Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 02:16:49 +0100
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: Critique of Trotskyism


Chris writes:

>The paradox is that the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe has
>provided a space for the total reexamination of what Marxism means.

I don't think there's a paradox here at all.

In the first place what collapsed in Eastern Europe and a lot of Asia was
not socialism. The bureaucratic Stalinist regimes collapsed - they sold out
to imperialism, accompanied by a wave of popular revulsion at themselves
and their tradition of treachery and oppression.

Second, the non-capitalist foundations of the states of the ex-Soviet bloc
have been proving far more resilient than any bourgeois experts or
superficial journalists anticipated. This resilience is getting an echo in
the minds of the people, not just in the reactionary Stalinist nostalgia of
the Zhirinovskys but in the minds of ordinary workers having to fight for
what used to be automatic rights. Kissinger and co were right to speak of a
window of opportunity for imperialism of one or at most two years, that
would last as long as the people of these countries were anaesthetized by
the euphoria of getting Stalinism off their backs.

Third, there's a space for Marxism all right, but a total reexamination is
only necessary for those who equated Stalinist practice and theory with
Marxism. Chris doesn't discuss the concrete people doing the reassessment.
As far as political organizations are concerned, the further away from
orthodox Trotskyism they are located, the more thorough-going will their
reexamination have to be. As far as the class is concerned, there is a real
space for developing Marxist perspectives undistorted by the lies and
silences of Social-Democrat and particularly Stalinist leaderships.
Millions more people will now come into contact with Marxist ideas,
explanations and proposals for revolutionary action without immediately
running up against nationalist barriers and class-collaborationist
strategies.

In other words, the sellout of the Stalinist bureaucracy to imperialism is
no paradox, the resilience of the non-capitalist economic base is no
paradox, and the space for Marxism is no paradox. These developments
reinforce some basic principles, and open the way to better forms of
discussion and approaches to action than we have seen previously.

Cheers,

Hugh




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