From: Jacques Beaudoin <grabuge-AT-odyssee.net>
Subject: Re: M-I: Why don't we all wait...
Date: 	Thu, 6 Mar 1997 11:49:37 -0500


>Date:	Thu, 6 Mar 1997 12:18:07 GMT
>X-Sender: hariette-AT-mail.easynet.co.uk
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>To:	marxism-news-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>From:	hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (Hariette Spierings)
>Subject: Re: M-I: Why don't we all wait...
>Cc:	majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk, detcom-AT-sprynet.com, grabuge-AT-odyssee.net,
>Jim_Hillier-AT-msn.com, Richard.Bos-AT-hagcott.meganet.co.uk,
>	marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>
>>I sent this reply to Zeynep last night in order to keep within 3 posts
>>for the day.
>>
>>Louis and Jon have not spoken on these matters yet. Their opinions would
>>be greatly valued.
>>
>>R.
>>
>>Zeynep Tufekcioglu wrote: (quoting Richard)
>>>
>>> >The people who are making attacks that cannot be answered are doing it
>>> >because they know that they cannot be answered. They are not going to
>>> >listen to your appeals Zeynep. They are not friends of yours, or the
>>> >Turkish revolution, or any revolution. Will you stand up to them and
>>> >fight back?
>>> >
>>> >Comradely,
>>> >
>>> >Richard.
>>> >      New Worker Online http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2853
>>> >
>>Zeynep:
>>>
>>> I'm not exactly sure whom I'm to stand up to and fight.
>>>
>>
>>Richard:
>>I mean the people whose sole purpose on the list is to attack the
>>Communists. They attack the existing socialist countries; they attack
>>former and current Communist leaders; they critisise most national
>>liberation movements; they have shown no support for the hunger strikers
>>in your country. Their remarks are not comradely critisisms, or designed
>>to promote understanding and co-operation.
>>
>>Zeynep:
>>> I believe that this is also from you;
>>
>>Richard:
>>>
>>> >These are difficult questions for the list moderators, and I do not envy
>>> >their impossible positions, but sometimes standing for justice comes
>>> >before standing for the rules.
>>>
>>Zeynep:
>>> Anyway, stupid me thought I was fighting against the bourgeoisie for a new
>>> world of freedom, free from oppression and exploitation.
>>>
>>
>>Richard:
>>I do not doubt your dedication Zeynep. I admire, and agree with what you
>>say on most subjects.
>>
>>Zeynep:
>>> I also think there are certain time-honored friends and enemies of the
>>> revolution. Well proven.
>>>
>>> Honesty and dedication to the point of being able to put one's ego aside
>>> helps, for one. Being able to grasp the difference between those committing
>>> the Crime of Difference of Opinion and real Counter-revolutionaries and
>>> enemies of the revolution also helps. Is that too subtle?
>>
>>Richard:
>>Please do not doubt my intelligence. I do not expect all Marxists to
>>agree on everything. I welcome the chance to have genuine discussion
>>with people from a Trotskyist background, or Maoists, or Left Social
>>Democrats. Most people on this list prove that those discussions can
>>take place without any problems. There are also some who want to divide
>>the people who want to discuss and find points of unity.
>>
>>Zeynep:
>>>Standing up for
>>> the simplest of all principles, such as not condoning death-talk in any
>>>form
>>> against any person that declares himself/herself on the side of the working
>>> class, and who is not proven to be otherwise (I mean *really* proven, not
>>> imagined) would also help, I suppose. Recognising honest criticism is the
>>> best gift to the revolution, and being able to look from the swamp of one's
>>> ego would probably be beneficiary too.
>>>
>>> Anyone who has a real stake in a revolution, what I call a friend of the
>>> revolution, must feel the pain of watching too many organisations or people
>>> flatter themselves all the way to defeat. It personally pains me to see too
>>> many honest and serious revolutionaries repeat the mantras of the past into
>>> trance, and I see anything that might remotely shake them out of it as a
>>> very welcome event. That, of course, requires listening to criticism,
>>>and of
>>> course, allowing the disagreeable act of letting those that disagree with
>>> you talk. Which, surprisingly, is very difficult if everyone in
>>>disagreement
>>> is branded as not being a friend of the revolution. I guess that simple
>>> principle also deserves standing up and fighting for.
