Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 09:40:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: No Marxist censors


On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, Luis Quispe wrote:

>   Thanks to the members of the list who have sent us messages of support.
>   Overall, most of the U.S. comrades are receptive to the information on
>   the People's War. For too long, we have allowed the imperialist media to 
>   brainwash some progressive elements in this country, they  tried to
>   win the debate by default, but now we are here.  There are only two 

Louis:

Imperialist media?

I get my information from Monthly Review, NACLA Report and people like 
Gerardo Renique, who is a fellow instructor at the Brecht Forum. I teach 
classes on the Internet. He is teaching a class on Mariategui right now.

The Monthly Review, NACLA and the Brecht Forum are institutions that the 
US left has struggled to build and maintain over the decades. They have 
sterling reputations. When somebody writes something about Peru in NACLA, 
I tend to pay close attention. I take the NY Times with a grain of salt. 
The funny thing, of course, is that the most flattering portrait of the 
Shining Path I've seen anywhere was an article that appeared in the 
Sunday magazine section several years ago written by an English journalist 
who was enthralled by the machismo of the Shining Path.

You have characterized all of the information coming from left sources as 
imperialist propaganda. It is difficult to take this seriously because 
the complaint is only coming from your quarter. Nobody has complained 
about NACLA coverage of Nicaragua or Cuba even when the Sandinistas or 
the Cuban CP get criticized sharply. I tend to give a lot of weight to 
these criticsms because this publication is right so often.

This is one of the reasons it is impossible to have a dialog with you. 
You deny the facts. I base my criticism on the facts that have been 
repeated by a wide number of commentators, all of whom you repudiate.

It is the same type of problem that existed in the 1930s in trying to 
establish Stalin's conduct. His defenders quoted extensively from Soviet 
newspapers, or from leftist tourists who were shown "Potemkin Villages" of 
grinning Soviet workers holding up portraits of Uncle Joe.

Critics of Stalin tended to rely on samizdat of working-class opponents 
of the regime or on reports from leftists who had a reputation for honesty.

Nowadays, nobody except people like yourself look back at this period in 
Russian history uncritically. This, of course, goes hand in hand with 
your whitewash of Sendero.

Well, all right, we can't agree on the facts. You say the only people who 
are being executed are spies for Fujimoro. I take the word of people who 
say that the executed are simply leftist opponents of Sendero.

Leaving all that aside, I still have a big problem with the politics of 
the Shining Path. You advocate a bloc of four classes, including the 
national bourgeoisie. This is a hopeless project and shows how pervasive 
Stalin's popular front ideology remains among some quarters of the left.

The Bolsheviks made a revolution in which the working-class came to power 
by embracing the cause of the peasantry. The workers could not have been 
successful on their own.

However, if you read through Lenin's writings, there is no evidence to 
support the notion that a bloc of 4 classes would replace the Tsar. In 
his earlier writings, he advocated a "democratic dictatorship". In his 
later writings, especially from the period following 1917, he comes 
closer to Trotsky's concept of a Permanent Revolution.

The class-collaborationist schema put forward by Gonzalo is the same sort 
of thing that doomed the Spanish revolution, that undermined French 
resistance to fascism, that led to disaster in Indonesia during the time 
of Sukharno, that has betrayed revolutions all through Latin America for 
decades and decades.

The national bourgeoisie is a comprador bourgeoisie. It is not interested 
in national liberation. It prefers crumbs from the table of the Wall St. 
banks and the multinational corporations.

By fostering illusions that this class can be drawn into struggle against 
imperialism, you are betraying all possibilities for socialism in Peru.

Maoism historically has represented verbal radicalism to the extreme 
degree (empty sloganeering about the "paper tiger, etc."), but timid 
kow-towing to imperialism in the realm of actual politics.

If you want to understand Maoism, think not of Red Guards terrorizing 
professors and health-care professionals who are not "red" enough, think 
instead of Mao toasting Nixon while B-52s were dropping bombs all across 
Vietnam.

Mao never promoted revolution anywhere. He promoted the interests of 
bourgeois politicians who would be friendly to China on a military or 
trade basis. There is a rogue's gallery that is made up of all the 
characters Mao supported, from Savimbi to Sukharno. 

Any organization that bases itself on Maoism bases itself on 
class-collaborationism, all of the ultraleft bombast notwithstanding.





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