Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 11:43:22 GMT
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (hariette spierings)
Subject: Re: Critique of Trotskyism


>Kevin has now concluded that his request was hopeless. I had
>stepped in quickly under this thread title because I thought
>it was a fair, if naive, question, and everything depended 
>on how people responded.
>
>In the event IMO people responded a lot better than they might.
>Given everyone's position, I thought those coming from a 
>Trotskyist background were thoughtful and open to re-examination
>*among themselves*. 
>
>I take the comments of course that for some
>there is no paradox in the possibility of a resurgence of marxist
>thinking after the fall of the eastern european state socialist
>regimes. The most thoughtful contribution from a Trotskyist perspective
>IMO was the one that put the development of ideas very much in a 
>historical perspective and asked as a thought experiment, what
>place we would give Trotsky in the range of marxist thinkers
>if Stalin had never existed.
>
>Adolfo on the other hand, despite his wide range of reading,
>clearly is using a Maoist concept of "two line struggle"
>actually to draw much more heavily on the most contemptuous
>[contemptuous, not contemptible please note] aspects of 
>*Lenin's* polemical style and believes he can demolish 
>opponents in a single blow. He forgets that Lenin also 
>said that in polemic it is wise to meet your opponents 
>on their argument at its best.
>
>So the call from Rahul and Louis Proyect for quarantine
>remains a powerful one, because they clearly were not 
>speaking just for themselves, as it was preceded by a 
>number of similar opinions, and received a strong
>and (massively silent) echo. Although I am not sure
>what Rahul is now doing, the essence of the 
>argument is clear: boycott the politics of abuse,
>whether the obscenities are colloquial or 
>ideological.
>
>What cannot be boycotted, because someone will every so often 
>ask the arkward questions, however sincerely like Kevin,
> 
>but which perhaps should be slowed down,
>
>is the clarification of some of the biggest contradictions
>in the international communist/marxist movement on which
>impassioned views have been held by different sides, and 
>which at times involve real tragedies in which millions
>have died.
>
>
>Chris
>
>
>     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>


Dear Chris:  Me think's you are missing the point.  It is not that we have
overlooked Mr. Cabral's proposal.  It is not that we intend to finish our
opponents "with one blow"  (we know perfectly well that Trotskysm - and all
varieties of petty-bourgeois and revisionist thought will NOT dissapear and
will continue to re-assert themselves until the end of class society and the
class interests and outlooks that sustain them).

That is not the question at present in the marxism list.  The question is
the degree of arrogance shown by our opponents AT THIS PRESENT TIME!  The
degree of hatred and contempt for the revolution in a SMALL number of
counter-revolutionaries who are being PROTECTED by the same people who want
a serious debate (and sometimes, it is in fact the same people who want a
serious debate with one hat, who, wearing another, resort to insults and
filthy allegations of imperialist - class enemy - manufacture.

Therfore, as mao teaches FIRST STRUGGLE.  Struggle to shake-up their
arrogance and supercilioussness - of which they seem to have an inexaustible
supply.  When they learn - the hard way - to respect the revolution,
conditions for what Mr. Cabral - wearing the hat of "reasonable Trotskyst" -
has requested from us. 

Then, and only then, we can give Trotsky his due in a dispassionate manner,
and simultaneously demand that our opponents do the same in regards to OUR
COMRADE, J.V. Stalin.  

Marxism is like that, is not a "greenhouse" ideology of "unanimous academia"
as Louis Project - when suffering his most acute delusions of grandeur -
pretends it should be. It is not eclectic, but affirmative, optimistic,
alive and with firm rooting in the revolutionary struggles of the REAL
WORLD, as oppossed to the merely theoretical speculations that fascinate the
intellectualists and exquisites partisans of the "just mean".  

Marxism, being an ideology of struggle, does not proceed as a Confucian
search for the middle way, and the zero sum of contraries. It proceed of
necessity by ONE SIDEDNESS - of one degree or another, according to the
intensity of the contradiction. This is inevitable, that is why Mao said:
Marxism is an ism, it is in fact a wranglism.    

We have no fear of summing up with fairness - as relative as fairness may be
under class society - the role of Trotsky, or any one else for that matter.
But would that put the matter to rest?  It depends of the attitude of our
rivals, and Mr. Cabral is only one of them - and only "half" of Mr. Cabral
is inclined in that direction at present, while his other half is only
inclined to churn out ludicrous charges worthy of Goebbles against our
comrade J.V. Stalin.

Therefore, I do not think that we shall finish our enemies with one blow, or
even two or three. But until they change their attitude, and signal their
COLLECTIVE willingness to listen with respect and reciprocate in the same
manner, we have no problem - and in fact enjoy it - in delivering BLOW after
BLOW, after blow in their direction, with our most Leninist CONTEMPT!


Regards


Adolfo Olaechea




     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---