Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 17:58:22 +0100
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (hariette spierings)
Subject: Re: Cockroach EXTRA! Congress declares war on poor!


Celebrating the return of "Mother on Welfare" malecki, a re-print to get the
atmosphere going:



>At 11:32 AM 8/4/96, Robert Malecki wrote:
>
>>COCKROACH! EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!
>>
>>A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE.
>>
>>WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS.
>
>For those who haven't visited this site, I've lifted the
following morsel.
>It would occur only to a genius to use the cockroach - revolting
disease
>ridden critters who eat garbage and catshit - as an image for
the working
>class, the expropriated creators of all wealth....
>
>Doug
>
>----
>
>>Perhaps we can learn something from the cockroaches struggle to
survive
>>extermination. If the cockroach was smart, it would of did
something
>>about their situation a long time ago. I mean just think if the
>>cockroaches had begun to organize themselves into trade unions
or
>>started a newspaper called "Cockroach" claiming that they were
going to
>>put and end to people who historically trying to exterminate
them. That
>>might have saved a whole lot of lives and suffering for the
cockroaches.
>>

ON THE REVERSE SNOBBERY OF THE "FILTHY SCUM"

"There has never been a single deep and mighty movement in
history without filthy scum" - V.I. Lenin

Hi there Doug:

Yes.  You are right in calling attention to this issue of how a
certain "Left" views the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat as a movement of the "filthy scum" and propagandise
this view with a smattering of catchwords seeking to identify the
"scum" with the hallowed and respected names of "bolshevik",
"Leninist", "Maoist", etc.

What Lenin was getting at is to the fact that it is *inevitable*
that in any mighty social upheaval, the *filthy scum* - which is
a permanent product of capitalist society and a bane on the
proletariat upon whom they principally prey - will also come to
the surface, and in fact vie, under the guise of "extreme
anarchists", "super-revolutionaries", etc. with the Marxists for
leadership of the revolution.  Historical experience teaches that
this has been the case.  

To that extent, and when the revolutionary movement is still in
the process of gathering strenght, it is impossible to avoid the
presence of such opportunism masquerading as revolutionism, and
even as Leninism, Maoism, or some such other ism which they
deface and caricaturise with their antics, serving thus the
interests of the ruling classes whose aim is to drive the masses
away from Marxist ideas, organisations and programmes.

What must be done is to unmask the demagogy implicit in such
"rrrevolutionists" who pander to the basest instincts of the
multitude, the mob, when they USURP the title of Marxists to
carry out their anarchistic and provocateur activities.

That requires a general criticism of a certain petty bourgeois
mentality which has been developing among the left mileu - hand
in hand with revisionist and bourgeois liberal ideas - which
seeks to sanctify and glorify the "filthy scum".

Imagine, there are some people who think that - for an example -
a drug dealer and murderer who killed his accomplice for no other
reason than to attempt to pocket all their ill gained loot
instead of his halve, can be a character reference for their own
"revolutionary credentials", and even adjudge and hold forth
"ex-cathedra" on the character of truly revolutionary people whom
such a person has never met in exchange for a couple of cartons
of Marlboroughs!
  
That it is enough that a person like this may have landed himself
- for his own rapacious (and very "bourgeois" motives) - into a
jail run by the class enemy of the proletariat, and that such a
felon, in order to do something useful with his time and attempt
to redeem his criminal past, would embrace revolutionist
activities and seek to do work for the revolutionary cause, to
forget altogether that under the proletarian dictatorship such
conduct would not be tolerated either and even more stringent
punishments would apply!.

I am talking here of a general trend - although such cases do
exist in the concrete world - I am talking of a general tendency
to glorify the "roaches" which runs counter to the proletarian
outlook.   

The problem is never with the individuals who seek to realise in
the revolution their own liberation from their own "filthy-scum"
lives.  We understand that they are to a great extent victims of
the system too, and not everything is their own responsibility -
lack of opportunities, the ghetto, and all that which malecki
keeps reminding us day in and day out.  

That is one side of the problem.  But to conclude from this, that
such people are in any way role models for the proletariat is
really to use the most twisted petty bourgeois logic and dress it
up as Marxism. 

The real culprits behind such "reverse snobbery" are the class
enemy ideologists and phoney "revolutionaries" who seek to
convince such people that they are some sort of heroes, when in
fact they are nothing of the sort.  It is the panderers to these
base instincts, like the maleckis or the kisspees, who should be
pilliored and exposed.  They sully everything they touch with
their own filthy antennaes.

Adolfo



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