From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 00:54:37 +0000
Subject: Re: M-G: Albania: No responsibility, no slogans!


> Date:          Thu, 13 Mar 1997 00:15:29 -0500
> From:          Vladimir Bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
> Organization:  North Carolina State University
> To:            marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject:       Re: M-G: Albania: No responsibility, no slogans!
> Reply-to:      marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU


Vladimir wrote:

> Dave wrote:
> 
> > The LCMRCI article "Victory to the Albanian Uprising"  is based on
> > information coming from inside Albania.  It is true that the LCMRCI
> > is not present in Albania.   It is unlikely that any serious revolutionary
> > organisation is present in Albania. That cannot  stop revolutionaries
> > >from attempting to influence the course of struggle. Did not the Bosheviks
> > attempt to influence the course of the German Revolution? Who says
> > revolutionaries must not intervene where they are not present?
> > If as as result of lack of inside information, the analysis is wrong,
> > or the demands are wrong then that needs to be confronted directly and
> > urgently corrrected. It seems this  is Vladimir's purpose.
> 
> Yes. But above all, my point was that one cannot intervene if one is
> not present.  I protested not the attempt to do this, but the absolutely
> inadequate, purely formalistic way of such "intervention." Dave's analogy
> is misleading.  Russian Bolsheviks *were* present in Germany, if only
> because there were German Bolsheviks there.  And this is not the case in Albania.
> Can we imagine Lenin in the Kremlin sending correct lines and slogans for Germany
> to nowhere and nobody in particular?
> 
It is true that without being present `intervention' is inadequate, 
but not formalistic.  To be that there would be absolutely no chance 
that any of the analysis and demands raised outside would be taken up 
inside Albania. How can we know that without making the attempt. That 
is to allow yourself to be trapped by a schematic view of what is 
necessary at a time when events are racing ahead of our capacity.
 You talk below of the measures you consider to be appropriate. 

> What is needed first and foremost is international
> solidarity in providing Albania and similar places with the most
> basic things: propagandist literature, equipment and channels for
> communication with the outside world, know-how of political
> organization, agitation, leaflet struggle ,etc. What is necessary is
> to plant the seedlings of future organizational forests, to connect
> them internationally, and let them grow.  And don't even think to
> create an International by debate in London or on the Net.  Like
> revolutions do not fall from the sky, but grow from the grass-roots
> of class struggle, so do Internationals. 
> 
All of these measures are necessary. But they are totally abstract 
measures unless you say what you want to happen in Albania. 
 The LCMRCI's statement is clearly putting forward an analysis on 
which the demands are based, not a list of dogmatic demands. Lets 
assume that this statement has already been read by a number of 
Abanians, if only on the internet - there are plenty of messages 
coming out.  Even so, this statement is worth 100 lists of measures 
you propose.  Why? because it confronts all the other political 
positions being debated in this rapidly developing uprising. 

Your list, says propaganda, but leaves the propaganda blank. Blank 
propaganda is no propaganda and leaves the field wide open to 
Berisha, the Socialists, regional warlords, the EU etc.
 
Your list says says channels of communication with the outside world. 
Who will you provide this equipment to so that they can communicate 
what to the `outside' world. Already the internet and maybe other 
channels are open. What is the purpose of further channels?

Your list says "knowhow"  of political organisations; agitation, 
leaflet struggles.  Fair enough. What political organisations do you 
propose to help build?  We suggest workers councils. What agitation? 
We suggest agitation around a set of demands such as "Down with 
Berisha"; "for a workers militia"; "for a Constituent Assembly"; and 
"for a workers government"for example. Would your demands and 
agitation be different?  The reason I ask is that no "knowhow"  you 
suggest will be any good unless you have politically won support for 
particular, organisations, agitation, and leaflets.  


> Then why do you call it  <<"red" uprising>>?
 
I can't answer that: I did not write the article. The "red" in quotes 
suggests that it is not really red anyway. 

>  And for which country is  intended this line:

> <<Revolutionary communists should demand that the socialist and toilers
> organisations break the coalition with the capitalist and pro-imperialist
> parties?
 > It's for any country in the world, which is to say--for none. And why don't
 >the LCMRCI call these organization by their names? Rhetorical question! 

I would have thought it obvious in an article on Albania that 
these demands apply to Albania.  Dont you agree that workers should 
demand that the Socialists etc break with the bourgeoisie? Are you 
for a the opposition popular front that will do a deal with Berisha?  
The article explains how the opposition comprises a popular front.  
It is important to demand that the Socialists who claim to represent 
workers break from such a popular front to expose them as collaborators,
 and free workers to fight for their own revolutionary workers party and
 a workers government.  

> > The LCMRCI is not offering Trotskyist slogans that  are
> > irresponsible in  the situation in Albania. They are the demands that a
> > revolutionary vanguard in Albania would have to raise to try stop the
> > uprising being contained  or disarmed by some deal between Berisha and
> > the Socialists, and to increase its chances of becoming a consciously anti-capitalist
> > uprising.  The fact that there is no revolutionary vanguard with an active presence
> >  in Albania is unfortunate. But the only way this can be rectified is for all
> >  serious revolutionaries to debate what is the corrrect programme and to
> > collaborate inside and outside Albania to help create a revolutionary
> > leadership  and to prevent imperialist interventions.
> 
> These slogans are irrelevant, and what could be worse in politics
> than being irrelevant! And why is this obsession with slogans and
> demands, without anything to back them? <<We know that there is no
> revolutionary vanguard in Albania, but anyway let us imagine it existed:
> What kind of slogans would be correct in such case, comrades?>>  
> No debate in London, no correct programme invented in Wellington can
> replace a revolutionary organization in Albania, or somehow "rectify"
> the absence of it. 

Vladimir, it is usually the case that when you disagree with slogans 
- you say they are irrelevant - that you put forward your own 
slogans.  Admittedly they would come from the US where you are now, 
and probably not be backed immediately by your political comrades in Albania. 
But the alternative is to not offer any analysis or demands, and to let 
the imperialists and their lackeys win by default. 

Of course it is true that no programme formulated outside Albania can 
substitute for the absence of a revolutionary vanguard inside 
Albania. It is because there is no revolutioary vanguard that we know of 
in Albania, that it is all the more necessary to raise these demands internationally. 
This is the only way that international debate can develop the forces 
necessary to creat a  new revolutionary international that can build a
 vanguard not just in Albania but everywhere. 

Dave. 



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