File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9709, message 464


From: "Joseph Green" <comvox-AT-flash.net>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 00:20:01 +0000
Subject: M-I: The theoretical crisis and the crisis on the Lenin List


     The theoretical crisis and the crisis on the Lenin List

    I am sending this comment to the Lenin List, as it concerns 
controversies on it, and to the Marxism-International list, as it 
seems that this controversy is now spilling over into other lists.
    The current crisis in the Lenin List seems to me to be caused 
by an underestimation of the seriousness of the crisis of 
revolutionary theory today. This lies behind the emotionalism 
about, and efforts to silence, inconvenient views. I do not agree 
with Hillier's banning of Adolfo's articles that refer to Cuba as 
fascist; his act has stopped the discussion of Cuba in its tracks. 
Nor I do agree with the harassment of those who oppose Stalinism, 
namely the Communist Voice, as we were harassed by special delays 
in posting the material we sent in; Hillier claims this was not 
due to him, but to others. I myself wonder whether a few (not all) 
of the current opponents of Hillier would react as Hillier did if 
it was a question of articles criticizing forces which they find 
as sacred as Hillier finds Castro.
     The discussion about Cuba was an important discussion, 
because it dealt with the attitude to state-capitalism and 
revisionism. If it were carried out seriously, it suggests ideas 
about a lot more than Cuba, because the state-capitalist structure 
of the Cuban economy is similar to that of other revisionist 
countries and to that of the Soviet Union for a long time. Many of 
those in the discussion had pat answers to this question. Proyect, 
for example, first posted his "Theory of the Cuban revolution" 
which glorified Cuba as continually deepening the revolution a la 
Che Guevara, and then under criticism claimed to know all about 
the problems of the Cuban economy, but held that so long as Cuba 
wasn't issuing stock, Cuba couldn't be capitalist. On the other 
hand, Adolfo, who opposed Cuba as fascist, also seemed impatient 
with economic analysis. He seemed to believe it sufficed to refer 
to a few of the reactionary Castroist political stands, and to 
shout about them as loudly as possible and in the most emotional 
way possible. Perhaps this is because a calmer look at Cuba would 
show the relationship of the Cuban system to the system pioneered 
by Stalin in the Soviet Union, and Adolfo doesn't yet grasp that 
Stalinism is revisionism. Meanwhile Malecki, shouting from outside 
the list, says like Proyect that he knows all about the problems 
of Cuba, but he wants to defend Cuban state capitalism anyway. 
That's Trotskyism for you.
      We in Communist Voice were in essence invited onto the Lenin 
List by Jacques Beaudoin of Action Socialiste (Canada) who posted 
Mark's article from Communist Voice entitled "The imperialist 
Helms-Burton law and the myth of Cuban socialism", and prefaced it 
with a gracious introduction. This was a comradely act by 
Beaudoin, and it is also notable that Action Socialiste carried a 
French translation of Mark's article in their journal. After J.B. 
posted Mark's article, I then posted other articles from Communist 
Voice on the Lenin List as well as making some comments of my own. 
The CV articles have added a good deal of economic analysis to the 
criticism of the Castro regime.
     We do not proceed on the basis of the Stalinist theory (or 
the Trotskyist theory), but from an independent anti-revisionist 
stand. However, both Hillier and Adolfo believe that Stalin should 
be upheld as a sign of anti-revisionism. Hillier reproached Adolfo 
with referring to the economic analysis in our articles, pointing 
out that we opposed Stalinism. However, Hillier also issued a 
request for me to post material on the CV views on Stalinism being 
revisionism, despite the fact that he couldn't imagine how 
Communist Voice would defend such a view, which he thinks is 
indefensible.
     But it turns out that, from the start, without informing me, 
my postings were subject to the petty harassment of a special 
review by the moderators which slowed down the postings. In reply 
to my note to the moderators about the strange slowness of 
appearance of a particular reply to Proyect, Hillier claimed that 
he had taken heat from Adolfo for his request for me to post our 
materials repudiating Stalinism, and that this stance of Adolfo's 
was the source of the petty harassment (my phrase, not his) 
against CV.
     Meanwhile Hillier has banned postings that label Castro as a 
fascist. While this does not apply to CV postings, since our 
writings have not done this (but "only" say that the Cuban regime 
is the rule of a new state-capitalist class over the working 
class), I don't agree with Hillier's action. It is very wrong; the 
justifications for it by Jim Hillier and Jim Blaut are 
astonishing; and it has essentially blown up the Lenin List. (One 
justification in particular I want to address: I don't agree with 
the assertion that the fireworks on the Lenin List required 
precipitate action; I agree with Beaudoin's view that it could 
have been dealt with over a period of time. I think something 
positive could have come from all of the fuss, but it was not 
going to happen very fast and it required more than a consultation 
among the moderators.)
     However, no one from the Lenin List has yet spoken on the 
harassment CV was subjected to. If there really are those who 
think that it's wrong to ban the postings saying Castro is a 
fascist, but right to harass, or perhaps even ban, those who are 
opposed to Stalinist revisionism, then this position is surely 
inconsistent.
     The Lenin List was founded in the midst of various 
controversies in the Marxism-International list which took place 
before I began to participate on these lists. So I'm not sure 
exactly how or why it was formed. But in any case, the declared 
purpose of the Lenin List was to advance anti-revisionism. As for 
us, the Communist Voice Organization springs from comrades who 
have sought to oppose anti-revisionism as the guiding point of our 
policy for a quarter of century. We have gone through the school 
of hard knocks, as we have found that the roots of revisionism 
went further than just Khrushchovism and Trotskyism. It seems that 
many of the comrades on the Lenin List haven't fully realized how 
serious the issue is. Because some organizations (from state- 
capitalist regimes that repress the workers, such as in Cuba, to 
militant parties and movements of varying political trends) still 
survive around the world, they don't take full account of the 
tremendous disorganization and collapse of the proletarian 
movement which has taken place around the world, nor realize the 
seriousness of the lessons springing from the existence of state- 
capitalist regimes parading as socialist or communist. Such things 
are behind the belief that if only certain positions are banned or 
harassed among the supposed anti-revisionists, things will be 
better.
     Hillier said he stood for making the Lenin List a center for 
serious discussion on the fundamental issues. It was on this basis 
that he quite properly invited me to post various articles even 
though he disagreed with what he knew of the Communist Voice 
stand. Yet his banning of Adolfo's Cuba as fascist position goes 
against the idea of having such a center of serious discussion. As 
I said above, however, there was also a harassment of our 
postings, and Hillier claims that his invitation to CV to post 
articles against Stalinism was used against him. I think both 
issues should be addressed by the discussion on the crisis in the 
Lenin List.
     Adolfo says he is now beginning to publish documentation on 
the struggle in the Lenin List on other lists, and others too have 
started to take this controversy more widely. What else could be 
expected? So I too shall post outside the Lenin List some of the 
CV articles relevant to this struggle. I believe that their 
attention to economic analysis, to tracing the evolution of the 
economy in Cuba, and to examining how the state sector really 
works, may provide an example of a serious study of revisionist 
state-capitalism. This is one part of the serious study of the 
economic and political roots of revisionism that is sorely needed. 
The seriousness of the struggle against state-capitalism is not to 
be judged by the volume of the insults; perhaps sometimes it may 
even be in inverse proportion to the emotionalism. <>

--Joseph Green, editor, Communist Voice
e-mail: comvoice-AT-flash.net
CV web page: http://www.flash.net/~comvoice


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