File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-31.182, message 6


Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 11:09:36 -0800 (PST)
From: " Rahul  Mahajan" <rahul_saumik-AT-hotmail.com>


I'm a bit confused by Louis Proyect's post, but here's my attempt to answer the
issues he has raised.

The record of Stalinist/Maoist sectarianism on this and previous lists is
crystal clear. From the Olaechea/Quispe "Black Vomit" wars, where each accused
the other of being a "counterrevolutionary Avakianist" down to the current day
when Olaechea and all of his cronies call Trotskyists (and anyone who ever
disagrees with them) counterrevolutionaries, imperialist agents, fascists, etc.
If this isn't sectarianism, I don't know what is. Of course, to Proyect, having
come out of a cult (the SWP), only those with sympathy for that particular cult
can be sectarian. I have never read any official stuff of the PCP, except for
things posted by Quispe, whom I trust about as much as I trust Olaechea, but,
in any case, that stuff is fairly sectarian as well. 

The point that I have raised, of course, as Proyect well knows, is not Stalin
admiration. In the third world, it is a very understandable and excusable
phenomenon, often not really affecting the realities of struggle against
capitalist oppression. In the first world, it is more of a fitting subject for
abnormal psychology and remedial education than for serious political
contention. There is a big difference, though, between thinking Stalin was a
good guy or the Soviet Union was a great place because you think the camps and
all the rest are just imperialist propaganda, because you want so desperately
to believe there can be something better than the sordid muck you see around
you, or even thinking that the monstrous tragedy that was the Soviet Union was
inevitable, that the rulers did the best they could with what they had, on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, being buddy-buddy with someone who has just
called for the torture and murder of a person because she applied the rules of
a mailing list to him. His attempt to shift the issue and evade his palpable
and evident culpability in this regard just exposes the fact of his
unprincipled opportunism more clearly. It has nothing to do with a political
orientation. He's not kidding anybody.

There are people here in Turkey who think the Soviet Union was a wonderful
place and defend things like the crushing of Hungary and Czechoslovakia because
of the need to "defend the workers' state" who are, even so, the finest people
I hope to know. They would be as disgusted by Olaechea's thuggishness and
Proyect's hypocritical apologetics as I am. 

Rahul Mahajan

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