Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 09:03:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: The question of leadership


On Fri, 18 Oct 1996, Adam Rose wrote:

> Nicaragua and Cuba IMO were nationalist, anti Imperialist revolutions.
> Neither resulted in socialist societies. In neither case did the
> working class take power - in both cases, a middle class leadership
> tried to build up national capital in what they hoped would be a less
> unequal relationship to Imperialism.
> 

Louis: I see one thing has not changed on M-I. People like Adam are
content to give their "opinion" on what happened in Nicaragua or Cuba
without mobilizing any historical or economic evidence to support their
conclusion.

I suppose this is what you would expect from an engineer who uses Internet
mailing lists the way other alientated white-collar workers use Solitaire.

The problem is that clashing *opinions* don't get us very far. It's like
listening to talk-radio. And so what do you think about Clinton and Dole?
"Well, in my opinion, Clinton has produced more jobs, but Dole's tax
reduction plan appeals to me also."

Adam and his partner in opinion, Jorn Anderson, just love to dispense of
Cuba and Nicaragua in a paragraph. What's depressing about this is that
Trotskyism at one time was able to produce such first-rate analysis of
revolutionary societies. Think of Harold Isaacs, CLR James and Felix
Morrow. They got beneath the surface of China, Haiti and Spain.

What email allows you to do is sound profound without providing any
substance. It allows you to pontificate on complex historical events
without getting beneath the surface. Trotskyism, or State Capitalism,
might have at one time been poles of attraction for probing minds. Now it
seems only to attract the banal and the self-satisfied. Trotsky would have
spit on you, Adam.