Date: Sun, 28 Dec 1997 09:56:41 +0100 From: Robert Malecki <malecki-AT-robertsfors.mail.telia.com> Subject: M-G: COCKROACH! #105 COCKROACH! #105 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. Subscriptions are free at http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/ Now on line! Check out the Home of COCKROACH! http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/ http://www.algonet.se/~malecki How often this zine will appear depends on you! -------------------------------------------------------- 1. Insect spray Special (Lenin and the Vanguard Party) and Maoism the unscientific revision. 2. On the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine 3. Letter to Red Cabbage! 4. Wall street pathognominics ------------------------------------------------------- Insect spray Special (Lenin and the Vanguard Party) and Maoism the unscientific revision. Rolf, Rolf, you don't really have an understanding of what Trotskyism is do you? Even if you could, I don't think you would, as the dogma of Mao clouds your head. Trotsky did not oppose the creation of the vanguard party, he only opposed Lenin's methods. Trotsky also didn't oppose democratic centralism either. The only thing he opposed was the split between the Mensheviks, and the Bolsheviks. Yes, Trotsky did do a lot of work, with BOTH factions in an attempt to bring the two organizations together, this utterly failed and by the summer of 1917, Trotsky had come into agreement with Lenin. Trotsky will admit his error, and so will we, the adherents of marxism. Trotskyism isn't some revision, it is marxism, following it's correct course. There was Marx, Lenin was the Marx of the revolutionary period, and Trotsky was the Lenin of the following period. Trotsky had the task of forging the collapsed revolutionaries of the period into a cohesive international, something of a difficult task, looking at the circumstances. Have you ever read Lenin's last will and testament? He was specifically given this duty by Lenin. Doesn't this say something? It does to us about you, that your revision is nothing but the amalgamation of hostile and counterrevolutionary tendencies against the forces of marxism. Maoism as a historic force is dead. It is not guided by dialectics, but by blind and raging emotion. Where as we look at things dialectic ally and objectively, the Maoists are guided by hatred and mistrust - how can this help the working class? The forces of Maoism turned from a re-radicalization(not necessarily in the greatness of ideas but in revolutionary spirit) of the youth in the 50's and 60's to a disgusting ultra leftist parasite on society. Individual terror, and bureaucratic control were on the order of the day. The youth who supported Mao were turned off by his Stalinist actions in governing China, the Cultural Revolution being a prime example. How do you, explain the fact that Mao looked up to Stalin, and saw him as an example of good leadership and as a top comrade? I think we can all agree that Stalin was not following the ideas of Lenin, so therefore neither was Mao. No matter what you say Rolf, Trotsky was the carrier of true marxism after Lenins death, not your sick perverse ideas and ideologies of hatred and blind indignant reactions. Trotsky's ideas were taken as Lenin's own, and vice versa. Lenin's ideas (that the Stalinists used to condemn Trotsky), were a lot of the time actually Trotsky's! Now not all the time,more often than not they came to the same conclusion independently, or together, they usually didn't have fight or argue over ideas, because there wasn't much difference there. Mao was a Stalinist, his economic and political zig zags are a prime example of this. The degeneration of the People's Republic of China was predicted by the forces of marxism (or in your world 'Trotskyists') because it was based on the same perverse bureaucratic centralism as the Soviet Union was (from 1923 - present). The difference being the Russian Revolution was based on genuine marxism, created by the working class under the vanguard. The Chinese revolution was based on the peasantry following the already deformed thoughts and actions of the Chinese Stalinists, it was doomed to fail. Hence, the quick degeneration of the Chinese State. Maoism is not marxism, but the intellectual masterbation of marxism, Maoists are marxists for the intellectual prestige it brings them when they blow up, act obstinate, and won't allow any opposition (some prestige!), they essentially smash the thoughts and beliefs of their opponents, no matter their beliefs. One of the greatest tactics that marxists use is 'mild in manner and bold in content' which gives us the edge of respectability. The forces of Maoism are split, even from Stalinism now, and stand on the very outskirts of importance and influence of society. There is no leadership of any kind in the present day Stalinist and Maoist organizations, only a bold rehash of the old tactics of control as put forth by Stalin and Mao. The forces of marxism must stand firm against the vilest forms of revisionism, Maoism and Stalinism. Comradely Rob ------------------------------------------------------- On the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine >Robert asks: > >>What, exactly, does the [PFLP] stand for, and does it support Arafat?... Godena can't even answer a question? The PFLP stands