Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:33:24 +0100
Subject: M-G: Re: Simon Bolivar Brigade


Louis P trots out his Nicaragua act again. Once more he tries to draw a
veil over the oppression of internationalist solidarity for the Nicaraguan
revolution by the petty-bourgeois nationalist Sandinista leadership by
lying and smearing. This time the lies and smears target Dave B as well as
myself. There is not one word of class analysis or internationalist
perspective in Louis's contribution, it all boils down to the usual turf
thing, these are goodies, those are baddies, and we all know who's who
don't we, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. He also gets aereated about the
question of evidence regarding the Simon Bolivar Brigade, and complains
about a lack of books and independent intellectual corroboration, implying
that Trotsky put books and independent intellectual corroboration before
class analysis and political action by the party and the class. I'll return
to that some other time, and Louis'll have to stew in the meantime.

The main thing in his posting, of course, since he doesn't give a toss
about validity or evidence or any of the other things he claims to hold so
dear (if anybody has seen anything on these lists to indicate that Louis
has ever been influenced by logic, reasoned argument or evidence, let them
speak up!!) -- he only uses them the way Adolf-O uses Lenin quotes, as
clubs to stun opponents so he can get to work with his razor at closer
quarters -- is the following:


>Rodwell and Bedggood are no better than the sort of people who >testified
>against Trotsky in the Moscow trials who made wild claims >that he was a
>fascist agent. They felt comfortable swearing falsely >since the lies were
>calculated in their mind to help preserve >socialism. These claims about
>the Simon Bolivar Brigade are just as >wild as anything ever put forward
>by Vishinsky. They are not based on >truth, but on a heated imagination.

a) "Preserving socialism" was probably the last thing on the minds of the
poor devils/professional perjurors who testified this kind of thing in the
Moscow trials.

b) None of the poor devils could have felt comfortable about what they were
saying, whereas on the other hand the professional perjurors might have.

c) Louis is drawing a direct parallel between organized internationalist
working class solidarity, in the form of the Simon Bolivar Brigade, and one
of the most atrociously poisonous excrescences ever to foul the history of
the labour movement. Our history will remember him for this.

d) He trivializes the treachery, lies and brutality of the Moscow trials --
the desperate acts of a hated counter-revolutionary regime to strengthen
its control by way of terror and a criminal distortion of the revolutionary
history of October -- by making it a simple matter of opposition between
"truth" (independent intellectuals? books? pie-in-the-sky?) and "heated
imagination"! The Moscow trials were the result of "heated imagination"!!

Louis >< P really wants Marxists to swallow his line, that the Moscow
trials were the result of "heated imagination"!!! This makes Isaac
Deutscher look like a paragon of class-analytical Marxist virtue!

e) Louis is actually at the same time trying hard to get me and Dave into
bed with himself and Adolf-O, by bringing us on board the good ship
Expediency. If we are as good as the poor confused souls who testified
against Trotsky in the delusive belief that they were aiding the struggle
for socialism (Louis's implication, not mine), why, then we're no longer
pariah know-alls, are we?  We're just as lost as Gary M or any of the other
Stalinists-by-default hanging around the lists. And we're the same kind of
thuggish sectarian put-the-boot-in polemicists as Louis himself. So every
cloud has a *silver* lining -- in this case, exactly thirty pieces.



Louis should treat himself to a cultural experience and read the final
cantos of Dante's Inferno, depicting Cocytus the deepest circle of Hell,
the Traitors' Lake of Ice. He should pay particular attention to the
following:

        Noi eravam partiti gia da ello,
          ch'io vidi due ghiacciati in una buca,
          si che l'un capo all'altro era capello;
        e come 'l pan per fame si manduca,
          cosi 'l sovran li denti all'altro pose
          la 've 'l cervel s'aggiugne con la nuca ...

        [We had already left  him when I saw two frozen in one hole so
        that the one was a hood to the other, and, as bread is devoured
        for hunger, the one above set his teeth in the other at the
        place where the brain joins the nape ...
        (trans: J D Sinclair, OUP)]

This is for run-of-the-mill traitors, so to say, partly their own masters,
partly subordinate to the world-historical traitors being ground eternally
between the teeth of Satan.


As for Nicaragua, I'll start listening to Louis P when he uses a
perspective that includes more than rich and middle peasants, when he
realizes that both Cuba and the Soviet Union had real revolutionary
policies available as alternatives to the counter-revolutionary
demobilization they put into practice, and when he is able to see the
petty-bourgeois nationalist leadership of the Sandinistas for what it was
and is. Till then I'll just turn the hot air extractor up as far as it'll
go.

Cheers,

Hugh


PS Here's a brief account of the role of the Simon Bolivar Brigade by
Carlos, who was there when it happened. Since we've been through all this
before, I'll just quote his posting of 29 Feb 1996:



    The Internation Simon Bolivar Brigade *was not formed* with
    the task of "helping the workers and the landless to organize
    independent and combative trade unions."

    The ISBB was formed in 1978/79 to fight alongside the FSLN against
    Somoza's National Guard.  They did that and were very heroic.  Some
    of the streets in Managua still have the names of those
    internationalists who died there.

    The ISBB members, after Somoza and most of the National Guard fled
    the country, were active in defeating the first attempt of a
    counter-revolutionary armed revolt against the new government in
    Bluefields.

    They started to build tradeunions in the Zona Franca, later in
    Granada and Masaya. But this was a natural sub-product of its
    main reason to be formed in the first place.

    They were not *jailed* by the Sandinistas, but something worse.
    Because two detachments of the FSLN *refused* to act against the
    members if the ISBB, the FSLN invited the Panamenian National
    Guard to do so.  The Panamenian soldiers arrived in two transport
    planes and irrumped in a meeting between FSLN leaders and members
    of the ISBB (to which ISBB members were invited to *discuss* and
    instructed to come unarmed).  They Panamenian troops *kidnapped*
    the ISBB members and transported them in the planes under military
    custody to Panama.  There, they were jailed by the Panamenian
    government for a few days and expelled to different countries days
    later.

    The FSLN jailed one member of the IWL(FI) leadership who remained
    in Nicaragua for 45 days and freed him after an international
    campaign.  This was done days before the former Maoists and two
    groups of dissident FSLN members were going to reach political
    agreement with the Trotskyist to form a united organization.





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