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