for the "People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine".. And if you read the document below that Godena sent to the list. One will quickly see that the so called "slander" is in fact the *REAL* program of the PFLP. They are petty bourgeois Arab Nationalists with and explicit stage theory of revolution. Thus calling for a democrat and sicular Palestine first and perhaps socialism further on in the future. It is classic Stalinst politics connected to bourgeois nationalism with a program of reversing the forms of repression in the middle east rather then eliminating them. Well, the Stalinist Soviet Union no longer exists and still these people are into the bankrupt political line that will lead them nowhere. Against this stage theory of revolution and popular front politics of the PFLP is posed the theory of Permanent revolution of Trotsky. Which means that it is only the proletariat under the leadership of a Bolshevik Party that has the Social power and program to solve the dead end fratricidal wars that ever repeat themselves. Not only between Israel and the Palestinians, but Iran and Iraq or any of the other tin pot dictatorships that are set up on the politics of the Stalinists. Iran and the Tudah Party and Mujadin are slavish examples of Godena's stage theory and look what it got them! Not even a bourgeois democracy! but a Mullah led dictatorship. You are a joke Godena and your Stalinist politics have led historically to defeat after defeat for poor and working class people.. Bob Malecki > > >Some diseased, fermented turd -- I forget who -- uttered a slander against >the PFLP the other day. Probably an acquaintaince of the gem that compared >General Giap unfavorably to Malecki. Anyway, for the record, the PFLP is >headquartered in Damascus (Box 12144) and calls itself a Marxist-Leninist >organization. It is still nominally tied to the PLO, though more or less in >name only. It began as a Left voice for the "camp Palestinians", the most >oppressed classes -- "the workers, peasants, sectors of the petit >bourgeoisie", those most in contradiction with imperialism, Zionism, and >Arab reaction. Their strategy was and remains the waging of "protracted >war" against the Zionist fascist beast and its armed state. > >I quote from an issue of their journal, *Democratic Palestine*: > >"The PFLP is deeply committed to the unity and independent, national >decision-making of the Palestinian people and their sole, legitimate >representative, the PLO. To this end, we work for strengthening the role of >the Palestinian left, thereby accentuating the PLO's anti-imperialist line >in common struggle with the Arab national liberation movement. > >The process of liberating Palestine relies on radical, national democratic >change or development in one or more of the surrounding Arab countries. >This will provide the PLO with a strong base for liberating Palestine. >Thus, the struggle for a democratic Palestine is linked to the creation of a >united, democratic, and ultimately socialist, Arab society. This will >provide the objective basis for eradicating the poverty, exploitation, >oppression and the problem of minorities, from which the people of the area >suffer. > >As a cornerstone in this process, the establishment of a democratic, secular >state in Palestine will provide a democratic solution for the Jewish >question in this area, while simultaneously restoring the national rights of >the Palestinian people. After liberation, Jews in Palestine, like all >citizens, will enjoy equal rights and duties. The decision of the PLO to >establish an independent Palestinian state on any liberated part of the >national soil is a step in this direction. It is the sincere hope of all >Palestinian revolutionaries that more and more Israelies will recognize that >they too have become victims of Zionism's racism, expansionism, exploitation >and militarism, and will join us in the struggle for a democratic Palestine. > > >I urge all interested parties to read the PFLP press, and its concomitant >literature from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the >Palestinian Peoples Party (formerly the Communist Party). Despite flaws and >ambiguities, it provides a benchmark for assessing the progress of the >democratic left in the liberation struggle. > >Louis Godena ------------------------------------------------------- Letter to Red Cabbage! Dear Red Cabbage and others, Nice introduction in the latest red cabbage. We appear to have the same line on events around Cuba and the Soviet Union. However, you do not go far enough (and you are not alone!) in your anal isis and leaves us class conscious militants without any direction and finger up our asses saying "Duh". You smart asses are surpose to be able to figure this shit out and as Trotskyists how to concretely deal with the situation that has come up. And I find it extremely frustrating that most all (if not all) "Trotskyists" appear to be silent on the question of WHAT IS TO BE DONE NOW? In fact outrageous hedging and fence sitting! Its despicable! Trotskyists are surpose to be the leaders of the party of world revolution and on the Soviet Union it appears that everybody is desperately saying to themselves quietly. "What the fuck are we gonna do now?" And have no answers for poor and working class people. Well, thanks a whole lot for your help