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