Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 16:02:00 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: Replying to Rahul was Re: M-I: Adolfo Olaechea


Rahul said:


>There are a lot of people on this list who have been cravenly sucking up to
>Olaechea for the past year -- Louis Proyect, Gary Maclennan, Doug Henwood and
>Carrol Cox (to a considerably lesser degree), among others -- I discount, as
>does any sensible person, Adolfo's gang of goons. Cox at least has admitted
>he's wrong, although he's attempted to say that it was a mistake he made for
>principled reasons. The fact is, of course, as anyone who has watched the whole
>sordid affair develop can see, that they all made this decision for thoroughly
>unprincipled, personal reasons. This is clear from, among other things,
>Maclennan's obsessive hatred of Malecki, who, whether you agree with him or
>not, has never engaged in this kind of vilification, let alone this kind of
>call for violence against a list member solely on the basis of damage to his
>ego, or Proyect's even more obsessive crusade against Trotskyist sectarianism
>while blatantly ignoring the Stalinist/Maoist sectarianism that has been
>plastered all over this and preceding lists.

Gary said: 


Rahul,

This is simply a crock of crap as they say in Omagh. It is offensive of
course but that is not a first for you. Me a goon? Get a grip, wee lad.
Reality is slipping past you.

Now let me address the question of Malecki and my alleged obsessive hatred.
I log on nearly every day and I routinely delete Malecki.  It is done quite
quickly, simply and without any resentment whatsoever on my part. The truth
is that I would be sort of saddened if the cockroach was not there to
delete.  He kind of orients me. I have not mentioned him for weeks and I do
so now only in the context of your silly reference to my obsessive hatred of
him.  The truth is that so absent is any hatred on my part that I will not
mention him again.


But I must confess that I am guilty of something.  I did begin the current
row by begging people to drop the anti-stalin bit, to get hold on reality
and realize that this was not the burning question of the 90s.  That was
meant to help the list proceed.  Instead I got the most incredible amount of
abuse from the Trots on and off-list.  It seems as if I had challenged their
identity.  Without Stalinism there could be no Trotskyism.  Without the
devil there could be no god.

This is just crazy nonsense.  There is a world to win.  Outside my office,
away from my computer and the list Australian workers are being driven into
the dirt.  Hard as it is for Trotskyist comrades to understand the Moscow
trial question is not the burning issue in Brisbane right now.  Every Monday
I stand outside State Parliament on a small picket line defending the rights
of workers to organize.  The man standing holding the banner with me is an
admirer of Stalin.  I couldn't give a flying fuck about this.  He regards me
as a rabid Trot but has agreed to bracket off discussion about the burning
issue of Nin and the POUM while we try and get people to stand up to the
state in 1997.

Now none of this I would submit makes me particularly craven, or a traitor
to the working class.  Nor does it make me disinterested in history. Nor
does it mean that I am showing disrespect for the memory of the great
Spanish revolutionary. I am simply prioritising what I think are the
pressing issues of the day.  Now is it so hard to understand that I think
the list should do the same???

G.MacLennan



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