Mother of All Questions (was: What is LЭko looking for?)

[stolz]

From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar>
Subject: What is L?ko looking for?
From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar>
(b) as I have already told cdes. in the First World, it is also
ESSENTIAL to understand why didn't _you_ and _your working classes_
in Western Europe come to the struggle when it was most necessary.

This is not (b) and not "also". This is THE MOTHER OF ALL QUESTIONS! Period.
And this question stands as tall today as it stood in Petrograd in the wee
hours of November 8 (Western style)1917: will they hear our signal and will
they rise? In comparison with this question all the silly debates about the
"nature of the Soviet Union", "socialism in one country", the "Soviet
Thermidor", and the like seem to me a kind of Freudian displacement of guilt
feeling. And this is at best. The key to understanding the defeat of the
world proletariat lies in the West, not in in the Soviet Union.

I can't honestly understand what does a German Marxist do when,
instead of scrutinizing the record of its own Left and working class
as regards the Soviet Union, scrutinizes the record of the Soviet
bureaucracy and (indirectly) of the Soviet masses who found no way
to shrug it off their shoulders.

Let us not forget that Ebert and the rest of the gang were also Marxists of a
sort, or rather they were GERMAN marxists. Being a Marxist does not guarantee
anything in our business. Trotsky made some delicious observations on Marxist
circles in Austria and Germany of his time, others in Britain, France and USA.
I have no reason to believe that things have changed much since then. My
point is: life is good, bourgeois life is good, there is a lot to value in it
if you're a sensitive, educated man and were born into the West 100 years ago
or now. It's orderly, comfortable, with great libraries and coffee houses,
the worst abuses of capitalism had long gone (partly not without the gentle
pressure of the old Joe and the state he built), they now have even the "Rosa
Luxemburg Stiftung" right next to her old friend Ebert's and nobody marvels
that they work hand in hand in the former SU to encourage the new breed of
reasonable Marxists with penchant for great libraries, coffee-houses, and
regular conferences of the left on the picturesque shores of the Rhein or even
not not so picturesque but still cquite comfortable Brooklyn. I was once on
one of such conferences and my only thought on the way back to Russia was: Why
in the world these people would ever dream of making a revolution?!
Revolutions are dirty, terribly messy, bloody things, with coffee shops locked
for good and Internet disconnected. I am not trying to look holier then them.
If I were in their shoes I would be fucking stupid even to seriously think
about saying "Revolution." I mean there are always some exceptional
individuals with extremely developed moral consciousness and will power.
There is also the adventurist type, ennobled by moral passion and sympathy to
the oppressed. But those are the tiny minority. Most of the left, including
the Marxist left are just decent "normal" people who in the West can enjoy and
do enjoy basically good life, as good as can be reasonably expected under the
present human condition. This is why, dear Nestor, the Mother of All Questions
will not be confronted by these people. And I honestly cannot blame them for
that. To become a revolutionary force Marxism needs those who can be both
cold and hot. But the modern Western society tends to produce the lukewarm
type of humanity. And, perhaps, it's the kind most suited for life.

Why, instead of talking to us about the Soviet bureaucrats, you
don't talk to us on the Social Democrat bureaucrats in Germany, who
have lost in Bayern against 61% vote to the Christian Democrats?
Aren't there working class votes in that 61%? What are you able to
tell us about the German working class? What about the consequences
of unification? What about the Ostalgie?
Or else, at least, give us an explanation of why, in spite of all
the rogue's evil features, people accepted their rule for so long a
time that the whole building crumbled. I am no pundit at all on the
fSU, nor on most issues raised on this list for that matter, but
when I try to think about issues I know little about I try to do
some exercise in -if you please- "deductive Marxism", not public
denounciation of rogues as such rogues that all of us know to be rogues.

I must say that looking back to my Soviet life from within the catastrophe of
the present I feel a little bit like Nietzsche "reevaluating all values".
Actually, I have developed tremendous respect, even awe for the Soviet
bureaucracy who once I so sincerely despised, especially after daily radio
tet-a-tets with the unforgettable Russian teams of the BBC, VOA, Deutsche
Welle, and Radio Liberty. If back then someone vile would have told me that
one day I would give a second thought to such demonic acts of Soviet
bureaucrats as the Stalin-Ribbentrop Pact or the deportations of the entire
peoples and ethnic groups, not to mention the Trials and the Terror, the
Doctor's Affair and so on and so forth, I don't know what I would have done to
that person. But I would not have killed him, because the ENLIGHTENED Soviet
bureacracy did not allow us to have firearms. Now I feeel almost tenderness
toward those gray old men. They and we had something very important in
common: neither how to sell things.

Vadim Stolz


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Mike Friedman]

Post by stolz
This is not (b) and not "also". This is THE MOTHER OF ALL QUESTIONS! Period.
And this question stands as tall today as it stood in Petrograd in the wee
hours of November 8 (Western style)1917: will they hear our signal and will

[...]

Post by stolz
one of such conferences and my only thought on the way back to Russia was: Why
in the world these people would ever dream of making a revolution?!
Revolutions are dirty, terribly messy, bloody things, with coffee shops locked
for good and Internet disconnected. I am not trying to look holier then them.
If I were in their shoes I would be fucking stupid even to seriously think
about saying "Revolution." I mean there are always some exceptional
individuals with extremely developed moral consciousness and will power.
There is also the adventurist type, ennobled by moral passion and sympathy to
the oppressed. But those are the tiny minority. Most of the left, including
the Marxist left are just decent "normal" people who in the West can enjoy and
do enjoy basically good life, as good as can be reasonably expected under the
present human condition. This is why, dear Nestor, the Mother of All Questions
will not be confronted by these people. And I honestly cannot blame them for
that. To become a revolutionary force Marxism needs those who can be both
cold and hot. But the modern Western society tends to produce the lukewarm
type of humanity. And, perhaps, it's the kind most suited for life.

It would seem that this is not really the Mother of All Questions, Mr.
Stolz, since you seem to have already found the pat answer to it!



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Mike Friedman]

Hi Nestor,

The answer to your question below (relating to the "guilt" of the European
and North American proletariat and their "leaderships" for not coming to
the aid of the Soviet workers, those of inumerable other revolutions, and
not overthrowing their own bourgeoisies in an opportune manner) is probably
yes and no. Perhaps when a definitive history of the capitalist period is
written, hindsight will allow us to judge ourselves and what we could and
should have or not have done.

In the meantime, it is senseless to "blame" a working class that currently
has no conscious sense of its historic interests and mission. The U.S.
proletariat cannot be said to be a "class for itself." The European
workers, with a more advanced political culture, still don't possess that
sense. Blaming "Western" workers, in that case is something like blaming a
baby for standing by while a mugging takes place. Where we do agree is that
the caps have been able to use the wealth stolen from the colonized world
to suffocate consciousness among the"Western" workering class.
Nevertheless, as David and others like Ernest Mandel (I'm reading something
of his now, so it sticks in my mind) have pointed out, European workers
have risen, and repeatedly, in the era of imperialism, only to be defeated,
repeatedly.

