From: UticaRose-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 13:17:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFT-7


In a message dated 97-04-11 09:56:38 EDT, malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
writes:

<< Are you not doing the exact same think of "overkill" that our Buffalo
 "Marxists" are doing with there "cyber facism"?
 
 Lenin's "What is to be Done" had to do with a all Russian newspaper and not
 the Moscow trials...
 
 Linking Stalinism to Lenin as the original crime is both wrong and
 dangerous. And the only *real* goal of "democracy" I am really interested
 in is the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat..
  >>
the specific topic was a newspaper, the context was party building
(refashioning) and the background was a social democrat party operating in
conditions of quasi-legality in a country exploited by Western European
capital and just emerging from feudal conditions of rural tenure. i dont
think it is overkill to criticize that legacy of lenin which, at least,
created the preconditions for stalin. the systematic elimination of inner
party democracy put a noose around trotsky's neck, the destruction of worker
independent organizations, the treatment of virtually every social activity
as a proper realm for party domination. all of these can be found in lenin's
time. i do not think that stalin was lenin's twin or son. i do think that
lenin had serious blind-sides, several of which were brilliantly and
presciently fingered by luxemburg, none of which appear to have been
understood by any of the bolsheviks. stalin did not just appear. and leninism
is not the sole franchise of the barracks left. while stalinists MUST create
a chinese wall between social democracy and communism, seems to me that the
no man's land in between is where the small and gifted band of lost left
souls of the teens, 20s and 30s all belong such as luxemburg and gramsci.
that is what has intrigued me about trotsky and the motley crew which come
after him. an appreciation of the scientific demands of socialism and the
instinct against the bureaucrats, militarists and other apparatchiks.

hal draper had a lot of interesting things to say about the genesis and
development of the marxist notion of democratic dictatorship. to investigate
the links between lenin and stalin may be dangerous but since when have
marxists shrunk from pursuing the truth ? what is heretical about considering
that lenin found himself backed into a corner because, not surprisingly, he
had a flawed understanding of the need for and strength of dispersing power
while empowering the working masses ? i am convinced that most marxists have
thrown out the baby with the bathwater, that the truths that lenin uncovered
will have to be relearned due to the lies and deceptions that antistalinists
understandably want to avoid. 

isnt there a real similarity, by the way, between the Buffalo group and those
who formed the lenin list in the need to form a clique, to exclude and to
turn discussion or even argument into jargon tossing ? 

as usual, my own ability to communicate clearly, directly and simply is
impaired. overkill ? probably. its hard to avoid overreacting when there are
such clear patterns of left-wing abuses and you see the same mindsets at
work. sort of like "Adolpho" who can mau-mau the academic flackcatchers and
count on them carrying his bags on his way out. why spend a lifetime to wind
up with new bosses who would be no different that the old except less
tolerant of any deviations.




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