Date: Sun, 6 Jul 1997 13:12:28 -0400 From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki) Subject: Re: M-I: Mass Organizing > 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. Time and again Proyect comes back to his pet theory for two fundemental reasons. Naturally to trash the "Trotskyists" here on the lists but even more so because of his own ideas of party building of a broad model where despite real political positions that put Proyects "Comrades" on the opposite side of the barricades they still can be in the same party. Because in reality that is the model that is being purposed here time and again by Proyect both in his conception of discussions but also the broad party view that he presented a few months back and which I labeled at best as some sort of "Yankee Doodle" socialism. Leaving aside that Proyect has been guilty both of organising "fraction" fights with a Stalinist flavor of bureaucratic exclusion and special rules but also a lot of personalistic stuff directed at political opponents. In fact the very first reply to Brown on this list by Proyect was entirely personalistic and slanderous and had nothing to do with politics at all. Brown's crime was pointing out how "progressive" the American CP was durinf the war in regards to the Japanese and Brown own quite colorful experience with the CP and the KKK! In fact nothing could be futher from the truth that the Lenin model of party building was some sort of collective septic tank where all views on politics was accepted as in the "party of the whole class" Kautskyite conception. In fact many times in the struggle with the Bernsteinians and the Mensheviks unity in fact was imposed on the party from the outside (for example the German social Democracy) or Lenin and the Bolsheviks made a treaty with their political opponents which was usually broken by the Mensheviks while at the same time accusing Lenin and the Bolsheviks of being splitters. Nor is Proyects empirical approach connected to any kind of political reality or that the evovlement of the Bolshevik party from being a part of the second International which collapsed in August 1914 leading up to first the February revolution and on to October revolution to building of the Third International and the famouis "21 conditions" of membership mean anything to Proyect in the sense of evolvement of the Bolshevik model on the party question. In fact Proyect proves like many of the new left spokesman that a democratic centralist party forged around program and tactics not only on the National level but also the International level is nothing for them. This is because partially of decades of Stalinist politics, but also today because of a very large jump to the right by the so called "new left" into trying to find and all incompassing progressive party of some sort on the National level, but also capitulating to anything that might be able to be called "anti-imperialist" on the other. In Proyects case it is a combination of uncritical support to the Cuban deformed workers state side with side to support to the FLSN who gave it away in and election to the class enemy and at best today are trying to rewtite the Nicaraguan national anthym and moving over to Africa we have Proyects support for Kabila in Zaire as the latest example of people who are his comrades. And in the USA itself Proyect came with the most pretendious social patriotic party building model of all a few months back and he has the nerve to talk about splits in the so called "Trotskyist" movements. Besides many of the splits among "Trotskyists" groups has hardly anything to do with the "Zinoviev" model as he claims. But a lot to do with decades of Stalinist practice in the workers movement. In fact the closet thing to the model that he claims is law for all "Trotskyist" groups and splinters in fact has more to do with Stalinism and Pabloite liquidationism then anything else. Does Proyect deny that the Bolshevik model never took one step forward from the late 1890's, all through the ealry 1900 leading uo to the outbreak of the first imperialist war? And does he claim that the formation of the Third international and the 21 conditions was not and even futher evolvement of thr Bolshevik organisational model? I think he does! He is looking for a scapegoat to batter on the "Trotskyist" groups and people represented on the lists while at the same time putting forth the Kautsky version of the party of the whole class both on the National level but also the International level. But it is Kautskyism with a neo-Stalinist twist involving all kinds of popular front politics and anti imperialist United Fronts to liquidate into in order to build this "new" broad neo Stalinist version of a party. In reality Proyect is using Lenin to practice Kautsky's ideas on the party of the whole class and even classes! And he is using Zinoviev to pounce on Cannon's SWP model which in practice because of historical reasons the one Trotskyist organisation in the world that for many years could function as a democratic centralist revolutionary Trotskyist organisation. And this as nothing to do with the bizaar clone that developed in the SWP as it was moving towards the right and finally stepped into the reformist politics of the Social Democracy. The best phrase that one can see from the Peter Camejo days in the SWP and also later on in the Mandelite USec was the label "disloyality to the party" as the excuse to expel any left opposition to their rightward adaption to both Stalinism and the Social Democracy. So in reality it had nothing what so ever to do with Proyects above arguements. This is just a theroretical cover for his hate of anything that claims to be Trotskyist but also his own political trajectory on the party question both nationally and Internationally. Finally a democratic centralist party of the Bolshevik/Leninist model must be buildt on the fundemental programatic positions of both the history of the Bolshevik Party and not in the least around its evolvement from the 2nd International into a Russian organisation that through October created the Third International. The first four congresses of the Third International naturally including the 21 conditions going on to the politics of the left opposition of Trotsky against the Stalinists and leading up to the creation of the fourth International. It will also have to take to task the degeneration of Trotskyist politics not so much under the pressue of Zinoviev'ism as PRoyect claims. But much more both Stalinist and reformist liquidation on politics connected to a Stalinist conception of the party. Another decisive question I think will be when a party begins to get a sizeable cadre from the working class which has not been the case since the second world war. It is much easier to have a million splits when the entire new left was and still is made up of petty bougeois intellectuals with no solid working class base of cadre. The one thing which Lenin was extremely careful about was winning these precioous cadre to his politics. He paid dearly in this perspective and the majority (the Mensheviks) organisationally were always larger then the Bolsheviks up to and including the February revolution. It was only after the July days and leading up to October that Lenin conception of the party linked to program and politics over a whole historical cycle paid off only a few years later to be beheaded not by Zinoviev' but in fact Stalin and his line which certainly had nothing to to with democratic centralism but liquidating all opposition to him and his followers. Finally I see that Louis his accusing Brown of being some sort of "snot nosed" something or other and actually is threatening Brown with something or other. Haven't the MI moderaters a rule that they made up for this kind of activity or is it just Aldolfo and the "Trotskyists" that the special rules are made up for. But don't worry Brown Proyect is quite harmless other then his big anti Trotskyist mouth and and naturally his usual tactic historically is not violence in anyway. For example he claims if you look back in the archives that Malecki is and "agent provacateur" in the pay of the CIA. I would never go to such lengths in the case of Proyect. My favorite is the neo Stalinist yellow journalist with a love for his old SWP scrapbooks and poster clue..Occasionally he still has to resort to the SWP in order to take on the state caps and others. But this man has moved very far to the right more then likely futher then the now bizaar politics of the SWP he once was a member of. And to Brown I would like to say I remember Camejo coming to Sweden to rally his little band of supporters against the Mandelite International Majority Tendency back in the ealy seventies. I find it quite interesting the story of how this fake Trotskyist ended up. But he was not alone. Look at Tariq Ali (another favorite of Proyects) by the way. Ask him to publish the stuff he wrote on this IMT wonder child and what he is doing today. Then I can publish my answer to that garbage on M-I.. Warm Regards Bob Malecki ------------------------------------------------------- Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people http://www.algonet.se/~malecki Back issues of Cockroach and my book at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ -------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005