And here is where we might also agree, in that the "leaders" (and as the
saying goes, "un traidor puede mas que mil valientes...") bear a mighty
responsibility for these defeats as well as the lack of timely responses to
world events. We might agree if you would agree to differentiate among that
amorphous mass you are calling "Marxists" and eschew a certain voluntarism.
Surely you wouldn't put the Eberts in the same company with the
Luxembourgs? And even the most astute and integrated (into the class)
revolutionary leadership can't conjure up an uprising, even in support of
the first proletarian state, if the proper conditions are lacking.

If your main effort, here, is to try to convince comrades in the
imperialist countries to look first at the role played by their "own" in
revolutionary defeats and overthrows, I'm all for that. But, a critical
balance sheet can't exclude an examination of the role of the bureaucracy
in the overthrow in the USSR. Nor the role of the bureaucracy in the
defeats of "Western" revolutions.

Interesting that the same subject came up when I was in Nicaragua in August
during a conversation with my brother-in-law, who was an officer in the
Sandinista military intelligence, and who still considers himself a
Sandinista, although he has become rather bitter. In his view, the defeat
was the result of Sandinista errors, such as problems with the military
service, corruption, orientation to sectors of capital, verticalism, poor
approaches to the campesinos, etc. I argued that these had to be seen in
the context of the U.S. intervention. The reality is that both sets of
phenomena conditioned the overthrow of the FSLN government, and a balance
sheet would have to show not only how Washington played the main role in
overthrowing the Sandinista revolution, but also how Sandinista
contradictions actually weakened Solidarity (such as -- in the name of
diplomatic convenience -- when the FSLN oriented the Mexican solidarity
movement to stop pressuring the Zedillo government to restore oil shipments
to Nicaragua). Of course, in the U.S., the role of a conscious worker was
not to harp on Sandinista deficiencies, but to harp on the U.S.
government's role.

abrazos,
Mike

But why not comparing with _what their own governments established
the colonial world over_? Isn't there a great burden of
responsibility on the leadership here, and a burden of selfishness in
the class?
I don't deny that, as you very well state one has to "account for the
role of the Soviet Union which had unparalleled influence with our
working classes". But what you don't realize is that I am kicking the
ball into your own side of the field, because what I am feeling that
deserves understanding is "the role of the Western proletariat which
had unparalleled influence with the Soviet Revolution" and its fate.
I understand that you can't see internationalism in what follows,

NG:I can't honestly understand what does a German Marxist do when, instead
of scrutinizing the record of its own Left and working class as regards the
Soviet Union, scrutinizes the record of the Soviet bureaucracy and
(indirectly) of the Soviet masses who found no way to shrug it off their
shoulders.Honestly and comradely, L?ko, I feel that you are failing to your
duty. Germany is still, and will be while capitalism exists, the

cornerstone

of the European building. Your responsibilities are highest.Why, instead of
talking to us about the Soviet bureaucrats, you don't talk to us on the
Social Democrat bureaucrats in Germany, who have lost in Bayern against 61%
vote to the Christian Democrats? Aren't there working class votes in that
61%? What are you able to tell us about the German working class? What

about

the consequences of unification? What about the Ostalgie?

I am not parochial. I am considering the revolution as a truly
international event. Thus I summon those cdes. I value most to take
up their own tasks, seriously, within this international symphony.
Revolution is such an international event that we are all still
waiting for you to be succesful, as well as (I guess) you are waiting
for us to be succesful at our turn.
In order to be succesful, however, we must understand our own
environment to the last millimeter. That is what I try to expose.

~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

El Domingo 28 de Septiembre de 2003 a las 8:57,

Post by Jose G. Perez
The cause of the defeat of the Nicaraguan Revolution was the imperialist
aggression. The revolution was drowned in blood militarily and
suffocated economically. It really is as simple as that.

[...]

Post by Jose G. Perez
The central factor is this: there was an insufficient material basis for
resistance to the imperialist onslaught within Nicaragua. However it
would be wrong to say the material basis for the revolution in Nicaragua
did not exist -- but it was not inside the country. It existed in the
socialist camp, first and foremost the Soviet Union.

[Jos?'s notes go ahead with a description of the way in which the
Soviet Union never fulfilled that role, either in Nicaragua or
elsewhere.]

Post by Jose G. Perez
From a Latin American point of view, the record of the Soviet Union

is not precisely what one would call brilliant. And this could not be
otherwise. On a recent posting, I have taken the defense of the the
bureaucrats as against imperialists, so that I feel I have a right to
state that their dark side glowed the most in their policies towards
Latin America. Harsh as it sounds, so it was.

Ever after 1945, the USA enjoyed a free hand in Latin America against
any form of resistence to their grip. The leadership of the Soviet
Union accepted the _fait accompli_ that we are the backyard of the
Empire, and cannot be blamed for inconsequence with their
conceptions.

They did not consider Latin America a central issue for Soviet
security and international policies, which is quite understandable if
one thinks in terms of "Soviet patriotism". There was even a
Communist Party leader in Argentina who screamed at an international
Congress during the 30s that "good it would be if these 20 republics
disappeared, if this helps to keep the Great Soviet Fatherland
alive!"

This was quite brutal, but in the end shows the gist of the
bureaucrats' policies towards L.A. (I hasten to state, however, that
the Argentinean CP was particularly stolid, since they did not
support Peronism even against sound advice from Moscow during the 40s
and 50s... such was their reactionary cast of mind!)

During the crisis of the missiles, Fidel himself felt the limits of
Soviet support. And not only then. During the Bettelheim-Guevara
economic debate, the heavy hand from the East appeared again. And in
a sense, the Cubans were cornered by the necessities of international
politics into supporting _both_ ultra-reformist Communist Parties and
ultra-leftist guerrilla/terrorist groups in Latin America as a whole.
These were two sides of a single policy.

I am not attempting a dispute on something that is gone with the wind
and won't come back (although it still exists under the form of
former "apparatchniks" who tend to capture the Latin American
political relations of victorious revolutions, such as unfortunately
is happening with the Venezuelan revolution --not that we are not
fighting back, but it won't be easy!).

What I want to state is that the destinies of the Nicaraguan
revolution may have _tactically_ been linked with the socialist camp
as a result of a particular set of international conditions. But
_strategically_ they were linked to the destiny of revolution in
Latin America as a whole. And I sometimes think that Nicas, as well
as Allende's Chile, did not grasp the full consequences of this
conception. Nicaragua could simply not defend herself, because
Nicaragua was not large enough to develop a Nicaraguan "national
revolution" in absence of a Latin American National Revolution.

They were prey of isolation, an isolation that somehow oozed from
their original theses and Nicaraguan "nationalism", which is as
ridiculous as Argentinean, Chilean, Mexican and even Brazilian
"nationalisms". The only support for a Latin American country is
Latin America as a whole and a political vision of the local
revolution as an act in the larger drama of the Latin American
revolution.

