Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 21:24:10 GMT
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (hariette spierings)
Subject: Re: Luxemburg Speaks For Herself  (AND BLOWS THE POOR TROTS SKYHIGH)


>With all due respect to this list's "Red Rosa," who has given me some of the
>few chuckles I have gotten out of the list recently, I believe that the eagle
>of the revolution should be given her own chance to respond to the
>misrepresentation of her politics by the Shining Path apologists.
>
>_The Russian Revolution_ (Ann Arbor: 1961, p. 71.):
>
>"In place of the representative bodies created by general, popular elections,
>Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true representation
>of the labouring masses. But with the repression of political life in the
>land as a whole, life in the soviets must become more and more crippled.
>Without general elections, without unrestriucted freedom of press and
>assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public
>institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy
>remains the active element."
>
>
>
>     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>

In my country we have a saying:  "The fish dies by its own mouth".  Mr.
Casey alleges that we have mis-represented Rosa Luxembourg, and only
succeeds in confirming what we said.

We affirmed that Luxembourg - while a revolutionist - a supporter of the
Revolution in Russia - despite her petty bourgeois parliamentarianism and
demo-liberal formalism - was nevertheless no enemy of the people.  Where in
the quote above is any accussation of "assassins" against Lenin or Trotsky?  

No, she is only being rather philistine in demanding bourgeois democracy -
because that is what she was suggesting in the above quotation - in the
middle of a civil war.  That is why Lenin said that she could indeed fly "as
low as the hens". 

However, she was NOT accussing Lenin and Trotsky of "killing Russian
peasants" - although many Russian peasants fighting with the reactionary
armies were indeed dying in the Civil War.  She was not ranting against
lenin and Trotsky for "killing leftists", although indeed many Mensheviks
and Social Revolutionaries - who also proclaimed themselves marxists - were
indeed being arrested, and many executed, or killed in combat.  The
Mensheviks, like some Peruvian "leftists" today, also raised armed groups
and even armies against the Bolsheviks and the revolution, and were of
course wiped out, without Luxembourg raising Cain on their behalf like
"Madame Mitzi" does.

Yes, Rosa Luxembourg was not a Bolshevik.  She was a Left-social-democrat.
We, communists regard Luxembourg as a good friend of the revolution, but
reject her mistaken ideas.  Trotskysts, while raising Luxembourg as a
banner, follow her only in what she was obviously mistaken.  People like
this, are but hens that because an eagle, by an accident or confussion, flew
once or twice into their yard, proclaimed her as the Queen of the Hens.  I
am sure that Luxembourg, being mainly a good eagle is not grateful to them
for that "honour".


Regards and keep trying


Adolfo Olaechea



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