Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 18:04:08 +0100
From: Jorn Andersen <ccc6639-AT-vip.cybercity.dk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: No more purges


Dear Richard,

At 11:40 26-10-96 +0100, Richard Bos wrote:
>Gerald Levy wrote:
<cut> 
>> Consequently, we do not know nor can we infer what Stalin's "attitude of
>> mind" was based on his official pronouncements and writings.
>> 
>> Furthermore, "history" judges individuals not primarily by what they say,
>> but by what they *do*. While what a person thinks clearly has an impact on
>> what they do, it is very rare when we have enough data to know what they
>> really thought.
<cut> 

+ and other arguments - following upon other arguments of *substance* in
previous mails. But why, Richard, do you choose to reply to his *least*
concrete, *most* generalized paragraph:

>> Lastly, the year is 1996, yet there are still defenders of a person who
>> ordered and orchestrated the murder of millions of workers, peasants, and
>> revolutionaries. How pathetic!

You state that: 
>Neither Chris, nor I would describe ourselves as "Stalinists".

Fair enough, I just disagree.

and that:
>it is doubly important to start a healing process in the workers
>movement, and not to jump up and down with rage if anyone dares to
>mention the names of Stalin or Trotsky.

That might also be fair enough, but if memory serves me, it was you who
threw in a (re)view on a book on Stalin which you said you found
interesting. Nevertheless you have not yet in your 6-7 posts given one
single argument or even a hint of why you think it was interesting.

It might be a fair position to say that we should be "conciliatory" and
start "a healing process in the workers movement", but then please provide
some arguments!

I don't think this is a position which can be defended. The basic reason
being, as John Mullen said, that the horrors of stalinism was done in the
name of the socialism, which we are a fighting for. And that this - the
identification between workers' power from below and tyranny from above -
has been maybe the most important single factor in the last 60 years to shy
people/workers on a mass scale away from a real debate on socialism pro +
contra. And in the process made all sorts of lunatic left- (and not so
left-)liberal, anarchist, reformist or nationalist positions look sensible.


Whether you today would describe yourself as a stalinist or not, may be
secondary to the debate (though it strikes me that the term "stalinist"
looses all meaning if not people, with whom you share a lot of views, like
Najibullah, Adolfo Oleachea and Charlotte Kates, can be described as
stalinists).

But it is a fact that you have grown out of a political tradition, which
has dominated the left worldwide, and which today is in a process of trying
to rehabilitate itself as a current in the workers' movement. And that the
first step of this necessarily involves coming to terms with its own past.
Alas it seems that this "open and critical" examination of the past is more
used as a weapon on those of us who *have* been through this process years
ago, than it is used as a guideline to clarification in these currents
themselves.


I don't think that marxists today would learn much from looking into the
inner soul of Stalin + Co.. Rather I would propose to take up the basic
stuff and check out if not the base on which marxism rests is "the
liberation of the working class by the working class itself". Then check
out whether this can justify any identification with stalinism (short for
"the rule of the USSR in the period from the late 1920's to the early
1990's + subsequent off-shots like E Europe, China etc. + the current on
the international left which in the main defended these regimes").

Having come this far, let's debate the details about how and why such a
defeat for the working class and the socialist movement worldwide could
happen, and which strategy we can apply today in trying to overcome this
defeat.

I don't think the rehabilitation of stalinism stands a minimum of a chance,
but, please, do not expect us to stand aside looking passively at the attempt.


These marxism lists has a few participants who still get wet eyes when they
think of the glorious Stalin, quite a lot who get wet eyes thinking about
the horrors of stalinism and very many who hate the horrors, but who are
not satisfied with assertions that it won't happen again. So it is
impossible to imagine that this debate will not come back again and again.
Even outside cyberspace this debate comes back now and then.

So there is no sense in simply letting expulsions solve problem as long as
this state is a, however distorted, reflection of the debate in the real
world. But we should demand that we take as a point of departure *basic*
marxist principles and methods when the debate comes up.

The wounds inflected by stalinism on the socialist movement is not going to
be healed by being "conciliatory", but only by digging away all the dirt
and build marxism upon its basic principles.


Yours

Jorn



--
Jorn Andersen

Internationale Socialister
Copenhagen, Denmark
IS-WWW: http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/is-dk/



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