 'Down with the
provisional goverment'. The Central Committee ... straightend out the
ultraleftists... to call the workers into the streets under that slogan -
this we cannot do, for we ourselves are a minority in the working class. If
we overthrow the provisional goverment under this conditions...we will help
the counterrevolution'
Doesn't really sound like the ultra-leftist adventurism you advocate, does
it?
>As long as the framework is as limited as Yeltsin vs CP, there will be
>no progress, just a continuation of the pain. It is time for higher
>horizons!
>
>Mike de Marseilles
You see as well as being brilliant theoreticians Lenin and Trotsky were also
astute strategists:
'Obviously, it is not enough to be for revolutionary war in principle. One
must have a head on one's shoulders besides. One must take into
consideration the circumstances..'
'This question is not decided by bare principles, nor by polemical formulas,
but by the relation of forces. With what care and conscientiousness the
Bolsheviks studied, counted and measured the relation of forces at every new
stage of the revolution!'
. You would do well to study their *methodology* before you start using
their names in vain to justify your maximalist, ultra-left stupidities. I
know it is not all your fault, Justin/Mac/Mike. Your multi-personalitied
head has been 'educated' by Fuzzy Frank.
Claude de Paris
Mike de Marseilles wrote in message <35F3AE...@marseilles.red>...
>My pauvre cousin/e Claude writes:
>
>> Whether an alliance represents a popular front is not decided by which
>> political forces are present within it but by the program advocated by
that
>> alliance.
>
>
>Of course, this was not Leon Trotsky's view.
>
>Trotsky held that political composition was the decisive question in
>determining whether a formation political was a popular front or not.
>
>If it was determined by program, then two (pro-capitalist) social
>democratic parties would be a popular front.
A popular front is one that subordinates the interests of the working class
to that of another class. Period. Come back when you have understood this.
>But my feeble-minded cousin/e Claude has never been strong on Trotsky.
>He preferes to go whichever way the biggest wind is blowing. If a big
>wind is coming from the Labour Party, then Claude will attach himself to
>that and try to become even more of a social democrat than the social
>democrats; if the big wind is from the Russian CP, then Claude would be
>a Russian CP big winder.
>
>Is called petty-bourgeois opportunism, I think.
>
>Mike de Marseilles
Here we have 2 opposing strategies. One of a united front with the CP. The
other to set about building a sectarian party in opposition to the CP. I
think our sectarian muddleheads need a lesson from the old man himself
talking about the united front in Germany. Bear in mind as you read it that
in Russia today the masses of the working class are solidly lined up behind
the CP:
'The overwhelming majority of the Social Democratic(SD) workers will fight
against the fascists, BUT... ONLY TOGETHER WITH THIER ORGANIZATIONS. THIS
STAGE CANNOT BE SKIPPED. We must help the SD workers in action..to test the
value of their organisations and leaders.'
Ultra-lefts aim precisely to skip this step.
And, just to pre-empt another ultra left misconception about the united
front, nor is the aim of the United Front simply to expose the SD Leaders:
'It is necessary...[to work]... not with the aim of merely 'exposing' the
SD, but with the aim of ACTUAL struggle against fascism.'
Shark
> If it was possible for a healthy CP to evolve, under the
> > hammer blow of events, into the disgusting Stalinist monstrosity it is also
> > possible for this bastard offspring of the Marxist movement to move, under
> > the hammer blows of the last decades, into a healthy organisation.
Interesting 'dialectics'. . .
The point about qualitative transformation, however, is that 'hammer
blows' can't turn the transformed quality back to its original state.
Nevertheless the idea sounds familiar. Pablo in the 1950s?
Now, there was a winning perspective. . .
SHARK
Ken MacLeod
<mi...@marseilles.red> writes
>But my feeble-minded cousin/e Claude has never been strong on Trotsky.
>He preferes to go whichever way the biggest wind is blowing. If a big
>wind is coming from the Labour Party, then Claude will attach himself to
>that and try to become even more of a social democrat than the social
>democrats; if the big wind is from the Russian CP, then Claude would be
>a Russian CP big winder.
>
>Is called petty-bourgeois opportunism, I think.
Then it is moi you should be attacking for it, and not just Claude,
because I raised this question in the first place.
To be blunt, I can see no evidence that Claude has illusions about the
CPRF, or that the strategy he advocates towards what *he regards as* a
mass workers party - demand that it 'take the power, damn you!' (as a
Bolshevik sailor famously said to a Menshevik politician) and implement
*its declared programme* - is anything but Trotskyist. Even Leninist!
it's a case of 'the impending catastrophe and how to combat it'.
Now it may be that the CPRF is not a workers party, or that its policy
(*not* a return to the Soviet command economy, but a break from the
mafia/comprador capitalism of Yeltsin) would be against the immediate
interests of the working class, or would get decisively in the way of
the long-term interests of the working class; it may be the case that
the Russian working class and the ex-Soviet peoples are doomed to a
continued slide into utter social degradation and disintegration; that
nothing can be done to stop this short of genuine socialism, which is
not going to happen in the next six weeks; and that even if something
can be done immediately, socialists should not advocate it. But none of
these strike me as plausible positions for a Marxist to take.
--
Ken MacLeod
Ken MacLeod
<clau...@juno.com> writes
>
>
>Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
>
>>
>> An English Trotskyist called John Ross documented all this in 1991 in a
>> big article in a wee journal, called Socialist Action
>
>Yeah. Wot an excellent journal that is.
>
>> Perhaps you've come across Ross's articles?
>
>I wouldn't be at all surprised............
Neither would I! However ...
Ross is at his best in exposition. The very first pamphlet of his that I
read was 'Imperialism, Stalinism and Permanent Revolution' which
expounded the views of the Left Opposition, the FI and the USec, and you
couldn't see the joins. At least, I couldn't. I also recall a sparkling
critique of the theoretical pretensions of Healy's Red professors, which
appeared in Intercontinental Press.
Similarly with his 1991 articles on aspects of Trotsky's analysis of
Stalinist economics and the nature of the CPSU.
However, when he strikes out on his own he is less reliable.
I have fond memories of such theoretical breakthroughs as the discovery
that the (pre-Barnesite) American SWP was a revolutionary marxist party,
and that the British SWP was too; and that Daniel Ortega, Gerry Adams,
Arthur Scargill and Lech Walesa represented an emergent new working-
class leadership.
Ross has a very unsubtle method of consigning every aspect of social
reality, every political tendency, every theoretical view, even every
*opinion*, to either the 'camp of imperialism' or 'the camp of the
revolution'; a theoretical procedure like that of Zhdanovism, which
Althusser described as 'a banner flapping in a void'. So I'm afraid I
can't share your enthusiasm for the journal 'Socialist Action'.
--
Ken MacLeod
Big Mac
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I have fond memories of such theoretical breakthroughs as the discovery
>that the (pre-Barnesite) American SWP was a revolutionary marxist party,
>and that the British SWP was too; and that Daniel Ortega, Gerry Adams,
>Arthur Scargill and Lech Walesa represented an emergent new working-
>class leadership.
Well worth starting a new thread with that one, along the lines of
"There's Daniel Ortega, Gerry Adams, Arthur Scargill and Lech Walesa
marooned on a desert island. So Arthur says to Lech ...."
Big Mac
wrote:
>Repudiation
>of the Yeltsin regime and a return to Soviet economic institutions would
>be a major step forward for the world revolution. Claude is completely
>correct and in the Trotskyist tradition.
Further proof, if any were needed after 1989, that the "Trotskyist
tradition" has long ago degenerated into the most conservative brand
of Stalinism.
Louis N Proyect
No, Trotsky understood that the defeat of the Nazis by the Soviet state
would be a great victory. That is why Trotskyists supported this aspect of
WWII, while rejecting the imperialist aspect such as the war between Japan
and the US.
What Big Mac (Why don't you folks use your real names? Justin and Adam are
nice names) does not understand is that western imperialism tried to
accomplish through the Yeltsin regime what Hitler couldn't accomplish
through brute military force.
Your dismissal of the "gains of October" are classic third-camp politics
draped in ultraleft rhetoric. What makes it all the more ludicrous is the
deep financial crisis that has been set off, in no small part, by investor
worries about Russia being removed from the capitalist world.
Louis P.
Neil Gardner
> On Mon, 7 Sep 1998, Big Mac wrote:
> > On Fri, 4 Sep 1998 18:39:38 -0400, Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu>
> > wrote:
> > >Repudiation
> > >of the Yeltsin regime and a return to Soviet economic institutions would
> > >be a major step forward for the world revolution. Claude is completely
> > >correct and in the Trotskyist tradition.
> >
> > Further proof, if any were needed after 1989, that the "Trotskyist
> > tradition" has long ago degenerated into the most conservative brand
> > of Stalinism.
>
> No, Trotsky understood that the defeat of the Nazis by the Soviet state
> would be a great victory. That is why Trotskyists supported this aspect of
> WWII, while rejecting the imperialist aspect such as the war between Japan
> and the US.
So the best way to fight Nazi expansionism was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
Please give a reference that show that Trotsky, whose judgements were often
wrong, supported the Allied war effort and maintenance of the British and
French empires?
> What Big Mac (Why don't you folks use your real names? Justin and Adam are
> nice names) does not understand is that western imperialism tried to
> accomplish through the Yeltsin regime what Hitler couldn't accomplish
> through brute military force.
>
> Your dismissal of the "gains of October" are classic third-camp politics
> draped in ultraleft rhetoric. What makes it all the more ludicrous is the
> deep financial crisis that has been set off, in no small part, by investor
> worries about Russia being removed from the capitalist world.
This is the failure of international capitalism to cope with the failure of an
authoritarian command economy. Had it been a workers' state the US would
neither have collaborated with the former USSR or have allowed it to coexist
for so long.
Neil
Louis N Proyect
> This is the failure of international capitalism to cope with the failure of an
> authoritarian command economy. Had it been a workers' state the US would
> neither have collaborated with the former USSR or have allowed it to coexist
> for so long.
Go away, naziboy. I don't discuss the problems of Soviet Russia with scum
with you. With you I discuss how you endorse the historical scruples of
admirers of Adolph Hitler, such as David Irving and Richard Harwood, when
their hero wrote: "The bigger the lie, the greater likelihood it will be
believed."
Louis P.
Claude de Paris
Pete de Paris wrote in message <35F3BF...@paris.red>...
>Cousin Claude writes:
>
>> We
>> should base ourselves in a nice cosy university so we don't have to mix
>> with real icky workers.
>
>
>This was always Claude's position. Claude is university-trained and has
>never been anywhere near 'icky workers'. He was always much more
>conmfortable in the bowels of the middle class Labour Party.
Parody is obviously lost on you Justin. The 'middle class' Labour party is
not only a party that enjoys majority support within the working class in
Britain (unfortunately even today) but its membership is predominantly
working class as are the unions whose affiliations support it. That is why
Lenin referred to it as a bourgeios WORKERS party.
The RCP on the other hand was always a middle class party in its membership,
which was predominantly wanky middle class radicals (who by now are mostly
safely enconsed in daddy's company) and in its program - unreconstructed
ultra leftism which is, of course, the other side of the coin of liberalism.
In any case it was universally reviled by the most militant sections of the
working class.
>The IMG split three ways, three microscopic germs which have no impact
>on anything in politics in Britain.
Yes, you better educate young Philip Ferguson on this issue as he seems to
be confused about whether the IMG still exists or not.
In any case, even 3 microscopic germs of parties must have more impact on
politics than a party that quietly gave up the ghost and disbanded itself,
as the RCP did.
>Pete de Paris
Mike de Marseilles
> A popular front is one that subordinates the interests of the working class
> to that of another class. Period. Come back when you have understood this.
Wrong again. Social democratic and Stalinist outfits subordinate
workers' interests to that of another class. That doesn't make them
popular fronts.
Trotsky was specific that it is the presence of a bourgeois force in an
alliance which makes it a popular front. He argued that the presence of
the Radicals was what made the alliance in France in the 1930s a popular
front. It was also the presence of bourgeois forces which made
Allende's bloc a popular front.
This is ABC Trotskyism, Claude.
Trotsky also argued, by the way, that the united front only comes on the
agenda once revolutionary Marxists have won over the advanced
detachments of the working class - in fact he even specified this to be
about 30 percent of the class. This is the classic united front
conception of the Bolsheviks and Third International in the 1920s.
It is typical of centrists and left reformists such as my silly cousin/e
to empty the united front conception of its specific content and refer
to any little group getting in behind a big social democratic or
Stalinist party as 'united front' work. It is actually just tailism.
Trotsky's actual views are of little interest to Claude, however. His
natural disposition is to attach himself to any anti-working class
current, like Stalinism or social democracy, and find some little niche
for himself in it. Hey, Claude, it must have been a big personal
setback when the Southwark ward of the Labour Party took away your
position as ink monitor.
Mike de Marseilles
Louis N Proyect
> The RCP on the other hand was always a middle class party in its membership,
> which was predominantly wanky middle class radicals (who by now are mostly
> safely enconsed in daddy's company) and in its program - unreconstructed
> ultra leftism which is, of course, the other side of the coin of liberalism.
> In any case it was universally reviled by the most militant sections of the
> working class.
Claude, you know that I am closer to you politically than I am to LM. But
this sort of post is really just repetitious bullshit. How many times have
you made it in the past? At least eleven thousand. If you and Mike de
Marseilles want to have a correspondence where you can call each other
middle-class wankers, why not do it privately? Or else choose a more
appropriate forum, like alt.flame. Meanwhile, for somebody who complained
about the sectarian stupidity of apst, you seem to be part of the problem
rather than the solution right now.
Louis P.
Peter West
<Clau...@juno.com> writes
>>typical impressionism. Always looking for someone other than the
>>working class and its Marxist party to do the job.
>
>today that would satisfy them. They could, of course, set up a Russian RCP
>but I fear it would suffer the same ignomonious fate the British one did. By
>the way the Russian working class is today very surely behind the CP and, if
>given the chance to vote, will return them to power with an overwhelming
>majority. So if anyone is divorced from the working class there it is you.
Would massive voting of individual workers for the Russian CP indicate
that an organised working class in Russia was acting for itself,
embarked on its self-liberation? I don't think so. Individual workers in
Britain voted for Blair's New Labour Party: it didn't make it any more a
working class party; in fact, it's still a bourgeois workers' party, but
with a Blairite program propelling it toward liberalism.
>[...]
>>The European CPs have not undergone any profound leftward transformation
>>in the wake of the implosion of Stalinism. The implosion made it
>>impossible for them to carry on in the same old way - so they have
>>evolved towards social democratic positions, just like the Spanish and
>>Italian CPs did. In other words, their evo,tuion has not bheen driven
>>by a break with Stalinism and desire to come to grips with revolutionary
>>Marxism: it has been driven by the pure untenability of holding onto the
>>old views.