Of course, this seems to mean little if you are under permanent
attack from the USA (and I agree with Jos? on this), but I humbly
(_really_ humbly) believe that one of the difficulties of the
Nicaraguan revolution was that they were not able (would they have
had an opportunity?) to follow a quieter pace, with a more
"patriotic" and less "socialistic" discourse. This pace would have
set synthonized them better with their Latin American environment,
thus making it more difficult for the US to bloodbathe and strangle
the Revolution.

Such a piece of advice may sound ridiculous, coming from Argentina.
Weren't we under the yoke of the 1976 Proceso? Weren't the Proceso
"specialists" actively working in Nicaragua (against the deepest
feelings of our people, but what can you expect)? Yes, we were. But
history has many corners, and unexpected corners for that. The self
and same criminals of 76 friendly hugged Fidel in 1982. Politics in
Latin America is not a clear-cut thing because our societies are not
clear-cut themselves.

The Sandinista Revolution had been targeted to doom by the USA, this
is true and it is the starting point. But, also, its excessive
reliance on a socialist bloc which either couldn't (Cuba) or did not
want (fSU,. etc.) to put its own destiny at stake by seriously
confronting the Empire of Evil in its backyard made the imperialist's
effort much more effective.

Methinks, with the highest respect for all those cdes. who not only
supported Nicaragua by word but actually _went there to help_.

N?stor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"S?, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Sim?n Bol?var al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Ozleft]

(Was Re: Shane Hopkinson post of Peter Boyle reformatted)

Alan Bradley's response reposted from Green Left Weekly list

I'm afraid Louis' response is mainly a product of the specific bats in his
belfry.

He tends to project his experience in the US SWP onto every other group in
the world.

The problem with that is, of course, that there are a whole host of other
party-building experiences out there, in a whole bunch of countries. It's
possible to learn quite a bit from them, and to consider all kinds of
interesting possibilities.

Louis seems to assume that the DSP is fixated upon the particular history of
the US SWP, apparently because they haven't denounced it as all being
worthless, and because it operates as a team that actually makes decisions
and seeks to carry them out (ie, is democratic centralist). This isn't true,
and is in fact a reflection of Louis' own fixation on the US SWP!

His broader analysis of "Zinovievism" isn't much broader. It actually seems
to be based almost entirely upon the experience of the CPUSA. It seems to be
conspicuously short on consideration of other parties, such as, for example,
the PCI, or the PCF, and other such (at times) relatively large Communist
Parties. Instead, he draws his analysis from the dwarfish US party, and from
it's even smaller Trotskyist offshoot, plus, of course, the generally absurd
history of British Trotskyism.

It doesn't acknowledge the existence of influential left parties in
countries like the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia... In short, it's
a sectarian stick to beat the actually existing US left with.

These are just my off the cuff impressions. I will do a proper analysis of
his post later.

Alan Bradley



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Louis Proyect]

Post by Ozleft
His broader analysis of "Zinovievism" isn't much broader. It actually seems
to be based almost entirely upon the experience of the CPUSA.

For newcomers to Marxmail, I recommend a look at things I've written at
"Organizational Problems of the Revolutionary Party" at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/organization.htm

I would also recommend Max Elbaum's website: http://revolutionintheair.com/
which is based on his "Revolution in the Air" book from Verso that deals
with the implosion of the Maoist movement (he calls it the New Communist
Movement). It includes my review of his book and other interesting commentary.

Alan uses the word "sectarian" to describe my critique of the DSP. Since I
speak only for myself, I would only say that this is a novel understanding
of the word sect. Well, at least he does not accuse me of trying to start a
cult around myself like the typical Trotskyist leader. Of course, with my
cantankerous personality that seems like a project that would be dead on
arrival.


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

El S?bado 27 de Septiembre de 2003 a las 19:24,
Mike Friedman dijo sobre Mother of All Questions (was: What que:

[Quoting Vadim Stoltz first]

Post by Mike Friedman

Post by stolz
This is not (b) and not "also". This is THE MOTHER OF ALL QUESTIONS! Period.
And this question stands as tall today as it stood in Petrograd in the wee
hours of November 8 (Western style)1917: will they hear our signal and will

[...]

Post by stolz
one of such conferences and my only thought on the way back to Russia was: Why
in the world these people would ever dream of making a revolution?!
Revolutions are dirty, terribly messy, bloody things, with coffee shops locked
for good and Internet disconnected. I am not trying to look holier then them.
If I were in their shoes I would be fucking stupid even to seriously think
about saying "Revolution." I mean there are always some exceptional
individuals with extremely developed moral consciousness and will power.
There is also the adventurist type, ennobled by moral passion and sympathy to
the oppressed. But those are the tiny minority. Most of the left, including
the Marxist left are just decent "normal" people who in the West can enjoy and
do enjoy basically good life, as good as can be reasonably expected under the
present human condition. This is why, dear Nestor, the Mother of All Questions
will not be confronted by these people. And I honestly cannot blame them for
that. To become a revolutionary force Marxism needs those who can be both
cold and hot. But the modern Western society tends to produce the lukewarm
type of humanity. And, perhaps, it's the kind most suited for life.

It would seem that this is not really the Mother of All Questions, Mr.
Stolz, since you seem to have already found the pat answer to it!

Don't fall on Vadim so angrily, Mike.

We all know that what he is describing is _part_, and an important
one, of the situation. I agree with him in that being Marxist means
little when you find Marxists supporting or rejecting (or even
supporting-rejecting), say, the Iraqi struggle today.

And that those who defend the invasion -or at least try to offer some
alibi to their tortured souls over the issue of whether Saddam
Hussein required a foreign invasion or not- are quite common among
the Leftist petty bourgeoisie of the affluent West.

The actual answer does not lie in Vadim's anger, and it is not Vadim
who can offer it. He can only appeal to the "hot and cold" minds of
those exceptional individuals which -I, for one, am convinced of this-
can be found, among others, among the readers of this list.

Did I throw a stone in the pond? What a splash!

N?stor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"S?, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Sim?n Bol?var al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

El S?bado 27 de Septiembre de 2003 a las 20:30,
Mike Friedman dijo sobre (Nestor) Re:What is L?ko looking fo que:

"The answer to your question below (relating to the "guilt" of the
European and North American proletariat and their "leaderships" for
not coming to the aid of the Soviet workers, those of inumerable
other revolutions, and not overthrowing their own bourgeoisies in an
opportune manner) is probably yes and no. Perhaps when a definitive
history of the capitalist period is written, hindsight will allow us
to judge ourselves and what we could and should have or not have
done."

Nestor answers:

Yes, I fully agree, particularly with the last sentence.

But allow me to explain that I was not placing any _blame_ on anyone.
I hope that my previous posting has explained this. Please remember
that all this thread began when I asked that those comrades who are
seriusly trying to develop a revolutionary policy in the metropolitan
West look more to their own realities before they begin to pass
judgement (or, yes, place blames) on other peoples and their leaders.

"In the meantime, it is senseless to "blame" a working class that
currently has no conscious sense of its historic interests and
mission. The U.S. proletariat cannot be said to be a "class for
itself." The European workers, with a more advanced political
culture, still don't possess that sense. Blaming "Western" workers,
in that case is something like blaming a baby for standing by while a
mugging takes place."