>>>
>>
>>Richard:
>>You should know me well enough by now Zeynep to know that is not a fair
>>reflection of my views. I have never taken a sectarian approach to
>>others on the list.
>>
>>Zeynep:
>>> I don't and can't even begin to comprehend how anyone who has his/her heart
>>> first with the revolution of the working people, then with his/her
>>> organisation does not recognise that sectarianism, being closed to
>>> criticism, nurturing the false, criminal belief that an organisation
>>>that is
>>> engaged in a real war must be handled with kid-gloves and be allowed to
>>> excuse and substitute everything with the simple fact that they are
>>>waging a
>>> right war against the enemy does not see that is what is killing the
>>> revolution, both before and after.
>>>
>>> The idea is not to feel good and congratulate each other all the time. We
>>> should feel bad and criticise each other, and create an environment
>>>allowing
>>> that criticism. I'd keep the congratulations a few and far between. Not
>>> while capital rules most every square meter of the planet anyhow.
>>>
>>> The only injustice I'm afraid of is doing injustice to the revolution. Do
>>> you think the rules which try to ensure that an environment for free,
>>>if not
>>> always intelligent or proper, discussion are there because some of us are
>>> nice boys and girls? That the attempt at condemning death-talk and
>>>"justice"
>>> contradict?
>>>
>>> Where the hell is the spirit of Lenin asking for Menshevik Martov's health
>>> in his own death bed? What happened to the breed of revolutionaries like
>>> Mahir Cayan, who died trying in the events after trying to arrange a
>>> jailbreak for his comrade Deniz Gezmis, who had incidentally broke away
>>>from
>>> their joint organisation with Mahir to form his own, an event that
>>>witnessed
>>> all parties calling each other most every name you can think of.
>>>
>>> The most serious injustice is done when organisations lose the real
>>>picture.
>>> That is why it is more important to ruthlessly criticise organisations.
>>>Even
>>> more so than criticising each other. It is an absolute must, and it is
>>>not a
>>> weakness against the bourgeoisie to do so and some of the criticism will be
>>> wrong, misplaced, undue. Better to have some wrong and misplaced criticism
>>> than too few well-placed and due criticism. Your criteria treating people
>>> and organisations is standing on its head. People can be ignored and
>>> forgiven more readily than organisations. With an attitude like yours,
>>>we'll
>>> play in the sand for a long time.
>>>
>>> And the real enemies of the revolution rejoice no less for closing the
>>>epoch
>>> that was supposed to be the epoch of transition to socialism with
>>> reiterating their power, while we happily squabble and make excuses of each
>>> other.
>>>
>>> Zeynep
>>>
>>
>>Richard:
>>I am sorry that you think that I am taking a sectarian approach. Do you
>>think that we have anything in common with people who make comments such
>>as "leap, lemmings, leap!"? Are they for the revolution, just because
>>they say they are?
>>
>>I have great feelings of comradeship for people like Gary Mc., Jon,
>>Louis P., and others who come from different backgrounds. Please do not
>>think that I, and others only want to speak to people with whom we agree
>>all the time.
>>--
>>Comradely,
>>
>>Richard.
>>      New Worker Online http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2853
>
>
>Zeynept Tufekcioglu is being disingenous and in practice treating the
>counter-revolutionaries with kid gloves.  We, revolutionaries, need no such
>treatment and all her lacrhymose sentimentality amounts to nothing but an
>attempt to cover the facts, as well as her own, and the other moderators,
>regretably spineless behaviour and petty bourgeois dictatorship:
>
>1)  The action of the moderators is completely unpricipled because:
>
>a) They themselves accept there was no death threat from Olaechea.  What
>there is is acceptance on THEIR part of the Trotskyst sects and the
>anti-communists thesis that to tell the enemies of the revolution to go jump
>on a lake AMOUNTS to a death threat SINCE the poor sods do not know how to
>swim.
