Date: Thu, 26 Dec 1996 16:29:38 +0100 (MET)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: M-G: Reply to Vladimir on Lima, Lenin, "unsustainable" Japs


Vladimir, you wrote on 25.12 
(and for references, see also my "UNITE Infos" #24 and #25
posted today, with some writings by Engels and Lenin):

>Rolf Martens wrote:

>> Not "into" conspiracies? I'm not saying that you yourself would
>> be engaging in some. But "not" knowing that conspiracies are
>> the life-blood of imperialism and social-imperialism, that's
>> a joke for someone with your background, I must say. You'd be
>> a little more "excused" if you were a Swede....
>
>I have an impression that we're arguing about words rather than
>concepts and ideas. When I say that I am not into this conspiracy-
>centered sense of history - which I think you express in this 
>discussion - 

I don't think I've been expressing a "conspiracy-centred sense of
history", in this discussion (on the Lima hostage-taking action) or
elsewhere. I've been pointing out that those progammes of the
present-day main reactionaries of the world which i.a. are being
camouflaged by such terms as "Agenda 21" and "sustainable
development" - which you seem to agree with me is a cover term
for an extremely reactionary, anti-industrial policy - constitute a
massive attack against the workers and the oppressed peoples.

They are a sign of the utter rottenness of the entire international
economic and political system of today. For instance, that system
has come to *hate to the utmost* the most superior energy source,
nuclear energy, the peaceful utilisation of which Linus Pauling in
the 1950:s (just to mention one instance of this) pointed to as 
mankind's greatest discovery (in the technical field at least) since
the controlled use of fire. 

And the system's main upholders today are unfolding massive
campaigns against all other comparatively modern and effective
energy sources too, oil, natural gas, even hydropower, because
they fear that industrial-technological development will favour the
rise of a revolutionary workers' mass movement.

Marx said on that even 140 years ago, in a speech in London in
1856 (which I've posted in German and English on the Net, as
#5 of my Info series): "Steam, electricity and the self-acting mule
were revolutionaries of a rather more dangerous character than
the very citizens Barbes, Raspail and Blanqui." Today this fear
is incomparably more developed within the governing circles 
of the bourgeoisie, of course.

It's above all when I've been pointing to the corresponding
actions by the bourgeois leaders as a *"green" warfare* against
the workers and the masses of people that I've been accused
by some people of advocating "conspiracy theories". Those
people obviously think the various massive anti-industry campaigns
(which have nothing to do with any sincere wish to improve the
environment, as far as their instigators are concerned) stem from 
some "grass root environmentalists".

But those things of course have that definite *class struggle back-
ground* I'm pointing at, although of course you might call them
(most massive) "conspiracies" too, if you want to. Such a term 
is a little misleading since it implies their being cabals concocted 
by a small number of people at certain meetings etc, which in 
general in this connection is not the case. This is why the seemingly
naive opponents of the exposing of the true motives behind certain
phoney "environmentalist" campaigns are using precisely that
word, "conspiracy", too, in order to try to discredit such exposure.

But then there are other things too, under imperialism (respectively,
under the rule of the reactionaries in the world)  that may be
called "conspiracies". One such phenomenon was pointed to by
Engels more than 100 years ago, in an article which I've just
now posted as "UNITE! #24en". I've been suggesting that it's
quite possible that the ongoing hostage-taking in Lima is an action
of that kind. I've stressed that I *don't know* whether it is.

>In this particular
>case, you immediate verdict that the embassy action is a such a trivial
>conspiracy works, among other things,  to avoid a discussion of really
>significant issues pertaining to this incident.

If you read my postings again, you can see that I never pronounced
such a "verdict" but only a *suspicion* in that direction, motivated by
some things that you're discussing below.

>> An action of a kind that's rarely if ever likely to produce positive
>> results for the masses. When did the Russian Bolsheviks, for instance,
>> who rightly still are famous in the world for their proletarian tactics
>> (not that they didn't have their negative sides, too, even the
>> Bolsheviks), ever engage in such an action? And the Chinese 
>>communists,
>> likewise well-known for their principled methods?
>> 
>> This is an action of a typically anarchist-Trotskyite kind.
>
>The Bolsheviks used the whole gamut of tactics and forms of struggle.
>Lenin himself used hostage-taking during the civil war consistently and 
>widely. Thousands of hostages were executed by his orders.

That was news to me, Vladimir. And I suppose you know more about
these things than I do, so I don't doubt that you're correctly informed
on this. But I still hold that hostage-taking is not a good method. The
later Chinese communists, for instance, had as one of the rules of
discipline within their Liberation Army (approximately; I don't have the
exact wording): "Do not maltreat prisoners". I think that was a good
rule. It would apply to the shooting of hostages too, wouldn't it, 
precisely the thing the so-called MRTA is now threatening to do.

>Nor Lenin rejected such forms as individual terror, armed expropriations,
>and any forms of guerilla action ("industrial and agrarian terror").