Well, this is something I used to believe myself, but now I feel that
some caveats could be made to the above. However, I also think that
debating on those few caveats would be hair-splitting, so let it be.
We agree in general. And, of course, I know that we also agree that

"the caps have been able to use the wealth stolen from the colonized
world to suffocate consciousness among the"Western" workering class.
Nevertheless, as David and others like Ernest Mandel (I'm reading
something of his now, so it sticks in my mind) have pointed out,
European workers have risen, and repeatedly, in the era of
imperialism, only to be defeated, repeatedly."

Well, yes and no, as you say above. Not "European workers" but heroic
parcels of the European proletariat, with most of that proletariat
passively waiting for the outcome (at best). When I speak about the
passivity of the European working class (and I am particularly
interested in the German, French and Italian working class) I don't
forget, not for a single minute, that there were heroic fractions
within that class. But, again, the record of the European proletariat
should warn European cdes. (on this list, at least) not to be so
harsh with other proletariats and the leaders that sprang out from
those "really existent proletarians", such as Stalin. I am simply
begging for some humility. Is it too much?
"And here is where we might also agree, in that the "leaders" (and as
the saying goes, "un traidor puede mas que mil valientes...") bear a
mighty responsibility for these defeats as well as the lack of
timely responses to world events. We might agree if you would agree
to differentiate among that amorphous mass you are calling "Marxists"
and eschew a certain voluntarism."

Yes, we agree. I am not putting every Marxist in the same bag. But
this does not diminish the fact that you can work for Satan by
quoting the Scriptures ("Se puede obrar para el diablo citando la
Biblia"). And the fact that you and me and many more here deride such
Marxists doesn't diminish their influence a single millimeter. We may
hate this, but those Marxists find friendlier ears than us. At first
sight, then, and particularly when even people from our own ranks
tend to unconsciously align with those "Marxists" we want to encircle
and expel, Western Marxism tends to appear as single block. Not that
I believe that. What I mean is that I understand Vadim's point of
view, and I am sympathetic with it.

"Surely you wouldn't put the Eberts in the same company with the
Luxembourgs? And even the most astute and integrated (into the class)
revolutionary leadership can't conjure up an uprising, even in
support of the first proletarian state, if the proper conditions are
lacking."

We also agree on this. What I want to trigger is the debate on the
"proper conditions". Yes, I know that this issue was debated once and
again. But IMHO the new historical situation urges a thoroughly new
visit, by cdes. in metropolitan Western countries, of their own past
of struggle.

"If your main effort, here, is to try to convince comrades in the
imperialist countries to look first at the role played by their "own"
in revolutionary defeats and overthrows, I'm all for that. But, a
critical balance sheet can't exclude an examination of the role of
the bureaucracy in the overthrow in the USSR. Nor the role of the
bureaucracy in the defeats of "Western" revolutions."

In full agreement. Only that, I hope, you will concede me that the
scales have been overtilted (is this English?) towards the debate on
the bureaucracy. You know Spanish very well, so that you know what I
mean when I say that "odio a la gente que patea al ca?do" (I hate
those people who kick the man on the ground).

"Interesting that the same subject came up when I was in Nicaragua in
August during a conversation with my brother-in-law, who was an
officer in the Sandinista military intelligence, and who still
considers himself a Sandinista, although he has become rather bitter.
In his view, the defeat was the result of Sandinista errors [...] Of
course, in the U.S., the role of a conscious worker was not to harp
on Sandinista deficiencies, but to harp on the U.S. government's
role."

Very interesting indeed, Mike. Would it be too much of a request to
ask German workers not to harp on Stalinist deficiencies but on the
German government's role in Eastern Europe?

Best,

N?stor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"S?, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Sim?n Bol?var al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

I got three answers that do not broach my basic question, cdes.

Of course, I am not blaming a class, not even a leadership (according
to not a few interpretations, even Rosa made a mistake in 1919, a
mistake which cost her life). I am not saying that the Chilean
working class and the whole mass of the Chilean people did not stand
a chance in 1973. I am not saying that there was _no other course_ in
Argentina, 1975/6.

The single thing I am saying is that the reasons for the immobility
of the proletarians in metropolitan Western countries cannot be laid
at the door of Soviet leaders, not exclusively at least; and
certainly not primarily. In 1919 there were no Stalinists to take the
blame, comrades.

The fact is that the Social Democratic trend (in the worst sense of
the word) had a strong mass foundation. The peculiar kind of Marxism
that became mainstream Marxism in Western metropolitan countries is
not only a matter of a "mistaken", "immature" or "treacherous"
leadership. It expressed (and expresses) a concrete kind of working
class.

The Stalinist leadership made gross mistakes. And I am the last on
Earth to forget that. Even crimes. Betrayal to Revolution, if you
want. But all and every one of these developments was triggered by
what happened in the West. And this is what Vadim is trying to
explain.

In order to understand what happened in the East, it is essential to
keep always in mind that the lever was in the West, not in the East.
That lever failed to move. The Tsarist Empire was left to itself and
its revolutionary masses were decimated. And even under these
conditions there were background battles against bureaucratism (even
from Left Stalinists against Stalin, after the Moscow trials). Not to
speak of LDT, of course.

Maybe the KPD had the key of the situation in the 30s, and under
orders from the SU they let it fall. However, all these explanations
don't answer the original question. The KPD was probably the only
communist party in the West that _could_ disobey Moscow. Its rank-and-
file did not do it. Nor did the rank-and-file Communists in France
and Italy disobey their leadership when they were ordered to disarm
in 1945. Can we explain away such massive passivity by simply
speaking of immature leaderships?

Vadim's answer is, in a sense, that Lenin was wrong: the labor
aristocracy was more extended that he ever dared to dream. Mine
runs, more or less, on similar tracks.

That is, we are trying to follow Mark Jones's ideas on what was
evitable and what was not evitable during the first half of the 20th
Century in the Soviet Union. Not everything that took place in the
Soviet Union was inevitable, we are agreed on that. But let us also
agree on that not everything that happened in the metropolitan West
was.

Probably the "wretched of the earth" had a very important role in all
the period: that of reminding even the most revolutionary of the
metropolitan Western proletarians that they _did_ have things to lose
that were not only their chains.

I am not placing "blames" on anyone. I am just trying to debate,
together with all the cdes., up to which point the conservatism of
the metropolitan working classes is a form of "false consciousness"
or is simply the reflection of their privileged situation as regards
the mass of the population on Planet Earth.

And this is not a futile academic exercise. This would save us lots
of time when, for example, some know-it-all appears on our radar
screen explaining that the "Bring the boys home" slogan is "too
Reformistic". My own opinion is that if it is "too Reformist", then
it has a very good chance to be the adequate one in the current
situation. For the reasons above.

