Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 01:55:59 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Tragedy and farce


Oh well, Hegel said it and Marx repeated it with knobs on: everyone happens
twice in history, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

The tragedy was the Stalinist counter-revolution in the world's first
workers' state, where the anti-revolutionary worms who'd crept into the
woodwork in 1917 crept back out again as the real revolutionaries were
being killed off or worn down by the imperialist onslaught against the
conquests of October, and these insects got enough maggots laid in the body
politic of the Soviet Union to ensure victory for the parasites by 1927.
The methods they used were misrepresentation, lies, threats, suppression
and violence of every degree.

The farce is the latterday feeding frenzy of the Stalinists and
neo-Stalinists over on Marxism-International. With the disappearance of two
level-headed, serious centrist moderators, Jon F and Zeynep T, the third
"historic" moderator, Louis Godena, feels free to fling all caution to the
winds and relive the twenties and thirties. Trotskyist scum, wreckers and
saboteurs beware! And how does he do the job?? With such brazen insolence
that he has to have been put up to it by Louis P: first you pick on a
dissident subscriber known for being a lone wolf, and tending to a
metaphorical turn of phrase of the more personal kind. But not a Ralph D,
dear me no, he's too firmly walled up in the ivory tower to be any threat.
No, take someone who's an outspoken defender of the poor and homeless,
active with the squatters and seriously into Marxist value theory. Oh and
just happens to have a penchant for pointing to the snitching activities
(proven and admitted) of self-proclaimed hardcore subscribers such as Louis
P. Then you do a Malgosia on him. "I don't like this. You're out." Big
cheers from the Coxes of this world who crave a strong hand at the helm.
Then of course the plan really starts to move. Not only has the original
victim been done over, but the bait is taken immediately by other
dissidents, so the axing can be repeated at will. "Here comes the chopper
to chop -- off -- his -- and his -- and his -- HEAD!"

Poof! Gone....

And the delightful thing is that the bait was the principle of standing up
for someone who's shafted by arbitrary chicanery and trumped-up charges,
something that means nothing to the hardcore cynics who just want to mumble
their self-congratulatory clubby vapourings in peace and quiet, so there's
absolutely nothing at stake in it for them -- everything to win, nothing to
lose. The perfect sting.

Just like back in the tragic days before the war, when the real victim was
the international working class which lost a principled revolutionary
leadership and gained a time-serving bureaucratic set of incompetents who
saved capitalism from destruction at the end of the second world war,
strangled most attempted revolutions after it (and warped the few that were
successful in spite of their best efforts), and eventually handed power
back to the bourgeoisie in the heartland of October. The real victim in our
little farce today on the other hand is free Marxist discussion on the
Marxism-International discussion list at Spoon, and the implicit threat its
strangulation poses to discussion on other lists here.

Stalin was unable to silence Trotsky and the Left Opposition by fair means
in the tradition of workers' democracy, so he used foul means with the
support of the resurgent petty-bourgeoisie, the  bureaucrats and the labour
aristocracy. Godena and his neo-Stalinist partners-in-crime have been
unable to silence the Trotskyists and the Left Opposition by fair means
according to the rules of the list (max 3 posts a day and no unfounded cop
smears, and no fascist propaganda) so they use foul means, as described
above.

The ironic thing is that they're doing it against the current of history
this time, not with it. This is no period of ebbing revolutionary energy,
but just the opposite. They're not riding a wave to position and perks,
they're sitting on a beach ordering the tide to stop coming in!!

The fools have not only done this, they've also torn the masks of urbanity
and affability and tolerance off their own faces, to reveal the snarling
skulls of raging petty bureaucratic bullies underneath. The whole crew,
ready to stop at nothing to get their own way, have discredited themselves
in the eyes of all serious socialists.

Of course, they don't give a damn personally, because the workers' movement
is something they are hermetically sealed off from. But they'll discover
that their traditional ability to pull the wool over the eyes of socialists
by pretending to be radical left thinkers in the tradition of Marx and
Engels and Lenin will be just that bit more difficult from now on. This
unprincipled coalition of Stalinists and Mensheviks is exposed for the
united front it actually is: united politically in its
counter-revolutionary malevolence, its readiness to stoop to any rotten
manoeuvres to silence opponents and its total disregard for the methods and
goals of the great revolutionary socialist leaders of the past 150 years,
Marx, Engels and Lenin, whose true banner they claim to uphold, but which
they are in reality just stomping deeper and deeper into mud and filth.

It's symptomatic that the fourth great Marxist of our age, Trotsky, is way
too uncomfortable for them to stomach. The reason is not because of any
difference of principle between Trotsky and the other three, but simply
because Stalin used the other three to cover his own crimes but was totally
unable to dragoon Trotsky into performing that service for him -- it took
him more than a decade to silence Trotsky's own Marxist critique of his
policies and actions, and even then he wasn't embalmable. Neither could he
silence Trotsky's books or the movement he founded as a continuation of the
theory and practice of Marx, Engels and Lenin and the First, Second and
Third Internationals, the Fourth International.

As the tide rises higher and higher, our censors and would-be liquidators
will look more and more foolish into the bargain. And they'll get lonelier
and lonelier as their flattering friends realize they've been backing the
wrong horses and do a bunk as soon as their feet get wet.

Glub, glub, Louis Proyect. Glub, glub, Louis Godena. Glub, glub, Doug
Henwood. And glubbity glub the rest of them.

As God wrote in a prophetic moment: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, YOU-FARCE-IN!!

Which being interpreted means: Your number is up, you've been weighed and
found wanting,  your kingdom is divided up and everyone's sniggering at you.

Now all it wants is for Malgosia to come out of the shadows to reveal she's
the mastermind behind the dictatorial tumescence of the past week, and for
Adolfo to return as subscriber-in-chief over Louis P's prostrate body, and
the cycle will be ready to start all over again.

Though Christ knows what the irony of history will have in store for us now
that the tragedy and the farce have both been played out ...

Cheers,

Hugh









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