File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1998/marxism-general.9804, message 10


From: "Siddharth Chatterjee" <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 03:00:05 +0000
Subject: Re: M-G: An Open Letter from S.Chatterjee to President Yeltsin



Vladimir Bilenkin:
>Actually, I am very angry. I don't have time for silly bickering and 
>all that.

Instead of directing your anger at potential allies, you should 
channel it into constructive activity and refrain from branding 
persons like Mao Tse-Tung as traitors and counter-revolutionaries 
without the least bit of analysis. This is not science but its 
parody. And yet you seem to want to raise the current status of 
Marxism to a science as it once was according to you. This is 
paradoxical behavior.

>I want to talk with independently thinking marxists who 
>realize that one cannot stop this madness by quotations from Dear 
>Leaders, that we must finally begin thinking with our own heads.  
>Twelve workers committed suicide during the ongoing strike in 
>Saratov.  Neither Marx, nor Lenin, nor Trotsky, nor Mao can explain 
>to us why they didn't build a baricade and smashed someone else's
>heads instead. 

The suicide of the 12 workers is a terrible tragedy. It shows the 
progression of the inhuman counter-revolution all over the world 
Please tell us what we on this list can try and do to prevent such 
occurrences. Recently, over a hundred farmers in a state in 
India committed suicide. Near Calcutta, mill workers are killing 
themselves due to lock-outs by the comprador employers and because of 
unpaid salaries over past several months. These are glimpses of the
barbaric future we are heading for.

> What do you want me to do with this "devastating
>critique" of Trotsky?  Hang it on the wall?  Tell me better how to 
>stop the counterrevolution and I will become a Chatterjeeist.  

Please remember the context of the original discussion. You upheld 
Trotskyism and dismissed Maoism as something like a 'nationalist' 
aberration like many academic western leftists. If you and the others 
wish to give an "activist" orientation to this list, let us go 
ahead and discuss what can be done. Group letter writing 
to newspapers, magazines about issues that concern working and 
oppressed people (e.g., MAI, WTO, GATT) and protesting atrocities 
could be a good beginning.

>If you want a serious discussion be serious yourself.  You may not 
>agree with words like "Bonapartist," "bureaucracy, " etc., but you 
>must know that these are not mere words but concepts based on a 
>rather rigorous analysis. Analogies with the French Revolution were 
>constantly in the back of the Bolsheviks' minds. And some of them 
>talked about the bureaucratic degeneration of the party before 
>Trotsky.

I am serious, that's why I posed the questions. I do not have  all 
the answers. It is my opinion that blanket concepts like "Bonapartist 
bureaucracy" as applied to Russia (after Lenin) and China by 
Trotskyists are not rigorous at all. They are escapist words rather 
than explanatory. The incorrect application of historical analogical 
method, specifically in this case, of applying concepts derived from 
the French Revolution to the very different social and political 
conditions in 20th century Russia and China has lead to great 
blunders in undertanding the nature of reality.   

>As to your questions, I do not find it possible to 
>answer them for a number of reasons.  They are posited in an 
>abstract way, both historically and theoretically.  How did you 
>arrive at them?  What is their relevance to our present, e.g. for 
>India?  Open your cards.  Are you interested in another 
>feat of "unmasking" Trotskism or in understanding what is going on 
>and what we can do about it if anything?

You do not have to answer anything, comrade. The questions were posed 
to people on this list specifically in regards to what happened in 
the USSR and China. Sorry if that did not come out clearly. And I 
arrived at them from the various posts to this list including those 
of your own and some personal reading. One relevance to the present 
is that we have to understand past historical  mistakes in order not 
to repeat them in the future. But, of course, this may not be the 
most important matter at this time in this forum. Finally, I do not 
have to unmask Trotskyism. Its theoretical, ideological and practical 
weaknesses have been exposed long ago. 

S. Chatterjee




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