Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 01:38:29 -0400
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-I: M-G: On VOODOO RHETORICS,CUBA, and other matters (Pt. 1)


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>Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 22:44:24 +0000
>From: vladimir bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
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>To: marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>Subject: M-G: On VOODOO RHETORICS,CUBA, and other matters (Pt. 1)
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>[I want to apologize for unintentionally misspelling Adolfo Olaechea's
>last name in
>my previous post]. 
>
>The last of Olaechea's revelations makes me think that the rank of our
>voodoo dialectician-in-charge and at-large, that I was about to award
>him, would be clearly undeserved and even unfair to a number of genuine
>voodooists on this list.  I thereby demote Olaechea to our voodoo
>rhetorician-in-charge and at-large. Let us now briefly
>examine this remarkable example of the rhetoric of the voodoo left
>dogmatism behind which there lingers on an ideology of the philistine
>petty-bourgeois nationalism.  
>
>Olaechea writes: 
>
><<The best proof that what Olaechea writes could not have been written
>by a
>Trotskyst, is precisely that the Trotkyst Bilenkin (and that Bilenkin is
>a
>Trotskyst we have ample proof in case his memory is shortchanging him)
>is so
>dead against his version of history in relation to the true character of
>the
>Cuban regime.>>
>
>A purely rhetorical construction based on a circular logic with a rather
>silly
>proposition that since "we (sic!) have ample proof that Bilenkin is a
>Trotskyist"
>then Olaechea could not have written anything that could have written by
>a trotskyist!  Everything that follows is but the extended version of
>this spectacular construction.  
>
><<That Bilenkin takes this position - like Trotskysts always do in
>opposition
>to the proletariat - is obviously for the most simple and telling of
>reasons:>>
>
>I categorically refuse to see Olaechea as a synechdochy for "the
>proletariat"
>in general and the Cuban proletariat in particular. If any of the good
>members
>of this list can provide me with any evidence to the contrary I will be
>eager to
>consider it and, if convinced, to bring my sincere apologies to
>Olaechea.
>
><<Because it relates to true facts and exposes these true facts for
>everyone
>to see.  As these facts run contrary to the interests of the
>social-fascist
>bourgeois scholars of revisionism who seek to delude the masses into
>supporting reactionaries by dressing them up as "the people's friends",
>and
>moreover, such facts expose these very scholars practical collaboration
>with
>imperialism, is it at all surprising then that Bilenkin wants to add his
>penny's worth to this mistification?.>>
>
>Of course it's not surprising.  What is surprising is how well the
>contemporary
>epigoni of Vyshinsky have been able to preserve his style (and style
>only) while
>completely lacking his undeniable logical skills in manupulating FALSE
>FACTS. The 
>"ample proof" of this aspect of Stalinist degradation that explains why
>I had to 
>deny Olaechea even the rank of the voodoo logician will be demonstrated
>below.
>
>
><<As to Bilenkin's silly and wooden "dialectics", sufficient to say that
>contradictions among fascists and counter-revolutionaries are not
>precluded,
>neither that such contradictions can become very acute under certain
>circunstances. It is obvious that such inter-bourgeois contradictions
>can
>also lead to wars, and in fact they inevitably lead to wars when all
>other
>methods to resolve them fail, as history has proven many a time.>> 
>
>Let us ponder on this theoretical semblance. My "wooden" dialectics as
>well as my knowledge of history suggest that contradictions between
>"fascists and counter-revolutionaries" are of a different nature than
>inter-bourgeois contradictions (both within one country and
>internationally), though not unconnected with them. The former can be
>born only out of the dynamic of class struggle against the advent of the
>revolutionatry proletariat. The latter exist always, i.e. even when the
>class struggle is in its latent phase. Olaechea's voodoo rhetoric is
>intended to obfuscate the difference that in certain circumstances can
>become crucial for proletarian politics.  For instance, we can say that
>under no conditions the contradictions of the former type can lead to a
>civil war but only to a putsch.  But a marxist politician worthy of this
>name would have to go far deeper in examining these two types of
>contradictions in all their concrete manifestations.  He will not be
>deceived by the vodoo dialectics of Olaechea-Manuilsky since he has
>learned something from history and is manly enough not to hide from this
>experience.  He knows that counter-revolutionary forces and even the
>fascist ones are not homogeneous substances of the Stalinist metaphysics
>but the political representations of heterogeneous social layers and
>groups with different and even contradictory interests. He finds in this
>heterogeneity of and contradictions between the reactionary forces,
>masked and subdued on a level of political representation by a "leader"
>or "leadership,"  a revolutionary chance for the proletariat.  This is
>what "wooden" dialecticians think
>about when they come across the voodoo dialectics of Adolfo's type.
