Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 16:00:31 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: M-G: Re: Reading books (on Soviet history) - part 3


Re: Reading books (on Soviet history) - part 3
[Posted: 04.04.98]

[Note: This goes to besieged Marxism-General mailing list (M-G), 
see http://jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU/~spoons/ and to news-
groups, i.a. 'alt.society.revolution'.]

This will still concern principles of Marxism above all, as did
the first two parts of my contribution to the debate on Soviet 
history on (besieged) M-G. We need clarity on those principles.

Since my last posting (29.03), this debate has continued fur-
ther, with i.a. Vladimir Bilenkin replying to me and continuing
to argue in favour of Trotskyism and social-imperialism, abso-
lutely refusing to see some clear facts of history and the Trot-
skyite/revisionist standpoint's utter contradiction to Marxism, 
which is the case with some other writers too including Juan Fa-
jardo, while Siddharth Chatterjay has countered this, i.a. with
a very good posting on 01.04. (I do apologize for earlier this
year having supposed you were a Krushchov adherent, Sid - that
isn't the case at all, I now can see! I shall forward separately
your 01.04 to Usenet.) The debate has come to touch on some 
points of recent Chinese history too. On this I shall include 
some just brief comments.

Concerning Soviet history itself, Vladimir replied to my ques-
tion about when Stalin once privately to Molotov said there
"was no dictatorship of the proletariat any more" in the Soviet
Union - after the XIX Congress of the CPSU, thus in 1939. Thanks
for that; I still disagree, as does Juan. He on his part has
contributed information on where to find a certain document:

> The transcripts -in English- of the 1936 Moscow Trial of the
> "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre" can be viewed at:
> < http://art-bin.com/art/omoscowtoc.html >. 

Thanks for showing us this; I've read these transcripts earlier
and hold that they show this trial to be quite doubtful and sus-
pect, despite the fact that the (actual) Trotskyites no doubt 
*were* trying to overthrow the then socialism in the Soviet 
Union. As I already wrote, obviously the proletariat in the So-
viet Union in the 1930s etc to a certain extent got caught bet-
ween two fires, in a manner similar to, but not the same as, 
what took place in China in the mid-1970s. The Stalin regime 
eventually came to brand practically all criticism of itself, 
also correct and/or well-intentioned such, as "Trotskyism".

Vlad in reply to Sid wrote that yes, he *is* angry, namely at 
the present counter-revolution and terrible conditions in the 
ex-Soviet Union, and that he wants to oppose them, in the first
place, and wants us all to find out how to counter them with
revolution, in the second. I too want the M-G list (also in its
present, besieged form) to be as much as possible an instrument
for actually combating present-day reaction, in all countries,
and so no doubt do many other subscribers. 

But Vladimir and other present-day propagandists of Trotskyism
and (what was actually) Soviet revisionism need to understand
- if they sincerely wish to support and give guidance to the 
overwhelming majority of people in the world in their struggle
against reaction, for genuine proletarian revolution - that it's
no good at all having Stalin's and his supporters "rightly" ar-
guing that "we had to become counter-revolutionaries in order
to fight counter-revolution" (still an utter muddle of course, 
and your drawing a "parallell" to Napoleon's "Thermidor" won't 
change that, Vlad - more later). And even worse is it to try to 
convince people that it was *Mao Zedong* - who very correctly, 
extremely importantly, *exposed and attacked* the *revisionist 
treason* of Khrushchov, Brezhnev etc - that it was "Mao"(!!) who
was the "revisionist", who was the one the *"Western" bourgeoi-
sie and the whole international reaction wanted and applauded*, 
instead of *precisely the other way around*, as pointed out re-
peatedly by me and recently, in this debate, by Sid too.

Both Vladimir and Juan expressly wrote that "no" basic change
took place in the Soviet Union in the mid-late 1950s (after
Stalin's death) - this the Trotskyites have always maintained
and the "traditional" bourgeoisie too. This obviously flies in
the face of the facts, goes straight against overwhelming evi-
dence, just a small part of which was brought in the 1964 artic-
le from China "On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism..." posted by me
on 26.12.97 and which all can find more of, e.g. in the other 
"Great Polemics" articles on the site of the (insincere but in
part informative) "Mao"Quacks, <http://www.blythe.org/mlm>.

The workers (and their allies) in the ex-Soviet Union too today
precisely very much need the criticism of revisionism by Mao 
Zedong and the other genuine Marxists, in order to be able to
see: Who are our enemies, who are our friends? - to begin with.

