File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9707, message 122


Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 09:36:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Mass Organizing


On Sun, 6 Jul 1997 Silknsky9-AT-aol.com wrote:
> 
> Geez Louise (literally)   This guy Proyect gets me soooooo frustrated, cuz
> he's only a few inches away from the truth sometimes....and then misses it by
> lightyears...
> 
> Okay baby, look  Cannon was right God dammit and Oehler was indeed wrong.

Louis P: Mr. silknsky-AT-aol.com/Comrade Brown, my name is Louis Proyect, not
Louise Proyect.  I have no idea why you would call me by my wrong name
when I at least make the effort to let people know who I am. I have also
met personally with probably dozens of people through this medium in order
to have further face-to-face discussions. What certainly cheapens and
undermines serious discussion is when a snot-nosed kid using an anonymous
aol tag shows up on this list and adopts the manner of a campus
coffee-shop kibitzer rather than a serious revolutionary. The next time
you call a 52 year old man who has been active in revolutionary politics
since 1967 "baby", you will deeply regret the decision you made to do so.
Trust me on this one.

>  You act as if this was a conflict between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
>   The conflict between Cannon and Oehler as to the correct orientation for a

Louis P: Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Here we have in the
"Generic Trotskyist League"--a split from a split from a split from a
Trotskyist group--a cyberclique of 3 or 4 people that defines itself on a
correct reading of history. This methodology has nothing to do with
Lenin's Bolshevik Party which had no "party line" on historical questions
let alone questions of how to overthrow the Czar.  When Bukharin was in
exile during 1914, he started an official Bolshevik newspaper called "The
Star"  which was financed by party funds. The newspaper dissented strongly
from Lenin's ideas on the First World War and other matters of party
program. It adopted a consistently *left* if not ultraleft orientation. It
wrote article after article denouncing Lenin's call for democratic demands
while urging the adoption of purely socialist demands. 

What was Lenin's reaction to this violation of democratic centralism?
There were no expulsions of the "renegade" newspaper staff. Lenin's
reaction was merely to question the use of scarce party funds to start a
new paper. Other than that, there was no objection since the Bolshevik
Party functioned completely differently from the Marxist-Leninist sects of
today that trace their origins to Zinoviev's caricature of the Bolshevik
model. This caricature was made official at the 5th Congress of the
Comintern in 1924-25. Trotsky, who never really understood the Bolshevik
organizational model. adopted Zinoviev's model as his own and every
Trotskyist group is based on it.

The results have been painfully obvious. Split after split after split.
The minute any serious disagreements take place, trial bodies are
assembled to expel the newest expression of "a scratch to gangrene", in
Trotsky's infelicitous description of the Schachtman-Burnham opposition.
Jan Norden, who you have expressed some sympathy for, edited the Spart
newspaper for over a decade and was then expelled on trumped-up charges
(not turning in vouchers) when the real reason is that he was only 98% in
favor of Spart-thought rather than 100%. This is no way to build a mass
workers party, but a sect. Actually, one does not build a sect. One
declares it and that's the end of it.

> 
> And it took and would have taken a much larger intervention to break
> revolutionaries from the suicidal opportunistic policies of the right wing
> Maoists in SDS.   The Spartacists were correct to enter SDS and oppose the
> split but also primarily tail Progressive Labor because of its working class
> orientation.
> 

Louis P: The Progressive Labor Party did not have a "working class
orientation". If this Maoist cult had such an orientation, it would have
helped build mass demonstrations for withdrawal from Vietnam rather than
beat people up who did so. When they attempted to storm the
speaker's platform of a rally in Boston in 1974, Jon Flanders and I were
on the defense guard that repelled them. The Spartacist League applauded
these Stalinist gangsters as being more revolutionary than the SWP. Real
revolutionaries mobilize the masses rather than physically attack mass
mobilizations.


> And were the Mandelites petit bourgeois?   You bet your ass they were, but
> the SWP was simply a different type of gross Social democratic opportunism.
>  Yes they could play orthodox Cannonites when they wanted to...which was
> every so often.
> 

Louis P: "Petit bourgeois". "Opportunism". "Orthodox". Yak-yak-yak. This
type of in-group jargon is what repels people from Marxism. Nobody has a
clue what you are talking about, who Cannon is, who Mandel is, etc. This
is the stuff of a sectarian netherworld where one can pretend that you are
up to the same level as Lenin in his fights with the Mensheviks. The only
problem is that the Bolsheviks had millions of supporters while American
Trotskyism has never been even to elect somebody to office. This type of
self-deception is of obvious comfort to people who never dream that it is
their responsibility to elect revolutionaries to office, lead strikes, or
in general act as a tribune for the masses. 


> And Peter Camejo, well that traitor damn well deserved to be expelled.  Now
> he runs some obnoxious so called progressive investment trust... Screw
> him....
> 

Louis P: Peter Camejo was expelled from the SWP not for being a
stockbroker but for criticizing the SWP's program. Do you know what his
ideas were in 1980 or 1981? I see that you are anxious to apply
disciplinary measures against or curse somebody whose ideas you don't even
have any familiarity with. Congratulations, you are like most
"Marxist-Leninists"  of today with their quick trigger-finger on the
expulsion button.  The real Bolsheviks--as opposed to these grotesque
caricatures--only expelled one person in their entire history: Bogdanov. 






     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005