Re: [A-List] Jack Straw: Beslan hostage-takers and Nazism are alike

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/5/2004 2:52:40 PM Central Standard Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx
writes:
Jim Yarker wrote:
>What remains to be explained is why if murderous anticommunist despots and
>mafiosi are to be disdained in Moscow, they should somehow be supported in
>Chechnya, even after they dismiss parliaments and cancel constitutional
>referenda.  But don't take that as an invitation.

I will take it as invitation. You ask a fundamental question about
politics, which is how Marxists see things in class terms. For instance,
Trotsky backed Haile Selassie against Mussolini, the Brazilian caudillo
Vargas against the "democratic" English and Chiang Kai-shek against the
Japanese invaders. All of these figures were just as reprehensible as
Dudayev or any other Chechen "bandit". Except for the few brief years
before the USSR became Stalinized, the people of Georgia, Chechnya,
Dagestan, etc. enjoyed more freedom than they ever have. That freedom was
taken away by Stalin and his successors. At least Stalin could be viewed
(in the most liberal terms) as defending collective property relations. His
CP supporters were understandably ready to apologize for his crimes since
they rationalized that this was the only way that socialism could be
defended. You have inherited their spin-doctoring proclivities but deploy
it on behalf of a Kremlin that is now pushing ahead aggressively with
dismantling the last social safety nets that existed in the USSR. What do
you get out of it, I wonder. Don't take that as an invitation to answer.



Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org



Comment

The social degeneracy of Trotskyism speaks for itself. I know something about
Ethiopia in as much as these were some of my comrades that seized power under
exceptionally difficult circumstances in the 1970s. These "men in uniforms" -
uniform is a military as opposed to industrial concept, had its complexity.

Lou P will not get anyone an audience other than the imperial petty
bourgeoisie.

I'm gone on 1-1-05.

See . . . guys like Lou think and fight of shit in their head and get elected
to nothing and win no field of contest.

Some of the people I know achieved critical mass.

We care nothing for the white petty bourgeoisie intellectual.

I am out.

Melvin P.