File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 211


Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 00:43:50 +0200 (MET DST)
From: m-18043-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Stuart Sheild)
Subject: M-I: The trouble with Proyect


Proyect to Hugh:
>You certainly aren't serious. When I was won over to Trotskyism in 1967, I
>became a Trotskyist. Being a Trotskyist means joining an organization
>based on a set of principles and carrying out a party line. Your concept
>of being a Trotskyist is sitting down at a personal computer keyboard and
>calling people Mensheviki. This is to genuine politics as masturbation is
>to sex.

This is a perfect example of the kind of baseless slander Hugh was talking 
about. Proyect obviously has NO knowledge of or interest in Hugh's 
involvement or participation in any party whatsoever, Trotskyist, Maoist or 
Eleventh Hour Immersionist. Not that lack of factual knowledge has ever 
stopped him from smearing people, as Bob Malecki and others can testify.

For the record, this is the sort of thing Proyect specialises in and has 
been practising on a regular basis since I joined the list: unprovoked, 
unpolitical, personalised, malicious, obsessive and -- of course -- wholly 
unfounded attacks, like this one, on people he perceives as a) a threat to 
his puerile territorial pretensions on MI, b) anyone (except Adolfo, for 
whom Proyect -- like most bullies faced with a bigger one -- has a cringing 
respect) who ventures an opinion on Cuba or Nicaragua, subjects only he is 
qualified to pronounce on, c) anyone uncongenial to his notion of what an MI 
list contributor should be (basically someone who doesn't give Proyect any 
lip -- in fact P. is remarkably like the sheriff (played by Gene Hackman) in 
a Clint Eastwood film I once saw: affable enough so long as his 'boys' knew 
their place and toed the line but pathologically homicidal when crossed), d) 
anyone with the ability to expose him as the shallow, crude thinker he is 
(and pompous with it), with his "in-depth research" and his anxious 
pretensions to "serious scholarship".

Even Adolfo Olaechea has Proyect's number. The following is bang on target: 

"Mr. Proyect has taken recently [and not so recently] to belittling the role 
of ideology in the revolutonary movement. [...] Mr. Proyect alleges that he 
is against "ideological zealotry".  However, he acts very much as a zealous 
defender of his own "non-ideological" (anti-scientific) ideology."

"It is evident that Proyect, beyond all his eclecticism (the helter-skelter
collecting of ideas into a mishmash) does actually subscribe to a very
definite school of "Marxism": Proyect's "Marxism is essentially
Revisionism [and boils down to the following proposition] "What does it 
matter if the cat is black or white if it catches mice?"."

"Mr. Proyect gets very worked out when someone would stick a deserved label
on him.  For example, when he is called a "maenshevik" - he freaks!"

"He reasons:  I am no Menshevik.  I love Lenin and hate Kerenski.  How can I
possibly be a "Menshevik"?."

"His problem is simple.  He does not recognise that his idea of himself -
defined as it is by his "likes" and "dislikes", his "sympathies" and
"anti-pathies" [...]"

"For example, contrary to his superficial theory of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
representing one and the same "working class movement" based upon the
external factors of a shared time and space, Lenin very clearly states:
"The unity of the proletariat in the epoch of social revolution can be
achieved only by the extreme revolutionary Party of Marxism, and ONLY IN
RELENTLESS STRUGGLE against all other parties" (V. I. Lenin, Collected
Works, Vol XXVI, p. 50)."

"[...] He - rather like the Mensheviks - believes in "Proletarian Unity" 
around the minimum common denominator, not around the extreme Party of 
Marxism.      
He is against ideological struggle (which is form of the struggle against 
other parties). Proyect advocates "ideological peace", i.e. "subsuming the 
Party with all other parties".  

"[...] Proyect says:  Bah! and so what?  I am not a Menshevik
because I know I am not, and that is that!."

