Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 23:41:17 -0400 From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki) Subject: M-G: COCKROACH! #78 COCKROACH! #78 A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Subscribtions are free at <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Now on line! Check out the Home of COCKROACH! http://www.algonet.se/~malecki How often this zine will appear depends on you! Back issues of Cockroach and my book at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Proyect and the "Trotskyists"! 2. Bordigists in sheeps chothing. Part 3 3. The Ireland debate... 4. Hillier's examples! ------------------------------------------------------- Proyect and the "Trotskyists"! In a new letter (two letters in two days, obviously Proyect must be feeling like a settler in a wagon train circle fighting off those horrible savages) Proyect lists up a number of people on this list and links them to various trends of thought which are surpose to represent how bankrupt "Trotskyism" is and renewing his lies about the "Trotskyists" never led anything which David replied to with some concrete examples of people and organizations claiming to be Trotskyist did have some mass influence. Yes, there are some very serious political differences in the various groups and trends claiming to be "Trotskyist". This can not be denied. They are linked to the complete historical domination of the Stalinist and Social Democratic domination in the workers movement especially since the end of world war 2, but also the victory of the Stalinists in the former Soviet Union in the Bolshevik Party. The political differences range over a large area of programmatic and political positions which in fact are vital to the victory or defeat of the world proletarian revolution. And many of these differences will have to be ironed out before and during the coming struggles which will be facing all of us. But Proyect who's best shot is cheer leading the FLSN and the Cubans while at home he is portraying some sort of Social patriotic "Yankee Doodle" socialism at best and more recently denying even the necessity or even possibility of revolutions on the North American continent and at the same time reaffirming his own role as recreating the "new left" of the sixties and seventies in some sort of anti-imperialist broadie coalition of progressive intellectual types around such astounding magazines as the New Left review. I mean really Proyect if anybody should be accused of doing nothing these days and even back then it must be the intellectual vanguard of the American left from Allen Ginsburg over the LP types who suck up to the Democratic Party to the "Independent Marxist" intellectuals who's at best during the roaring sixties were a chorus around the popular front and Social Patriotic slogans like "Bring the boys Home!" and sucking up to pro-imperialist democrats like Vance Hartke! What has the new left done since the war or before the war in America. Before the war it did not even exist it was more of the traditional political trends of the workers movement foremost Stalinists and the then Trotskyists SWP. During the war it was this large lump of shit on the universities who mostly were in to "Hell no we won't go" as they ran off to Canada and England like Clinton. After the war most got over their revolutionary fever and went on to careers in life and raising families. Albeit a small part like yourself stayed around and played the "radical marxist intellectual" writing for the rags who had a guilt ridden and slowly diminishing amount of subscribers until today. With the demise of Stalinism which was in fact the bottom political line of the new left politically represented in the popular front, single issuism and an un serious attitude to taking seriously the idea of building a really serious Trotskyist revolutionary alternative in the United States including the SWP which you were a member of at that time who turned being big and opportunism into breaking with its Trotskyist tradition and heading towards being a reformist party. And today are at best parroting around the same line as the various new leftists who were tailing either Mao, Che Chevara, or Hoxcha in Albania in the early 60ties, in hoping that they are going to with the Cuba question be the first on the new anti-imperialist bandwagon of the 90ties. A fucking pipedream by the way because the conditions for the new left coming again have about a bigger chance then a snowball in hell. It was a movement which was based on specific conditions of post war economic boom, connected to the cold war and education explosion on the universities and the political forces which were dominant then. Today the Stalinists are dead and the Social Democracy is on its way to committing political Harri Kari against its once historical base the workers movement. This leaves a situation for the Trotskyists to intervene in a situation which they never before been faced with. A vacuum of leadership in the workers movement which the last time was in fact perhaps in 1918 when the Social Democracy declared its bankruptcy before the world. The other historical event which could be seen to the equivalent is the recent demise of the Soviet Union. At best Proyect you have the politics of the New Left Review to offer as the answer to our problems. What a fucking joke. The trotsyists have and arsenal of historic experience and political theory connected both to Stalinism and Social democracy, not to mention all of the twists and turns of many of the groups claiming to be Trotskyist. But the difference is that Trotskyism is not personalities, nor in fact size, you know how big you are shit. It is the program and tactics of world revolution and the historical experience of the Bolshevik Party in Russia and the history of the Left opposition and the documents of the Fourth International. How many numbers of New Left review can you base your political future