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 --------------------------------------------------------- Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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