File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/current, message 31


Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 03:28:20 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: Re: M-G: "Discussion" with/on Chris-B: More later


John B wrote, on 16.05:

(Rolf:)
>>Sorry, John B, you're overlooking one *crucial trick* on the
>>part of the enemies of the great majority of people.
>>
>>False-labelling.
>>
>>Those creeps are NOT "fellow Marxists".
>>
>>Ever heard of Bernstein?
>>Ever heard of Trotsky?
>
>Tho' i'm not exactly a Trotskyite, I would say that he was a Marxist, no
>matter what side you take on him.

He may have been at one time, though I'm inclined do doubt that
too. From a later point on, he became an enemy of the workers.
His name rightly is infamous among Marxist-Leninists. True,
there were and still are some errors on the part of several
of the latter (read: in the Stalin tradition) which need to be
rectified and which has helped the reactionary ideology of
Trotskyism to linger on. But that's the quite subordinate
side of things.


(Rolf, correcting now some misspellings - sorry:)
>>Ever heard of Crhushchev?
>>Ever heard of Brezhnev?
>>Ever heard of Liu Xiaochi in China?
>>Ever heard of Lin Biao in China?
>
>Ever heard of Stalin? But never mind...
>( I mean, he's why people wrongly associate socialism with dictatorship)

In the main, he should be supported. But see also avove.
>
>>That last-mentioned case was a particularly
>>instructive one. Lin B was actuallt named in the oficial
>>press in 1969 etc as Mao's "closest comrade-in arms"
>>and probable successor.
>>
>>Yet in 1971 he tried a coup, i.a, intended to murder
>>Mao Zedong.
>>
>>It failed. Some sucessors of his succeeded.
>>
>>With your primitive thinking John, the
>>revolutionaries will get nowhere except in
>>front of the machine guns of reaction.
>
>Your forgetting again, whatever you may think of the above people, most of
>them WERE Marxists- maybe Marxists in the wrong, but most did beleive in
>Marxism.

Fror Chris' sake, NO!

How on earth can you have reached such a conclusion?

There's some super-naivité on your part here.

Most "ordinary people" know very well about many cases of
*dastardly treason* by leaders or former leaders in the
workers' movement. This on various levels. They can
understand the very clear evidence against those crooks
I mentioned.

Would you care to try to explain how you have come to
believe in what you expressed by that sntence above?

>As an analogy, the fact that many capitalists considered Roosevelt a
>traitor sadly did not make him a socialist- he was just a different sort of
>capitalist

On that point, you're right.

>This tendency to label people 'traitors of the revolution' seems rather
>primitive to me- it's the reason the USSR had all those nice purges and stuff.
>It seems to me that a little democracy would have cut down on that a lot.
>People could express their disagreements by vote rather than by violence.
>  Sorry to bring up a beorgousie state, but despite sometimes very serious
>disagreements the USA has never had a cuop d'etat or anything like it.  Not
>that I'm advocating capitalism- I'm advocating democracy-capitalism is in
>fact the reason that American democracy isn't worth a whole lot.
> Combine Socialism AND democracy, see what ya get!

That's the old bourgeois prejudice here again. It would carry to
far if I were to try to explain it. But socialism always *was*
demorcary, for the majority, and capitalism always *was*
dictatorship, by a few over most people. You don't have to look
that far under the surface to see this.

Democracy: The Cultural Revolution in China was an excellent
example of it. There *were* grave deficiencies on the question
of actual democracy under the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union.
Those were deformations of that socialism - to put this whole
complicated matter, which still needs further investigation,
in rater simple terms, as well as I on my part can do this today.

Rolf M.



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