on Proyect? Oh this is so fucking funny... Yes, once again the so called "Trotskyists" have their ideological and political struggles. And they certainly will continue until we find some clarity in the formation of the future revolutionary Communist International... But what has Proyect and his Ilk? For Proyect it appears that its the New Left Review and others perhaps the collected works of Stalin or Mao..Well time will tell Proyect. But one think for sure.. As a realist and a dialectical historical thinker I can honestly say THAT YOU ARE IN DEEP SHIT WITHOUT A PADDLE.. In fact any time you even try and get serious politically you are forced to draw out your SWP experience in order to say anything coherent..And you are talking about political sects and isolation of the various groupings that claim to be "Trotskyist". Proyect at best is and American centered new leftist who in order to give us a International flavor sometimes mentions struggles in the western hemisphere mainly Nicaragua and Cuba. Because the American new left is just that. And isolated little sect who can't even see the other side of the ocean never mind the rest od the world. Where is Proyect on the discussions on Europe or Africa or China. Yeah he is strutting around name dropping and talking about the next cyber seminar which will provide though for the New Left review crowd. So touching. In fact Proyect is so fucking isolated he did not even know what was going on in his own fucking city with the squatters and when Jerry informed him he immediately jumped on the wrong side of the barricades! And he talks about the "Trotskyists".. Sorry Proyect you desperate "sect" letters about the trotskyists shows that in many cases we are talking about both small groups and large groups with newspapers and books and members in a number of countries around the world. Many of them at least trying to intervene in the daily class struggles and trying to move things forward. Despite the political deviations and differences they are ten times if not a hundred times better then the aging new leftists who are waiting around at a revivalist meeting! Hugh's recent observation about you Louis as you see the turf you once thought you owned here being invaded by more and more militants like Yoshie or Utica Rose and the new David over from his entry operation on the LP are a both enfreshing and dangerous turn for Proyect. Now Proyct you can either use the brain you have to make M-I and interesting place or you can take a dive like "Comrade Aldolfo" albeit into the deadend nostalgia of American new leftist isolationism which is far more *real* then anything you are talking about in regards to "Trotskyists" from various political trends on this list.. Warm Regards Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- Bordigists in sheeps chothing. Part 3 At last Neil thinks that he has the "trotskyists" pinned down on the former degenerated Soviet Union and the deformed workers states in eastern Europe. This time he takes Hugh to task over "nationalizations". Neil sees no difference in the "nationalisations" in the Soviet Union nor in the former deformed workers staters of east Europe when compared with the "welfare" states like Sweden where the Social Democrats in their peaceful march towards "Socialism" nationalized parts of or all of certain industries in a country which has seen neither war or revolution. Now even a state capitalist like Neil who openly admits his sympathies with the Bordigists, and sees trade unions as the enemy of the working class, and things like elections are just a bunch of bougeois hokus pocus wants to take us into some pretty far out generaizations in regards to "nationalisation" of the means of production. Neil as always is driving with huge black patches over his eyes I will try and explain the differences between the former Soviet Union (a degenerated workers state) the eastern European countries (deformed workers states) and Sweden a capitalist imperialist state (with a pro capitalist Social Democratic leadership.) to him and others who are coming on to the list. The former Soviet Union which Neil paints up from its inception as state capitalist was and is the home of the first and only victorious October Revolution led by the Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky among others. The nationaized property forms came out of a victorious revolution by the workers and peasants with guns in hand who not only took power but confiscated in the name of the Soviets and the Bolshevik party just about everything in the form of banks, large industries and the land. Naturally in backward Russia even with the leadership of the Bolshevik party when it was still in the hands of people like Lenin and Trotsky the nationalized property forms in the face of 4 years of imperialist war and the following imperialist encirclement of the new Russian republic, was hardly the first place that even Lenin or Trotsky would have liked to start the long march towards Communism via the transitional state of the then new Soviet republic. But that is what they had to work with and the ensuing NEP and five year plans must be seen in light of the realities that the young workers republic in "backward" Russia had to work with. But to come as the state capitalists do and write off the Soviet Union must be seen not only in their bankrupt economic critism's but in that it in no way has any concrete connection to the concrete realities that the Bolsheviks were faced with at the time. But is the ideas of a petty bougeois opposition trying to paste theory onto concrete revolutionary reality that the Bolsheviks were faced with. In fact it is just a cheap shot in order to avoid the key political question of rolling up your sleevews after October 1917 and trying to extend October to one or more advanced industrial country as the Leninists try to do knowing that the economic pre-eqiisites in Russia were not very bright. But that was the