Re: marxists & gay liberation

[Jeffrey Booth <booth2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dialectics 101 for Adolpho:

1) The masses are made-up of individuals...

2) Revolution is a process that depends on the actions of the masses...

3) (Oh, what the hell, forget it!  Bourgeois habits of thought are so
deeply ingrained in Adolpho that it's not worth the time...)

        Adolpho's post reminds me of the Sparts that came to a Labor
Militant meeting last Saturday.  The Sparts lectured/harangued the two
speakers about how to achieve "Black Liberation".  The two speakers were
working class, African-American comrades and the main topic was the fight
for a living wage.  Of course, the Sparts were white and petit bourgeois.
        Adolpho has nothing useful to say to working people about
marxism, gay liberation or anything else.


                                -- Jeff Booth




On Wed, 24 Apr 1996, hariette spierings wrote:

> >At 12:26 AM 4/23/96 -0700, Jay wrote:
> >>
> >>Gary wrote:
> >>
>
> >
> >This Maoist has not answered anything re the criminalisation of gays in 1934
> >or the criminalisation of abortion in 1936 in Stalin's russia.
> >
> >It is it seems more important to go on about Avakian's (who?) black vomit.
> >
> >Let me be clear here.  what is at stake is nothing less than the status of
> >Marxism as an emancipatory movement, specifically  in how it relates to the
> >oppressed.  I have insisted on emancipation being central to this debate
> >because historical experience of Stalinist influenced regimes and groups is
> >that they become anti-emancipatory.  And at this juncture in the 20th C. we
> >cannot go to the "masses" of the advanced capitalist world with anything
> >less than a full emancipatory program.  If we fail to do this then
> >capitalism will win every time.
> >
> >I  have chosen two significant moments in history.  1934 and 36.  They are
> >too long ago for Maoists it would seem.  But of course for Marxists there
> >should be no question of the relevance of these moments.  Behind the
> >criminalisation of homosexuality and the criminalisation of abortion was
> >nothing less than the counter revolution.  To minimise the extent  of this
> >the  Maoists have to down play how progressive and brilliantly free Lenin's
> >Russia was in the  fields of culture and sexuality.  But one has only to
> >compare the dreary accomplishments of the Social Realist with those of the
> >dazzling Constructivists to realise that in the thirties Stalin did lead a
> >counter revolution.
> >
> >I have  already posted on the connection between this and the launch of the
> >Popular Front by Dimitrov in 1935.
> >
> >So I will not repeat the case here.  But to sum up personal abuse will not
> >conceal the silence and in this case silence is consent.
> >
> >Gary
> >
>
>
> Look Gary:  Why don't you stop being ridiculous? You - and those like you
> who think that Marxism girates around their OWN PERSONAL VIEW OF LIBERATION
> - are very mistaken. Marxism is about the revolution of the exploted and
> oppressed masses.
>
> For any one with that outlook and who is serious and not pandering
> demagogically to gain your support under false pretenses it is clear that
> power for the proletariat - state power, interest of the proletariat in
> holding together its own state power - must come above everything else.
> That is why Lenin said: "Besides Power Everything (and gay liberation,
> women'lib, etc. etc.) is a far as I am concerned part of everything A.O.) is
> Illussion".
>
> Now you end up as every enemy of the revolutionary proletariat must always
> end, attacking Georgi Dimitrov and the United Front policy which was the
> instrument by which the proletariat was able to defeat fascism!.
>
> Tat you are in fact upholding fascism, does not seem to faze you.  In the
> inner circles of Hitler, and in Mussolini's Salo republic, open
> homosexuality was not unknown - despite all their hypocritical cant about
> the "healthy nature of the Arian race" and the "virile Roman nation" of
> Mussolini etc.  I think that your motives were very much exposed by comrade
> Jay.
>
> You would do better in thinking these motives over, because that is the
> reason you have landed yourself in the situation of having to dissociate
> your anti-communist views from those of that open capitalist you were
> debating with.
> It is no longer a question of your utter failure to pin the charge of
> homophobia on any one who defends the historical role of comrade Stalin and
> his condition as a Great Marxist Leninist and revolutionary leader of the
> class.
>
> You see, if you go to bed with hatred in your heart against the
> revolutionary proletariat and its leaders, you are bound to wake up in the
> middle of the night and find you are in fact sharing your bed with Joe
> MacCarthy!  That is why you woke up crying on that occassion.  Not a nice
> nightmare, you see!
>
>
>
> Adolfo Olaechea
>
>
>
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>


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