>
>Actually the parties have splintered in various directions. Many have
>completed the evolution towards social democracy, some have moved beyond
>that to pure liberalism (eg in England) while others have moved leftwards.
But what examples of these CPs' moves leftwards are there, where is the
evidence for this assertion? These CPs, which are mostly smaller or
larger sects, consider socialism, if they still refer to it at all, as
being possible in one country: they are national socialist (i.e. not
communist at all).
--
Peter [remove .nosp in address before emailing]
~ Weekly Worker electronic edition at ~
<URL: http://www.duntone.demon.co.uk/CPGB/>
Louis N Proyect
mailing-list. I would consider him one of the most valued members of the
list, even though I disagree with him politically on most questions. He
earned people's respect by writing extremely erudite and coherent posts.
We keep a journal of monthly posts and Heartfield shows up more than
anybody. I would say that "Gerry the Gerbil" and "Claude de Paris" should
take their beef with LM somewhere else. It is just sectarian wrangling.
How many times do we need to rehash the ITN/Serb crap, or how the RCP
dissolved itself. For my money every one of these fucking self-declared
vanguards should dissolve themselves as well, for all the good they do.
Does anybody think that the Spartacist League is to be applauded that they
have not dissolved? We might as well salute the Jehovah's Witnesses.
The events of the last month should be forcing everybody who has studied
and absorbed Trotsky's Marxism to rededicate themselves to a serious
discussion of world events. If Trotsky were alive today, the bourgeois
press would be ringing his phone off the hook to find out what he thinks.
I keep posting articles from the bourgeois press stating that capitalism
is not working in half the world and is due to stop working in the other
half before too long. In such a crisis, it is COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY to
bicker over the ex-RCP. We have to find a way to isolate Vigliemo, Watson
and his mad monk lawyer, the SLP'ers, the naziboy and everybody else who
gets in the way. Faatz was sobbing today because I was working to make
this Trotskyist newsgroup. Damned fucking right. That's the goal. We will
be entering a period of wars, revolution and fascism. Anything that
diverts us has to be pushed aside.
On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Philip Ferguson wrote:
> Louis Proyect writes:
>
> > What Big Mac (Why don't you folks use your real names? Justin and Adam are
> > > nice names) does not understand
>
>
> Louis, I think this would be a fair point - fair, that is, if you
> applied this comment equally to "Gerry the Gerbil" and "Claude the
> Paris".
>
> I have been thinking, by the way, of how those of us who post under our
> real names might be able to clean up apst and get rid of the crapola.
>
> I think I have an idea and will get back on it.
>
> Philip Ferguson
>
>
Philip Ferguson
Neil Gardner
> In point of fact I get along extremely well with Jim Heartfield on my own
> mailing-list. I would consider him one of the most valued members of the
> list, even though I disagree with him politically on most questions. He
> earned people's respect by writing extremely erudite and coherent posts.
> We keep a journal of monthly posts and Heartfield shows up more than
> anybody.
Many pro-marketeers come up with erudite analysis too. However, reaching the right
conclusions based on rational thought is infinitely more important than
embellishing one's writings with pseudo-Marxist terminology.
> I would say that "Gerry the Gerbil" and "Claude de Paris" should
> take their beef with LM somewhere else. It is just sectarian wrangling.
I don't know who these guys are, but at least they engage comrades in debate.
> How many times do we need to rehash the ITN/Serb crap, or how the RCP
> dissolved itself. For my money every one of these fucking self-declared
> vanguards should dissolve themselves as well, for all the good they do.
> Does anybody think that the Spartacist League is to be applauded that they
> have not dissolved? We might as well salute the Jehovah's Witnesses.
>
> The events of the last month should be forcing everybody who has studied
> and absorbed Trotsky's Marxism to rededicate themselves to a serious
> discussion of world events.
Could not agree more.
> If Trotsky were alive today, the bourgeois press would be ringing his phone off
> the hook to find out what he thinks.
You mean he would be a market analyst, neat job.
> I keep posting articles from the bourgeois press stating that capitalism
> is not working in half the world and is due to stop working in the other
> half before too long.
Reality has suddenly descended on Columbia University.
> In such a crisis, it is COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY to
> bicker over the ex-RCP.
Trivial might be more appropriate. Remember many left groups are manipulated by
the secret services. Anyway the RCP has run out of steam as facts are proving them
wrong.
> We have to find a way to isolate Vigliemo, Watson
> and his mad monk lawyer, the SLP'ers, the naziboy and everybody else who
> gets in the way.
This sounds like fearless open debate to me. Agreed Watson is not revolutionary
socialist, but engages everyone else in debate. I wonder what life under Louis
Proyect's new world order would be like.
> Faatz was sobbing today because I was working to make
> this Trotskyist newsgroup. Damned fucking right. That's the goal. We will
> be entering a period of wars, revolution and fascism.
Please do not rule out the rebirth of Stalinism. What about state capitalist
China? just waiting to seize the day.
> Anything that diverts us has to be pushed aside.
Who decides what constitutes diversionary tactics? If various Trotsky factions
have dismally failed to win over large segments of the working class for the last
five decades, except around short-lived united front tactics, why should you
succeed now? An elitist democratic centralist organisation that claims to fight on
behalf of the working class will inevitably lead to Stalinism for want of a better
word.
What stands in the way of a socialist revolution is class solidarity and radical
politicisation. Media manipulation, mythology and religion cloud rational
analysis, so we need fearless open debate more than ever before.
Neil
> On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Philip Ferguson wrote:
>
Louis N Proyect
> Who decides what constitutes diversionary tactics?
Coming on a left-wing newsgroup and defending the "truthfulness" of
Faurisson, Harwood, Leuchter and Zundel. That's about as diversionary as
you can get. The very first time you circulated this racist crap on a
moderated Marxism list, you got the boot. And this was from a Stalinist
who tends to be an antisemite himself. Too bad, naziboy, you blew it.
Nobody will ever regard you as a leftist again. You went overboard. Like
Dr. Strangelove, that right hand went shooting up in a "sieg heil" salute
just one time too many.
Louis P.
Neil Gardner
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Translated into English, you decide what we
may debate. As the world recession is likely to intensify conflicting
capitalist interests , we should get ready for the propaganda, before we
support a US invasion of mainland China to stop the Tibetan holocaust (just
conjecture, no apology for Chinese repression of Tibetans).
Neil
Claude de Paris
Mike de Marseilles <mi...@marseilles.red> wrote in article
<35F43F...@marseilles.red>...
> Trotsky also argued, by the way, that the united front only comes on the
> agenda once revolutionary Marxists have won over the advanced
> detachments of the working class - in fact he even specified this to be
> about 30 percent of the class. This is the classic united front
> conception of the Bolsheviks and Third International in the 1920s.
>
> It is typical of centrists and left reformists such as my silly cousin/e
> to empty the united front conception of its specific content and refer
> to any little group getting in behind a big social democratic or
> Stalinist party as 'united front' work. It is actually just tailism.
>
> Trotsky's actual views are of little interest to Claude, however. His
> natural disposition is to attach himself to any anti-working class
> current, like Stalinism or social democracy, and find some little niche
> for himself in it.
Quite apart from the utterly uproven implication that the CP is a
*bourgeois* force which underlies the RCPers contributions to this thread,
even were that the case, they are wrong.
One reason why sects grow to a certain minimum size is there are always
people who need to follow leaders who can free them for thinking for
themselves. Their entire thinking here is based on a 'principle' which is
'no compromises' not just with bourgeois forces but even social democrats
or Stalinists.
The art of Marxism is not to recite pre-ordained formulas (even down to
percentage points!) but to understand the methodology involved. That is the
value of reading how Lenin or Trotsky analysed society or the struggle.
Last time Big Mac tried to appropriate Lenin to defend his apologia for
imperialism in general and Microsoft's monoploy in particular, I posted
(twice) very specific rebuttals with volumunious quotes from Lenin's
Imperialism... to refute his argument. At that point, the thread dried up.
In an effort to put an end to this childish thread, this attempt to use the
name of Lenin and Trotsky to justify their ultra left sectarianism let us
see what Lenin said about alliances and compromises in Left Wing Communism:
Firstly on formalistic attempts to arrive at general principles:
"It would be absurd to formulate a recipe or general rule ("No
compromises!") to suit all cases. One must use one's own brains and be able
to find one's bearings in each particular instance. "
Secondly on compromises with the bourgeosie:
"'...All compromise with other parties ... any policy of manoeuvring and
compromise must be emphatically rejected,' the German Lefts write in the
Frankfurt pamphlet.
It is surprising that, with such views, these Lefts do not emphatically
condemn Bolshevism! After all, the German Lefts cannot but know that the
entire history of Bolshevism, both before and after the October Revolution,
is full of instances of changes of tack, conciliatory tactics and
compromises with other parties, including bourgeois parties!"
"To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a
war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than
the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in
advance any change of tack, or any utilisation of a conflict of interests
(even if temporary) among one's enemies, or any conciliation or compromise
with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or
conditional allies) -- is that not ridiculous in the extreme? "
" At the very moment of the October Revolution, we entered into an informal
but very important (and very successful) political bloc with the
petty-bourgeois peasantry by adopting the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian
programme in its entirety, without a single alteration -- i.e., we effected
an undeniable compromise in order to prove to the peasants that we wanted,
not to "steam-roller" them but to reach agreement with them. At the same
time we proposed (and soon after effected) a formal political bloc,
including participation in the government, with the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries, who dissolved this bloc after the conclusion of
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and then, in July 1918, went to the length of
armed rebellion, and subsequently of an armed struggle, against us."
Thirdly, on the illusion that the Bolsheviks were some kind of sectarian,
ultra-leftist adventurists (like the RCP would love to be if only it had
any members!):
"Despite views that are today often to be met with in Europe and America,
the Bolsheviks began their victorious struggle against the parliamentary
and (in fact) bourgeois republic and against the Mensheviks in a very
cautious manner, and the preparations they made for it were by no means
simple. At the beginning of the period mentioned, we did not call for the
overthrow of the government but explained that it was impossible to
overthrow it without first changing the composition and the temper of the
Soviets. We did not proclaim a boycott of the bourgeois parliament, the
Constituent Assembly, but said -- and following the April (1917) Conference
of our Party began to state officially in the name of the Party -- that a
bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly would be better than a
bourgeois republic without a Constituent Assembly, but that a "workers' and
peasants"' republic, a Soviet republic, would be better than any
bourgeois-democratic, parliamentary republic. Without such thorough,
circumspect and long preparations, we could not have achieved victory in
October 1917, or have consolidated that victory."
Louis N Proyect
> Would massive voting of individual workers for the Russian CP indicate
> that an organised working class in Russia was acting for itself,
> embarked on its self-liberation? I don't think so. Individual workers in
> Britain voted for Blair's New Labour Party: it didn't make it any more a
> working class party; in fact, it's still a bourgeois workers' party, but
> with a Blairite program propelling it toward liberalism.
Talk about an inability to put things into context. The Russian CP used to
hold power in a state in which capitalism was against the law. You could
go to jail for starting a "biznyess." As soon as the CP was ousted,
western imperialism poured in and the economy fell by 50%, the worst
economic catastrophe since the 1930s. This has resulted in immiseration as
homelessness, infant mortality, prostitution and hunger have increased. So
when workers as a defensive reaction decide that the CP is preferable to
western imperialism, you argue that "self-liberation" is not present at
all and that the return of the Russian CP and an end to "biznyess" is
comparable to the replacement of Major by Blair.
Go read some Marx and learn to see things in class terms.
Louis P.
Joseph A. Tomaras
clau...@juno.com says...
>simple. At the beginning of the period mentioned, we did not call
for the
>overthrow of the government but explained that it was impossible to
>overthrow it without first changing the composition and the temper
of the
>Soviets.
As this quote makes clear, however, Lenin never said: "Let's not
worry about overthrowing the government, it's not really our
concern. We'll just keep up some occasional pressure on the
Mensheviks, but give them our full support." (Stalin and Kamenev
did, and got savaged.) The propaganda put forward was aimed toward
changing the composition of the soviets so as to enable overthrowing
the government. The question of overthrowing the government was
dropped from the pages of Pravda only when Stalin and others misused
their editorial privileges against Lenin's explicit wishes.
Claude, Proyect, and other co-thinkers are not trying in the
least to change the balance of political forces within the working
class, but join in propping up a tottering Stalinist party. There is
still room for scientific debate on the class character of the KPRF,
and my last contribution on this score was met with nothing more
than snide sarcasm and quote-mangling from Proyect. (Who then gets
all pious about "sectarianism" marring the free and open debate on
apst!) However, even within the Soviet-defensist tradition (which I
don't subscribe to) the Trotskyist view of the Stalinists has long
been as at best vacillating neo-Mensheviks, and at worst open
counterrevolutionaries in the mold of Noske and Scheidemann.
The strategies put forward by the defenders of Zyuganov on
this newsgroup stand at stark variance with Bolshevism, EVEN IF
THEIR BASIC POSTULATE THAT THE KPRF REMAINS A WORKERS PARTY GOES
UNCHALLENGED. This shows clearly that any attempt to use Lenin to
defend opportunism from "ultra-leftism" cuts both ways.
Claude de Paris
Joseph A. Tomaras wrote in message <6t6tbi$ap6$1...@netra-news.ntrnet.net>...
>for the
>>overthrow of the government but explained that it was impossible to
>>overthrow it without first changing the composition and the temper
>of the
>>Soviets.
>
>worry about overthrowing the government, it's not really our
>concern. We'll just keep up some occasional pressure on the
>Mensheviks, but give them our full support."
Neither did I, or Ken M or Louis P. If we did, perhaps you could quote the
appropriate passage?
>(Stalin and Kamenev
>did, and got savaged.) The propaganda put forward was aimed toward
>changing the composition of the soviets so as to enable overthrowing
>the government. The question of overthrowing the government was
>dropped from the pages of Pravda only when Stalin and others misused
>their editorial privileges against Lenin's explicit wishes.
> Claude, Proyect, and other co-thinkers are not trying in the
>least to change the balance of political forces within the working
>class, but join in propping up a tottering Stalinist party.
Now if the Yeltsin regime is brought down and replaced by a goverment
dominated by the CP it will "change the balance of forces", won't it?
Perhaps this is not a radical enough change for you to worry about
supporting it. But the same paragraph from which you lifted your quote above
goes on to say:
"...and following the April (1917) Conference
of our Party began to state officially in the name of the Party -- that a
bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly would be better than a
bourgeois republic without a Constituent Assembly, but that a "workers' and
peasants"' republic, a Soviet republic, would be better than any
bourgeois-democratic, parliamentary republic. "
So I am quite willing to say this: A CP government would be better than a
Yeltsin one, but a workers republic would be better than a CP government.
Are you in agreement?