You're right in so far as the fact that Marxists of course must
acknowledge the necessity of *terror* in certain circumstances, for
keeping the bourgeoisie down and beating it, in the course of 
revolutionary war and under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

>His classical work on this topic is the 1906 article "Guerilla War." If
>Rolf and Karl get aquainted with it, they will find Lenin ridiculing
>the arguments of "learned marxists" that sounded VERBATIM like their own
>90 years ago. 

I've just now posted some excerpts from that article, Vladimir, in my
"UNITE! Info #25en" in 2 parts, i.a. to this list. Your suggestion that 
I and others study it (again) was a good idea. But my and Karl's
recent arguments did NOT "sound VERBATIM" like those which Lenin
ridiculed 90 years ago. I have not kept any part of Lenin's argument
(against those who  were then against guerilla warfare) out of those
excerpts I posted. Please see for yourself. Lenin did ridicule a certain
false "argumentation" at that time with what some called "anarchism,
Blanquism and terrorism", that's true. But I hold that my and Karl's
agruments were *not* in the vein of those people's, 90 years ago.
And there was nothing directly, on principle, on the question of
hostage-taking, in that article of Lenin's either.

>One can also add that while ruthlessly
>fighting SRs politically, the Bolsheviks and Lenin personally always
>recognized the revolutionary sacrifice of their best fighters, like
>Sazonov, Kaliaev, Spiridonova, Savinkov, and others. It is well-known 
>that not only Left SRs but even their most "terroristic" split group
>of the "Maximalists" participated in the Soviet government and the 
>soviets. It goes without saying, that any personality of the Russian
>revolutionary movement who would call "reactionary" a terrorist act
>against representatives of the ruling class would have been finished
>politically for ever both in the eyes of the parties and the people. 

Yes, as far as actions *genuinely* intended to hit at the reactionaries,
this would have been so. But you see, Vladimir, that there were, and
in the present world still are, actions of *another* kind too, *tricks*
that various reactionaries are using, and are trying to camouflage as
"revolutionary actions", but which in reality have *exact opposite* aims
and effects. It seems you are quite unaware of this phenomenon after
all? Then you can learn a little about it from that article by Engels
I brought in my "UNITE! Info #24en", posted just recently.

>Against this historical background, the opinions of Karl and Rolf are
>revealing and worthy of taking note by those outside of the 
>conventional western-european left, its mentality and prejudices. 

I think it's the other way around, Vladimir, that it's your (true or 
only feigned?) complete ignorance of certain, as you'd call it perhaps,
"trivial" methods of reactionary conspiracy that's worthy of being
taken note of by others. Well, you wouldn't be alone in such
ignorance, if it's real. There are lots of other such (genuinely?)
"professionally naive" person in the various phoney"Marxist"
organizations of today. I did think (see above) that as a Russian,
you wouldn't be likely to be all that naive on these things, because
of the particular, and publicly quite well-known, penchant which both 
the old and also the new Russian tsars always had for such cloak-
and-dagger stuff.

>> Because Robin Hoods are bloody ineffective, that's why. This
>> "cheering up" stuff doesn't work the way you say it does. That idea
>> is really one of underestimating the intelligence of the masses.
>> The Peruvian peasants may not have much education etc; I doubt that
>> they are very much impressed by this really essentially bourgeois TV
>> stunt.
>
>To underestimate the intelligence of the masses is precisely what 
>you and Karl do when you ascribe to them the same attitude toward
>the bourgeois media, the same type of sensibility that the middle class
>has. For that, workers and peasants are just too much in touch with the 
>reality and everydayness of their oppression.  They know well that
>their immediate oppressors are just pawns, slave-drivers and semi-
>slaves themselves; that the real masters of their fate are beyound
>their reach, a stone, a knife, even a bullet. So when they see that
>a whole bunch of these invisible masters are caught unawares - while
>eating a meal which cost as much as a slave's year worth of meals, 
>and eating it in a house "for six" that accomodates 400 -  and 
>held at a gun point shitting in their pants, the good workers and 
>peasants of Peru think: Well, perhaps, justice is possible in this
>world, after all. And its not in God's hands only. They say the man who's
>made it happen was just a simple textile worker. 
>
>This is also a dialectics, but of entirely different sort than Karl's.

I still think those Peruvian workers and peasants whom neither of us so far 
have asked will realise perfectly well that neither God nor that "Godly
heroic" textile worker (is such he is?) are helping them very much to
get out of their situation of exploitation and oppression. For one thing,
that hostage-taking doesn't really hit at the *main* people responsible,
does it?

>One detail seems to have fascinated Rolf to such extent that he presses it
>on us message after message. 
>
>>Isn't it fishy that the US ambassador left
>>30 minutes before it all started? That is, mustn't one suspect
>>that it's a manoeuvre by some string-pullers who have some
>>specific aims in a specific situation, for instance: Diverting
>>attention from the (main) real insurrection, that led by the PCP,
>>or perhaps giving the Japanese rivals (to the US) in Peru some
>>extra problems?
>
>Let's see how likely these "specific aims" are? 
>
>To divert attention? But one cannot divert something that is not. Since
>the plotters are Yankies, the plot makes sense only if the Yankee press
>has been swept by the flood of revolutionary news from Peru. Now, I live 
>in the Yankee country, read three major newspapers daily, reasonably
>interested in international politics to browse half a dozen leading 
>journals on it, watch CNN and other major networks every evening, regularly
>listen to All Things Considered, and I do not recall a single mentioning of 
>Peru, let alone PCP for at least half a year. How likely is it that the US
>"string-pullers" - some of the most notable suckers in these things in the 
>world (and who are well aware of this) - would undertake the enourmous risk
>involved in such a provocation just to deflect the non-existent public's 
>attention from something non-existent in the mainstream media? I leave it 
>up to the common sense of the list members to decide.

