File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9711, message 351


Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 14:45:46 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: On Easy (and False) Moral Equivalences



Leo suggests that Trotskyists face moral responsibility of some sort for
the Nazi genocide, which began in 1941-2, because they opposed allied
participation in WWII in 1939-40. (As, by the way, did the CPUSA.) This is
odd. Retrospectively, Trots might well come to think that in view of what
happened that was the wrong position, but a bad call of that sort hardly
makes the guilty of complicity in mass murder. I am, by the way, not a Trot.


On Sun, 30 Nov 1997 LeoCasey-AT-aol.com wrote:

> I would think that one who embraces a tradition is impelled, if they are
> intellectually honest, to face up to the failures and nadirs of that
> tradition. Whatever one would want to make of the Trotskyist tradition -- and
> since it has never held state power in any meaningful sense of the word, we
> can not judge how the practice conforms to the theory -- it would seem that
> its position on World War II, that it was the second great imperialist war,
> with a curse on all parties to the war, would have engendered a little
> reflection on political responsibilities in the face of genocide. Alas, it
> appears not.
> 




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