>still room for scientific debate on the class character of the KPRF,
>and my last contribution on this score was met with nothing more
>than snide sarcasm and quote-mangling from Proyect. (Who then gets
>all pious about "sectarianism" marring the free and open debate on
>apst!) However, even within the Soviet-defensist tradition (which I
>don't subscribe to) the Trotskyist view of the Stalinists has long
>been as at best vacillating neo-Mensheviks, and at worst open
>counterrevolutionaries in the mold of Noske and Scheidemann.
Yes it is a complicated reality. The Soviet bureacracy was
counter-revolutionary force. But it was also, by its position, forced to
defend many aspects of the workers state for nigh on 70 years. The CP that
was then splintered into many fragments. The most right wing currents ended
up as openly pro-imperialist current around Yeltsin or worse drifted towards
fascism. Other currents, however, gravitated towards defence of the social
gains of October 1917. Is this a positive development or not? If in Russia
today an openly pro-imperialist current standing face to face with a current
that wants to halt or limit privatisation, to re-nationalise the
infrastructure and to defend social provisions, to place controls on the
flow of capital and to tax the private gangster-bourgeosie, should we stand
aside from this struggle?
> The strategies put forward by the defenders of Zyuganov on
>this newsgroup stand at stark variance with Bolshevism, EVEN IF
>THEIR BASIC POSTULATE THAT THE KPRF REMAINS A WORKERS PARTY GOES
>UNCHALLENGED. This shows clearly that any attempt to use Lenin to
>defend opportunism from "ultra-leftism" cuts both ways.
You fail to understand the position. It is this: we are for relative unity
with and absolute opposition to the CP. It is a more complex position than
simply being opponents or "defenders of Zyganov". Because the most political
masses today look to the CP in Russia, because a CP government would be a
huge step forward over a Yeltsin government today we are in favour of an
alliance to bring that government to power. We do not imagine that the CP is
a revolutionary Marxist party, or that it will not vacillate or that it is
incapable of selling out. We will continue to support it when it takes the
right action because that will STRENGTHEN THE WORKING CLASS and appose it
when takes the wrong steps because that will EDUCATE THE WORKING CLASS.
Lenin, again, from Left wing communism:
""From all this follows the necessity, the absolute necessity, for the
Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, its class-conscious
section, to resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises with
the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers
and small masters. It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these
tactics in order to raise -- not lower -- the general level of proletarian
class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win. "
As for the, admitted, possibility that the "Menshevik" CP will take the
wrong line, it will vacillate, may even end up siding with the bourgeosie, I
have to agree with Lenin and not you:
"The petty-bourgeois democrats (including the Mensheviks) inevitably
vacillate between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between bourgeois
democracy and the Soviet system, between reformism and revolutionism,
between love for the workers and fear of the proletarian dictatorship, etc.
The Communists' proper tactics should consist in utilising these
vacillations, not ignoring them; utilising them calls for concessions to
elements that are turning towards the proletariat -- whenever and in the
measure that they turn towards the proletariat -- in addition to fighting
those who turn towards the bourgeoisie. As a result of the application of
the correct tactics, Menshevism began to disintegrate, and has been
disintegrating more and more in our country; the stubbornly opportunist
leaders are being isolated, and the best of the workers and the best
elements among the petty-bourgeois democrats are being brought into our
camp. This is a lengthy process, and the hasty "decision" -- "No
compromises, no manoeuvres" -- can only prejudice the strengthening of the
revolutionary proletariat's influence and the enlargement of its forces.
Claude de Paris
Louis N Proyect wrote in message ...
>If you and Mike de
>Marseilles want to have a correspondence where you can call each other
>middle-class wankers, why not do it privately? Or else choose a more
>appropriate forum, like alt.flame. Meanwhile, for somebody who complained
>about the sectarian stupidity of apst, you seem to be part of the problem
>rather than the solution right now.
>
>Louis P.
Actually if you follow this thread back you will see that I entered it not
with comments about the RCP but about the situation in Russia. The fact that
the RCP decided to retort with sectarian rubbish isn't my fault. The fact
that I chose to reply to it is my fault. But I reserve the right to - just
as you apparently reserve the right to attack Chris Faatz. If I find that
boring, I just don't read it. You are free to do the same with my posts.
Claude de Paris
Neil Gardner wrote in message <35F663BF...@infotrad.demon.co.uk>...
>Louis N Proyect wrote:
>> How many times do we need to rehash the ITN/Serb crap, or how the RCP
>> dissolved itself. For my money every one of these fucking self-declared
>> vanguards should dissolve themselves as well, for all the good they do.
>> Does anybody think that the Spartacist League is to be applauded that
they
>> have not dissolved? We might as well salute the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Well except that...
>> The events of the last month should be forcing everybody who has studied
>> and absorbed Trotsky's Marxism to rededicate themselves to a serious
>> discussion of world events.
Without the founding of the fourth international there would have been no
continuity of revolutionary marxism. All we would have in the world would be
stalinism and its variations such as maoism. You would never have been
recruited to the SWP or learned anything about Trotsky or his writings. You
would probably have been repulsed by Stalinism and therefore by communism as
a whole since that would be the only current claiming allegiance to it. APST
would not exist!
>> In such a crisis, it is COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY to
>> bicker over the ex-RCP.
Well it might be if APST was actually a serious tool for building
revolutionary parties, but it isn't. The majority of the world's
Trotskyists - serious revolutionaries or not - have no connection with it.
>Trivial might be more appropriate. Remember many left groups are
manipulated by
>the secret services. Anyway the RCP has run out of steam as facts are
proving them
>wrong.
If only!
>> We have to find a way to isolate Vigliemo, Watson
>> and his mad monk lawyer, the SLP'ers, the naziboy and everybody else who
>> gets in the way.
Umm. How is this hatred for those people different from my disdain for the
RCP? Are Faatz and the SLP really a greater problem than the RCP?
>This sounds like fearless open debate to me. Agreed Watson is not
revolutionary
>socialist, but engages everyone else in debate. I wonder what life under
Louis
>Proyect's new world order would be like.
>> Faatz was sobbing today because I was working to make
>> this Trotskyist newsgroup. Damned fucking right. That's the goal. We will
>> be entering a period of wars, revolution and fascism.
Well we are probably entering a period of great instability, fascism is a
growing threat, but where is the evidence that it will lead to revolutions?
Unfortunately the problem you raise above about the failure of Trotskyism is
part of a greater problem of the failure of ALL revolutionary currents.
Rebuilding them will be a long hard struggle.
A pre-revolutionary situation can't be brought to a revolutionary situation
without a revolutionary party. I don't see one around.
Claude de Paris
Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
>In article <01bdd843$a6a3e810$e6be43ce@instructor2>, claude de paris
><clau...@juno.com> writes
>>
>>
>>Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
>>
>>>
>>> An English Trotskyist called John Ross documented all this in 1991 in a
>>> big article in a wee journal, called Socialist Action
>>
>>Yeah. Wot an excellent journal that is.
>>
>>> Perhaps you've come across Ross's articles?
>>
>>I wouldn't be at all surprised............
>
>Neither would I! However ...
>
>Ross is at his best in exposition. The very first pamphlet of his that I
>read was 'Imperialism, Stalinism and Permanent Revolution' which
>expounded the views of the Left Opposition, the FI and the USec, and you
>couldn't see the joins. At least, I couldn't. I also recall a sparkling
>critique of the theoretical pretensions of Healy's Red professors, which
>appeared in Intercontinental Press.
>
>Similarly with his 1991 articles on aspects of Trotsky's analysis of
>Stalinist economics and the nature of the CPSU.
To give him credit he stood almost alone in the British Trot scene and
within the fourth international in correctly characterising the events in
Eastern Europe as a counter-revolution rather than the much anticipated
political revolution the rest of the left mistook it for. I think it was a
dramatic test of Trotskyism that most Trot organisations failed. To mistake
a counter-revolution for a revolution is no small mistake!!
>However, when he strikes out on his own he is less reliable.
>
>I have fond memories of such theoretical breakthroughs as the discovery
>that the (pre-Barnesite) American SWP was a revolutionary marxist party,
Wasn't it? And wasn't this opinion held by the rest of the 40 odd sections
of the fourth internationall too?
>and that the British SWP was too;
Isn't it?
>and that Daniel Ortega, Gerry Adams,
>Arthur Scargill and Lech Walesa represented an emergent new working-
>class leadership.
I think the line actually was that they were a *potential* leadership for a
'class stuggle current' which is a very different thing.
>Ross has a very unsubtle method of consigning every aspect of social
>reality, every political tendency, every theoretical view, even every
>*opinion*, to either the 'camp of imperialism' or 'the camp of the
>revolution'; a theoretical procedure like that of Zhdanovism, which
>Althusser described as 'a banner flapping in a void'. So I'm afraid I
>can't share your enthusiasm for the journal 'Socialist Action'.
Sometimes for the sake of polemic and for clarity you need to reduce a
situation to its crudest elements. The art of Marxist analysis does involve
taking a complex material reality and abstracting to its purest and simplest
form, the better to understand it. When applied to the example of Eastern
Europe this methodolgy served Ross better than the more 'complex',
'sophisticated' analyses of his detractors. Of course 'bending the stick' is
a difficult trick. Sometimes the stick breaks.
>Ken MacLeod
Claude de Paris
Big Mac wrote in message <35f3ce29...@news.xara.com>...
>Well worth starting a new thread with that one, along the lines of
>"There's Daniel Ortega, Gerry Adams, Arthur Scargill and Lech Walesa
>marooned on a desert island. So Arthur says to Lech ...."
I await the punchline with bated breath......
Louis N Proyect
> Well it might be if APST was actually a serious tool for building
> revolutionary parties, but it isn't. The majority of the world's
> Trotskyists - serious revolutionaries or not - have no connection with it.
Actually, there are very many serious Trotskyists who lurk on apst, but
don't post. Occasionally I get email from them commenting on thing or
another. For example, Gerry Foley reads this newsgroup on a fairly regular
basis but never posts. More to the point, I wouldn't expect the Internet
to be a tool for "building revolutionary parties." That is an illusion
that people like Malecki foster. Rather it can serve the function of an
online educational conference. For example, when you were in absentia a
couple of months ago, there was a very rich discussion (as we used to
refer to such things in the SWP) about the national question. My concept
of apst is that it would be an ongoing place to have such discussions. If
it did, it would attract serious Marxists and Trotskyists. But when you
have flame wars with the ex-RCP, it accomplishes nothing. As far as my
spat with Faatz is concerned, it lasted all of 2 or 3 days. What worries
me is that you will unleash a 2 or 3 month flame war with "Big Mac" and
"Mike de Marseilles" that will turn our attention from more pressing
events. I am pleased that you have taken the high road by posting from
"The Economist." This is what is needed, not rehashing old fights with a
group that no longer exists.
Louis P.
Ken MacLeod
<Clau...@juno.com> writes
>
>Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
>>Ross is at his best in exposition.
<snip examples of the work of the English Trotskyist John Ross>
>>However, when he strikes out on his own he is less reliable.
>>
>>I have fond memories of such theoretical breakthroughs as the discovery
>>that the (pre-Barnesite) American SWP was a revolutionary marxist party,
>
>
>Wasn't it?
>And wasn't this opinion held by the rest of the 40 odd sections
>of the fourth internationall too?
>
I really don't know how widely held this opinion was. My impression in
the early-to-mid 70s was that whatever the 'official' position may have
been, the American SWP and its international catspaw the LTF was
heartily loathed and despised by the Majority Tendency. Who *were* these
strange, sad people who sold their strange grey weekly with its crummy
drawings at *our* internal meetings? I remember feeling gutted when the
factions dissolved - I didn't regard these people as part of the
International. As it turned out, neither did they.
>>and that the British SWP was too;
>
>Isn't it?
>
I'm going by how I felt at the time - and again, I felt gutted. We'd
always regarded the state-caps as centrists; the whole rationale for
being in the IMG rather than the far bigger and better-placed IS/SWP was
that the IMG were the real revolutionaries. Anecdotal example - an IMG
member in Glasgow told me how a very serious left academic who was then
in the IS had said: 'The CP are the Right Mensheviks, the IS are the
Left Mensheviks, and the IMG are the Bolsheviks!'
This was of course over-stating the case a little, but that attitude
gave the IMG its morale, which it lost when it became 'non-sectarian'.
But there was more at stake than the IMG's morale. If you regard the SWP
as revolutionary marxist you must think that defence of the workers'
states isn't worth splitting over, which means that you think *even
support for counter-revolution* isn't worth splitting over.
<snip>
>>Ross has a very unsubtle method of consigning every aspect of social
>>reality, every political tendency, every theoretical view, even every
>>*opinion*, to either the 'camp of imperialism' or 'the camp of the
>>revolution'; a theoretical procedure like that of Zhdanovism, which
>>Althusser described as 'a banner flapping in a void'. So I'm afraid I
>>can't share your enthusiasm for the journal 'Socialist Action'.
>
>
>Sometimes for the sake of polemic and for clarity you need to reduce a
>situation to its crudest elements. The art of Marxist analysis does involve
>taking a complex material reality and abstracting to its purest and simplest
>form, the better to understand it.
'Reducing to its crudest elements' and 'abstracting to its purest and
simplest form' are not quite the same thing, are they?
--
Ken MacLeod
Joseph A. Tomaras
after eight hours of exploitation ending in a splitting headache, I
cannot provide that. So I'll ask an open question for anyone who
cares about the Russia debate: what do you make of the endorsement
of Primakov as Prime Minister by the Duma fraction of the KPRF?
In article <unp5$WH39GA.150@upnetnews05>, Clau...@juno.com says...
Joseph A. Tomaras
occurs to me...
In article <unp5$WH39GA.150@upnetnews05>, Clau...@juno.com says...
>"...and following the April (1917) Conference
>of our Party began to state officially in the name of the Party --
that a
>bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly would be better than
a
>bourgeois republic without a Constituent Assembly, but that a
"workers' and
>peasants"' republic, a Soviet republic, would be better than any
>bourgeois-democratic, parliamentary republic. "
>
>So I am quite willing to say this: A CP government would be better
than a
>Yeltsin one, but a workers republic would be better than a CP
government.
>Are you in agreement?
>
I think I've already made clear that I am not in agreement. But more
importantly I think that once again you misuse Lenin by making a
comparison which stretches the case more than a little bit. The
Constituent Assembly slogan (like the "All power to the Soviets!"
slogan, which was made even at times when the Bolsheviks were not the
Soviet majority) was calling for a specific political gain which
increase the political power of the oppressed classes in Russia, not
the ascendancy to power of a particular party--even parties such as
the SRs and Mensheviks who had the Constituent Assembly in their
paper programs. It was not a call for "Immediate convocation of the
Constituent Assembly with an SR majority," or "All power to the
Menshevik leadership of the Soviets." The Bolsheviks knew very well
that the SRs would not call for Constituent Assembly elections, nor
would the Mensheviks take Soviet power, but intended to let their
propaganda and events demonstrate this clearly to the masses. As it
turned out, both the Constituent Assembly and Soviet power were
attained only by the Bolshevik revolution, whose task was then to
lead the Soviet power in defeating the counterrevolutionary forces
which had belatedly rallied around the CA.