>
><<In today's world, US imperialism is the leader of the new fascism, but
>even
>then, US imperialism - as all imperialist and fascist powers do -
>strives to
>impose its domination over all other powers, including also those who
>are
>also equally bitter enemies of the revolutionary proletariat.>>
>
>A good example of voodoo logic: since all of the above is true, Castro's
>Cuba is a "bitter enemy of the revolutionary proletariat."  Who can
>notice that under the spell of this verbal black magic Olaechea smuggles
>in a repudiation of the most fundamental 
>epistemological insight of historical materialism, the primacy of class
>struggle for our understanding of historical process.  What Olaechea
>asserts is that when confronted by the "revolutionary proletariat" the
>exploiting classes of imperialist and "all other powers" DO NOT unite
>against their common class enemy but rather slash one another's throats
>and commit their own class suicide!  Olaechea's thesis then goes against
>the very heart of proletarian politics and the entire historical
>experience of socialist movement.  Bravo, VOODOO PROFESSOR!  What
>professional propagandist for the bourgeoisie could do a better job! 
>But Olaechea is not a propagandist for the bourgeoisie.  He is a
>revolutionary in a tradition of the Left dogmatism, more exactly, of its
>degenerated voodoo stage. But the class base of his revisionism remains
>the same.  Which class?  To answer this question we have ask: To What
>class social reality tends to appear as one determined by "big guys" and
>who tends to explain its own misfortunes and the motion of history by
>them and their inter-national competition rather than by the often
>invisible struggle between classes?  The answer is: petty bourgeoisie,
>and in Olaechea's case,  the doubly fucked-up peripheral, neo-colonial
>petty bourgeoisie.  But this is trivial and has only a secondary
>interest for me.  Much more important is Olaechea's recurrent and purely
>rhetorical reference to "the revolutionary proletariat" who leads a
>ghostly existence in the insides of our ventriloquist.  I'll return to
>this detail later.
>
><<A case in point is that of the Saddam Hussein regime, which no one can
>deny
>it is indeed a fascist style regime. The fascism of a third world
>bureacratic capitalist regime, the fascism of a weak nation.  
>
>No one can deny either that the US imperialists - who are top dog in the
>imperialist pile -  would very much like to annex Irak and to rid the
>international scene of the troublesome Hussein who is always causing
>them
>trouble in its regional power plans.>>
>
>Let me be the only one who does not agree with Olaechea's and President
>Bush's
>designation of Saddam and his regime as fascist.  Saddam is the "mother"
>of all petty and not-so-petty Asiatic tyrants.  But he is not a
>"fascist" unless Marxist science is reduced to voodoo rhetoric.  But the
>above also shows Olaechea's appalling ignorance of "true facts" about
>US-Iraq relations.  Who can seriously talk  about international
>politics, let alone, Marxist international politics with some one who
>believes that US "would very much like to annex Irak and to rid the
>international scene of the troublesome Hussein who is always causing
>them
>trouble in its regional power plans"?  But this is also secondary since
>Olaechea draws his voodoo analogies to convince us that there is no
>essential difference between the US-Iraq and US-Cuba contradictions. 
>Let us play his game for a moment and ask Olaechea: What exactly are the
>"troubles" that Castro causes in US regional power plans?
>
><<Therefore, it does not follow that communists should support Miami
>shopkeepers - only Trotskysts, who, being political eunuchs (i.e.
>"revolutionaries" without a revolutionary apparatus to call their own)
>can
>think in this barren fashion and truly undialectical fashion.>>
>
>Notice how subtle is this transition to "therefore" from Saddam to Miami
>shopkeepers.
>Yet the question remains: ON WHOSE SIDE WILL ADOLFO OLAECHEA BE WHEN THE
>MIAMI SHOPKEEPERS AND CUBAN WORKERS FACE EACH OTHER IN THE SECOND BAY OF
>PIGS? Unless Olaechea's "dialectics" is voodoo Hegelian, he will have to
>decide not between the "revolutionary proletariat" of the Holy Spirit
>and the Sons of Darkness in Havana but between the corporeal toilers of
>Cuba and their bloodthirsty class enemy.  Do you  pledge the
>unconditional defense of Cuba in case of a military intervention against
>it, Adolfo?  This is a straight question.  I expect a straight answer. 
>
>Olaechea continues:
>
><<People like this can never see beyond the bourgeois horizon, always
>assuming
>that in all circusnstances, one has to trail either one or the other
>reactionary regime, one or the other reactionary party of the double
>faced
>bourgeosie, one or the othet reactionary ideology, etc.  No sense
>whatever
>of proletarian class political independence.  
