Re: re AUT: Seeking info on Negri and Fortunadi

["cwright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Thomas.

There seems to be relatively little agreement on what Rifondazione is
politically (from libertarian communist to social democratic), but a lot on
what it is not (Stalinist, -oid, etc).  My understanding of what
Rifondazione is comes from some very dated materials, from when Rifondazione
first appeared, as I understood it, as a split from the CPI which reached
out to some other sources, but which had by no means rejected the old CPI
politics, but rejected the CPI's continuing slide into open, unabashed
social democracy.  Whether this was even quite accurate then, I am no longer
sure.  Certainly, however, my reference to Stalinism was to an understanding
of Rifondazione which is at best VERY dated and at worst simply dead wrong.
It was based on old articles from Lutte Ouvriere, actually.  They followed
the Italian scene closely and had some contacts in Italy.

Cheers,
Chris


----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Seay" <entheogens@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, August 04, 2002 3:50 PM
Subject: Re: re AUT: Seeking info on Negri and Fortunadi


>
> --- Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >  but Trotsky> himself surely
> > was not only a Stalinist, but the greatest
> > theoretical apologist
> > for Stalinism,
>
> Harald, you are right to raise the point that there is
> little difference, if any, between the attitude of a
> Stalin or a Trotsky.  However, I think it is
> misleading to call Rifondazione Communista "stalinist"
> or even "stalinoid".  It is a social-democratic
> parlamentarian party, not a vanguardist one.  It is
> made up of a hodge-podge of people to the Left of the
> old PCI.
>
> I am on the chat list of the youth section of
> Rifondazione Communista, and there are a few there who
> call themselves trotskyists.  It strikes me that
> they know nothing of the despotic Trotsky which you
> cite.  They identify with a mythical trotsky that is
> "anti-stalinist".  My impression is that many of these
> young people are revolutionary and, for the time
> being, have assumed the label of trotskyist.  Most of
> them seem too non-dogmatic to be dyed-in-the-wool
> hard-core trotskyists.
>
> In any case, criticize as we might the Rifondazione
> Communista, it takes  a real leap of imagination to
> extrapolate from the fact that there are some
> trotskyists in RC that RC is stalinist and/or fascist.
>
> I think we should be careful about loosely throwing
> around terms like "stalinist" or "fascist".
> Generalizing blurs distinctions and before you know
> it, everybody who does not think like "we" do becomes
> "stalinist" or "fascist".
>
> Thomas
>
>
>
> =====
> "The tradition of all the dead generations
>  weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"
>
> -Karl Marx
>
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