Now let's turn our attention back to 1998. Russia doesn't
have even the extreme bourgeois democracy of a Constituent Assembly,
but a strong presidency with the power to rule by decree, and a
cabinet almost wholly unaccountable to the fractionalized Duma, a
bicameral legislature, first-past-the-post elections, etc. But rather
than call for this kind of political gain, or even better the
recreation of actual workers Soviets, and so use those slogans to
expose the traitorous nature of the existing parties jockeying for
workers' support, Claude calls for strategic support to one such
party. (Just as much of the British left loyally stands by Labour
even when they're attacking the working class, and the American
"Trotskyist" milieu hitches itself to the Labor Party Advocates even
when its being used as a maneuver by the "left" wing of the AFL-CIO
bureaucracy to corral working-class opposition to the Democrats and
prevent it from getting out of hand.) Rather than call for the
workers to take into their own hands the realization of whatever
positive aspects of the KPRF's paper program there might be (and
I want you to show them to me in black and white!), Claude
counsels a passive wait-and-see approach of calling on the KPRF to
take power and then realize its program. When that party is making
peace (or at least a truce) with Yeltsin over the selection of
Yevgeni Primakov as the Prime Minister, I think the burden of proof
falls decisively on Claude and his co-thinkers, if they want to
claim a Bolshevik pedigree for their method.
Hunter H. Watson
> But remember: In Trotsky's writings, one of the main factors of degeneration
> of the various CPs was its absorbing a nationalist-messianic ideology
> expressed in the Stalinist theory of "Socialism in one country".
I've read recently that *Lenin* was of the "Socialism in one country"
persuasion. Quotes were included. If this is true how could it be seen by
Leninists to be "degenerative" or "nationalist-messianic"? Are Trotskyists
still Leninists?
Hunter Watson
Big Mac
Watson) wrote:
>In article <6sq0t5$csq$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
>
>> But remember: In Trotsky's writings, one of the main factors of degeneration
>> of the various CPs was its absorbing a nationalist-messianic ideology
>> expressed in the Stalinist theory of "Socialism in one country".
>
>I've read recently that *Lenin* was of the "Socialism in one country"
>persuasion. Quotes were included.
Then include them here. Do try and liven up your pathetically ancient
trolls by making at least a modicum of effort.
creb...@antares.com.br
hwa...@portup.com (Hunter H. Watson) wrote:
> In article <6sq0t5$csq$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
>
> > But remember: In Trotsky's writings, one of the main factors of degeneration
> > of the various CPs was its absorbing a nationalist-messianic ideology
> > expressed in the Stalinist theory of "Socialism in one country".
>
> I've read recently that *Lenin* was of the "Socialism in one country"
> Leninists to be "degenerative" or "nationalist-messianic"? Are Trotskyists
> still Leninists?
>
> Hunter Watson
If that means that after the defeat of the Red Army to the Poles in 1920,
Lenin envisaged the internationalization of the Russian Revolution as a long
and costly business, right; but if that means that he envisaged a
self-supporting USSR building by sustained effort a developed socialist
society... that was something even Stalin dared to propose; otherwise, events
like the Stalin-sponsored 1935 military putsch in Brazil, the 1962 Cuban
missile crisis, the support to the struggle for independence of Portuguese
colonies in Africa would be unthinkable. Even Stalin and his successors
didn't think socialislism in only country was possible; only they treated the
internacionalization of socialism as a part of Soviet world-power politics,
i.e., as a strictly Soviet affair, that they justified as part of the
Soviet/Russian messianic mission; see Stalin's "Fundamentals of Leninism",
with his conferences in the Sverdlov University in early 1924.
Carlos Rebello
>
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Dragan Jargic
of the working class. The miners, classically one of the most militant
sectors of the world working class are attacking the remnants of the stalinist
bureaucracy, Yeltsin and his pro capitalist friends. The workers in the
workers state in the area that used to be called the Soviet Union arevery
patient because a communist leadership has not yet jelled out of the strikes
and protests the working class and its allies. This sector of the world
working class was the first to establish a workers state, but were unable, as
Trotsky said, to retain workers democracy until other forces in the more
advanced countries reinforced them. However, the working class is more
organised than we were in the 1920s, and I believe that our class will be able
to produce a leadership similar to that of the Bolsheviks, in Russia, and get
rid of the stalinist remnants. I used to work in the mining industry, and
have a lot of confidence in the capabilities of the miners. yeltsin's
starving of the miners will prove to have a long lasting effect on him.
Yeltsin au poteau!!! Or in US terms, we'll hang Boris from the sour apple
tree!!! or are there any sour apple trees in Russia?
Lucien Lenoire
Mike de Marseilles wrote:
> Louis Proyect writes in response to Joseph Tomaras:
>
> > Repudiation
> > of the Yeltsin regime and a return to Soviet economic institutions would
> > be a major step forward for the world revolution. Claude is completely
> > correct and in the Trotskyist tradition.
>
> Louis, I think this is wrong. Trotsky would have had higher horizons.
>
> In the West the bourgeoisie has limited the discussion of economic
> matters to, at most, whether there should be a 'free market' or state
> intervention. It is necessary to go beyond this and talk about putting
> human needs first and explain how this can only be done outside of any
> capitalist framework.
>
> In Russia, the job of Marxists is surely not to accept the limited
> framework of Yeltsin or old-style Stalinism, but to point to the
> inadequacy of both and explain patiently that there is an alternative.
>
> When Lenin arrived back in Russia in April 1917 he did not say, 'Well
> the choice is between the tsar and the provisional government; therefore
> we are for the provisional government'. That was Stalin's position.
> Lenin said, neither the tsar nor the provisional government - and
> patiently set about winning over the working class (and many of his own
> comrades) to that position.
>
> As long as the framework is as limited as Yeltsin vs CP, there will be
> no progress, just a continuation of the pain. It is time for higher
> horizons!
>
> Mike de Marseilles
Hunter H. Watson
I have quoted the passage elsewhere and given the citations to the
"Complete Works" in reply to Mr. Diamond's request. You will probably have
a better handle on interpreting them than I but it is clear what
Volkogonov's interpretation is. I find it persuasive. Can it not be said
that Stalin was the Leninist on that issue which even today is so
significant to Trotksyists?
Claude de Paris
Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
>I really don't know how widely held this opinion was. My impression in
>the early-to-mid 70s was that whatever the 'official' position may have
>been, the American SWP and its international catspaw the LTF was
>heartily loathed and despised by the Majority Tendency. Who *were* these
>strange, sad people who sold their strange grey weekly with its crummy
>drawings at *our* internal meetings? I remember feeling gutted when the
>factions dissolved - I didn't regard these people as part of the
>International. As it turned out, neither did they.
I am confused. I thought you were referring to the pre-Barnsite SWP, ie
before it began its adaption to Castroism?
>>>and that the British SWP was too;
>>
>>Isn't it?
>>
>
>I'm going by how I felt at the time - and again, I felt gutted. We'd
>always regarded the state-caps as centrists; the whole rationale for
>being in the IMG rather than the far bigger and better-placed IS/SWP was
>that the IMG were the real revolutionaries. Anecdotal example - an IMG
>member in Glasgow told me how a very serious left academic who was then
>in the IS had said: 'The CP are the Right Mensheviks, the IS are the
>Left Mensheviks, and the IMG are the Bolsheviks!'
>
>This was of course over-stating the case a little, but that attitude
>gave the IMG its morale, which it lost when it became 'non-sectarian'.
>
>But there was more at stake than the IMG's morale. If you regard the SWP
>as revolutionary marxist you must think that defence of the workers'
>states isn't worth splitting over, which means that you think *even
>support for counter-revolution* isn't worth splitting over.
>
Well I always took the 'we are the bolsheviks, and they are
centrist/counter-revolutionary/reformist' lines sceptically. Apart from
anything else the IMG adopted such a bwildering variety of positions (often
diametrically opposed to the line pursued 6 months previously) that it was
impossible to hold to any of the these characterizations.
Despite the fact that many people here have me pegged as a sectarian I
actually regard most of the other sects as part of the Trotskyist family.
They might be sectarian nutters but they are our sectarian nutters*!
We would all do well to study Trotsky's determination to attempt to stay
within the Stalinized third International until it became absolutely clear
there was not a whimper of opposition to the criminal policies in Germany.
Whatever their deviations most of the Trot groups have hardly crossed class
lines in such dramatic fashion.
Even on Eastern Europe, whilst I agreed with Ross's analysis, I disagreed
with his assertion that the other Trot groups had definitively 'crossed
class lines'. To be sure their support for the counter-revolution in Eastern
Europe was outrageous however most of these groups remain *programatically*
committed to socialist revolution. In other words their errors were errors
of analysis not due to programmatic revisions - which would have placed them
in the counter-revolutionary camp. They defended the counter revolution
because they thought they were defending the interests of the working class
not because they had abandoned the working class - an important difference.
Now back to the SWP (UK). Of course, their positions on the USSR represented
gross adaption to imperialist cold war pressure. Mostly the differences were
theoretical. In practical terms, however, we were able to work with them in
campaigns against Stalinism. And if their positions led them to support for
Lech Walesa, well, so did ours! Was their practice or their program
domestically counter-revolutionary or centrist? I don't think so. They never
abandoned the independent fight for the interests of the working class -
even if they misunderstood sometimes how to fight for them.
My reluctance to joining the SWP was obviously based in part on their state
cap positions, but also on their 'rank and filism' - they never understood
the the need to build a revolutionary current vertically which fights at all
levels, and, most crucially, the lack of internal democracy - which meant
that it would be very hard to fight to correct their errors.
Does the state cap position mean they are not 'revolutionary'? Well, as it
turned out, when the real counter-revolution came most of the Fourth
International, which had the 'correct' programmatic positions on Stalinism,
ended up on the same side as the SWP - the wrong side!
History has shown us that the arrogance of the Trotskyist sects is
misplaced. While they denounce every other political force (and other Trots)
and proclaim themselves as
the real revolutionaries, only non-Trotskyist forces have ever made a
revolution!
Why is Trotskyism still important? It still is the only current that defends
the programmatic gains of revolutionary marxism as a whole. Will the coming
revolutionary parties be purely Trotskyist? I very much doubt it. Will
Trots be a component of the mass revolutionary parties of the future - I
certainly hope so.
By the way I think that, as the example of Militant shows, even when an
organisation that appears to have gone the whole hog towards reformism, the
pressure of events can force it to correct its errors.
So, no, I don't regard either the british or the pre-Barnsite US SWP as
non-revolutionary. Of course, the post Barnes SWP made major programmatic
adaptions to Stalinism and so is a different kettle of fish.
*at the risk of labouring the point, I don't regard the RCP as part of the
family. In my opinion the RCP is a scab formation that has no useful part to
play in the labor movement - indeed its interventions have always been
counter-productive. Before anyone jumps down my throat, the RCP itself
regards itself as outside of this tradition, as evidenced by their use of
the term 'the Left' as a pegorative term.
Ken MacLeod
<jtom...@ntrnet.net> writes
>This post of Claude's deserves a far more detailed response, but
>after eight hours of exploitation ending in a splitting headache, I
>cannot provide that. So I'll ask an open question for anyone who
>cares about the Russia debate: what do you make of the endorsement
>of Primakov as Prime Minister by the Duma fraction of the KPRF?
>
It's a compromise which won't resolve the situation, and we can expect
further crises in short order. It tells us nothing new about the KPRF,
in which I for one have no confidence whatever.
--
Ken MacLeod
Ken MacLeod
<Clau...@juno.com> writes
>
>Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
[About the American SWP and the LTF]
> I remember feeling gutted when the
>>factions dissolved - I didn't regard these people as part of the
>>International. As it turned out, neither did they.
>
>
>I am confused. I thought you were referring to the pre-Barnsite SWP, ie
>before it began its adaption to Castroism?
>
Yes, I was. I think they were a disloyal faction well before Barnes took
them over the edge. I don't think they ever thought of themselves as
part of the Fourth International - they expelled everyone who ever did,
from the RT in the 60s to the RMT in the 70s to the FIT or whatever it
was in the 80s. They expelled our people for selling Inprecor in North
America, while their people sold Intercontinental Press as their main
party work in Europe!
<snip>
[re the British SWP]
>Does the state cap position mean they are not 'revolutionary'? Well, as it
>turned out, when the real counter-revolution came most of the Fourth
>International, which had the 'correct' programmatic positions on Stalinism,
>ended up on the same side as the SWP - the wrong side!
>
I don't think it *was* the wrong side. I was on the side of the people
who came out against the Stalinist regimes, even though I knew the
likely outcome was a capitalist restoration, and I don't regret it even
now. There is no way I would have supported machine-gunning masses of
people in Liepzig or anywhere else. Where the Trots were wrong was in
thinking that the end of the Second World was the long-awaited
'political revolution'.
--
Ken MacLeod
Stephen R. Diamond
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Does the state cap position mean they are not 'revolutionary'? Well, as it
> >turned out, when the real counter-revolution came most of the Fourth
> >International, which had the 'correct' programmatic positions on Stalinism,
> >ended up on the same side as the SWP - the wrong side!
> >
>
> I don't think it *was* the wrong side. I was on the side of the people
> who came out against the Stalinist regimes, even though I knew the
> likely outcome was a capitalist restoration, and I don't regret it even
> now. There is no way I would have supported machine-gunning masses of
> people in Liepzig or anywhere else.. . .
Of course not. I don't think that's the issue, but rather which side ought
to be granted *conditional* support. One could have supported the Soviet
regime against the masses, without supporting its means of self-defense. A
similar question can be put retrospectively about Hungary, as regards the
position Fred espoused that the Marcyites were right not to support the
revolt absent a leading party.
I don't think the question of when a revolt against a Stalinist regime
become supportable has been systematically addressed by anyone. I don't
think the popular character of the revolt can decide the question. I would
think that the factor of the likely autocome of the success of the revolt
must be a major factor, if not the pre-eminent factor. Yet, can anyone
pronounce on outcome when neither side approaches programmatic
correctness? Can the *central* programmatic thrust of a movement be
assessed when it is composed of a welter of conflicting tendencies, with
no hegemonic party or even a programmatic common denominator?
We know the essential program of the Stalinists. Perhaps a Stalinist
regime must be supported against an undefined opposition, since the lack
of definition really can only mean acceptance of capitalist ideology.
