From: "Sid Chatterjee" <sgc88-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: M-I: On Lenin: Letter from Adolfo
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 15:07:15 PST



I had written a letter to Adolfo regarding the recent events in this 
list about Lenin, Russian Revolution etc. Below is his reply which he 
has given his consent to circulate to the list.

Sid

-----------------------------------------------
Hi Sid, how are you.  Happy New Year.

I have read Godena's postings and I fail to see what is that distresses 
you so much.  Obviously Louis Godena has a right to find right wing 
historians more congenial and aposite than phoney leftists ones.  After 
all, if you got to read bourgeois historians, it is your choice whether 
you want to be insulted openly or subrepticiously. I myself, always 
prefer the enemy with the open visor to that one who slithers around in 
the dark pretending to be our friend while damning us with faint praise 
and instilling poisonous weeds
among us with the aim of disarming us. 

We, revolutionaries, should never be sanctimonious, nor confuse to be 
closer to someone's views with any form of identity or admiration.
In MY OWN READING of Godena's postings it seems to me that he says that 
he finds himself "much closer" to the views of Pipes et alia, regarding 
the Russian revolution, than to the views of the Trotskyites and the 
rest of phoney lefts. He certainly has a point.  Actually, I do not see 
that Godena is saying that he has an IDENTITY of views with those right 
wing fellows. Trust a mystificator and defender of social-fascism such 
as Proyect to try to give such a ridiculous spin to a mere fair comment. 

Godena is only saying that his views are "much closer" to the views of 
these people in relation to how distant he feels from the views of the 
worst kind of falsificators of history, the hagiographers of the phoney 
left, the Trotskysts. And in that he is certainly not alone.  

It is true that the righ-wing bourgeois scholars are now trying to 
demonise Lenin, like they in the past have done with comrade Stalin.

However, the same Trotskysts who partake in this demonisation of Lenin's 
continuator, Stalin, are the very last people on earth to have a right 
to berate Godena for feeling "closer" to their views.  The bogus left's 
attempt (revisionism) to "canonise" Lenin into a gutless icon incapable 
of good old revolutionary ruthlessness in defenece of the interests of 
the working class, or as a gutless wonder unable to pay the class enemy 
tit for tat for their underhand policies and counter-revolutionary 
actions, is even more dangerous for the revolution than the overt 
attacks of the right wing intellectuals at the service of world 
imperialism.

Mariategui once said: "Among people of a definite and clear position it 
is easy to understand each other even while fighting against each other.  
With those we shall never reach any kind of understanding is with those 
people of an undefined and prevaricating position, with those pharisee 
democrats, with those phoney socialists".  

It is of course true that Godena is oversimplifying the issues and using 
general adjectives such as "ruthless", "underhanded", etc., without 
putting those within a class perspective (ruthless towards who? - 
"underhand" in response to what subterfuges and ruses of the class 
enemy? - Comrades ought to remember Chairman Mao's words about "knitting 
your brows to come up with an stratagem" (an stratagem is by definition 
a ruse, a way to deceive the enemy, and, that the class enemy would 
complain of having been outwitted by a leader like Lenin, only increases 
his stature and gives shine to his condition as a clever combatant of 
the working class).

It is also true that Godena is failing to make a distinction on the 
question of the "craving for power" of a proletarian leader such as 
Lenin and the craving for power of a bourgeois politician.  A 
proletarian leader MUST crave power for the proletariat and the people, 
and in seeking to satisfy that "craving", he must be ruthless, 
persistent and bold, otherwise he/she would not be worth a candle for 
the cause of the working class. 

It would really be odd if a proletarian leader, and moreover a 
successful one, would not have been a ruthless revolutionary, capable of 
giving the class enemy TIT for TAT when facing up to their UNDERHAND and 
ruthless counter-revolutionary actions.

As to the question of the Russian revolution "being more like a coup de 
etat" that too should be read with a critical eye rather than merely 
rendering a sanctimonious cry of distress.  

We are not "leftie" falsificators and therefore it would be churlish to 
deny that - in comparison to the absurd views of the Trotskyites 
(according to whom the entire revolution was a sedate trade union affair 
in which everyone decided to revolt at the same time following "natural 
class lines") - the views of the right wing historians are indeed closer 
to a true picture of the Russian revolution.  A revolution in which the 
Bolshevik Party, as the advanced section of the working class, played a 
decisive role in the seizure
of power without which such a revolution would not have had the great
significance it has had in history.

Thus comrade Godena is "wrong" in saying that the Russian revolution (as 
an historical processs that both preceded and developed after the 
insurrection of October) "was" a coup de etat.  Although what he 
ACTUALLY said was that it "WAS MORE LIKE A COUP THE ETAT" which is not 
the same thing than just a simple and straighforward allegation that in 
the Russian revolution we ghad but a coup de etat.  That is why to be 
"closer" to the views of the rightwing historians is not the same as 
holding IDENTICAL VIEWS. 

