Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 21:11:52 +0100
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (hariette spierings)
Subject: Re: A defense worse than the deed


>At 4:37 PM 7/24/96, Robert Malecki wrote:
>
>>Everytime the reformists and centrists run into a brick wall with their
>>rotten politics that try to blame the Trotskyists who usually long before
>>pointed out just their rotten politics.
>
>Am I right in believing that no Trotskyist party has ever held state power
>with a brief exception in Sri Lanka?
>
>Now, capturing the state is certainly no index of political wisdom or
>virtue.
>Doug
>


Now Doug, you must admit that a Trotskyst symphatiser at the head of an
electoral coalition including Trotskysts, won government but not state power
in Sri-Lanka.  State power can only be won by revolution - unless the
Trotskyst "bolsheviks" hold otherwise.  "You can not just lay hold of the
state machinery"..... Remember?  If not, Hugh will remind you.  State and
Revolution.

Capturing the government and not smashing the state also shows that the
Trotskysts around the Bandaranaikes were practicers of what they themselves
accusse the communists in Spain in 1936.  Except that in Spain, the fight
was against fascism in the BATTLEFIELD, while in Sri-lankan politics the
Trotskyst kept to the boundaries of bourgeois parliamentarism and
economicistic trade union demands for fear of taking the battlefield against
the same fascism - i.e. the armed forces of Sri-lanka.  In practice, their
united front was not revolutionary, while that in Spain had a revolutionary
content.


So in fact, you could be more accurate in the Marxist sense by simply saying
"a Trostkyst party has never held state power period"!.


Adolfo Olaechea 



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