Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 10:15:47 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Louis Godena and Richard Pipes


Louis Godena: 
"Did Carr write much on Stalin in the period of the thirties and forties
(after Socialism in One Country), [and] was there a change in outlook in
his later years?"

Carr actually had a great deal to say about Stalin during and after WWII,
much of which was censored by the London Times (where Carr was assistant
editor during the war).  He wrote lengthy reviews, too, for the *Times
Literary Supplement* on a variety of related topics.

Louis Proyect:
Now that nobody on the M-I list can have a decent conversation with Louis
Godena anymore, he has begun to talk to himself evidently. "Did Carr write
much on Stalin?" Who is asking this question? Nobody that I know of. In the
past, Louis Godena was content to chat with his off-list muses like
"Roxanne." Now he is taking it one step further and just asking questions
to himself. Late at night I often do this myself. "Now why in god's name
did you go and get drunk at that party and dance the Macarena in your
underwear."

Louis Godena:
And, yes, Carr is my favorite historian, and one with whom I feel the most
empathy in matters political.  Paradoxically, I am much closer to Richard
Pipes, Martin Malia, and Orlando Figues on the general outlines of the
Bolshevik revolution than I am to the historians of the Left like Stephen
Cohen.  The Russian revolution *was* more of a coup d'etat than a
revolution; The Bolsheviks *did* lack working-class support (which probably
partly accounted for their success); Lenin *was* ruthless and underhanded,
and, above all else, craved power, qualities which were central to the
Communists taking power.  And, of course, Stalinism *was* the logical
successor to Leninism, without which, as Carr points out, Lenin's
revolution would have "run out into the sand".  

Louis Proyect:
Is this the same Richard Pipes who was President Reagan's advisor on Soviet
Affairs? Pipes wrote that if there had not been a Russian Revolution in
1917 there would very likely have been no Nazis, probably no second world
war and certainly no cold war. Blaming the Russian Revolution for Hitler is
like blaming the abolition of slavery for the Ku Klux Klan. If Louis Godena
believes in the garbage written by a member of the most mendacious
government since Hitler's, then he is welcome to it, along with all the
other crap written by his other favorite professor at his alma mater,
Samuel Huntington. Louis Godena repeats Pipes' conclusion: "The Bolsheviks
*did* lack working-class support." I suppose that he must think that
surrounding the word "did" with asterisks must cinch the argument. What
does he expect of us? To slap our foreheads when we see this sentence and
cry out, "How could I have been such a fool to believe that the Bolsheviks
were based on the working-class?" No, it takes more than bald assertions
like this. It would take a painstaking to replicate Pipes' arguments here,
but Louis Godena doesn't have patience for that type of intellectual
effort. He is content to throw out conclusions without the supporting
evidence. It as if a prosecuting attorney said nothing during a trial save
for the following: "Ladies and gentleman of the jury, justice demands that
you find the accused guilty." Where is the evidence, they would ask. And so
must we.

Louis Godena:
Part of my posting of Carr to m-i was in response to that awful piece by
Petras that Proyect (I think) posted a day or two earlier.  There is simply
no left-wing historian writing to-day that, to me, presents a mature,
convincing account of what communism is all about.  If I could persuade
Olaechea to do something,...well.

Louis Proyect:
Awful? What's so awful about it? I don't expect you present any
counter-arguments. If you do, I will demolish them. You think that you can
persuade Olaechea to write a mature, convincing account of what communism
was all about? Wait until he finds out that you've set up a Richard Pipes
fan club. You just might not get anything in return from him except words
like "black vomit", etc.

Louis Godena:
As for the "left-wing press" (about which you specifically ask), it is
uniformly horrible.  I am finding myself nowadays unable even to read this
goddamned contraption.

Louis Proyect:
There's the door over there. Shut it behind you since its cold outside.
It's been nice knowing you. Good luck with the tractors and all the other
accouterments of farm life. This is one case when the term "rural idiocy"
has plausibility.

Louis Godena:
I think the lumpenized gangsterism that marks the "leadership" of these
"vanguard groups" (Mencken said it "would be flattery to call them stupid")
is the biggest single stumbling block to build a mass left-wing party.  It
is a culture that has to change, and change it will, even if the total
destruction of the Left is called for.  That would be preferable to
continuing with what we have.

Louis Proyect:
You have no ideas on how to build a mass left-wing party. Most of your
ideas are reactionary claptrap directed at the existing left, whose
destruction you call for. You of course realize that nearly everybody on
this mailing-list is representative of one or another aspect of the
existing left. Anybody who is capable of the most elementary logic will
understand that it would be a step forward in your eyes if this
mailing-list would be destroyed, since it shows no sign of changing. If
positive change means agreeing with Richard Pipes' character assassination
of Lenin, then no thank you. What kind of ultimatums anyhow are these to be
coming from the moderator of a Marxism mailing-list? The answer obviously
is no moderator at all. I think Godena is probably up to the task of
checking whether people post more than 3 times a day, although I could
write a computer program to do the same thing. If he gets a kick out of
this, so be it. I enjoy counting seagulls when I am at the beach. But when
it comes to questions of the political direction of the list, or conflict
resolution, we will have to look elsewhere. Godena's relationship to this
list is one based on animosity. If he had any sort of emotional and
intellectual self-awareness, he'd stop picking fights with people and go
elsewhere. Unfortunately, he is like the many, many, many people who are
attracted to the Spoons Marxism lists. They are here to draw lines in the
sand and issue calumny. I've heard it so many times in the past that I've
become inured. Louis Godena is just one more maladjusted crank to ignore.




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