N?stor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"S?, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Sim?n Bol?var al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Jose G. Perez]

In his view, the defeat was the result of Sandinista errors, such as

problems with the military service, corruption, orientation to sectors
of capital, verticalism, poor approaches to the campesinos, etc. I
argued that these had to be seen in the context of the U.S.
intervention. The reality is that both sets of phenomena conditioned the
overthrow of the FSLN government, and a balance sheet would have to show
not only how Washington played the main role in overthrowing the
Sandinista revolution, but also how Sandinista contradictions actually
weakened Solidarity (such as -- in the name of diplomatic convenience --
when the FSLN oriented the Mexican solidarity movement to stop
pressuring the Zedillo government to restore oil shipments to
Nicaragua). <<

The cause of the defeat of the Nicaraguan Revolution was the imperialist
aggression. The revolution was drowned in blood militarily and
suffocated economically. It really is as simple as that.

What we are talking about are the factors that made it possible for
imperialism to do that, and the reasons the defeat took the specific
forms that it did.

The central factor is this: there was an insufficient material basis for
resistance to the imperialist onslaught within Nicaragua. However it
would be wrong to say the material basis for the revolution in Nicaragua
did not exist -- but it was not inside the country. It existed in the
socialist camp, first and foremost the Soviet Union.

I believe, having observed the process at close range for four years,
that timely Soviet military and economic aid to Nicaragua would have
allowed the Nicas to defeat the imperialist aggression, with this
leadership. On the scale of the Soviet economy, or the socialist block
as a whole, the needed resources were practically zero. What was missing
was the political will.

Militarily the needed aid was insignificant. What was needed was a few
jet planes --even Korean war museum pieces would do-- to take out the
CIA air resupply operation for the contras, which is what allowed them
to take the war to the interior of the country. And a few dozen more
Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters, (the Nicas had perhaps 20 total) to be able
to throw a few hundred troops behind the contra columns and block their
retreat. The evidence is overwhelming that such aid was promised under
Brezhnev and Andropov, because by mid-1984 Nicaragua had trained pilots
for the jets and was building a military air base. But the Soviets
welched. Of course, whether they had any intention of living up to their
promises is doubtful, for they also --and totally consciously-- allowed
the Chilean revolutionary process to be strangled.

The historic betrayals of the Soviet Union in Latin America were
carefully documented in the Ted Turner financed 24-part documentary
series "Cold War."

ON CHILE:

Narration: In November 1971, Fidel Castro arrived to support Allende's
policy of change through the ballot box.

Interview: President Fidel Castro, Cuba

"We fully supported his policy. We trained people for his personal
security. We were experienced in this because we had had to defend
ourselves against those who had wanted to destroy us. We told him about
this because we thought he had enemies who might try to take his life."

Narration: The dangers didn't just come from the right. Castro's Cuban
policy of armed revolution found favor with Chile's extreme left, who
were hostile to Allende's methods.

But most Chileans ignored the call to armed struggle.

As inflation mounted, the right attacked economically. CIA money helped
pay for Chilean truck owners to bring the country to a standstill. At
the U.N., Allende accused ITT of trying to provoke a civil war.

Archival Footage: President Salvador Allende, December 4, 1972

"They propose economic strangulation, diplomatic sabotage, social
disorder, to produce panic among the people allowing the army to
overthrow a democracy and put in a dictatorship."

Narration: Moscow was the next stop. There Allende sought the money he
needed to stave off bankruptcy. But the Russians, already spending a
fortune to support Cuba, were unimpressed.

Interview: Nikolai Leonov, KGB, Latin American Department

"We had come to a conclusion. This regime would soon be toppled because
they were trying through very democratic means -- without the use of
arms -- to break the resistance of stronger opposition forces."

ON NICARAGUA

The Sandinistas asked the Soviets for help.

Interview: Yuri Pavlov, Soviet Foreign Ministry

"The leaders in Moscow did not want to provoke the United States into
giving more military aid to the Contras and to the Honduran government.
Therefore these requests were politely denied every time the Sandinistas
brought it up in Moscow."

Narration: The Sandinistas, with help from Cuba, vowed to defend their
borders and the revolution.


ON EL SALVADOR, AND CENTRAL AMERICA GENERALLY

In the United States, the new Reagan administration blamed Cuba and
Moscow.

Archival Footage: U.S. Secretary of State, March 22, 1981

Gen. Alexander Haig: "What we're watching is a four-phased operation.
Phase one has been completed -- the seizure of Nicaragua. Next is El
Salvador, to be followed by Honduras and Guatemala -- it's clear and
explicit."

Other: "There is a Caribbean domino theory that's unfolding?"

Gen. Haig: "Of course. I wouldn't call it necessarily a domino theory. I
would call it a priority target list -- a hit list if you will -- for
the ultimate takeover of Central America."

Interview: President Fidel Castro, Cuba

"Look, if a Soviet-Cuban master plan actually existed we would have won
the Cold War. (Laughs) If there had been a master plan. But
unfortunately there was no such plan, quite the opposite. Cuba's actions
conflicted with Soviet interests at that time."

YOU CAN FIND IT ALL HERE, including LOTS more on Guatemala, Grenada, and
so on:

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/18/script.html

* * *

Note especially Fidel's considered judgment, in an interview done around
1997 or 1997: "if a Soviet-Cuban master plan actually existed," that is,
if the Soviet Union had followed a policy of revolutionary
internationalism, "we would have won the Cold War."

The fundamental problem in Nicaragua was that it HAD to rely on aid from
the international working class. The revolution was based NOT on the
relationship of forces between imperialism and the working people of
Nicaragua or even Central America generally, but on a world scale.

This was a relationship of forces that was established by the two
outstanding political developments of the XX Century, the October
Revolution and the defeat of German imperialism in WWII by the Soviet
Union, with the resulting collapse of direct colonialism due to the
exhaustion of all the main colonial powers and the creation of a world
socialist camp.

As became evident a few years later, there wasn't enough LEFT of the
October Revolution to even save the Soviet Union, never mind Nicaragua.
And it does no good to complain it was the bureaucracy and so on and so
forth. The holocaust that has befallen working people in the former
Soviet Union is history's way of saying, next time you take power, be a
little more careful in how you use it.

Sandinista policies did play a role in how the defeat of the revolution
unfolded. But not just the factors Mike alludes to, which mostly were
the forms in which the toll taken on the revolution by the imperialist
aggression in turn manifested themselves within the revolutionary
vanguard. In my judgment the overriding political mistake was their
early policy towards the Miskitus, which allowed the contra to expand
from a force of one or two hundred ex Somocista National Guards that
would have been easily contained and then defeated. The Sandinistas,
showing their revolutionary mettle, were able to correct this policy and
completely neutralize the CIA's manipulation of the national aspirations
of the Miskitu people. This was registered by the autonomy agreement of
1984.

But by then, the CIA had begun succeeding in leveraging the initial
social base among the Miskitu people into a broader social base among
the peasantry in Nicaragua's agricultural frontier, and by mid-1985
contra columns were operating deep inside the country, in the cattle
zone of the fifth military region, Boaco and Chontales, which is as far
from any border as it is possible to get in Nicaragua.

This was facilitated by unintended consequences of early reforms in the
countryside, which sought to replace the traditional exploitative credit
and distribution networks with state institutions, and an agrarian
reform policy centered on the creation of cooperatives and state farms
--in effect, you had to collectivize to benefit from the agrarian
reform-- rather than simply giving land to landless peasants.

