Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 12:29:26 +0200 (MET DST) From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens) Subject: M-G: UNITE! Info #21en: 2/5 Debate with Olaechea, '96 VII UNITE! Info #21en: 2/5 Debate with Olaechea, '96 VII [Sent: 27.10.96] 2/5 Do c. Adolfo & PCP need lessons from individuals? [14.07.96] [Continued from part 1/5] 3. WHERE DO YOU RISK LANDING IF YOU ACT ACCORDING TO THE PRINCIPLE: "WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE LESSONS FROM INDIVIDUALS"? The underlying idea behind such a "principle" is of course, that you'll consider something as important only if it's stated by or supported by some organised forces or other, which thus at laest on the surface may appear to carry more weight with them, and if something at a given point in time is stated by only one individual or perhaps a few individuals, then you don't think this is anything that should be taken much into account. I suspect that it was such thinking that landed the PCP together with Avakian and his "RCP" of the USA and the other organizations which supported this "RCP", in its signing of the phoney"Marxist", in reality reactionary, "Declaration of the RIM" in 1984, a declaration which, most unfortunately, the PCP still today is supporting. I don't know whether the PCP really reasoned like this. At any rate, whether it did or not, such thinking, such a "principle" as "we're not going to listen to such things as are said by merely a few individuals; we'll support them if they have some larger organized forces behind them but only then", that's a typically petty-bourgeois line of thinking. The petty-bourgeoisie wavers beteween supporting the proletariat and supporting the bourgeoisie. As a class, it seeks support for its interests and asks itself: Which one is the stronger of the two? In fact the proletariat is the stronger. But petty-bourgeois forces, or such forces which haven't left petty- bourgeois thinking behind them entirely, don't always see this. In the early '80:s, the PCP - which I hold to be a revolutionary party and whose armed struggle against the reactionary regime in Peru absolutely is favouring the international proletariat - was seeking international support for its struggle. The Avakianists offered such support. They had several - rotten - organizations behind themselves. The only thing the PCP had to do in return for their support, they said, was to sign their rotten declaration and thus in this respect help them oppose the international proletariat. The "RIM Declaration", that's a kind of "Gotha programme", only even much worse. I know that you and other comrades in London from the start expressed grave doubts about the Avakianists. That IMO is to your credit. But the error was committed anyway. The PCP signed. And your 27.06 posting seems to confirm that you still haven't seen that it *was* and *is* a serious error, although you also did write (as I quoted above): "We are not blind to these problems". To have gone together with the Avakianists into a united front, for instance for support of the people's war in Peru, while not coalescing with them, while not selling out on principle, that would have been quite another matter and would, as far as I can judge today, have been correct. And you, comrade Adolfo, in some documents on the struggle within the "RIM" which you have earlier posted to this list, i.a. have quoted Lenin as saying that of course it's OK to enter into alliances with non-proletarian forces, as long as you don't sell out on principle. Only, in this case, that was precisely what the PCP did. For the "RIM" of course has never presented itself as a "united front" of some kind but has always pretended to be an entity for ideological and political leadership of the international proletariat, as its 1984 "Declaration" states. Those two different things, an international united front, on the one hand, and an organization for international leadership of the proletariat, on the other, of course one mustn't mix up with each other. In your 27.06 posting you at one point seem to me to be doing precisely this as well. I'll return to this question below. Nine years after 1984, in late 1993, the PCP (and others) did receive an important lesson, not from any individual but from a "movement", as the "RIM" calls itself. That was the lesson of the support by the "RIM" for the CIA/SIN "peace letters" hoax. It wasn't "just" the "CoRIM" that supported that hoax. It was the "entire RIM". In my 12.08.1994 article, later posted as "UNITE! Info #3en", which i.a. was a kind of "Critique of the Gotha Programme", you could say, directed against the "RIM Declaration", I also pointed to and attacked that statement (No. 2) of 26.12. 1993 signed by "the RIM" which was "In Support of the People's War in Peru" etc, etc, but which pointedly omitted all mention of that hoax and of the Oct '93 PCP CC declaration against it, and thus quite openly stabbed that CC and that entire people's war in the back. That lesson IMO absolutely should be taken into account now when we're preparing for the WMC. This was the "thanks" that, eventually, the PCP itself got for signing the "RIM Declaration". And so far, there still haven't been any sign (visible here) of a reaction by the PCP itself to those "thanks". I find this a little disquiteting. But it may simply be due to the reactionaries' very fanatical cutting-off of the communications. At any rate, it's absolutely wrong to think and say that you should not take any lessons from individuals, just because they're only individuals and don't have any organization behind them. The question of whether one should take lessons from other forces or not of course should depend on whether the ideas of those forces are seen to be correct or not, *not* on how organizationally big they are. The PCP "took lessons from" Avakian's "big" forces, and what were the results? Firstly, considerable damage to the international proletariat by the dissemination, during a long time and eventually in more than 20 languages, of the reactionary platform and the entire reactionary ideology of the "RIM", which thus were given the "all clear" by the