>
>b) The accusation that to call anyone a "eunuch" (richly used in the Marxist
>tradition) is "sexist" only shows Tufekcioglu's ignorance and bourgeois
>feminist frame of mind.  To be a eunuch is a condition denoting a bodily
>lack, no different - if psychologically stronger and therefore hitting this
>particular mark all the better - than calling the "ruthless critics" of
>revolution "spineless", "cretins (something which denotes a lack of
>intelligence and nous, for her information), "headless" or "gutless", for
>example.
>
>No, here, the only sexism is Zeynept's own and that of the other moderators
>who are in point of fact hiding behind her bourgeois feminist skirts to
>cover up for their arbitrary behaviour and for their own inability to make
>any self-criticism for their own failures.
>
>2) The moderators are being dis-ingenous because the fact that they have
>applied this sanction ENDORSES in practice - as they themselves now can more
>than  perceive clearly - the accussations of US imperialism, the Fujimori
>regime, and its agents and servants, who in point of fact they are
>mollycoddling and protecting.
>
>All the high-fallutin declaration of support to the Peruvian revolution on
>the part of any of the moderators mean absolutely nothing when in practice
>they are colluding and taking sides with the counter-revolutionaries in this
>point.  They demand to be treated themselves with kid-gloves and that
>everyone should overlook principled questions and consider first the
>position they have landed themselves in, while at the same time they are
>JOINING IN - by default - in a bean fest of imperialistic accussations
>against the PCP, El Diario Internacional, Committee Sol Peru, etc.
>
>Concretely: Have they taken any measures other than issuing lacrymose and
>hypocritical appeals to the most vulgar counter-revolutionaries to "wait
>until Olaechea is ALLOWED to come back"? No. They have not. Just one
>example: Rodwell is allowed to continue to publish a death symbol next to a
>subscribers name, a behaviour no different from that of the Fujimori death
>squads which inundate my mail box with letters and mailers sealed with
>skulls and crossbones.  This they tolerate without even batting an eye. Am I
>not entitled then to point out that they seem rather hypocritical to me
>while prattling like gossipy old codgers laying in wait on Hospital's
>corridors commenting the latest about Lenin visiting his old political
>enemies on their death beds?
>
>3) As for Zeynept platitudes about wanting to "ruthlessly criticise
>organisations", I think that she must think that people are born idiots: In
>point of fact - in the here and now - What "organisation" is being
>"ruthlessly criticised"? It is the organisation which the imperialists and
>the reactionaries are - and in point of fact have been - consistently and
>"ruthlessly criticising" in the same vein themselves already for the last 16
>years, the Communist Party of Peru.  Must they also be so transparent in
>adding their miserable grain of dirt to the tons of filthy mud already used
>by reaction for this purpose?
>
>And what "criticisms" are these? What these "criticisms" amount to? Do these
>criticisms have anything to do anything with the ideology or the practice of
>the PCP as seen from the standpoint of revolutionaries? No. These
>"criticisms" amount to nothing more and nothing less than the very old tired
>allegations of imperialist reaction dressed up in Trotskyst language:
>Assassins, murderers, terrorists, sectarians, etc.
>
>Tufekcioglu is in point of fact acting as no friend of any revolution in my
>understanding, and if she were, she would begin by criticising her own
>"organisation" - whatever it may have done, and if nothing, criticise then
>the whys and wherefores of that inactivity at a time when in her country
>there ARE organisations already engaged in the armed struggle.  But no. That
>is not on her agenda presently.  On her agenda is to "ruthlessly criticise"
>the PCP and to allow that such "ruthless criticism" of the overt
>counter-revolutionary kind be spread unchallenged and with a thick trowel in
>a list under her control.  She cannot escape and will not escape her
>responsibility.
>
>This is all that lays behind the high-fallutin words of her homily:
>Tefiocuglu shows that she is herself happy to let the enemies of the
>revolution to "happily squabble" among themselves to be the first to throw
>the mud pies while she does "absolutely nothing" to prevent it, while
>"making excuses" a mile a minute for herself and the "moderators" at large.
>A look in the mirror in the morning would not be a waste of time for such
>"moderators".
>
>Adolfo Olaechea
>
>Please forward to M-I
>




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