>
>No sense at all of the most basic tenet of the Communist Manifesto:
>
>"Communists stand as a separate party oppossed to all other parties">>
>
>Now we have an example of the voodoo citation strategy.  Let us again
>play the opponent's game for a moment.  I quote:
>
>"The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other 
>working-class parties.  
> 
>They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat
>as a whole.  
> 
>They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to
>shape and mold the proletarian movement.  
> 
>The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by
>this only.... 
>  
> The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other 
>proletarian parties...." 
>
>Now what can we say about Olaechea's own "sense of the most basic tenet
>of the Communist Manifesto?"
>
>It is also clear that Olaechea does not know the difference between
>ideology and politics, between the political regime and the social
>order.  He uses Marxis jargon but thinks in the categories of bourgeois
>political science. Let me agree for the sake of my argument that
>Castro's regime is fascist.  What then about the fundamental social
>arrangements of Cuban society that determine the day-to-day existence of
>10 million people?  What if Cuban workers prefer them to those that will
>be established by the Miami shopkeepers should they overthrow fascist
>Castroites?  Is this consideration unimportant for some one with a
>"sense of the Communist Manifesto?"
>
>
><<In the logic of the social-democrat revisionist Bilenkin, you must
>always
>lend support to Labour, or otherwise you are actually supporting the
>Tories,
>and it does not occur to him that "Labour" can in fact turn into the
>most
>reactionary party, making the tories look progressive in comparison.  Do
>we
>proletarians alwyas have to trail behind either one or the other
>"carrion
>crows perched atop the murrained cattle" trying to sell either to the
>masses
>as their "friend" in counter-position to the other?   It does not occur
>to
>the "dialectician" in Bilenkin that in fact BOTH are the people's
>deadliest
>enemies, and that the obligation of the communists is to expose this
>fact to
>the masses, even when - in particular concrete conditions - supporting
>either of them, "like the rope supports the hanged man". 
>
>No.  Bilenkin, unlike Lenin, is for the preservation of illusions,
>rather
>than for casting these illusions away!  What is new?>>
>
>In the voodoo logic of Olaechea, you must not support anyone but the
>communist party of outer space and the "revolutionary proletariat" of
>the Holy Spirit.  This voodoo illusionist has no illusions, you see.  He
>wants to call things by their true names, the beacon of the proletarian
>spirit he is.  But in reality, he again smuggles in the most hackneyed
>left infantilism that could be explained by naivete and zealotry 80
>years ago but not today, not today.  Here is what Lenin, whom Olaechea
>makes, after the manner of his "the revolutionary proletariat," into a
>ghostly emanation of his ventriloquist excercises had to say on these
>matter:
>
><<If we are the party of the revolutionary CLASS, and not merely a
>revolutionary group, and if we want the MASSES to follow us (and unless
>we achieve that, we stand the risk of remaining mere windbags), we must,
>first, help Henderson or Snowden to beat Lloyd George and Churchill (or
>rather, compel the former to beat the latter, because the former are
>AFRAID OF THEIR VICTORY); second, we must help the majority of the
>working class to be convinced by their own experience that we are right,
>i.e., that the Hendersons and Snowdens are absolutely good for nothing,
>that they are petty-bourgeois and treacherous by nature, and that their
>bancrupcy is inevitable; third, we must bring nearer the moment when, ON
>THE BASIS, of the disappointment of most of the workers in the
>Hendersons, it will be possible, with serious chances of success, to
>overthrow the government of the Hendersons at once; because if the most
>astute and solid Lloyd George, that big, not petty, bourgeois, is
>displaying consternation and is more and more weakening himself (and the
>bourgeoisie as a whole) by his "friction" with Churchill today and with
>Asquith tomorrow, how much greater will be the consternation of a
>Henderson government!>>
>
>Now this is some sense of the "fundamental tenet of the Communist
>Manifesto"!  And this sense is light years apart from that of Olaechea,
>the fact that by now must be obvious to every one.  Notice, Lenin does
>not call to "chose" between the two parties or to piss on both and march
>forward with the communist party of outer space ahead of the
>revolutionary proletariat of the Holy Spirit.  Nothing of this kind,
>i.e. of the "true Leninist" Olaechea kind.  Lenin calls the "party of
>the revolutionary class" to "compel" Labor to beat the Tories!  Lenin
>calls "windbags" those who think that class struggle is about calling
>Labor "fascists" rather than compelling Labor to win!  I don't want to
>go further.  One can talk for hours about this paragraph-long
>masterpiece of Marxist politics.  But even a glance at it makes clear
>that there is nothing in common between real Lenin and that of the
>voodoo Leninists.
>
>(to be continued)
>
>Vladimir Bilenkin
>
>
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