PCP, a party which deservedly had and has a certain prestige. Secondly, the lesson to the PCP itself from late 1993 on, the stab in the back, which one might say that the PCP "deserved", too, but which the Peruvian people and other peoples have had to pay for. I do hope that you, comrade Adolfo, will realize the completely erroneous character of that "argument" about "not taking lessons from individuals", respectively, on "becoming isolated" (if one insists on the truth) which you repeatedly (on 10.06 and again on 27.06) have brought against me in our debate, and start representing instead the opposite standpoint on this, which is the only standpoint the proletariat can use. 4. DID THE BIG BLOW AGAINST THE 4-GANG IN CHINA IN OCT '76 MEAN THAT "A BALANCE WAS BROKEN"? On the question of the 4-Gang in China, which is a question closely connected to that of the whole ideology of the present- day Avakianists and to the subversion against the international communist movement since several decades back and still today, you wrote in your 27.06 posting: >So you admit already that with the overthrow of the "gang of >four" a balance was broken and the Right benefitted from the >word go! There is of course another explanation too Rolf, which >you may have overlooked. That the group of "perfect Maoists" >was not taken seriously at all!. That the way to settle issues >within the International Communist Movement was not by printing >instant letters of support from leaderships of Communist parties >which were proven idiots just a few weeks later, and, like in the >case of PCP, were therein criticised and thrown out. This is erroneous on several not unimportant counts. It's erroneous concerning recent history and it's erroneous on a matter of principle which is as least as important. In the above which you wrote there's even a rather silly suggestion on one matter, namely, the "German connection", about which I obviously know something and you just as obviously knew nothing, but this didn't stop you from coming up with a "possible explanation" which I "might have overlooked" - a bit superfluous, don't you think? But more on that below. The really serious thing about the above IMO is that you still seem to be unable to distinguish phoney"left" from genuine left. In my 17.06 reply to you I at some length pointed out how in your 10.06 you had confused those two. And here you're talking about a "balance" which, according to you, was "broken". It's not only that you've got your facts wrong; your whole reasoning on this point is muddled. I'll once more try to explain this whole matter to you. First of all: Is the matter of the 4-Gang of the 1970:s really still of importance today? It is, and there are several reasons for this. I'll give you one quite practical such reason. Suppose I were a boss within the CIA (and not merely a small-time operator and "provocautor" of that agency, as "Quispe" wrote I was, when he really started getting stuck in that quicksand) charged with the mission of preventing the genuine communists in the world today from ever gaining any influence in China, a country which has over a fifth of the entire population of the world and the country where the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, for instance, took place not too long ago. What would I try to influence those communists to do, by means of my infiltrated agents etc, in order to get them to discredit themselves completely to the Chinese people? The best thing obviously would be having them applaud the revisionist and fascist Deng Xiaoping regime in China. But this nobody in our pro-WMC camp, for instance, does - well, except for the PTB, the Partie du Travaille, Belgium, whose chairman happens to be a namesake of mine, Ludo Martens, and whose entire leadership in fact are relatively close to the Soviet revisionists, too, which doesen't speak too well for them. But the PTB is a rather large party and it's a good thing that, obviously, comrade Luis A.B. and others, probably with some help from you London comrades too, have managed to influence its "ordinary" members and light some fire under the asses of those PTB leaders so that they've even agreed to support the WMC. Preventing the WMC from squarely condemning the Deng Xiaoping regime they quite certainly will not be able to do. But a very effective "second-best" thing the communists could to in order completely to discredit themselves with the Chinese people, that would be, precisely, to support those other infamous and hated counter-revolutionary forces there of the quite recent past, the 4-Gang. Certainly the Chinese people have not forgotten the enormous crimes which *they* perpetrated. Any forces coming to them today and saying "We uphold the line of Mao Zedong and the 4-Gang!" would be quickly, completely and justly rejected by the Chinese. Just because many comrades today, among those who support the WMC, are so extremely badly informed about the elementary facts of recent history, those on China in the mid- '70:s for instance, because of the decades-long disinformation and brainwashing campaigns by the Avakianists and others, this doesn't mean that "ordinary people" are equally ignorant of all these facts. The crimes of the 4-Gang, and the great joy with which the Chinese people greeted their downfall in Oct '76, still are quite well known to many people not only in China but here in Sweden, for instance, too, as well as in Britain and in many other countries. You, comrade Adolfo, also wrote that you lived, as a grown-up person, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and thus you also remember the events in China in 1976 or at least that which was reported on them. Can you have failed to realize the fact of the massive, enthusiastic support by the Chinese masses for the big blow against the 4-Gang in October '76? The evidence for this fact is overwhelming. I've quoted only part of it in my series on the 4-Gang, but even that part should be sufficient - everyone can check on it and will find that it's the truth. [Continued in part 3/5] --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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