people.. I find it despicable and not in the least astounding that all those claiming to be "Trotskyist" appear to have dug a whole in the ground on this question and are hiding. Now how in the hell can we go out to poor and working class people and explain this shit when everybody is confused and at best hedging. I have not seen one article which points the way forward from here from nobody! Thanks for all the help my friends! The next time I talk to workers I shall have to say that I think this---- but the entire movement Internationally claiming to be Trotskyist have no answers for me or you. So you people either better come up with some answers because class struggle and program can not stand still. The TP was for the unconditional defense of the deformed and degenerated workers states. Today this line is absolutely impossible in regards to the former USSR and Eastern Europe. But according to all of the groups their IS NO LINE NOW or at least I have not seen one article which tells me what the line is. Stop the Bullshit people.. It was the bombing of the parliament which was the final nail in the coffin. Yes! However, when you start rambling about the other republics in the former USSR (not taken up here at all) as not being a part of this your are wrong. If as you say capitalist counter-revolution still had not taken place in certain republics or at a later date then the bombing of the white house should have been the starting point of a civil war... I think many "troskyists" appeared to make a fetish of property forms without taking up the decisive question of who has state power and who controls the guns. (Not only the tanks that surrounded the parliament, but the armed forces within the entire ex-union and its nuclear capabilities. Getting back to the other republics and any kind of resistance to the Jeltsin attack on the White house. No civil war and in fact ... Nothing of the sort happened. In fact all of the former republics accepted the parliament attack and rushed to make all kinds of treaty's with the now capitalist Jeltsin regime in power. Meaning they accepted the new counter-revolutionary capitalist structure and at best wanted to carve out a piece of the former Soviet Union for themselves. Naturally one can argue all day as the Morenoites do about the degree of collectively owned property forms in the various different republics. But if these people don't get off their asses they might find themselves defending capitalist Russia with the mistaken line of them still being some form of deformed workers states. But that is hardly the point. It was the taking of state power by the Jeltsinites confirmed by the storming of the parliament building that sealed the fate of the entire ex-Soviet Union. I am basically translating Lenin's thesis on the state power and dictatorship of the proletariat backwards. And as long as the state power leaned on the gains of October with Stalinism in power we defended it despite the Stalinists. The Rubicon on the state power question and the Stalinists who had for decades usurped that power was put to end with the storming of the parliament in the entire Soviet Union.. Which without a civil war concluded the capitalist counter-revolution and made the now ex-degenerated workers state un-defensible as a degenerated workers state. Chew on that my friends.. That is why I today in many of my Radio reports am always talking about "new social revolutions from Portugal to the Urals"..and will continue to do so despite the cowardly hedging by the self proclaimed Trotskyist Internationally. If I am wrong then argue but stop hiding under rocks like slime. This discussion should be central to any serious revolutionary regroupment. And as it is today all regroupments would be false because I don't know any group that has a line connected to What Should Be Done? So I think it is your duty to expand this introduction and tell the whole truth..Not only you but any group or party claiming to be Trotskyist. By the way it was the first time I actually read anything about what the Spartacists were saying and their positions on this stuff today. It will be extremely interesting to hear their views on this. I do think they say that a counter-revolution now has taken place however I do not know the reasons why they have come to that conclusions. Finally if somebody doesn't convince me soon about What exactly is to be Done in the ex Soviet Union now? I am going to write off all of you as fencesitters, confused at best and political cowards who can or will tell the whole truth to poor and working class people. Because for decades the Trotskyists were right according to Trotsky. Today nobody has a line! Incredible and out rageous.. Warm regards Bob Malecki ------------------------------------------------------ Wall street pathognominics Ok Doug asks some fair questions. The problem we face is precisely understanding the causes of the reactionary period we are living in. But rather than fixate on the frustrations and the weakness of the left we need to rebuild from positions of strength. This means applying the lessons of the past to the present. We don't shirk from this duty just because such debates may be unpopular. Its obvious that in a period of reaction, most workers are turned off revolutionary politics. But that doesnt stop us from debating among those who are not