revolution they had and what is it they were exactly surpose to do in the situation.Well they rolled up there sleeves and began to work under some rather extreme circumstances. One can say the right or wrongs about the NEP or this or that five year plan but the fundemental political and economical superstructure was the dictatorship of the Proletariat. Now the post war deformed workers states in East Europe. If one were to believe Neil it was this fucking rosy "peaceful" march by the Red Army though the forest on a picnic Sunday outing and not a military occupation after four years of war that was never seen the like of in destruction before on the European continent. In fact reality was the fact that there was not to much industry left in tact at the end of the war! So the nationalization of industries that Neil talks about is a fucking ghost. Although the industries that were left were hardly nationalised but occupied and then physically moved inside the borders of the Soviet Union! Especaially in East Germany. So in fact the so called nationalization Neil is talking about is in fact the military victory and occupation of these states by the forward marching Red Army. Connected to and entrenched paranoid Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union who rather then build up a new Europe on the basis of proletarian power and who saw all foreigners as the enemy imported and transplanted many of the organistional forms direct from the Soviet Union on to these occupied territories. It was the paranoid political superstructure of Stalinism that hardly was interested in "state capitalism" at all but the physical removal of political opponents and whole industries to the Soviet Union that was the living reality. Although in certain areas Checkoslavakian for example industries that were left in tact (arms industy) developed because of the industrial skills of the checks rather then any kind of planned state capitalism by the leaders in the Kremlin. And even if it was! It was and is certainly defensible against *real* imperialism in regards to the overall situation at the end of the war.. But for our Borgidist in sheeps clothing none of the above makes any diffence. He lumps it all in to his state capitalist bag and marches off into the desert. However their is a difference beteen Neil and lets say the state caps that used this debate at the beginning of the war in order to desert the neccessity of defending the Soviet Union against imperialism despite the Stalinists in the war, like the Shactmanites who were a petty bougeois opposition in the then Trotskyist SWP of Cannon's. For Neil is one would say a clone version of the Schactmanites who for entirely different reasons came about this (storm in a waterglass) debate on nationalisations and state capitalism to avoid the revolutionary responsibility of taking a fundemental defencist line on this question. Sort of like the "August 1918" demarcation line for the Schamanites and Neil who a number og generations later is using the "state capitalist" line in order to justify his ultra left line on just about everything which makes him become and unconcious ally of capitalism and the imperialist bougeisie! What I mean is that the Schamanites would be saying today about the demise of the Soviet Union "good" as they wipe the sweat of fear" confronting their own boubeoisie's at home with the revoltionary line of defeatism. Whereas Neil is saying "good" now that we got the Soviet Union and East Europe out of the way it is time to take on the "reactionary" trade unions. Ultimitely to different lines of approach but in the end winding up on the wrong side of the barricades of the working class. Finally the "nationalisations" in the "welfare" states like Sweden under the reformist Social democracy and Keynesian politics of the post war model- This is hardly the same as the nationalisations in the former Soviet union and Eastern European States described above. But in fact came on the advances of the Red Army and the possibility of the nationalised property forms of Stalinism spreading into the countries still controlled by imperialism and their armies. In fact keynesian politics was nothing else but a platform to fool the working class and at the same time use tax money to save what was left of capitilism and imperialism on this continent after the destruction of the war and the occupation of Europe by the Red Army and the nationalised property forms of the Stalinists who despite their counter-revolutionary political line countered with bureaucratically deformed nationalisations based on the Red Army and the Stalinist bureaucracy rather then any capitalist class...And in peaceful Sweden it was not even that but but the question of a historic compromise with Social Democracy in order to by time until the disastrous situation on the European continent would change in the favor of imperialism again. However all of the nationalisations whether they were in the former Soviet Union based on October. If they were in the former Eastern European deformed workers states because of the military occupation of the Red Army. Or the nationalisations here in Sweden which came under more peaceful forms.. All of them for Communists are DEFENSIBLE as a higher forms of organisation form in the interests of the proletariat!Despite there being bureaucratically deformed in the former degenerated and deformed workers states they were one of the pillars which stopped the Stalinists from handing it over to the imperialists in the 40ties instead of now in the 80ties. And in the capitalist-imperialist Sweden they were reforms that the workers understood were going in their direction and not the otherway. Naturally this does not mean that there is a Stalinist stages of bureaucratic degenerations and deformations are neccessary as a rule on the wat to Communism. Exactly the opposite they are and were road blocks endangering the great gains made by October! Now a question to