Stephen R. Diamond
Stephen R. Diamond
> Does the state cap position mean they are not 'revolutionary'? Well, as it
> turned out, when the real counter-revolution came most of the Fourth
> International, which had the 'correct' programmatic positions on Stalinism,
> ended up on the same side as the SWP - the wrong side!
A point of information - what side did the iSt take?
Stephen R. Diamond
Claude de Paris
DYE wrote in message <980912163357.n...@mail.clara.net>...
>on 11 Sep 98, Claude de Paris wrote...
>
>>Even on Eastern Europe, whilst I agreed with Ross's analysis, I disagreed
>>with his assertion that the other Trot groups had definitively 'crossed
>>class lines'. To be sure their support for the counter-revolution in
Eastern
>>Europe was outrageous however most of these groups remain
*programatically*
>>committed to socialist revolution. In other words their errors were errors
>>of analysis not due to programmatic revisions - which would have placed
them
>>in the counter-revolutionary camp. They defended the counter revolution
>>because they thought they were defending the interests of the working
class
>>not because they had abandoned the working class - an important
difference.
>>
are
>talking about when you allude to `their support for the counter-revolution
in
>Eastern Europe' but all this sounds a little bit like misplaced crowing.
There
>is no way that anyone could support the military/police apparatus of the
>Stalinist states against the popular movements which eventually led to the
>collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
I don't support stalinist police/military terror. However your position is
not that of Trotsky or the formal position of Trotskyists which was to
support *political* revolution made by a revolutionary party which
overthrows the bureacracy from the left in order to bring in real socialist
democracy. The position has *never* been to support, in fact it has always
been to oppose, counter-revolution - that is, capitalist restoration. But
that is precisely what the majority of Trots did do. Not because they
supported capitalist restoration but because they misunderstood the dynamic
of what was unfolding. Ross and a small majority in the Fourth International
DID understand that what was underway was a counter-revolution that would
lead to the restoration of capitalism and NOT to socialism. We did argue
that it would be a disaster for the working class. And we HAVE been
vindicated. The collapse of the Russian economy, plunging the Russian
working class into third world immiseration is NOT a step forward. The
months without pay, the collapse of social welfare provisions, the NATO
encirclement, the unemployment and loss of housing and pensions and all the
other disasters that have befallen them prove that it was a step backward
for them.
>The task at that
>time was to intervene in these movements and try to turn them onto the path
of
>political revolution rather than capitalist restoration.
I don't disagree. But the problem with many Trots was that they didn't even
understand that these were counter-revolutionary movements. If your analysis
is that fundamentally flawed how can you hope to lead the working class in
any direction, least of all to swim against the restorationist tide!
The second problem was one that has always plagued the Trotskyist movement.
An inflexible dogmatism that leads not to a careful analysis of the
situation and elaboration of the *best* was forward for the working class
but to an a priori determination of the formally *correct* line regardless
of the practical implications of following that line.
I remember arguing with an 'orthodox' Trot back when Gorby decided to pull
the soviet troops from Afganisation. I pointed out that they would be
replaced by medieval
mullahs and it would plunge the nation back into the dark ages. No, he
argued, sometimes you have to make hard choices. NO! You have to make
practical choices. The working class has no need for quasi religious
revolutionaries. 'I know you are suffering but its the formally correct
position comrade!' One reason why the Trots have remained so insignificant
is precisely this disease of formal dogmatism. A revolutionary who doesn't
live in the real world, doesn't understand the balance of forces, is unable
to formulate a way forward in the real world is worse than uselss. A
revolutionary who formulates ideal solutions in an ideal world should go and
live in the ideal world.
>Take the Soviet Union. Yeltsin, as a non-CP president of Russia and de
facto
>leader of the `democratic' movement had long been preparing the dissolution
of
>the Soviet State and had obviously previously ensured he had the support of
>important parts of the army but he also had the backing of many sections of
>workers at the time including, most importantly, miners. When the doomed
>military coup was launched, Yeltsin threatened to call a general strike. Of
>course, this was only a supplementary threat by Yeltsin who was already
>confident that he had sufficient support in the army to put down the coup.
But
>for socialists, I believe it was necessary to rally the workers behind the
call
>for a general strike. This would have brought them, for the first time and
in
>their millions, into the political arena and would have substantially
altered
>the direction of the popular movement. It might even have breathed new life
into
>the moribund Soviets.
No! mobilising the workers to a general strike in favour of a
counter-revolutionary can not have progressive outcomes.
>As it was, the working class remained on the side lines, just as Yeltsin
>prefered and the Soviet state collapsed and Russia emerged as a capitalist
>state.
The working class refused to take sides between reactionary
counter-revolutionaries and die-hard Stalinists. In this case the working
class was right and all the Trots were wrong.
>Supporting the coup would have been equivalent to supporting the
>Tiananmen Square massacre by the Chinese leadership, in fact it may even
have
>been worse as the coup leaders (generals) did not even intend to stop the
>restoration process and would have launched bloody wars against several of
the
>non-Russian republics to put down the independence movements that were
breaking
>out everywhere.
Well Yeltsin did that anyway. And if you had managed to mobilise the working
class behind him he would have done it with greater legitimacy and it would
now be harder to smash his regime.
>It would have been similar to the regime in Belgrade, which
>collapsed the Yugoslav state and then went on a barborous land grab at the
same
>time as restoring capitalism.
The history of Yugoslavia has also been misunderstood by most Trots. The
imperialists took advantage of the criminal actions of the Stalinists to
complete what imperialism and Hitler had failed to do in the past: the
annexation by German imperialism of the western half and the dismemberment
and atomization of the rest. One of the most shameful episodes in Trotskyist
history has been the support for the imperialist encirclement, bombing and
dismemberment of the Yugoslav state.
>The failure of the coup and subsequent events in Russia are what determined
the
>evolution of the KPRD it would have been a very different situation today
as far
>as a tactical orientation towards different groupings in Russia is
concerned.
>The KRPD, defeated, sought refuge in the Duma, where, as a result of the
>restoration process and its somewhat feeble opposition to it, it grew in
>popularity. The Zuyganov leadership is now providing ministers for the
>capitalist government which indicates that bonapartism, while not defeated,
is
>toppling to the left under the pressure of the masses.
The commuists have built their support on opposition to the free market
reforms. They will continue to grow only in so far as they maintain that
opposition.
>In another post, I
>pointed out that the leadership of the Russian Federation of Independent
Trade
>Union led by a man called Andrey Isayev (who keeps a portrait of the leader
of
>the failed coup in his office) was splitting with the KPRD leadership in
the
>Duma and putting forward their own programme. There are many workers
mobilised
>behind this federation, including miners, the leaders of which can no
longer
>look to the army to defend their bureaucratic priveleges. They have been
>compelled to rest instead upon the fighting capacity of the working class
and
>this is a very important development. Their programme criticises Zuyganov's
>plans for the formation of a `popular trust government' and they blame the
>Communists in the Duma for the severity of the situation as much as they
blame
>Yeltsin because they have voted for every budget and backed anti-trade
union
>laws. They call for a `complete and unequivocal settlement of wage
arrears', a
>big increase in the puny minimum wage, other changes in social and economic
>policy and `simultaneous early presidential and Duma elections.
>I asked in my previous post, if they were calling for immediate elections
to the
>Duma and did not support the Zuyganov-led KPRD Duma faction then perhaps
there
>is another faction in the KPRD which they intended to support or perhaps
they
>intended to establish their own political party or support another which
was
>already in existence. Trotskyists, I suggested, should be encouraging the
>leftward movement of this leadership whilst at the same time exposing the
>vacilations of its centrist leadership. If they are battling it out in the
KPRD
>then we should be there demanding, if we are not strong enough to demand
the
>expulsion of the Zuyganov leadership, at least that they should break from
the
>capitalist government. If however there are moves afoot to build a new
party
>then we should be encouraging this and advocating that it adopt a
revolutionary
>internationalist transitional programme. Without reliable reports from the
front
>line so to speak, it is difficult to know which is the correct tactic. If
>elections are called sooner rather than later, it might be necessary to
vote for
>the KRPD in solidarity with the millions of workers who undoubtedly will
vote
>for the party and place demands on it but as I say, a thorough examination
of
>conditions on the ground is necessary to determine this. In any case, it is
in
>no way permissible for Trotskyists to have any illusions in the KPRD
leadership
>that they will be leading some kind of restoration of the Soviet order. As
>powerful partners in the new government they will undoubtedly be the most
vocal
>advocates of a thoroughly reactionary `foreign' policy and will continue to
>apologise for Russia's bandit monopoly capitalist who will sit tight until
this
>government can be replaced by something more suitable and stable.
I don't know enough about this faction to comment on it but it appears (from
your description) a somewhat healthy development. But I would want to know
what actual forces and support they command and whether splitting, rather
than trying to win the leadership of the communist party, is the correct
tactic given all of these factors.
>The crisis in Russia seems to have led some Trotskyists to once again
develop a
>belief in the revolutionary potential of Stalinism.
That is a caricature of my position, as I think I have made clear above.
>Hopefully, the entry of KPRD
>deputies into the new Yeltsin government will sober those people up pretty
>quickly.
Well I have said repeatedly that the CP contains many different factions. We
have to understand their relative positions and strengths in order to orient
our tactics correctly. This is hardly the position of someone who is
intoxicated and infactuated with the CP.
>Claude, maybe the reason you could not agree with Ross over the
>question of Trotskyists crossing class lines by not supporting the physical
>dissolution of the popular movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
was
>because you could see that it would lead to an extreme form of
Stalinophilia.
Or maybe I just didn't agree that that was the case.
Claude de Paris
Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
>>
>>Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
>
>
>>>factions dissolved - I didn't regard these people as part of the
>>>International. As it turned out, neither did they.
>>
>>
>>I am confused. I thought you were referring to the pre-Barnsite SWP, ie
>>before it began its adaption to Castroism?
>>
>
>them over the edge. I don't think they ever thought of themselves as
>part of the Fourth International - they expelled everyone who ever did,
>from the RT in the 60s to the RMT in the 70s to the FIT or whatever it
>was in the 80s.
Not being familiar with all the splits you mention I have to content myself
with questioning whether these expelled factions were so loyal to the FI
majority that they stayed within the FI? As for the FIT I know that they
were expelled by the Barnes faction because they *defended* the FI against
Barnes revisions. But that was post not pre-Barnes.
>They expelled our people for selling Inprecor in North
>America, while their people sold Intercontinental Press as their main
>party work in Europe!
I have never heard of that allegation before, ever.
>
>[re the British SWP]
>
>>Does the state cap position mean they are not 'revolutionary'? Well, as it
>>turned out, when the real counter-revolution came most of the Fourth
>>International, which had the 'correct' programmatic positions on
Stalinism,
>>ended up on the same side as the SWP - the wrong side!
>>
>
>I don't think it *was* the wrong side. I was on the side of the people
>who came out against the Stalinist regimes, even though I knew the
>likely outcome was a capitalist restoration, and I don't regret it even
>now.
This is a bizarre position. So you knew that the likely outcome of the
counter-revolution would be capitalist restoration and therefore the working
class would be worse off and yet you supported it?? On what basis?
>There is no way I would have supported machine-gunning masses of
>people in Liepzig or anywhere else.
Nor would I. Nor do I support capitalist restoration. The fact is that the
real choice in Eastern Europe was between the continuation of Stalinism or
the its overthrow by imperialism. Trots were forced to take sides and most
took the wrong side. Trotsky nor any of his followers EVER supported the
overthrow of Stalinism by counter-revolution.
The collapse of Stalinism in *this* context has been an unmitigated disaster
for the working class throughout the world. Not only for the workers in
those countries where they have been reduced to the living standards of the
third world, where countless reactionary nationalist wars have claimed
thousands of lives but also for the entire third world where imperialism and
the diktats of America now rule supreme - for the people of Iraq and
Afganisation, Sudan and Somalia - the list is growing every day. It has also
been a disaster for the surviving workers states such as Cuba. Finally it
has been a disaster for the working class in the imperialist countries
where, finally freed from the threat of Stalinism on its borders, the
bourgeosie has felt free to start dismantling the welfare states that were
set up, in part, as a defensive response to threat of the the Russian
Revolution and the post war Stalinist expansion. Finally it has been a
disaster for the socialist project as a whole as it has shattered any
confidence and belief in a socialist solution. Workers everywhere have
thrown out the baby of socialism with the bath water of Stalinism.
Trotsky alway understood the terrible ramifications of such an eventuality
and that is why he always opposed it. Even Mandel, initially one of the
loudest cheerleaders of the counterrevolution, started to reverse his
positions towards the end of his days.
>Where the Trots were wrong was in
>thinking that the end of the Second World was the long-awaited
>'political revolution'.
Eh?
>--
>Ken MacLeod
Claude de Paris
Stephen R. Diamond wrote in message ...
>In article <xQgwPCA6...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>, Ken MacLeod
><k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
it
>> >turned out, when the real counter-revolution came most of the Fourth
>> >International, which had the 'correct' programmatic positions on
Stalinism,
>> >ended up on the same side as the SWP - the wrong side!
>> >
>>
>> who came out against the Stalinist regimes, even though I knew the
>> likely outcome was a capitalist restoration, and I don't regret it even
>> people in Liepzig or anywhere else.. . .
>
>Of course not. I don't think that's the issue, but rather which side ought
>to be granted *conditional* support. One could have supported the Soviet
>regime against the masses, without supporting its means of self-defense.
Exactly!
> A
>similar question can be put retrospectively about Hungary, as regards the
>position Fred espoused that the Marcyites were right not to support the
>revolt absent a leading party.
>
>I don't think the question of when a revolt against a Stalinist regime
>become supportable has been systematically addressed by anyone. I don't
>think the popular character of the revolt can decide the question. I would
>think that the factor of the likely autocome of the success of the revolt
>must be a major factor, if not the pre-eminent factor.
Exactly right. Which is why Ken's position is so paradoxical. 'I knew it
would lead to capitalist restoration but supported it anyway!' Such a
position, if it is based on the unstated premis (actually a stated premis by
some Trots such as Socialist Organizer in Britain) that capitalism is
*better* than Stalinism is theoretically false and proved so by events.
>Yet, can anyone
>pronounce on outcome when neither side approaches programmatic
>correctness? Can the *central* programmatic thrust of a movement be
>assessed when it is composed of a welter of conflicting tendencies, with
>no hegemonic party or even a programmatic common denominator?
Not only should it be possible but it was correctly analysed (and we can
verify this in retrospect) by a minority current within the USeC which
included the Ross current in the UK, the section in Germany (perhaps because
of their proximity to the actual events) and by some Latin American
sections.
alt...@aol.com
[In reference to the US SWP & its international tendency the LTF in the
'70s:]
> I think they were a disloyal faction well before Barnes took
> them over the edge. I don't think they ever thought of themselves as
> part of the Fourth International - they expelled everyone who ever did,
> from the RT in the 60s to the RMT in the 70s to the FIT or whatever it
> was in the 80s. They expelled our people for selling Inprecor in North
> America, while their people sold Intercontinental Press as their main
> party work in Europe!