That the Sandinistas could and would also have refined these policies,
and improved the functioning of the state institutions that serviced the
needs of the countryside I have no doubt. But they did not get a chance
to. The war had unleashed a tremendous economic crisis which the
operation of the capitalist market automatically placed on the backs of
working people, despite Sandinista efforts to mitigate its effects. The
working people became atomized in a maddening day-to-day struggle to put
food on the table; the unions and revolutionary mass organizations
virtually ceased functioning as such; the FSLN was no longer able to
rely as much on the mass movement, on mass initiatives and
participation, and resorted increasingly to administrative and
bureaucratic methods. Careerist and opportunist elements --and those
same tendencies within revolutionary cadres-- tended to come to the
fore. These growing phenomena within the FSLN were simply the form that
the toll taken on the country and its revolution took within its
vanguard detachment.

Of course, there was a continuity with the specific forms in which the
FSLN was organized, the pre-eminence of the National Directorate and so
on. But even if the broader Sandinista Assembly had been invested with
formal top authority, or even a party Congress, I believe that it was
inevitable that the defeat of the revolution would take its toll on and
break the FSLN as a revolutionary instrument. The fact that there was no
significant advance towards a broader authoritative leadership body than
the nine after 1984 or 1985 was by then a reflection of the beleaguered
state of the revolution, not its cause.

Jos?


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[stolz]

Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 01:44:25 -0300
From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar>
Subject: Let us not get astray, please
The fact is that the Social Democratic trend (in the worst sense of
the word) had a strong mass foundation. The peculiar kind of Marxism
that became mainstream Marxism in Western metropolitan countries is
not only a matter of a "mistaken", "immature" or "treacherous"
leadership. It expressed (and expresses) a concrete kind of working
class.

Yes, this is a typical idealist thinking to abstract the "leadership" from its
base.
Also the national working class, or a part of it, is not the only material
factor that binds the party intellectuals to their society. The historical
formation of radical Western intellectuals and their position vis-a-vis other
classes seems to me tied them much stronger to the bourgeoisie than it was in
the case of Russian intelligentsia.

The Stalinist leadership made gross mistakes. And I am the last on
Earth to forget that. Even crimes. Betrayal to Revolution, if you
want. But all and every one of these developments was triggered by
what happened in the West. And this is what Vadim is trying to
explain.

Absolutely, even more so by what DID NOT happen in the West. Let us image
that everything went according to Marx' scenario and socialist revolutions
occured where they were supposed to. In that case the internal factors would
play the dominant role in the fate in these revolutions. The rest of the
world could have become either the object of their benevolent socialist
imperialism or just left alone as Engels recommended, if I am not mistaken.
But what if a socialist revolution takes place in a "backward" country? Well,
our founding fathers did not consider this possibility, because it was
self-evident for them that such a revolution was doomed... unless supported by
similar revolution in Germany or elsewhere in the West. That is they did not
have any doubts that in case of the "backward" country the decisive factors
were external. And frankly, one does not have to be a genius to come to this
conclusion.

In order to understand what happened in the East, it is essential to
keep always in mind that the lever was in the West, not in the East.
That lever failed to move. The Tsarist Empire was left to itself and
its revolutionary masses were decimated. And even under these
conditions there were background battles against bureaucratism (even
from Left Stalinists against Stalin, after the Moscow trials). Not
to speak of LDT, of course.
Maybe the KPD had the key of the situation in the 30s, and under
orders from the SU they let it fall. However, all these explanations
don't answer the original question. The KPD was probably the only
communist party in the West that _could_ disobey Moscow. Its rank-
and- file did not do it. Nor did the rank-and-file Communists in
France and Italy disobey their leadership when they were ordered to
disarm in 1945. Can we explain away such massive passivity by simply
speaking of immature leaderships?
Vadim's answer is, in a sense, that Lenin was wrong: the labor
aristocracy was more extended that he ever dared to dream. Mine
runs, more or less, on similar tracks.

Yes, this was implied in what I said in the first message. Lenin realized the
extent and the fatal implications of social-imperialism too late. For this he
is guilty before the Russian workers of 1917. He began talking about
social-imperialism for the first time only in 1914 when even the blind could
see it, yet long before that he knew by heart all written by European
socialist-democrats, above all Kautsky's works that exude social-imperialist
ideology. Moreover, how could someone like Lenin with his intimate knowledge
of West-European life miss the cultural bond between the ruling classes and
the workers in countries like Britain, France and even Germany? Did he ever
talk to real British workers? I am not sure. He never had any illusions
about the British left or the French, but why didn't he extrapolate this lack
of illusions onto the working classes who imprinted their bourgeois mentality
on that Left in the first place and who in their turn became inculcated with
social-imperialism by that Left? Here was the man who put such a premium on
leadership, the vanguard and who by 1917 knew all too well that socialist
leadership in the West was in crisis, to put it mildly, and would rather
suppress the revolution than lead it.

Apparenly, this realization was just psychologically impossible for Lenin. To
be a revolutionary and a Marxist can be a rather contradictory proposition.
Anyway, in the end he acknowledged his terrible mistake only indirectly, by
coming to the conclusion that the existing impasse will be resolved not by
Western workers, or even
by inter-imperialist contradictions but by the apocalyptic confrontation
between the "imperialism of the West" and "nationalism of the East" (the South
at that time was still considered largely an "non-historical" entity). I
believe this vision still holds true. If so the Western Left has only a
provincial significance and should not be trusted to accomplish anything
except some reformist reargard action.

That is, we are trying to follow Mark Jones's ideas on what was
evitable and what was not evitable during the first half of the 20th
Century in the Soviet Union. Not everything that took place in the
Soviet Union was inevitable, we are agreed on that. But let us also
agree on that not everything that happened in the metropolitan West
was.

Dear Nestor, let me be undiplomatic and respectfully disagree with this
careful balancing of responsibilities. The truth is that there was simply no
comparison between the straight jacket of "iron" necessity
in which the Soviet Union found itself after the devastations of the civil
war, isolated, with 80 million peasants and the decimated working class,
primitive argriculture, hostile intelligentsia and so on--on the one hand, and
the capitalist world, not threatened by military intervention, with its huge
industrial working class, all the material and cultural wealth, mass labor
movements, enourmous network of radical press, first-rate intellectual cadres.
This last world had freedom of choice and it actually had proven this by
developing into rather different directions of the New Deal, the most
democratic form of capitalism, and Nazism -- the most repressive. It's also
obvious that its democratic potential could be realized only in the country
like the US, with its huge wealth available for redistribution through state
capitalism, but not in the devastated Germany. To expect from the Soviet
Union "democratic" or "true" socialism and to blame on Stalin the failure of
the revolution to materialize in the West is like blaming the Amazonian tribe
for falling short of the ideals of the old European Humanism and, to boot,
making the tribe responsible for the collapse of "humanist values" in the
contemporary West.