our state capitalists who have for weeks now been going on with this storm in a water glass debate. Why is it that it is just those nationalisation forms that you critisize the "Trotskyists" for defending against imperialism just those things that the real imperialists are going after in not only in the former degenerated and deformed workers states, but in imperialist Sweden is just those type of nationalised property forms? Gulp Gulp guys! Can you deny that their is a difference? Why is it exactly these forms that the restorationists are attacking all along the line? I mean you been running around here for weeks telling us it is all the same shit. Well, obviously the "real" capitalists and imperialists just don't agree with the state capitalist of the "left" on M-I as elsewhere. Because it it just these nationalized property forms that they are taking back all across the line.... Now this must say something even to the brightest state cap "leftist" about the rotten political line they have been hawking for one reason or another since the late 30ties! Sorry if I find this stuff hard to believe. But then again I believe that Trotsky and Cannon for example were fundementally right about the state capitalists. Warm Regards Bob Malecki ------------------------------------------------------- The Ireland debate... The debate between Martin and Gary shows quite clearly the dilema of the so called left on Ireland. If Martin's latest could be classified as a sickening apologogy from the left of tailing Blair and his style of reformism without a gun, all for the sake of "unity" of the Irish working class and backhandedly arguing some kind of perspective of a peaceful road to socialism over the Irish working class being united under the British flag. Then Gary's Mao-Stalinist approach of uncritical support for the stage theory, popular front politics of the IRA with a gun is just as sickening. In fact the only real difference between the two combatants is which wing of reformism/popular frontism one capitulates too.. Quite funny and quite tragic to watch on this list. Niether of these "leftists" have a program or tactics which can realize the *revolutionary* unification of not only the Irish working class, but the British working class to fight for power, including the right of and Irish workers republic in a federation of Socialist states in the Britsh isles. Both capitulate in one form of another to either the English imperialists in the form of Martin's left wing tailing of Blairs "new" labor. Or Gary who capitulates to Irish petty bougeois nationalism and popular front politics with a gun. Niether want to fight for independent proletarian class struggle for power. But all kinds of opportunist suicidal combinations that will lead the working class down another dead end. And Gary's views on the "national" question are just and old hashed up version of Stalinist politics without claiming the source of his bankrupt line. So despite Gary's obvious Irish "I don't give a bloody fuck" temper coming out again he nor Martin can show the way forward out of the dead end that all these rounds of peace deal negoiations on the one hand and protracted city guerrilla warfare on the other, "reformism with a gun", which always in the final analisis mean stabbing the working class in the back, can show the way out. Only a Bolshevik/Leninist Trotskyist Vanguard Party with a program like the International Communist League has for Ireland including the "National" question will be able to intervene and change the course of the dead end left who time and again! either wants to make a deal with British Imperialism or some popular front- petty bougeois nationalist combinationism connected to a stage theory of revolution. So despite the hard words between Martin and Gary they in fact are united. The only difference being that Martin wants to tail Blair's reformist/pro imperialist line and Gary wants to tail a petty bougeois nationalist/popular front/reformist combination.. Warm Regards Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- Hilliers examples! Hillier's examples Unionist violence against Chatholic areas in Ireland prove nothing! In fact it just shows one side, in this case the unionist, terror attacks against Chatholic areas. What it does show also is Hillier's inability to find a way out of this communal bloodbath..His only line is...See the fucking orange unionists reactionary para-military wackos are killing innocent people, thus it is right and just to tail the IRA who want to reverse the forms of oppression, rather then remove them. It also gives Hillier a cover for his rotten Stalinist stage theory of revolution and supporting the IRA and its petty bougeois nationalist pick up the gun, pro Chatolic church retoric. And in fact Martin is right, in one sense, these city guerrillas can not win militarily and at best (politically) want to give power to the Irish Catholic bougeoisie and the reactionary Chatholic church in a little chatolic statlet in Northern Ireland. We on the other hand could call for workers,trade union, militias to defend these areas from all forms of sectarian terror....This also goes for the protestant side of the fence, linked to a program to overthrow the present government and build a United Irish Workers Republic in a Federation of Socialist states in the British Isles for example. Hillier and his cronies at best are tailing the IRA and the fucking Chatholic Church. And quietly saying that it is OK for the IRA to go into protestant neigborhoods and do the same thing that the Unionists are doing in Chatholic neigborhoods. Warm regards Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! And Now the International Communist League Page! Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people http://www.algonet.se/~malecki Back issues of Cockroach and my book at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ -------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005