Actually the Internationalist Tendency, which you are referring to, was
not expelled from the (US)SWP for selling Inprecorr. I recall several
public demos where the ITers in my branch, in violation of party
discipline, sold Inprecorr, Old Mole, Red Weekly - ANYTHING but the
Militant, the official publication of our party! They weren't expelled
then (1973) because THEN (unlike a few years later when Joe Hansen died
and Barnes became unquestioned lider maximo) the party leadership
believed that political discussion took precedence over rigid
organizational standards. AFTER we had had that discussion, and AFTER
the IT had shown themselves to be thoroughly disloyal and undisciplined,
they were tossed out.
Now, in retrospect, the way the IT was expelled was wrong (reregistering
the membership rather than having a trial), but it was
justified nonetheless. The IT was the biggest bunch of dillettantes,
europhiles and nose-pickers I've ever had dealings with. Getting rid of
them was like taking a nice, cleansing shit!
I agree, and thought even then, that the LTF supporters in Europe were
wrong to sell Intercontinental Press & Pathfinder Books (I don't know if
they did this INSTEAD Of selling the press of their sections). When the
IT did it here in the US it drove us up the wall!
At any rate, the SWP/LTF political positions in the '70s factional
struggle in the FI were proven to be more correct, as Mandel & Co. later
admitted. Ironically, a few years later, Barnes & his acolytes tossed
all that overboard. Politically the SWP of today has more in common
with the FI majority of the '70s than it does with the SWP/LTF of the
'70s.
Dave Altman
Joseph A. Tomaras
<stephend15-12...@user-38ld55q.dialup.mindspring.com>,
steph...@mindspring.com says...
>
>In article <uTh0c6f39GA.112@upnetnews03>, "Claude de Paris"
>
>> Does the state cap position mean they are not 'revolutionary'?
Well, as it
>> turned out, when the real counter-revolution came most of the
Fourth
>> International, which had the 'correct' programmatic positions on
Stalinism,
>> ended up on the same side as the SWP - the wrong side!
>
>
>Stephen R. Diamond
The following quote is from the Fall 1991 issue of Proletarian
Revolution, journal of the League for the Revolutionary Party, whose
theory of state capitalism is set up just as much in conscious
opposition to Cliff's as it is to "deformed workers state" theory.
Having formerly been in the IST and read the relevant literature, I
consider this a good summation:
"The International Socialism tendency calls Stalinism state
capitalist and has recently adopted the line of posing as the only
true Trotskyists. Yet it grossly adapted to bourgeois propaganda by
plastering London with posters asking 'After the Death of Communism,
Is There a Future for Socialism?' to announce a speech by Tony Cliff,
head of the Socialist Workers Party. It took the correct position of
momentarily blocking with the anti-coup forces and opposing the
liberals' claim to state power. But it showed its true politics by
refusing to oppose the super-exploitative bourgeoisification trend,
on the grounds that _all_ forms of capital exploit the workers. IS's
anti-Trotskyist theory ignores the partial gains preserved by Soviet
workers despite the Stalinist overthrow of their state."
creb...@antares.com.br
<Pine.GSO.3.95qL.9809...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu>,
Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Peter West wrote:
>
> > Wo As soon as the CP was ousted,
> western imperialism poured in and the economy fell by 50%, the worst
> economic catastrophe since the 1930s. This has resulted in immiseration as
> homelessness, infant mortality, prostitution and hunger have increased. So
> when workers as a defensive reaction decide that the CP is preferable to
> western imperialism, you argue that "self-liberation" is not present at
> all and that the return of the Russian CP and an end to "biznyess" is
> comparable to the replacement of Major by Blair.
>
> Go read some Marx and learn to see things in class terms.
>
> Louis P.
To Louis: I think that things here are more nuanced. The CPRF is today, I
think, a bourgeois party completely integrated in the fledging underdeveloped
capitalist society the FSU is in the process of becoming. However, as the
Latin American bourgeoisie discovered during the 30s, finance capital
movements are too much unstable to make a reliable foundation of a national
economy.As expressed in its acceptance of a Primakov government under
Yeltsin, the CPRF programme is to propose building a screen (some
nationalizations, deficit spending, "indicative" planning) between the
Russian economy and world finance capital, but always in the broader process
of bargaining hard with the IMF, the WB, etc., and at the same time complying
with the ultimate dominance of the said finance capital. In Latin America,
that was, in the given historical circunstances of the time, a step foward;
in Russia today, a step backward, were it only for the fact that it will
alienate completely the working class from active participation in the
political process.That's why, to me, the Party of Labour of Kagarlitsky is to
be taken as the bearer of our best hopes.
Carlos Rebello
Hunter H. Watson
> In article
> <Pine.GSO.3.95qL.9809...@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu>,
> Louis N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> > On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Peter West wrote:
> >
> > > Wo As soon as the CP was ousted,
> > western imperialism poured in and the economy fell by 50%, the worst
> > economic catastrophe since the 1930s. This has resulted in immiseration as
> > homelessness, infant mortality, prostitution and hunger have increased. So
> > when workers as a defensive reaction decide that the CP is preferable to
> > western imperialism, you argue that "self-liberation" is not present at
> > all and that the return of the Russian CP and an end to "biznyess" is
> > comparable to the replacement of Major by Blair.
> >
> > Go read some Marx and learn to see things in class terms.
> >
> > Louis P.
>
> To Louis: I think that things here are more nuanced. The CPRF is today, I
> think, a bourgeois party completely integrated in the fledging underdeveloped
> capitalist society the FSU is in the process of becoming.
Precisely so. It is a social democratic party commited to personal
liberties and a mixed economy. I see it as not much to the Left of British
Labourites after WWII.
However, as the
> Latin American bourgeoisie discovered during the 30s, finance capital
> movements are too much unstable to make a reliable foundation of a national
> economy.As expressed in its acceptance of a Primakov government under
> Yeltsin, the CPRF programme is to propose building a screen (some
> nationalizations, deficit spending, "indicative" planning) between the
> Russian economy and world finance capital, but always in the broader process
> of bargaining hard with the IMF, the WB, etc., and at the same time complying
> with the ultimate dominance of the said finance capital. In Latin America,
> that was, in the given historical circunstances of the time, a step foward;
> in Russia today, a step backward,
Backward from the perspective of the Russian people? Can this be said
against the history I know you understand? This is clearly a time of
troubles for Russia but it is, I think, transitional. It is demeaning to
the Russian nation to presume it is incapable of generating a
sophisticated bourgeois state on the European model. That result would be
infinitely superior to what has gone before under Leninists.
were it only for the fact that it will
> alienate completely the working class from active participation in the
> political process.
The working class does not in fact participate much in the political
process except as relates to narrow economic issues. Under
Marxist/Leninist governments it was denied even that. Unspeakable things
were done by other classes in its name.
That's why, to me, the Party of Labour of Kagarlitsky is to
> be taken as the bearer of our best hopes.
Tell us about this party's platform, please?
Hunter Watson
creb...@antares.com.br
hwa...@portup.com (Hunter H. Watson) wrote:
> Backward from the perspective of the Russian people? Can this be said
> against the history I know you understand? This is clearly a time of
> troubles for Russia but it is, I think, transitional. It is demeaning to
> the Russian nation to presume it is incapable of generating a
> sophisticated bourgeois state on the European model.
I do not think it demeaning to my countryfellows presuming that Brazil will
never develop such a society. It's simply too late for that; see what has
happened recently in Asia.
That result would be
> infinitely superior to what has gone before under Leninists.
>
> were it only for the fact that it will
> > alienate completely the working class from active participation in the
> > political process.
>
> The working class does not in fact participate much in the political
> process except as relates to narrow economic issues. Under
> Marxist/Leninist governments it was denied even that. Unspeakable things
> were done by other classes in its name.
And, of course, the bourgeois class didn't participate much in politics before
the French Revolution. The above statement is ideology, in the stricter sense:
to take the historically contingent as natural and eternal. That what makes
Pipes- and, consequently, you- miss entirely the point about what was the
Russian Revolution about.
> That's why, to me, the Party of Labour of Kagarlitsky is to
> > be taken as the bearer of our best hopes.
>
> Tell us about this party's platform, please?
For the time being I would say it's a Marxist syndicalist party that is
beginning to get aware to the Leninist issue of being able not only to make
pressure through grassroots organizations but also to the question of state
power.
Carlos Rebello
> Hunter Watson
DAVIDRAIL
If so, do they publish a journal and what do they do?
Claude de Paris
<199809141619...@ladder03.news.aol.com>...
>Does British Socialist Action still exist?
> If so, do they publish a journal and what do they do?
Although I have not been in Britain for a couple of years now, I believe the
answer is yes, yes and dunno.
sayan bhattacharyya
>
>> Backward from the perspective of the Russian people? Can this be said
>> against the history I know you understand? This is clearly a time of
>> troubles for Russia but it is, I think, transitional. It is demeaning to
>> the Russian nation to presume it is incapable of generating a
>> sophisticated bourgeois state on the European model.
>
>I do not think it demeaning to my countryfellows presuming that Brazil will
>never develop such a society. It's simply too late for that; see what has
>happened recently in Asia.
>
Do you see the irony in your statement above? You are arguing on the
basis of examples, i.e. your argument is an inductive one. An
inductive argument isn't a provably true argument.
In short, you are taking the historically contingent fact that the
asian economies were unsuccessful, as a natural and eternal truth
with universal validity. A fallacy that you yourself accused Mr.
Watson of committing, in the very same post.
Isn't this contradictory?
Furthermore, how do you explain Poland and Hungary, which are well
on the way to becoming "sophisticated bourgeois states", and will
probably enter the European union at some point in the future?
Stephen R. Diamond
Paris" <Clau...@juno.com> wrote:
I would guess the iSt gave no support to Gorbachek et al, since they,
unlike most Trotskyists, refused to support Walesa. On the other hand, I
don't think (I may be wrong) that they had the courage to conditionall
support the Polish Stalinists _against_ Walesa.
I wonder if the critical event in the degeneration of Trotskyism was not
the possibly wrong position on Hungary, where the only possibly correct
view was taken by a cultish tendency which could drift with the wind into
overt Stalinism (the Marcyites, that is).
Although the signs of degeneration are usually reckoned from Pabloism, as
considerable earlier the US SWP was calling for troops to the South. This
is a FAR greater betrayal than the merely high-tactical position of deep
entry into the Stalinists.
Stephen R. Diamond
Ken MacLeod
>Actually the Internationalist Tendency, which you are referring to, was
>not expelled from the (US)SWP for selling Inprecorr. I recall several
>public demos where the ITers in my branch, in violation of party
>discipline, sold Inprecorr, Old Mole, Red Weekly - ANYTHING but the
>Militant, the official publication of our party!
Well, I'll take your word for the details. But was *anyone* in the SWP
allowed to sell Inprecor, or was a crime like selling Moscow News in
Havana?
[snip]
> Politically the SWP of today has more in common
>with the FI majority of the '70s than it does with the SWP/LTF of the
>'70s.
>
The FI majority of the 70s - whatever its faults - were not lickspittle
Stalinists or braindead zombies. They didn't spend their time selling
books in factories. I'd like to know what you think they had in common
with the Barnesites of today.
--
Ken MacLeod
Ken MacLeod
Paris <Clau...@juno.com> writes
>
>Ken MacLeod wrote in message ...
re the American SWP:
> I think they were a disloyal faction well before Barnes took
>>them over the edge. I don't think they ever thought of themselves as
>>part of the Fourth International - they expelled everyone who ever did,
>>from the RT in the 60s to the RMT in the 70s to the FIT or whatever it
>>was in the 80s.
>
>Not being familiar with all the splits you mention I have to content myself
>with questioning whether these expelled factions were so loyal to the FI
>majority that they stayed within the FI? As for the FIT I know that they
>were expelled by the Barnes faction because they *defended* the FI against
>Barnes revisions. But that was post not pre-Barnes.
>
Yes, the FIT was post-Barnes.
About the others, the RT were the Robertsonites (the proto-Sparts) whose
'Fourth International' was the IC, so maybe I'm being over-generous in
including them. The RMT however were the American supporters of the
International Majority Tendency, who were declared by the SWP leadership
to have 'formed a separate party' for doing things that looked like
normal factional activity. After their expulsion they were advised by
the IMT to dissolve and rejoin the SWP individually: in other words,
they were left high and dry, and I think a lot of them were lost to the
FI.
>>They expelled our people for selling Inprecor in North
>>America, while their people sold Intercontinental Press as their main
>>party work in Europe!
>
>
>I have never heard of that allegation before, ever.
>>
OK, slight polemical exaggeration there. *One* of the reasons given for
their expulsion was that they publicly sold Inprecor; this was at a time
when the LTF had a special arrangement that they could specialise in
selling Intercontinental Press.
But, to be fair, all of this is from memory. I'm just explaining some of
the subjective reasons why factional hostility remained after the
factions were formally dissolved.
I said:
> I was on the side of the people
>>who came out against the Stalinist regimes, even though I knew the
>>likely outcome was a capitalist restoration, and I don't regret it even
>>now.
>
>This is a bizarre position. So you knew that the likely outcome of the
>counter-revolution would be capitalist restoration and therefore the working
>class would be worse off and yet you supported it?? On what basis?
>
On the basis that there is no long-term gain in forcing 'socialism' on
an unwilling people, especially an unwilling working class. As one NLR
author said to me at the time, 'Let them go, let them go! Let them have
all the nationalism and all the religion they want, let them drink that
cup to the *dregs*! Let them drink it till they spew! Then you can talk
to them about socialism!'
In the first place we have to distinguish between most of the East
European and Baltic states on the one hand and most of the Soviet Union
on the other. There was a surprisingly persistent difference between the
countries that had had a socialist revolution of their own - however
distorted - and the countries on which it had been imposed from outside.
The countries where 'socialism' had been imposed from outside got rid of
it as soon as the Soviet back-up was removed. For the most part they
seem to have become viable bourgeois states within which an independent
working-class movement can develop - and indeed, in a reformist way, is
developing. The chances of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and
Slovakia regressing from bourgeois democracy are slim. For these
countries and for the Baltic states the deformed workers' state was in
no way an organic development of their class and national struggles and
was experienced as a regression. This doesn't seem to be the case in
Russia and some other countries.
The majority of the working class and even collective farmers in Russia
are not viscerally anti-Communist, far from it. The same goes for
Yugoslavia, for the same reason - they had an indigenous revolution,
which could only be destroyed by nationalist fratricide. (Albania is a
special case, its bizarre mausoleum socialism collapsing straight into
pyramid-scheme capitalism, and of course it remains wildly unstable.)