Probably the "wretched of the earth" had a very important role in
all the period: that of reminding even the most revolutionary of
the metropolitan Western proletarians that they _did_ have things to
lose that were not only their chains.

Indeed, they had quite a bit to lose. And they finally had their homeland
too. Unlike it was in Marx's time, by the end of the civil war in Russia all
working classes in the West had been recognized by their bourgeois states as
politically equal to bourgeoisie. Workers became full citizens with all
rights and responsibilities implied. Materially they also had to lose quite a
bit. I recall Victor Serge's impressions on his return to Europe from the SU.
I believe it was already during the Great Depression. He went to Belgium and
describes his son's awe at the sight of shops with all that food, delicacies,
the candy store, nice clothes, toys... Serge stayed in the home of an
unemployed worker, who had three rooms for himself (something that only a very
highly placed Soviet engineer could hope for), a bycicle (still a luxury item
in the SU), ate meat every day while hundred thousands still starved to death
in Soviet Central Asia and elsewhere, and so on and so forth.

I am not placing "blames" on anyone. I am just trying to debate,
together with all the cdes., up to which point the conservatism of
the metropolitan working classes is a form of "false consciousness"
or is simply the reflection of their privileged situation as regards
the mass of the population on Planet Earth.
And this is not a futile academic exercise. This would save us lots
of time when, for example, some know-it-all appears on our radar
screen explaining that the "Bring the boys home" slogan is "too
Reformistic". My own opinion is that if it is "too Reformist", then
it has a very good chance to be the adequate one in the current
situation. For the reasons above.

We have reached similar conclusions in relation to a broader phenomena of
European ATTAC and Western "anti-globalism" of their brand who have been
on a missionary expedition to Russia lately (and I want to stress:
"missionary" in exactly
the same sense as in the 19 century Equatorial Congo or 17 century
California). As a Western reformist movement and in the context of the present
historic reaction ATTAC has a modestly progressive role to play IN THE WEST.
But the same movement in Russia and the rest of the neocolonial world should
be seen as regressive and threatening the organization of anti-imperialist and
anti-capitalist struggle. We are reasonable people. We understand. We no
longer expect the workers and the Left in the West to rise. But there is a
lot of space for progressive change between the present reaction and a
socialist revolution.
For example, we badly need the democratization of mass media in the West. We
need pacifism and the real anti-NATO movement in the West. This is not
revolutionary but would help us enormously by taking some pressure off our
countries. We want as much social reformism in the West as one can get, if
only because this would isolate our capitalists who imitate the Darwinian
style of US capitalism. The problem is: we see none of the above. NATO
encircles us and nobody in the Western Left gives a damn about it. But when
it comes to Chechnya, no calls to arms needed -- we see legions hurrying to
courageously struggle against "Russian imperialism" on the left flank of
Western imperialism in the Caucasus and the Caspian. For the last 10-12 years
Western banks and other financial institutions protected and participated in
the criminal plunder of the former Soviet Union by our capitalists and no
left party in the West cared to demand to put a stop to this crime (even by
capitalist standards and laws!!) which literary killed millions of our people.
In short, a political movement that is progressive in the West can be
retarding and in some instances even reactionary in countries like Russia.
That is we have a situation of non-synchronicity in the world socialist
movement caused by imperialism.

Let me finish by saying that as far as I am concerned this thread is not about
blaming Western leftists who have nothing to do with what had transpired
before they even were born. It is about becoming clear-eyed about our future,
above all: 1) what can we and what we cannot reasonably expect from the labor
movement and the Left in the West, because we would hate to repeat Lenin's
mistake and 2)identifying and building links with those comrades in the West
who have a proven record of anti-imperialist struggle and for who we have
tremendous respect, like the IAC people in US, or comrades like Melvin P. who,
we still hope, will write for us :)). Nor do we see the working classes in
the West as a homogeneous mass hopelessly loyal to their bourgeoisie. We were
very encouraged, to give you one example, by the overwhelmingly critical
attitude toward the aggression against Iraq by Black workers and communities
in the US. Still, together with comrades like James Petras, whose article
posing and answering these questions we've just translated an published, we
believe that the impasse in the West--without the resolution of which no
decisive step towards a socialist reconstruction of humanity can be made--can
and should come mostly from the outside by a full specter of anti-imperialist
struggles, which would eventually put unbearable pressure on ALL classes in
imperialist countries and will encourage the MASS of their workers to act with
radicalism and determination that the Russian workers of 1917 waited in vain
from their predecessors.

VS


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 9/29/03 12:09:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, stolz at left.ru

The truth is that there was simply no comparison between the straight jacket

of "iron" necessity in which the Soviet Union found itself after the
devastations of the civil war, isolated, with 80 million peasants and the decimated
working class, primitive agriculture, hostile intelligentsia and so on--on the
one hand, and the capitalist world, not threatened by military intervention,
with its huge industrial working class, all the material and cultural wealth,
mass labor movements, enormous network of radical press, first-rate intellectual
cadres. This last world had freedom of choice and it actually had proven this
by developing into rather different directions of the New Deal, the most
democratic form of capitalism, and Nazism -- the most repressive. It's also
obvious that its democratic potential could be realized only in the country like
the US, with its huge wealth available for redistribution through state
capitalism, but not in the devastated Germany. To expect from the Soviet Union
"democratic" or "true" socialism and to blame on Stalin the failure of the
revolution to materialize in the West is like blaming the Amazonian tribe for falling
short of the ideals of the old European Humanism and, to boot, making the tribe
responsible for the collapse of "humanist values" in the contemporary West. <

Comment

Bourgeois democratic America of course drew its strength from the
exploitation of the non-sovereign peoples and countries, including everyone in the
Western hemisphere, although to this very day some claim the theory of "national
wages." America's democratic face is revealed for what it is in the fact that
the Voting Rights Act was not passed until 1965. Without the existence of Soviet
power things in America would be much worse. In its political antagonism with
American imperialism, Sovietism forced enormous concessions to be extended to
the working class of our country.

Nevertheless, to this very day the structures of political control of the
bourgeoisie is based on exclusion of the most poverty stricken sector of the
working class that is criminalized and incarcerated at the highest rates on earth.

From the overthrow of the democratic government of the South in the 1890

until the 1960s the plantation South remained under fascist rule. Fascist rule is
correct. In every other bourgeois country on earth, the open terrorist
dictatorship of capital is called fascism and fascism is understood as imperialism
turned inward except in respects to the American Union and the former plantation
area of the South.

In the North there was a combination of bourgeois democracy for the most
privileged workers and police murder and terror for the lowest section of the
workers. Although America was basically a Southern country in its origins and
political structures, up to the Civil War, our history is peculiar. This history
has been written down and talked about by the Black elite since the formation
of the Negro (Colored) Peoples Convention Movement in 1830.

The genesis of the colonial relationship in the American Union is complex and
tricky, and actually began emergence in 1790 in the North, when the market
crashed and more than 30,000 black slaves were set free. We of course know that
the cotton gin altered American history. The black community actually traces
its history from 1790 as a community of blacks and not slaves in the North. The
isolation and terror reaped upon this community was so intense that there are
isolated cases of blacks selling themselves into slavery to be sent South.
These free blacks posed a threat to the Southern slave oligarchy by simply
existing. The cotton gin and the Dred Scott case around 1838 would set the
political basis for the colonial framework that exist to this very day.

