Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 14:02:11 -0500 (EST) From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu> Subject: Re: M-G: An Open Letter from S.Chatterjee to President Yeltsin Vladimir: I read your 'letter' with some amusement. You seem a very angry person - you have to descend from the egotistical heights in which you live before a cool and scientific discussion can be carried on. For the purpose here is not to denounce, denigrate and condemn but to understand and analyze. In your 'letter', you took a superficial approach and did not address any of my points. You have to take off your Trotskyist glasses and see the world for what it is. There exists a devastating and deep critique of Trotskyism (ideolology and history). And it is not by Ludo Martens whose approach is condemnatory instead of analytical and theoretical. But this discussion should not degenerate into a abusive contests between two sides. Nothing will be gained from this by anyone. Instead, we should focus on some of the fundamental issues. Here are a few of them: 1. What is the meaning of the "bourgeois state without the bourgeoise" AFTER the party of the proletariat has seized power? This statement by Lenin is actually a most profound statement. 2. What is the meaninng of the term "class" AFTER seizure of power by the proletarian party? Does "class" have any meaning after the means of production is in the hands of the new state? 3. If the answer is 'yes' to the item 2, then what were the contending classes in Russia after 1917 and in China after 1949? 4. Do 'relations of production' and 'property relations' mean the same thing? 5. Is the Communist Party a monolitihic party? Or does it have divisions? 6. The Trotskyists reduce the GPCR to a fight among the different factions of the "bureaucracy". This is a most superficial judgement but for a moment let us go along with it. Then the questions are: (a) Does the bureaucracy hang like a balloon over society and has no class component? (b) If not what is the origins and class basis of this "bureaucracy" 7. How does the process of capitalist restoration occur and how is it to be prevented? Does it occur from outside and/or from inside the party? 8. What is the meaning of the Trotskyist term "permanent revolution" and does it have any connection with the Maoist term "uninterrupted revolution with stages"? 9. What is the meaning of Cultural Revolution and what happened in China during 1966-1976? 10. What is the meaning of "democratic centralism"? Does this term solely apply to the organisation of the party or is it something more? What is the connection between 'democracy' and 'centralism'? I do not have all the answers to the above and hope that the list members will contribute to the discussion. Finally, I am not an "unrepentant Stalinist". Nor a Marxist or Maoist in the true meaning of the terms. To claim these titles, one has to be a revolutionary (theory AND practice). S. Chatterjee --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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