Adolfo Olaechea: M-I: L PROYECT: REVISIONISM, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND 
MENSHIVISM (fwd from moderator)


Back to Proyect:
>However, he had an excuse from his mommy
>saying that Hughie did not have to join a party himself, because he was
>too busy watching the telly and eating herring up in Sweden. The idea was
>that the rest of us were to do something about this categorical imperative
>that this loud-mouthed dilletante found so convenient to ignore. 

[snip]

>So we ignored him, as we ignore the wretch Malecki, who continues to refer
>to Congo by its neo-colonial name. What's next, a Cockroach special on the
>conjunkural situation in Northern Rhodesia?

Who's ignoring who? To my knowledge this is the sixth message in as many 
weeks picking up on something Hugh has written and using it as an excuse to 
denounce Hugh (who, doubtless unwilling to encourage Proyect's sense of 
self-importance by feeding him with attention, has not directly addressed 
him for months) as an armchair revolutionary, and therefore not competent 
(lacking the "authority" was the phrase Proyect so tellingly employed) to 
pronounce on the subject of revolution. This is false and nonsensical. Its 
falsity I would be glad to prove were it my business to do so. Its 
nonsensicality lies in the obvious fact that the logical truth -- or 
otherwise -- of a statement is not contingent on the occupation of its maker. 

It is also blatantly hypocritical; no one on this list is under any 
obligation to give any other member an account of his day-to-day political 
activities. Proyect neither demands this of anyone other than Hugh (or 
occasionally Dave) nor -- apart from shameless name-dropping and the 
occasional pompous declaration to the effect that he doesn't join parties 
but starts them -- does he provide us with any such account himself. The 
only people Hugh has any political obligation to are his party comrades and 
comrades in the struggle.

>Who wants to have a "debate" with such
>close-minded individuals. Your best bet is to say, "No thanks, I don't
>have the time right now." 

This is another of Proyect's stupid, insufferable contentions, repeated ad 
nauseam: "You can't argue with a guy who's already made up his mind." As if 
no other member of the list ever argued from a pre-established position, 
convinced of the truth of what he/she was saying. Not Olalechera the Maoist. 
Justin Schwartz the market socialist. Or Jim Hillier the Cuba-is-not-fascist 
Stalinist. Not Andrew Austin the Marxist-Historical Materialist (whose 
departure from the list was acompanied -- and probably expedited -- by a 
stream of Proyectilian homilies on the virtues of tolerance and humility -- 
like being lectured on the need for social solidarity by Margaret Thatcher). 
Certainly not Godena. Or Dave B the Trotskyist. Nor of course Proyect the 
Castroite, who never made up his mind or took up an uncompromising stance on 
anything at all. 

The truth is that Proyect has a personal aversion to (what he carelessly 
assumes to be) Hugh's political position -- for personal reasons. Nothing 
else can explain the virulence and uncontrolled nature of his attacks on a 
few selected targets. He and his ex-trot and/or centrist cronies have 
consistently condoned all the faults in the Stalinist list contributors -- 
claims to true revolutionary purity, un-nooahnced appeals to higher 
authority, empty, hysterical phrase-mongering, collective branding of 
opponents in the Left as class traitors, fascists, etc. -- for which they 
froth at Hugh, Dave B. and Bob Malecki with mechanical monotony.

To add insult to injury, Proyect maintains that *all* Trotskyists 
unthinkingly regurgitate whatever line is fed to them. This is not only 
highly offensive, it is also untrue. It is offensive because it assumes that 
people don't -- or can't -- choose a position on the basis of its objective 
merits and then join the organisation that best embodies that position. 
According to P., it has to be the other way round. Trotskyists join an 
organisation for extraneous reasons and then swallow the party line whole. 
It is untrue because party work is just not like that. It may have been in 
Proyect's experience; it certainly isn't in mine.

How Proyect's execrable behaviour goes unchecked and for the most part 
uncommented on on this and other lists is difficult enough to understand. 
How anyone can put up with his repellant daily presence is totally mystifying.

Stuart Sheild
Stuart



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