Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 01:35:38 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: Re: AUT: (en) A call for anarchists and other left 


Tony, you write:
        To be even 'somewhat sectarian' is a dangerous road
        for the libertarian !

Why?

        My own political history is strewn with  errors and
        mistakes. From the early 70's through to the mid-80's
        I saw myself as a Trotskyist struggling against
        the obscenity of Stalinism. I came across Situationism
        and 'Socialisme ou Barbarie', was deeply impressed,
        but wasn't confident enough to escape from the security
        blanket offered by Lenin and Trotsky, but I never
        stopped thinking completely.  I never became the absurd
        generalisation proposed by Ilan and Harald, the absolute
        living counter-revolutionary!

Nobody gets reduced to that, if not "history" plays them a
trick with placing great power (over others) in their hands,
and the "historical forces" compel them to take part in acts
they really never imagined they were capable of.

I always try to keep apart individuals - who always will
have a human potential - from the organisations they belong
to. When all too many after joining the International
Socialists here begin talking like Fascists, or the
Stalinists of the seventies: that it (for some meta-
physical cause) was neccessary to shot these workers here
and those workers there, for so many million peasants to
starve to death (while exporting grain) and so on, then
to behave in a sectarian way against an organization
that screws up people's mind is such a way, seems the only
rational and decent thing to do. The seem to think of them-
selves as some Job having to obey the voice of God.

By the way, Ilan has been a Marxist-Leninist himself, so
it is hardly that he thinks that people are uncapable of
changing.   


You continue:

>Together with a small group of comrades , brought closer by our experience
>in the British Miners Strike 84/85 and our contradictory waged labour
>(workers with young people employed by the capitalist State)., I've tried to
>make better sense of the world and to be a revolutionary - despite the yoke
>of my Leninist past. By way of the Italian, Dutch and German Communist Left,
>of Voline, of Cornelius Castioradis, of Harry Cleaver, of many a chat  and
>activity with anarchists and  leftists of many hues I think I'm an ageing
>revolutionary heretic of some integrity.

Great!

>I've no doubt that the Marxist-Leninist tradition has been an obstacle to
>the self-emancipation of the working class. This does not mean that those of
>us , who signed up to its dogma, are irretrievably doomed to be
>counter-revolutionary scum. To argue thus is bourgeois psychological crap of
>the first order. A major principle of libertarianism communism must be that
>folk can reflect, be self-critical.......that they are not the prisoners of
>their past: that people can change.

We perfectly agree. But for me these are reasons to take a more
sectarian stance, not towards individuals, but towards Leninist
parties and organisations.

Harald 
 
  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba-AT-online.no



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