In Russia unlike Eastern Europe there was no mass mobilization against
the regime and there has been no restoration of capitalism and no
prospect of that happening in a bourgeois-democratic framework. In fact
even some bourgeois commentators recognise that in order to get to
capitalism it would be necessary to *re-nationalise* the major
industries.
>>There is no way I would have supported machine-gunning masses of
>>people in Liepzig or anywhere else.
>
>Nor would I. Nor do I support capitalist restoration. The fact is that the
>real choice in Eastern Europe was between the continuation of Stalinism or
>the its overthrow by imperialism. Trots were forced to take sides and most
>took the wrong side. Trotsky nor any of his followers EVER supported the
>overthrow of Stalinism by counter-revolution.
>
In this concrete situation how *else* could the continuation of
Stalinism be ensured than by massive violence against the working class?
As Joe Slovo put it, these were popular revolts against unpopular
regimes. One could argue within the rebellions against a restoration,
strive for independent organization of the working class and so on, but
there was no way to 'save' the regimes even if one wanted to. You seem
to retrospectively accept a Catch-22 situation where Stalinism prevents
the development of a left alternative, but the left has to support it
because the regime incites such mass hatred of socialism that it can
only be overthrown from the right!
>The collapse of Stalinism in *this* context has been an unmitigated disaster
>for the working class throughout the world. Not only for the workers in
>those countries where they have been reduced to the living standards of the
>third world, where countless reactionary nationalist wars have claimed
>thousands of lives but also for the entire third world where imperialism and
>the diktats of America now rule supreme - for the people of Iraq and
>Afganisation, Sudan and Somalia - the list is growing every day. It has also
>been a disaster for the surviving workers states such as Cuba. Finally it
>has been a disaster for the working class in the imperialist countries
>where, finally freed from the threat of Stalinism on its borders, the
>bourgeosie has felt free to start dismantling the welfare states that were
>set up, in part, as a defensive response to threat of the the Russian
>Revolution and the post war Stalinist expansion. Finally it has been a
>disaster for the socialist project as a whole as it has shattered any
>confidence and belief in a socialist solution. Workers everywhere have
>thrown out the baby of socialism with the bath water of Stalinism.
>
Yes, but the 'socialist project' launched by the Russian Revolution *has
failed* and the sooner we climb down from that blocked route the better.
Even in the Third World, a great deal of avoidable poverty, misery and
tyranny has resulted from Soviet support to the 'non-capitalist road'
and various adventurist bonapartist regimes. That is not to take any of
the blame off imperialism and reaction - but, for example, would Renamo
and the South Africans ever have had much of a chance in Mozambique if
Frelimo hadn't embarked on a mad experiment of total collectivization?
Also incidentally I think it's a cop-out on our part to blame the
dismantling of the welfare states on the collapse of the workers'
states. The former process and the general roll-back of socialism in the
West was well underway long before the fall of the East: Thatcher was
elected in 1979, not 1989. It might even make more sense to argue the
opposite - the failure of the Western working classes isolated and
demoralised any socialist currents in the East.
>Trotsky alway understood the terrible ramifications of such an eventuality
>and that is why he always opposed it. Even Mandel, initially one of the
>loudest cheerleaders of the counterrevolution, started to reverse his
>positions towards the end of his days.
>
>>Where the Trots were wrong was in
>>thinking that the end of the Second World was the long-awaited
>>'political revolution'.
>
>
>Eh?
>
Sorry if it's obscure - 'Second World' is the Soviet bloc.
--
Ken MacLeod
Louis N Proyect
> Well, I'll take your word for the details. But was *anyone* in the SWP
> allowed to sell Inprecor, or was a crime like selling Moscow News in
> Havana?
I was in the Houston branch and Militant sales director when this fight
was raging. The branch had more Mandelistas than any other. The Barnes
leadership was preparing a split in the FI and a decision was made not to
have a fight over Imprecorr sales since it was a secondary issue. For the
record, I would state that the Houston Mandelistas were the biggest
phonies imaginable. These were people who adopted rural guerrilla warfare
as a line for their faction, when none of them believed it for a
split-second. These were die-hard workerists who wanted nothing more than
for the SWP to send its members into basic industry. They used to get up
in preconvention discussions and state: "The working class is the only
class with the power to overthrow capitalism." Like duh. After the split
in the FI, most of these people left politics altogether. With 2
exceptions: P., who went to work with the Mexican section and does
excellent work. And Jon Barzman, who moved to Europe and became a serious
Marxist scholar. His last effort was translating the work of French
Marxist scientists on the global ecological and energy crisis.
Louis P.
Stephen R. Diamond
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>This is a bizarre position. So you knew that the likely outcome of the
>counter-revolution would be capitalist restoration and therefore the working
>class would be worse off and yet you supported it?? On what basis?
>
<<On the basis that there is no long-term gain in forcing 'socialism' on
an unwilling people, especially an unwilling working class. As one NLR
author said to me at the time, 'Let them go, let them go! Let them have
all the nationalism and all the religion they want, let them drink that
cup to the *dregs*! Let them drink it till they spew! Then you can talk
to them about socialism!' >>
Well, it was surely Lenin's position - hold onto power, even in the face
of a recalcitrant population, or even working class. It really reduces to
whether the pre-eminent goal is the development of the forces of
production or the securing of democracy.
> In the first place we have to distinguish between most of the East
> European and Baltic states on the one hand and most of the Soviet Union
> on the other. There was a surprisingly persistent difference between the
> countries that had had a socialist revolution of their own - however
> distorted - and the countries on which it been imposed from outside.
I think Yugoslavia is the counter-example. The level of "socialist
conscousness" there, when it still had a planned economy, essentially
match that of outher E European states. Of course this is an impression
based on personal obesrvations of others. Theoretically speaking I don't
see how "indigenous revolt" gains any standing in a Marxist account,
unless you can show how the Yugoslav revolt (and the Chinese for that
matter) was in any way tantamount to a revolution by the working class.
The fratricide in Yugoslavia merely harks back to old nationalist
rivalries, held in check by the Tito regime.
<<In this concrete situation how *else* could the continuation of
Stalinism be ensured than by massive violence against the working class?>>
But the goal, Proyect notwithstanding, is not to secure the continuation
of Stalinism, although such may be the actual result, and is to be
preferred to the institution of capitalism. The defense of the regime
against the popular reactionary revolt would be a propagandistic one,
which gave no support to the terroristic methods of the Stalinists.
You speak of the disirability of going backwards so a working class
movement can develop. I don't see how this position in any material way
differs from supporting capitalist democracy over soviet dictatorship.
What is there to support, if the working class develops its consciousness
better under capitalist democracy?
Stephen R. Diamond
alt...@aol.com
> The FI majority of the 70s - whatever its faults - were not lickspittle
> Stalinists or braindead zombies. They didn't spend their time selling
> books in factories. I'd like to know what you think they had in common
> with the Barnesites of today.
Point well taken, Ken. Actually, it's probably more correct to say that
the METHODOLOGY of the Barnesites today is closer to that of the
Mandelistas of the '70s than to the SWP of the '70s, that is to say:
Back then the SWP/LTF were more or less "orthodox" Trotskyists, hewing
to the standard line of party-building, transitional program, building
the mass movement, etc. The FI majority were more impressionistic, going
along with whatever the trend was at the moment: workerism one minute,
socialist-feminism the next, etc. The FI majority sections tended to
have looser internal structures more like the New Left organizations
many of their members came out of, while the SWP & its satellites
followed the Cannonist model (although I would argue fairly democratic
at that, certainly not the grotesque caricature it's become).
Look at the Barnesite SWP of today: Like the Mandelistas, they chase
after whatever group or individual or cause is the latest "thing": the
Sandinistas one minute, the ANC the next. It's not surprising, then,
that Mandel said, back when the Jack Pack were embarking on their new
orientation (& I paraphrase), "well, we agree with your idea of
orienting toward the Sandinistas, Grenadians, etc., we just think you
should include Polish Solidarnosc & the PT of Brazil & all of these
other currently-fashionable causes in your conception of the 'New
Leninist International.'"
Of course, the Barnesites still "build the Party," whereas the remnants
of the FI majority are buried in assorted swamps like "Squalidarity."
But the basic overall outlooks are similar.
I would disagree, somewhat, with the assertion that the SWP/LTF were
"disloyal" to the FI. What you had then basically was a "cold split" in
the FI where the two factions functioned like separate international
organizations. But the split was never "formalized." I think that the
Latin American segment of the LTF led by Nahuel Moreno always had a
"split perspective." I believe, however, that Joe Hansen, Novack & some
of the other older, more seasoned comrades of the SWP thought they could
win over at least a section of the FI majority to their positions and
realized that splitting the FI would be a no-win situation. In the late
seventies the differences over guerrilla warfare in Latin America, which
sparked the faction fight, began to narrow and the factions were
formally dissolved (although they reemerged several years later along
slightly different lines).
Dave Altman
Louis N Proyect
> Point well taken, Ken. Actually, it's probably more correct to say that
> the METHODOLOGY of the Barnesites today is closer to that of the
> Mandelistas of the '70s than to the SWP of the '70s, that is to say:
This is not right at all. The "methodology" of Barnes is super-sectarian,
while the Mandelistas were much more correct about the notion that a
revolutionary party will not result from a small cadre formation winning
adherents by twos and threes to a fully elaborated program. The only
problem with the Mandelistas is that they did not go far enough. People
like Maitan and Frank were typical Trotskyist sectarians who expected
their small groups to gain hegemony over the student and workers movement
because of their "superior" ideas. They lectured people, just like the SWP
does, but not as obnoxiously.
Louis P.
Stephen R. Diamond
<Pine.GSO.3.95qL.9809...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> People
> like Maitan and Frank were typical Trotskyist sectarians who expected
> their small groups to gain hegemony over the student and workers movement
> because of their "superior" ideas. They lectured people, just like the SWP
> does, but not as obnoxiously.
You reject the idea that any tendency ought to expect to win hegemony
because of its programmatic superiority. How do you justify thingking the
socialist movement will gain hegemony over the workers - if not by its
"superior ideas." In each instance "superior" means nothing more than
conforming to the true interests of the workers. What gives you the
"right" to the belief socialism will become hegemonic, when you reject the
same reasoning when applied to any _particular_ socialist tendency? What
other constraints make the one inference reasonable and the other
unreasonable?
Stephen R. Diamond
Philip Ferguson
> I agree, and thought even then, that the LTF supporters in Europe were
> wrong to sell Intercontinental Press & Pathfinder Books (I don't know if
> they did this INSTEAD Of selling the press of their sections). When the
> IT did it here in the US it drove us up the wall!
Hi Dave,
Here's an answer to the above from what I know:
LTF supporters in Europe sold Pathfinder, Intercontinental Press and the
Militant to the exclusion of FI (USec) stuff and the publications of the
sections of which they were members. This was certainly the case in
Britain, where the sole activity of the LTFers consisted of such sales -
and even then they didn't do this very much. They were extremely
slothful and dim people, in my experience of them. At least the IMTers
had a bit of go in them.
The LTFers in the IMG in Britian, for instance, were almost totally
inactive. People like Connie Harris and Alan Harris did nothing for
years, but they supported LTF positions because as long as they did so,
they had the Pathfinder franchise and that gave them a nice, comfortable
life. If the American leadership had've said pigs flew, Alan Harris
would have said that he had really always thought pigs could fly.
It is also interesting to see to what extent the Americans intervened
behind the scenes and in bullying tactics to maintain no-hopers like the
Harrises. Alan Harris is a dimwit flunkey (albeit with more than a
touch of the Uriah Heeps), always was, and there is no way that he could
have written the internal IMG documents that bore his name. They were
written in New York.
At the 1979 World Congress, the IMG delegates left Harris off their list
of nominees for the International Executive Committee. Good for them,
Harris was totally inactive and there is no oway he should have been on
the IEC. He and Connie were just bookshop proprietors, having a nice
little comfortable existence running Pathfinder Bookshop in London.
Anyway the New York heavies had to step in. Barry Sheppard got IMG
leader Dodie Weppler in a room and yelled at her and abused her,
reducing her to tears, demanding that the IMG delegation add Alan
Harris' name to their IEC nominations or the US SWP leadership would
basically declare war on the IMG.
Unfortunately, Weppler was a wimp. Instead of telling Barry Sheppard he
was a complete pig and he should fuck off, she burst into tears and ran
back to the IMG delegation, who then made a formal complaint over the
incident. But the IMT leaders, who never were much good at standing up
to the Yanks, never did anything about it. Harris' name was added to
the IMG nominations and he was back on the IEC.
Those were the 'good old days', before Barnes took over totally. It's
not hard to see that the seeds were already well-sown before the purges
which placed the Barnes clique in complete control and they turned those
tactics on their own older veterans.
The US leadership did all kinds of stuff behind the back of elected
leaderships in Europe, but then acted all morally offended when they
themselves found out - surprise, surprise - that Ernest and Livio and
co. had met up a few times with American dissidents. When it came to
sneakiness, duplicity and hypocrisy, the IMT leaders weren't a patch on
the American leadership.
Although Ken meant it amusingly, like him I sometimes wonder if the
American SWP isn't the Great Satan. (Of course, it is not the SWP these
days, it's now just the mad 'Barnesites'.)
Philip Ferguson
PS: Dave, the sub hasn't arrived yet!
creb...@antares.com.br
bhat...@skynet.eecs.umich.edu (sayan bhattacharyya) wrote:
> In article <6tjgc7$5ja$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <creb...@antares.com.br>
wrote:
> Do you see the irony in your statement above? You are arguing on the
> basis of examples, i.e. your argument is an inductive one. An
> inductive argument isn't a provably true argument.
>
> In short, you are taking the historically contingent fact that the
> asian economies were unsuccessful, as a natural and eternal truth
> with universal validity. A fallacy that you yourself accused Mr.
> Watson of committing, in the very same post.
>
> Isn't this contradictory?
>
> Furthermore, how do you explain Poland and Hungary, which are well
> on the way to becoming "sophisticated bourgeois states", and will
> probably enter the European union at some point in the future?
>
Dear Sayan:Yes, I took too much for granted. But let's dot the ii: as a
Trotskyste, I subscribe to the idea of uneven and combined developement: late
coming capitalist economies always start the road to development burdened
with the vested interest of capitalist investors from overseas, that, for the
sake of stability, are interested above all in perpetuating the
powers-that-be, no matter how politically backward; that proved right for
Tzarism in the early XXth. century as for Suharto later in the same century.
As to India, Trotsky himself ,in *The Permanent Revolution*, adduced that
British capitalism had mummyfied all sorts of archaic social relationships
inherited from the Asian middle ages in order to make more assured profit
from its ventures there.Also, Trotsky later expanded combined and uneven as a
more general law of capitalism, by saying that even in the US actual
political development had lagged behind economic development.