Firstly because it is natural that the bourgeosie would regard anything 
that wrenches its state power away from their "legitimate" hands as a 
"coup de etat".  A violation of their "right" is for any class by 
definition "illegal".  So, no surprises here.

However the rightwing bourgeois historians are indeed "closer" than the 
Trots and the hagiographers - once we dispute the legitimacy of their 
state - to the fact that the October seizure of power was indeed an 
insurrection which succeeded despite the fact that the bulk of the 
working masses did not partake INITIALLY in the DECISIVE fighting. If 
they want - in order to feel"better"  - to call that a "coup de etat", 
so be it.  We need many more "coup de etats" such as that! 

Obviously, for anyone with an ounce of sense, the Russian revolution was 
- as a process lasting tens of years - much more than the insurrection 
itself. However to deny or belittle the decisive role of the 
insurrection, as the bogus left tends to do, is "farther" from a 
communist reading of history, in which the role of conscious masses, 
rather than mere numbers is stressed.  

In the current atmosphere of pacifism and ultra-democratism aflicting 
the left as a result of the revisionist canonization and emasculation of 
the need for revolutionary TERROR,  the silly epithet of "coup de etat" 
with which the right wing bourgeois scholars try to put down this 
momentous event in history, is nothing but an irksome gnat, easily 
dismissed by a comtemptous shrug of the shoulders. 

However, most valuable in the argument of the rightwing bourgeois 
scholars is the recognition of the continuity between Lenin and Stalin - 
the Leninism of Stalin - and that the Red Terror is not a question of 
this or that personality. This , of course is what riles the 
leftie-pinkos and the "clerical Marxists", such as Proyect.

This understandable slander on the part of the scholars of the right 
ought not to rile the revolutionaries at all:  Yes, gentlemen of the 
Right. We have to be ruthless towards the class enemy and we must indeed 
"crave power" for the class and the people if we want to make any 
headway against your corrupt rule of millenia.

Basing ourselves in this recognition of our need as a class, we must
challenge the idiotic "morality" of the bourgeosie, in both its "right" 
and "left-wing" versions.

The bourgeosie and all the exploiting classes have a record in history 
which bears no moral resemblance whatsoever to their current 
sanctimonious judgement upon the acts of violence and terror of the 
revolutionary classes in their quest for a world without exploiters and 
oppressors.

This is what we ought to confront the bourgeoisie with:

Look gentlemen, we need not canonise our leaders into clownish versions 
of Father Christmas, and even less turn them into harmless and gormless 
icons just because you hypocritically try to stir animosity among the 
ignoramusses with sanctimonious garbage about the necessary blood and 
gore of the class struggle.

When Marx and Engels issued the Communist Manifesto" they already 
enjoined the ruling classes to "tremble" before the prospect of the 
proletarian revolution.

Yes, tremble, gentlemen, you should. We shall indeed strive to be as
ruthless as you, and use every ruse and means to overthrow your rule and 
keep you subjected to ours until you are ELIMINATED as a class.  That 
has always been our programme, and there is no reason to deny or change 
it one iota.

The question is not who - you the bourgeosie or us the proletariat - is 
more "ruthless".  We would be happy to be more ruthless than you, Mssrs 
the bourgeois, and only wish more of our comrades would be conscious of 
this necessity and therefore put it into practice.

We, then, do not dispute your accussations of ruthlessness in defence 
and furtherance of our class interests.  But ruthlessness is not to be 
equated with viciousness, mad rage and dark fury.  It is only the 
bourgeosie, a dying class attempting vainly to cling to its paradise of 
exploitation, who can produce the gratuitous insanity of reactionary 
war, and the vicious terror directed against the masses, that you, the 
ruling classes, know how to produce and apply so well.  
We, the oppressed classes, may be ruthless - and hopefully as ruthless 
or more than you - because without ruthlessness there is no victory in 
war nor holding on to the fruits of victory, as historical development 
has demonstrated.  But, try as we may, we can never harbour the mad 
hatred and the insane rage of the reactionaries like yourselves.  That 
belongs to the socio-path's realm of the  bourgeosie and all exploiting 
classes.

That is the difference between the Red Terror and the Black reaction of 
the Nazi style machine that you created and sustained in Germany.  The 
difference between those fighting against imperialism in all countries 
and the Amerikan Reich, mssrs!.  The real difference between the 
communist revolutionaries and the mad dogs of imperialism such as 
Fujimori in Peru,for example.   


Adolfo Olaechea



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