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

["Jim Yarker" <sjy_estrien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wouldn?t you know there?s always someone who invites himself.

Your ?review? of 7 decades of Soviet history is a little scant on the nature
of ?collective property relations? 4 decades after Stalin?s death in
1990-91, when Dudayev?s movement was murdering and putting to flight elected
communists and thousands of other ?oppressors? ? something you were denying
until quite recently - pulling down a statue of Lenin, and while Basayev was
at Yeltsin?s side to put down the ?hardliners? coup.?  But that?s ok, I?m
all for you economizing.

Like Rozoff I have no investment whatsoever in seeing a lifting of the
fortunes of  the ?Bonapartist figure who is running Russia today? at the
expense of the Russian left.  I hope very much for the opposite.  I suppose
the hope lies in that the Russian left, who opposed Yeltsin?s war in
Chechnya, doesn?t ignore or relativize imperialism?s encirclement of Russia
using the Axis template of 1941.  This is a cheap pose they can?t afford,
since this is a real life situation for them.


> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: The A-List <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: The A-List <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [A-List] Jack Straw: Beslan hostage-takers and Nazism are
> alike
> Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 15:49:52 -0500
>
> 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