People who make propaganda for Trotskyism, and/or for the revi-
sionism and social-imperialism of the Soviet Union in the 1960s
to 1980s, and/or who don't want to distinguish between the pro-
letarian, Marxist, progressive (or "good" if you wish) actions
of Stalin and those bourgeois, revisionist, reactionary (bad)
acts he committed too (Vlad tries to ridicule Mao's giving Sta-
lin very approximately 70% for merits and 30% for faults) -
such people, even if they sincerely want to help those workers,
by this part of their activities of course are contributing to-
wards the bourgeoisie's - *including* the revisionists' - hol-
ding them down today.

Much of this posting this far has been just a repetition of 
things I've already said before, several times even, but these 
matters, I hold, are important enough to repeat over and over.


DID MAO ZEDONG BY RECEIVING NIXON IN 1972
PERHAPS "CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS THE DOWNFALL 
OF SOCIALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION"?? 

The really fantastic "theory" in this subtitle has actually been
advanced earlier by Vladimir, who on 16.10.97 wrote, under "On 
VOODOO RHETORICS, CUBA, and other matters (Pt.2)":

>Olaechea is sanctimoniously horrified by Castro embracing 
>Wotjila? Was he in the least embarrassed by Mao's kiss to 
>Nixon that sealed the fate of socialism in SU and China and 
>was a kiss of death to the international proletariat?!

Now he's repeated it, even talking about a (Chinese-US) "pact" 
in 1972 and further muddling things by bringing the later *re-
visionist* rule in China into it too (and OK, I may have been
imprecise in calling a state ruled by a bourgeoisie of the re-
visionist type a "revisionist state", but that hardly matters):

>Vladimir: Mao was himself a revisionist of the first order.  
>Or perhaps this is a misnomer.  He was a great peasant revolu-
>tionary, not a Marxist leader of a revolutionary proletariat.  
>Nationalist element in Maoism was even stronger than in Sta-
>linism.  Mao's pact with the "Great Satan" in 1972 was the 
>most dramatic confirmation of this fact.  It's been further
>confirmed by the newly sanctioned cult of Mao by the Chinese 
>bourgeoisie and bureaucracy.

Mao Zedong precisely was a great Marxist, and *never* embraced
nationalism but always proletarian internationalism. In China's
war of national liberation he made an alliance with some na-
tionalists, the national bourgeoisie, which as Sid has pointed
out was the correct thing to do in such a country, of the third
world, where a part of the bourgeoisie too opposed imperialism.

Mao Zedong's receiving US President Nixon in 1972 was not a
"pact", in the first place, though it was an act of considerable
symbolic significance, and a quite correct one, in the world
situation existing then, importantly *favouring* the interests
of the international proletariat and the oppressed peoples and
nations. Why was this; what was that situation and the signifi-
cance of that act?

I wrote on this in a 1994 article, posted on 01.01.96 as "UNITE!
Info #3en: '94 art. on Mao, RIM, US, PCP" (part 3/3):

(Rolf, 1994/1996:)
>And he [Mao] was at that time [the early-mid-1970s] already 
>advocating the forging of a broad international united front 
>against the two superpowers, in particular against social-
>imperialism, and later sought to include not only small and 
>medium-sized imperialist countries, those of the second world,
>but even certain forces of U.S. imperialism into a united 
>front against Soviet social-imperialism as the then most
>dangerous source of war, which had put its economy on a 
>military footing and above all was threatening an aggression 
>against Western Europe.

Nixon in 1972 - while still engaging in the US war of aggression
against Vietnam, which socialist China always consistently op-
posed - was a representative of that group within US imperialism 
which (in contrast to one rather strong US group) was *not* con-
doning and in fact encouraging the very massive military threat 
and provocations, political pressure, subversion and infiltration
against the West European countries by which Soviet social-impe-
rialism at that time sought to bring those countries in under its
domination, which would have been very bad for the workers there
and elsewhere if it had succeeded. Nixon, from a likewise impe-
rialist standpoint of course, opposed social-imperialism in this.
And therefore, Mao Zedong made a symbolic alliance with him *on 
certain points*, *only* on certain points, by this reception.

This move by Mao was *not*, as Sid tentatively guessed, for de-
fending *China* against a social-imperialist threat - the si-
tuation had changed in that respect since 1969. The Soviet re-
visionists were making, as pointed out at the CPC's 10th Con-
gress, Aug 1973, and in the Chinese autumn 1972 UN speech too, 
"a feint to the east while attacking in the west". 

(But here Hans Ehrbar forces me to break off, to M-G at least. 
More tomorrow.)



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