As to Hungary and Poland in the EU, let me say that Portugal belongs to the EU
for more than 20 years now, and remains in a dismal state of economic
stagnation, some investments in public works and speculative ventures
notwithstanding; but the Portuguese agriculture and fisheries are now tajen as
doomed due to European concurrence.
Carlos Rebello
> >And, of course, the bourgeois class didn't participate much in politics
before
> >the French Revolution. The above statement is ideology, in the stricter
sense:
> >to take the historically contingent as natural and eternal. That what makes
> >Pipes- and, consequently, you- miss entirely the point about what was the
> >Russian Revolution about.
> >
>
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
>In article <uXmxMTA...@upnetnews02.moswest.msn.net>, "Claude de
>Paris" <Clau...@juno.com> wrote:
>
>I would guess the iSt gave no support to Gorbachek et al, since they,
>unlike most Trotskyists, refused to support Walesa. On the other hand, I
>don't think (I may be wrong) that they had the courage to conditionall
>support the Polish Stalinists _against_ Walesa.
Yes they did. I said to George Foster at the time that this
necessarily called into question the SL's historical position in
support of the Hungarian workers councils against the Stalinists. (To
no avail).
>I wonder if the critical event in the degeneration of Trotskyism was not
>the possibly wrong position on Hungary, where the only possibly correct
>view was taken by a cultish tendency which could drift with the wind into
>overt Stalinism (the Marcyites, that is).
>
In the absence of a revolutionary party, surrounded by world
imperialism, the ultimate outcome of Hungary wouldn't have been very
different than Poland a generation later.
>Although the signs of degeneration are usually reckoned from Pabloism, as
>considerable earlier the US SWP was calling for troops to the South. This
>is a FAR greater betrayal than the merely high-tactical position of deep
>entry into the Stalinists.
>
Well, that and the promulgation of the poly-vanguardist sectoralism of
the 60's and 70's. They arrived at the same place as Mandel and Co.,
they just took a slightly different route.
If you want an interesting Saturday afternoon's reading, find the FI
documents on the class nature of Yugoslavia in the mid 1940's. They
were completely at sea.
Fraternally
Fred Ferguson
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
>In article <4ZwiNCA93U$1E...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>, Ken MacLeod
><k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>This is a bizarre position. So you knew that the likely outcome of the
>>counter-revolution would be capitalist restoration and therefore the working
>>class would be worse off and yet you supported it?? On what basis?
>>
>
><<On the basis that there is no long-term gain in forcing 'socialism' on
>an unwilling people, especially an unwilling working class. As one NLR
>author said to me at the time, 'Let them go, let them go! Let them have
>all the nationalism and all the religion they want, let them drink that
>cup to the *dregs*! Let them drink it till they spew! Then you can talk
>to them about socialism!' >>
>
>Well, it was surely Lenin's position - hold onto power, even in the face
>of a recalcitrant population, or even working class. It really reduces to
>whether the pre-eminent goal is the development of the forces of
>production or the securing of democracy.
>
>> In the first place we have to distinguish between most of the East
>> European and Baltic states on the one hand and most of the Soviet Union
>> on the other. There was a surprisingly persistent difference between the
>> countries that had had a socialist revolution of their own - however
>> distorted - and the countries on which it been imposed from outside.
>
>I think Yugoslavia is the counter-example. The level of "socialist
>conscousness" there, when it still had a planned economy, essentially
>match that of outher E European states. Of course this is an impression
>based on personal obesrvations of others. Theoretically speaking I don't
>see how "indigenous revolt" gains any standing in a Marxist account,
>unless you can show how the Yugoslav revolt (and the Chinese for that
>matter) was in any way tantamount to a revolution by the working class.
>
>The fratricide in Yugoslavia merely harks back to old nationalist
>rivalries, held in check by the Tito regime.
>
><<In this concrete situation how *else* could the continuation of
>Stalinism be ensured than by massive violence against the working class?>>
>
>But the goal, Proyect notwithstanding, is not to secure the continuation
>of Stalinism, although such may be the actual result, and is to be
>preferred to the institution of capitalism. The defense of the regime
>against the popular reactionary revolt would be a propagandistic one,
>which gave no support to the terroristic methods of the Stalinists.
>
>You speak of the disirability of going backwards so a working class
>movement can develop. I don't see how this position in any material way
>differs from supporting capitalist democracy over soviet dictatorship.
>What is there to support, if the working class develops its consciousness
>better under capitalist democracy?
Exactly!
To have supported the "popular" movements in E. Europe had a two-fold
effect:
1. Those regimes and those countries formed a necessary military
shield between world imperialism and the degenerated workers state in
the USSR. To have supported restorationist forces in E. Europe meant
that you no longer defended the Soviet Union against restoration.
2. Further, by taking the position basically of saying "fuck 'em let
them restore capitalism, indulge in communal warfare and butcher each
other by the thousands, experience unemployment and homeless--that'll
show 'em. Maybe then they'll be willing to talk about socialism
again," shows that these are some pretty sorry revolutionaries.
Fraternally,
Fred Ferguson
>
>Stephen R. Diamond
Ken MacLeod
om>, "Stephen R. Diamond" <steph...@mindspring.com> writes
>In article <4ZwiNCA93U$1E...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>, Ken MacLeod
><k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
>> In the first place we have to distinguish between most of the East
>> European and Baltic states on the one hand and most of the Soviet Union
>> on the other. There was a surprisingly persistent difference between the
>> countries that had had a socialist revolution of their own - however
>> distorted - and the countries on which it been imposed from outside.
>
>I think Yugoslavia is the counter-example. The level of "socialist
>conscousness" there, when it still had a planned economy, essentially
>match that of outher E European states. Of course this is an impression
>based on personal obesrvations of others.
I don't agree that Yugoslavia is a counter-example, in fact I mentioned
it as in example in the post you quote. (It didn't have much of a
planned economy, but that's by the way.) My impression is that the
Yugoslav peoples were not anti-Communist the way the E. European peoples
were. (This is partly based on acquaintance with exiles from various
countries before the collapse.)
>Theoretically speaking I don't
>see how "indigenous revolt" gains any standing in a Marxist account,
>unless you can show how the Yugoslav revolt (and the Chinese for that
>matter) was in any way tantamount to a revolution by the working class.
>
'Indigenous revolt' gains standing in *any* account, because there is a
big difference between a political regime and social order that was
brought about by the actions of *millions*, many with guns in their
hands, and one brought about by a few thousand cadres backed up by a
foreign army.
Regardless of whether the Yugoslav War of National Liberation was a
revolution by the working class (and if I remember the old 'Education
for Socialists' bulletins right, there is a case that it was) part of
the case that indigenous socialist revolution makes a difference is also
related to the national question. If a country went 'socialist' in the
course of its own bourgeois national revolution then socialism and
national consciousness reinforced each other rather than the opposite.
>The fratricide in Yugoslavia merely harks back to old nationalist
>rivalries, held in check by the Tito regime.
>
There a lot of people better informed than I am would strongly disagree.
The transition from thinking of oneself as, e.g., 'a Bosnian Catholic'
to thinking of oneself as 'a Croat' was not something that just happened
when the pressure of 'socialist fraternity' was lifted. It had to be
worked for, and was. (And so on, mutatis mutandis.)
><<In this concrete situation how *else* could the continuation of
>Stalinism be ensured than by massive violence against the working class?>>
>
>But the goal, Proyect notwithstanding, is not to secure the continuation
>of Stalinism, although such may be the actual result, and is to be
>preferred to the institution of capitalism. The defense of the regime
>against the popular reactionary revolt would be a propagandistic one,
>which gave no support to the terroristic methods of the Stalinists.
>
>You speak of the disirability of going backwards so a working class
>movement can develop. I don't see how this position in any material way
>differs from supporting capitalist democracy over soviet dictatorship.
>What is there to support, if the working class develops its consciousness
>better under capitalist democracy?
>
What indeed, especially if the deformed workers' state doesn't even
develop the productive forces better than capitalism, at the given stage
of development?
But just to clarify - I don't speak of the desirability of going
backwards, I query whether going from a decaying Stalinist dictatorship
to a bourgeois democracy *is* 'going backwards'. Also, I would still say
that socialist democracy (as per the USec document 'On Socialist
Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat') would provide better
conditions for the development of working-class consciousness than
either Stalinism or bourgeois democracy.
--
Ken MacLeod
Louis N Proyect
> You reject the idea that any tendency ought to expect to win hegemony
> because of its programmatic superiority. How do you justify thingking the
> socialist movement will gain hegemony over the workers - if not by its
> "superior ideas." In each instance "superior" means nothing more than
> conforming to the true interests of the workers. What gives you the
> "right" to the belief socialism will become hegemonic, when you reject the
> same reasoning when applied to any _particular_ socialist tendency? What
> other constraints make the one inference reasonable and the other
> unreasonable?
Groups like the Workers League, the Sparts, the SWP are very odd. They
consist of several hundred people who agree with 99% of the party line,
which is laid down by the head guy, who is the "living embodiment" of
Lenin or Trotsky. When somebody--for one reason or another--decides that
the party line is incorrect, this puts them on a collision course with the
head guy. This happened to Tim Wolforth, Jan Norden and Peter Camejo, who
all got thrown out for having "incorrect" ideas that might infect the
party.
This is not the way a Marxist party should operate. In Lenin's party,
there was open debate between Bukharin and Lenin. Also, if you take into
account that the Russian/Polish Social Democracy included both Menshevik
and Bolshevik factions, the debate included Luxemburg and Trotsky as well.
There was no "party line". Bukharin had his own views on the national
question and printed them in an official Bolshevik newspaper in exile, as
Stephen Cohen points out in his book on Bukharin. Lenin's only problem
with Bukharin was whether the Bolshevik party could afford the newspaper,
not whether Bukharin was "breaking discipline."
Louis P.
Stephen R. Diamond
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
What if the "socialist" states continued to develop the forces of
production better than the capitalist states?
Or, what about the time when they did. Would you then say capitalist
democracy is better for the interests of working class than Stalinism? In
other words, would you oppose soviet defensism throughout the Stalin era,
or only more recently (when there was more rather than less "democracy").
If your position changes with some development in the Soviet Union, what
was that development, and why is it critical? Is it the failure of the
planned economy to develop the forces of production better than
capitalism?
Stephen R. Diamond
Ken MacLeod
>Look at the Barnesite SWP of today: Like the Mandelistas, they chase
>after whatever group or individual or cause is the latest "thing": the
>Sandinistas one minute, the ANC the next. It's not surprising, then,
>that Mandel said, back when the Jack Pack were embarking on their new
>orientation (& I paraphrase), "well, we agree with your idea of
>orienting toward the Sandinistas, Grenadians, etc., we just think you
>should include Polish Solidarnosc & the PT of Brazil & all of these
>other currently-fashionable causes in your conception of the 'New
>Leninist International.'"
Sorry, but I can't buy that either.
The SWP in the 70s had the same uncritical attitude to the PLO that it
has today to the ANC, and that in the 80s it had to the Sandinistas. I
well remember how the SWP presented the *evacuation of the PLO from
Beirut* as a triumph of Arafat's policy. The USec majority in the 70s
were very free with their criticisms of anti-imperialist leaderships -
rightly or wrongly.
Your paraphrase of Mandel is unfair: what he insisted on was that *only*
the international could stand up in Poland for the anti-imperialist
cause, and in Grenada for the anti-Stalinist cause, and in the West for
the defence of the workers states and the anti-imperialist movements.
--
Ken MacLeod
Stephen R. Diamond
<Pine.GSO.3.95qL.98091...@ciao.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis N
Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
> > You reject the idea that any tendency ought to expect to win hegemony
> > because of its programmatic superiority. How do you justify thingking the
> > socialist movement will gain hegemony over the workers - if not by its
> > "superior ideas." In each instance "superior" means nothing more than
> > conforming to the true interests of the workers. What gives you the
> > "right" to the belief socialism will become hegemonic, when you reject the
> > same reasoning when applied to any _particular_ socialist tendency? What
> > other constraints make the one inference reasonable and the other
> > unreasonable?
>
> Groups like the Workers League, the Sparts, the SWP are very odd. They
> consist of several hundred people who agree with 99% of the party line,
> which is laid down by the head guy, who is the "living embodiment" of
> Lenin or Trotsky. When somebody--for one reason or another--decides that
> the party line is incorrect, this puts them on a collision course with the
> head guy. This happened to Tim Wolforth, Jan Norden and Peter Camejo, who
> all got thrown out for having "incorperect" ideas that might infect the
> party.
Actually, Wohlforth never disagreed with the line - at least not publicly.
In his book he does not claim as much. He was expelled because of Healy's
paranoia about "security."
>
> This is not the way a Marxist party should operate. In Lenin's party,
> there was open debate between Bukharin and Lenin. Also, if you take into
> account that the Russian/Polish Social Democracy included both Menshevik
> and Bolshevik factions, the debate included Luxemburg and Trotsky as well.
> There was no "party line". Bukharin had his own views on the national
> question and printed them in an official Bolshevik newspaper in exile, as
> Stephen Cohen points out in his book on Bukharin. Lenin's only problem
> with Bukharin was whether the Bolshevik party could afford the newspaper,
> not whether Bukharin was "breaking discipline."
I agree the amount of cohesion expected in these "parties" is excessive.
Literally no disagreement is tolerated for any length of time. But kind of
differences must be distinguished. Bukharin thought for himself, but his
position did not amount to a consistent *general* alternative to Leninism.
An organization like Solidarity unites tendencies consistently opposed to
one another. It is as though one "head guy" is replaced by a group of
them, each with their mindless supporters.
Stephen R. Diamond
>
> Louis P.
Bob Malecki
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>What indeed, especially if the deformed workers' state doesn't even
>develop the productive forces better than capitalism, at the given stage
>of development?
>
>But just to clarify - I don't speak of the desirability of going
>backwards, I query whether going from a decaying Stalinist dictatorship
>to a bourgeois democracy *is* 'going backwards'. Also, I would still say
>that socialist democracy (as per the USec document 'On Socialist
>Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat') would provide better
>conditions for the development of working-class consciousness than
>either Stalinism or bourgeois democracy.
>--
>Ken MacLeod
Now this is quite explicit! Who said Social democracy was dead! It
lives in the opportunist illusions of Ken and the USec who see a new
chance to get rich quick.
Putting together a document to tail the traditionalists while spouting
fundamental anti Trotskyist trash like this only means that they are
still adapting their politics to something they have no understanding
of..
Warm regards
Bob Malecki
By the way the Swedish USec which is really trying to implement this
line is a miserable failure! Even the ex Euro-Communists are far
better at it and now are polling between 10 and 15% of the vote.
The only difference is that there is a real left wing in the the ex-cp
which does not buy this garbage. Not to mention tens of thousands who
have experienced the last four years of Social democracy.