File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-03.020, message 31


Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 13:05:06 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-I: No more Mr Nice guy


Per has described Adam's position as "silly". I tend to agree though
honestly I am reluctant to use that word of someone I like and admire.

But really to chuck the label "centrist" around at this political juncture
is a bit of a giggle.

This is soo.....o retro Bolshevik that one almost detects the postmodern
tongue in the cheek.  But Adam is too earnest a chap for that, surely (?).

Now Louis P. is I believe chopping steadily into the Bolshevik party
tradition as it has come down to us through Trotsky and Zinovief. I have
been part of that tradition and everything he says rings true with me.  the
possibility that Louis  might be correct is too horrible for the party
people to contemplate.  So he has to be attacked.

I have written to Adam off list about my experiences with the ISO.  I have
talked a little about this on-list. Basically Armstrong and Co, including a
treacherous little bastard named John Minns, crushed a group of us in 1981.
It was not because we weren't revolutionaries.  Nor was it because we did
not have ISO politics.  We represented a challenge to the leadership of
Armstrong and Co. and so had to go.  We were also victims of Cliff's turn to
Leninism-Trotskyism.  The fact that we did not realize we were a threat did
not save us.  Professional revolutionaries do not make mistakes when it
comes to securing their own bureaucratic power.

We were accused of being rightist when in reality we were fighting the
sectist ultra-Bolshevik, splitting and wrecking politics that Armstrong
flourishes in.   Over time ISO went though a series of  splits and
eventually the line which we had pushed in 1981 was used to crush Armstrong.
Words cannot convey my sense of the fitness of this.  The hard man bumped
off by another hard man.

I cannot  disclose Adam's comments on my post to him without his permission.
But I will say that in his posts he refuses to acknowledge the political
realities of someone like myself.  There are thousands like me who have been
spat out of the trotskyist organizations.  Were  we wrong or were the little
groups wrong?  Should we be dismissed as "centrists" so that those who give
their lives to the little groups can sleep more comfortably?

regards

Gary



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