turned off, and want to regroup so that next time we win. There will be a next time; undermining the bosses victory today is the insoluble contradiction of capitalism. Doug makes a lot of the conditions today compared with those of 80 years ago. Is this a valid comparison? The first and only proletarian revolution took place in a backward capitalist semi-colony. The conditions facing Russian workers and peasants were similar to those facing the masses of workers and peasants in the world today, war, famine, disease, starvation i.e. capitalist exploitation and oppression. What made the difference then was the self-conscious band of marxists who formed the Bolsheviks against the menshevik current. The Bolsheviks organized a tiny minority against the stream of worker and peasant consciousness, and evolutionary/fatalist marxism represented by the then mensheviks. Today we do not use the terms Bolshevik and Menshevik to represent historic party labels, even less historical events in which both groups took part in, but the underlying methods which their politics reflected. This method preceded such historical groups and long outlive them. This is where the real issue is today. Such is the demoralisation of the left with the collapse of the SU and the victory of the right, that it is backsliding into the menshevik method of evolutionary/fatalist marxism. Menshevism presents history in terms of necessary objective processes, and relegates the subjective revolutionary role of the party to the sidelines and irrelevance. Most important, mensheviks tend to blame the working class for any failure to rise to the challenge of history, [that is when mensheviks judge history to be ripe for revolution having first gone through a protracted democratic stage in preparation] and not the misleaderships of mensheviks and the Stalinists who readily reverted to menshevism to justify their petty bourgeois class interests. Those of us who put the subjective role at the centre, the Bolsheviks, are rubbished as a tiny band of loonies who can't tell when the revolutionary conditions are ripe and try to substitute for the working class.This judgement is reinforced today by the retreat from the Bolshevik revolution as premature - the menshevik position at the time, and the position of Stalin, Kamanev and Zioniviev even in the days of October. On this list many contributers put forward that view in a range of variations - most pointing to the political immaturity or small numbers of workers at the time. If these people were honest they would recognize that their current demoralization results from the collapse of the socialist project which they are now retrospectively denying. This immediate discussion arose out of Louis Proyect's rubbishing of Trotsky and Trotskyists as incapable of preventing fascism in Germany. He put this down to Trotsky's Zinoviev-like conception of the revolutionary party. What Proyect is actually doing is denying the need for a Bolshevik party which acts as a vanguard. He condemns Trotsky for issuing an order calling on the German working class to rise up in 1923. What Proyect means is that the German workers were not ready, and Trotsky substituted for German workers. If you read Trotsky's account of that period in "The Third International after Lenin" you find a different perspective which accuses Zinoviev among others of being in essence mensheviks who relied on superficial impressions which supposedly revealed an underlying objective revolutionary situation, so that the role of the rapidly bureaucratizing Comintern was to provide an ineffectual and untimely mis-leadership. The resulting failure of the German revolution, isolated the SU, sealing its eventual degeneration, and immediately set the scene for the rise of fascism in Germany. But even so, Trotsky [the volutarist/ bureaucrat!] fought tooth and nail to stop fascism by desperately trying to get the stalinist and SPD workers to join in a united front against Hitler. Those who fail to see this and instead attribute the rise of fascism to objective processes including a nativist german anti-semitism, cannot learn the lessons of history, 1923 or 1933, and will not learn them. Those that cannot learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them, or that as Trotsky said,. those who cannot defend old victories will never win new ones. Dave ------------------------------------------------------- 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! Just push on the "Spartacist" Button. Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people. NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Stratfacts, Bob Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Stratfacts Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these reports now on line. http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/ http://www.algonet.se/~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! Just push on the "Spartacist" Button. Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people. NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Straitfacts, Bob Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Straitfacts Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these reports now on line. http://w1.934.telia.com/~u93402111/ ------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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