Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 11:35:26 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: Re: M-G: Cheap Trotsko/fascist historiography


David W. wrote, on 10.10:

>"War Against Those Elements"?
>War? What War?
>
>Maleki brings up a good point. While Mao was persuing the Block of Four 
>Classes, the Cuban CP was following a similar method with the BLock 
>with Batista. What's the dif?

Mao always made such united fronts as favoured the proletariat -
Chinese and international. I believe there were some concessions to
the bourgeoisie/landlords during the anti-Japanese liberation war.
Probably quite correct.

Castro rather early on, in the early 60s, betrayed the Cuban
revolution and aligned himself with the Soviet social-imperialists,
in effect against the workers of the world. Later, for i nstance,
he applauded the Chinese revisionists' striking down of the
masses' movement in 1989. So did the Trotskyites, those of the
Malackey variety at least.

So there's a *heap* of a difference. 

>The Comintern's line in both instances was the same: sacraficing the  
>independence of the working class for a 'bloc' with the bosses.

On the Comintern in the 1930, you may be at least in part right.
Many bad or suscpicious things were done by that body then.
I on my part don't know the full story by far. But I know that
much that there's reason for caution at least.

>In Spain, the Cominterns' line was for "liberal democracy now, 
>socialism later"...sounds like the line of reformism...especially since 
>what they got was was "liberal deomcrcy now, Franco later."
>
>The Comintern had a STATED position of holding back workers' revolution 
>in favor of the Popular Front...this meant returning factories to the 
>bosses and farms back to the landlords...this is one reason that the CP 
>in spain remianed the small behind the CNT and SP and that the areas of 
>recruitment for the CP was NOT the workers but among the petty 
>bourgeoisie and the officer corps. The Comintern position on Spain was 
>nothing sort of reactionary.
>
>David Walters

On principle, one might perhaps have made concessions to other
classes in Spain in the interest of defeating Franco et al. I 
don't know whether such a thing was made correctly or not -
quite possibly, it was made wrongly.

But I also know for a fact that on other occasions, *Trotskyism*
has quite wrongly gone against united fronts that were justified.
So a *Trot* criticism of events in 1930s Spain isn't worth much
either.

Rolf M.



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