What we are dealing with in America is oppressing and oppressed people;
exploiting and non-exploiting classes. In the ideological realm we are dealing with
white chauvinism and national chauvinism. In America the historical
anti-Sovietism was tightly liked to white chauvinism. This social phenomenon of
anti-communism/anti-Sovietism/white chauvinism, is not the result of bad thinking but
the ideological expression of what the rest of the world calls oppressing and
oppressed peoples, not simply exploiting and non-exploiting classes. The
material unity between the best paid sections of the working class of the North
and the Anglo-American imperial bourgeoisie and their Southern reactionary
lackey's is founded on the understanding that rest of the world will be exploited
on their behalf.

Bush Jr., of course understand the national colonial question very well. The
1965-Watts Rebellion was met by the Reagan Revolution in California and then
went South to doubled back North to the White House. Look at California and
remember "Bloody Kansas."

The American left can be "trusted" to do nothing or rather what they have
always done - be the left bench of the bourgeoisie, which is the meaning of being
left in world history. Nevertheless, its political motion can be impacted
depending on the degree that the most poverty stricken section of our working
class is galvanized into a coherent political body. The left is composed of
thousands of decent people whose moral outrage is a material force. The reason the
American left has said nothing about the imperial attack on the former
Republic of the Soviet Union in league with the domestic bourgeois
nationalist/capitalist is anti-Sovietism and national chauvinism. The Soviet power will never be
forgiven for the defeat it forced on capital and its "anti-democratic" ways.
Who better than the bourgeoisie and its intellectual hit men can lecture the
proletariat on democracy? :-)

Fortunately, the American Union has entered another cycle of its
revolutionary history.

Melvin P.


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

El Lunes 29 de Septiembre de 2003 a las 9:11,

From the overthrow of the democratic government of the
South in the 1890 until the 1960s the plantation South remained under
fascist rule. Fascist rule is correct. In every other bourgeois country on
earth, the open terrorist dictatorship of capital is called fascism and
fascism is understood as imperialism turned inward except in respects to
the American Union and the former plantation area of the South.

"overthrow of the democratic government of the South in the 1890":
could you please explain further? Thank you, Melvin P.

N?stor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"S?, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Sim?n Bol?var al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[stolz]

Melvin P. wrote:

Comment

Bourgeois democratic America of course drew its strength from the
exploitation of the non-sovereign peoples and countries, including everyone in
the
Western hemisphere, although to this very day some claim the theory of "national
wages." America's democratic face is revealed for what it is in the fact that
the Voting Rights Act was not passed until 1965. Without the existence of Soviet
power things in America would be much worse. In its political antagonism with
American imperialism, Sovietism forced enormous concessions to be extended to
the working class of our country.

Nevertheless, to this very day the structures of political control of the
bourgeoisie is based on exclusion of the most poverty stricken sector of the
working class that is criminalized and incarcerated at the highest rates on
earth.

From the overthrow of the democratic government of the South in the 1890

until the 1960s the plantation South remained under fascist rule. Fascist rule is
correct. In every other bourgeois country on earth, the open terrorist
dictatorship of capital is called fascism and fascism is understood as
imperialism turned inward except in respects to the American Union and the
former plantation area of the South.
--------------

My reply:

Dear Melvin, I stand corrected and ashamed of myself. I should've written:

The white democracy of the New Deal had at its heart the Fascist Southern
State and the white labor movement to help it teaching black workers "to know
their place" . Germany did not have its South and its Negro worker - the
New Deal for Germany lied in the East. It was called Plan Barbarossa. How
could I forget about this?! I, who translates Sakai's book for labor
activists in Russia.

Vadim Stolz


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

El Mi?rcoles 1 de Octubre de 2003 a las 5:52,

- the New Deal for Germany lied in the East. It was called Plan
Barbarossa.

More than that. Under the Weimar Republic, there were Social Democrat
geographers working on an "ideal" construction for optimizing
settlement patterns on an "isotropic plain". What was most striking
with these schemes was that they in the end reproduced the situation
of a colonized East under German rule: industrial production, for
example, did not appear at all in the model. Cities were commercial,
administrative and political centers, not productive centers.

The head of the group was Walter Christaller, who helped produce the
school of analytical geography and regional science after 1950.

The network of "defence freeways" in USA (that was their first name)
and of Autobahnen in Hitler Germany both date back to those
democratic years of the Weimar Republic, when more foundations were
laid for Hitler and his Eastward expansion than many would like to
admit.

N?stor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"S?, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Sim?n Bol?var al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 9/30/03 7:13:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar writes:


The network of "defense freeways" in USA (that was their first name) and of
Autobahnen in Hitler Germany both date back to those democratic years of the
Weimar Republic, when more foundations were laid for Hitler and his Eastward
expansion than many would like to admit.

N?stor Miguel Gorojovsky



Most Americans think that freeways are meant for cars and vacation trips,
which are not as plentiful as several years ago. After the 1967 Rebellion in
Detroit, Interstate 75 - which runs through Detroit was reconstructed and widened
at the request of the military. The width is based on the ability of two
tanks to turn around at the same time without colliding. The Davison freeway -
running through Highland Park was the first constructed in America, about half a
mile from Ford's first mass assembly plant.

When Interstate 75 was originally built through Detroit an enormous political
struggle erupted and the state of Michigan designed plans to build the
freeway through the historic African American distinct and economic center of all
its businesses. All the commercial enterprises, hotels and nightclubs were wiped
out, virtually overnight. This area was called Paradise Valley.

This current thread evolved from the various "Marxist" who do not identify
themselves as Marxist but ideologist of the "other guy" point an accusing finger
at Moscow. Then the thread shifted to DMS and social imperialism.

At root is a non-Marxist approach to the national colonial question and this
has been my basic contention. Most of the material presented on the nature of
the class rule of the bourgeoisie in the old South and the aftermath of the
Civil War was written and published over 30 years ago. As long as you understand
the imperial logic you are dealing with you will survive.

The communist workers in American have a radically different view from the
left and the people who profess "their man." We are roughly 30 years ahead of
them in real time and totally different from them in history.

This thing about the basis classes of a social system not being able to over
throw the system is brilliant. "We" have actually written volumes of brilliant
stuff. It comes out little by little but Marxline is not a Marx line. It is
the ideology of the other guy.

Hey, the loss of Henry Liu was horrible. Here is a banker that can give us
the ins and outs of the accumulative process as abstraction and real motion. In
the last instance he could not coexist with the chauvinists, although I
understand the mistake that got him purged from the list. I am not purged yet and do
not see it coming in the immediate future but it is just a matter of time.
The battle over Soviet socialism and American communism semi-fascist roots is
going to come up again and I am going to confront the chauvinists for what they
are. Plenty of the comrades good and some are simply rotten.

Peace


Melvin P.



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.