File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-25.170, message 35


Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 21:44:43 +0000
From: Mark Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: re: Zarembka on Stalin


Thanks, Carroll.I am tired of being pilloried by these types. But as my
wife says, I dig the pit, I jump in and I pass them the shovel...
I think, as I said to Lou Godena just now, and I said in other postings,
that the USSR was glorious. 
It was also a shambles, a madhouse, morally indefensible and in the end, 
economically bankrupt.
Life is complex. All those things are true. To deny the totality of that
truth is to deny something important about ourselves. The point is it 
was the only USSR we had, in the same way the AFL/CIO and the Teamsters 
and the British TUC are all instances of working class self-organisation 
which sooner or later became co-opted by the capitalism they could not 
overthrow yet continued to resist. 
And we have always to celebrate the real history of the mostly unsung 
heroes who first built those instances, as well as to understand to the 
core the other parallel, intertwined, imbricated history of oppression, 
careerism, exploitation, gangsterism and terror which is always present 
in those instances, the more so the more successful they are and the more 
they invite the merciless opposition of the class enemy.
 The main thing is, it is *our* history, not theirs, we bear the
burdens of the distorted forms our self-emancipatory struggles take, not
they, and we have the duty to criticise ruthlessly the errors of our
forebears and our own mistakes, not those who seek only to destroy us;
and we have the right to repudiate the sickening, sanctimonious
hypocrisy of the armchair militants rubbishing from the comfort of their
salons the histories and tragedies of people who fought and failed, but
at least fought. Someone on this list said there are many other
histories to celebrate, of revolutionary and popular struggles in many
places. I write about what I know. I earnestly enjoin others to do the
same, and to make this list also a celebration of the true history of
the twentieth century, bloody but glorious.

As William Morris said: 'I ask you to think with me that the worst which
can happen to us is to endure tamely the evils that we see; that no
trouble or turmoil is so bad as that; that the necessary destruction
which reconstruction bears with it must be taken calmly; that everywhere
-- in State, in Church, in the household -- we must be resolute to
endure no tyranny, accept no lie, quail before no fear, although they
may come before us disguised as piety, duty or afection, as useful
opportunity and good nature, as prudence or kindness. The world's
roughness, falseness and injustice will bring about its natural
consequences, and we and our lives are part of those consequences; but
since we inherit also the consequences of old resistance to those
curses, let us each look to it to have our fair share of that
inheritance also, which if nothing else come of it, will at least bring
to us courage and hope...'


Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
>     Someday, I hope in my more hopeful moods, there will be a socialist
> movement which simply incorporates (without hysterical labelling) a
> *Non* (not anti-) "stalinist" politics. (In fact, my guess is that *most*
> of those Marxists who either call themselves Stalinist or at least
> avoid anti-stalinist rhetoric, are "non-stalinist" in their current
> politics.) But until that day comes, it is, I think, rather obvious
> that the continual invoking of the "anti-stalinist" mantra is, when
> not merely hysterical or self-indulgent, just one more of the infinitely
> varied attempts of capitalist intelligentsia to insulate themselves
> from history: i.e., claim, more or less explicitly, that while *others*
> are subject to history, *they* somehow or other rise above it.
> 
>     I am trying to formulate a serious and not merely a rhetorical
> question here. What, really, is gained by the endless reaffirmations
> of the evil of Stalin and the endless insistence that a ritualpre-
> affirmation of that evil is a precondition for rational debate
> of *current* political questions?
> 
>     Red-baiting, "anti-communism" as opposed to "non-communism," are
> variants of the long recognized argumentative techniques of "poisoning
> the well of discourse" or *ad hominem* arguments: an argument or
> principle is repudiated out-of-hand not because of its content but
> 
> because of who makes the argument or upholds the principle.
> 
>     Most aggressive "anti-stalinism" that I have seen on this list
> fits that pattern of argument.
> 
>     Carrol Cox
> 
> Doug Henline writes:
> 
> >
> > At 10:20 AM +0000 2/21/97, Mark Jones wrote:
> >
> > >There is only an unanswered question:
> > >does Zarembka think that the liquidation of the Soviet Union was a good
> > >thing or a bad thing?
> >
> > I'm not Zarembka, but I think it has to be said many times that the
> > liquidation of the USSR was a bad thing. Not only for the people of the
> > former Soviet Union, who have suffered one of the most remarkable economic
> > and social collapses in history, but for the world as a whole. All those
> > social dems who applauded the death of the USSR forgot a simple fact - that
> > as long as the USSR existed, it represented a real threat of expropriation
> > to the capitalist class in the First World and the Third. In the U.S.,
> > there's little doubt that even lots of concessions on civil rights for
> > black Americans were made in part in the interest of increasing the appeal
> > of "The West" in the Third World. With the USSR gone, the capitalists and
> > the racists have been given full rein to do as they please. Further, the
> > collapse of the USSR has, wrongly I think but it hardly matters, greatly
> > de-legitimated all left-of-center ideas, even mild ones. One could
> > criticize the USSR at great length - for repression, stupidity, crimes
> > against the natural environment, whatever - and rightly, but that still
> > doesn't change the fact that on balance its passing from the world scene
> > has been a disaster.
> >
> >
> > Doug
> >
> > --
> >
> > Doug Henwood
> > Left Business Observer
> > 250 W 85 St
> > New York NY 10024-3217 USA
> > +1-212-874-4020 voice  +1-212-874-3137 fax
> > email: <mailto:dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
> > web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> >
> 
>      --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

-- 
Regards,
Mark Jones
website: http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~majones/index.htm
email: mailto:majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk




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