It's true that the "mainstream media" *have* been very silent on Peru in
the latest 6-12 (or more) months. *But* there are not so few people who
*don't* get their only news from those media any more, and who don't
trust them at all either or consider *them* as the "point of orientation".
Those interested in revolution and having Net access make up one group of
such people, for instance. This is not unimportant.

>Now, the "Japanese rivals." I admit I don't know anything about the 
>presumed competition between US and Japan in Peru. Clearly, it has to be 
>super-atrocious for US to resort to such extraordinary plot suggested by 
>Rolf. But let us use a bit of our common sense. Nobody can deny that the 
>US-Japan alliance has a tremendous strategic significance for the US as 
>global superpower. To put this alliance in jeopardy because of some local 
>competition in a small peripheral >country? One must be mad to do such a 
>thing. 

That's not such a bad point you're making here, Vladimir. *But* in the 
first place, there *is* a not unimportant element of imperialist rivalry 
between the US superpower and (militarily quite weak but economically 
rather strong) Japan, a rivalry that doesn't extend only to the 
admittedly comparatively small country Peru either.

And another thing, which I only thought of just now (on this), is the 
fact that there's a quite sharp conflict between the main ruling circles 
of the USA, on the one hand, and those of Japan, on the other, on the 
questions of that which I've been calling "green" warfare. Or in other 
terminology over the programmes of so-called "sustainable development" 
etc, i.e. the global anti-industrial programmes. *This* is *not* really 
an inter-imperialist conflict either but is essentially a conflict between 
the *most* reactionary parts of the bourgeoisie in the world and some *not* 
so extremely reactionary.

For instance, precisely Japan is a country that still in important respects
is holding on to, and is advocating the use of modern techologies such as
nuclear energy, which is something positive, as seen from the standpoint
of the proletariat. The (main) US imperialists are doing all they can to
*kill* (peaceful) nuclear energy (and certain other modern things) in the
world. *Here* there is one qiute important conflict between the main UU
bourgeoisie and the main Japanese one. And this conflict may well be
one reason for the US' trying, even rater despreately, to involve the
Japanese bourgeoisie in some difficulty or other, for instance, one
such as they're involved in right now on the hostage-taking in Lima.
 
>And even if we allow for a fit
>of temporary madness on the part of the US ruling class, is it possible that
>they were so mad that intentionally to uncover their own plot before the
>Japanese? For if Rolf and that smart historian were able to crack the plot
>so easily, the Japanese - who are no less intelligent - would certainly do
>too.  In other word, wouldn't it be a sheer madness for the Yankee plotters
>to remove their ambassador from the building "just half an hour" before the 
>attack "as if they knew about it." And what would be the purpose of this? 
>To save the ambassador? No one, even Rolf could believe even for a >moment
>that the life of some ambassador can be of any concern for the 
'string->pullers'.

No, Vladimir, "even" I don't believe that it could be the question of its
ambassador's life that US imperialism would be taking into
consideration - *if* now it's the one that's behind this thing,which I
have NOT said I "know", only that I see some reasons to *suspect*.
But there would be a *political* reason for the US rulers to remove
their ambassador beforehand, if they were organizing this action
behind the scene. With a US ambassador taken hostage too, there
would be clamour in certain circles for the USA to intervene directly,
which on the other hand would be an uncomfortable thing for the
US imperialists to undertake, since precisly they are so partcularly
infamous precisely in Latin America (for instance). "Better" for them,
*if* they should be involved in the planning of the hostage-taking
(which I repeat I *don't know* whether they are or not) to *stay away*
>from the develpoing situation and *let others deal with* that 
(for some) uncomfortable business. 

>So this is out of question. 

Nope. So it is *not*.

>But it's also impossible that they intentionally
>betrayed and endangered the strategic alliance by removing this guy. Two
>impossibilities. Ergo: something wrong not with the Yankees but with Rolf's
>imagination. 

Sorry, Vlad. Your reasoning it is that there is something wrong with here.
Probably because of some things (mentioneda bove) on which you don't 
have sufficient information. 

>To give a sense how real police conspiracy or provocation works, I will simply 
>cite without any comments a few paras from yesterday's New York Times, one of 
>the most respectable instruments of "class conspiracy" in this country.

Which I'll snip here. I think I already do have some knowledge of how
certain police conspiracies or provocations (on the national or 
international level) work, in part from such articles as the one by Engels 
I just posted, in part also from my own (in part rather direct) experience 
here in (supposedly) "quiet sleepy" Sweden - about which more some 
other time perhaps.

Rolf M.



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