File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/marxism-general.9707, message 196


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]



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