Re: Stay in your corner, Adolfo! Gladly, Hugh!

[hariette spierings <hariette@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>CHEERS HUGH! YOU FINALLY DID IT! YOU ARE NOW A MAOIST, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT
>>OR NOT!  YOU ARE A MAOIST IN DEEDS AND NOT IN WORDS, LIKE AVAKIAN AND HIS
>>MIGNONS, NO MATTER WHAT ELSE MAY STILL SEPARATE YOU FROM MAOISM, IN PRACTICE
>>YOU ARE ALREADY THERE!
>
>
>Adolfo! I think if you read my greeting carefully, you'll find a number of
>things that aren't Maoist at all, either in words or deeds.

Sure I do Hugh, to start with that the revolution for you is but a
postcript, always a day late with your superciliuos solidarity, etc., while
for Marx, Lenin and Mao, the revolution and internationalist solidarity with
the fighters in the FOREFRONT, was always their first concern. However that
only means that you are a Maoist in very small deeds and even smaller dosis
one has to make you spit out of your gullet like the proverbial silver
spoon.  For example, one must admit that you, unlike otheres in this list,
are at least, and at last, ready for recognising the obvious:

"PS:  There has been civil war in Peru for sixteen years now -- a chronic
>revolutionary situation that has outlasted the Thatchers and the Reagans".


>And lay off the guilt by association thing. There's too much of that around
>as it is!
>
>I can support a rebellion without supporting the political line of its
>leaders, and I can take part in discussions in a spirit of critical
>independence without this making me an automatic supporter of the positions
>of the other participants.

Who would want to lay all this "guilt" at your door Hugh?  You, such a pure
and elegant Marxist, have indeed no merit at all in this stupendous historic
achievement of the Peruvian proletariat and people whatsoever. Therefore I
agree that none of their "guilt" can in any way attach to your pure self.
Total purity and innocence of actual revolutionary leadership, that same
"revolutionary leadership" you so most ardently recommend and praise as your
most prized possession, I may hasten to add in order to SEND YOU BACK INTO
YOUR CORNER where you seem to be more comfortable, has nothing at all to do
with the "guilty achievements" - from the point of view of the bourgeoisie
and imperialism - of the Peruvian proletariat and people.


>Of course actions speak louder than words. But the great thing about
>humanity is its ability to think -- it can test out different lines of
>action *in thought*, without having to act everything out first. It can
>assimilate and learn from other people's experience on the basis of its
>own, without having to go through all the same mistakes all over again.

And philosophers have understood the world in various fashions, however the
question is to change it!  That is why even your "post-script" pronouncement
is noteworthy enough in a man of your station and political line to meriat
to be saluted and welcomed, no matter in how many qualifications it may come
wrapped into.



>But it can only do this when it takes its thought seriously, and accepts
>the logic of its possible actions. If it doesn't, it'll be the same old
>comedy of errors. A very good example of this is the interaction between
>the Spanish Trotskyists during the civil war and Trotsky himself. They
>didn't accept the logic of their positions in relation to petty-bourgeois
>nationalism, which Trotsky was warning them about constantly. In this way
>they repeated disastrous historical mistakes, and weakened their ability to
>confront the Stalinists, who found it that bit easier to defeat them as a
>result.

>Cheers,
>
>Hugh
>

Do you know Hugh what is the most impacting difference between Marx's and
Trotsky's warning and advice to the working class?  For Marx - most
concretely in the event of the looming Paris Commune - the advice and the
warnings to the class were A PROLOGUE to the actions of the proletariat and
the people, and not, as in the case of Trotsky in relation to the Soviet
revolution - and yours in relation to the Peruvian People's War - a mere
POSTCRIPT to butress up your future credentials while in fact you are
already sharpening your forensic "revolutionary" scalpel in anticipation of
yet another POSTMORTEM!

Marx WARNED the workers not to seize power prematurely, but when they went
ahead at did it nevertheless, he wholeheartedly - nay even heatedly - did
everything to bring them assistance and leadership, taking the lead as much
as the concrete conditions permitted, and Engels himself undertook
preparations for direct participation in the heroic struggle of the working
class.  The Paris Commune only lasted a few weeks, travel then was not so
fast, nor the means of communication so sophisticated.

However, Marx and Engels did not wait for a single hour to get excieted and
active in support of the "foolhardy" action of the heroic Communards.

It is taken you 16 years to come out with a "form of words" to "support" a
revolution, and even then, as you correctly point out, your "formulation" is
full of lawyerly escape clauses which could well do proud the skills of the
Queen's own solicitors and barristers!

Another glaring discrepancy is the following you say:

"I send greetings to all in Peru who are fighting for an internationalist
socialist revolution, for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction
of a workers' state with no capitalists and no bureaucrats, run according
to the principles of workers' democracy".

You see, we are for a workers state too, but only for the period of
transition to communism, where the state itself will be abolished.  You see,
we as Leninists understand well what is meant by a "workers state".  A
"bourgeois state without the bourgeosie" where bureacracy, bourgeois right
and general democratic principles still remain in force.

That is why communists struggle too under socialism for the "abolition", or
more exactly, the withering away of such state while using it to the full in
the interests of the class while its existance remains necessary. In your
formulation, an idealist formulation, the "workers state" is nothing but an
abtruse category which is substituted implicitly for the "final aim" of the
proletarian revolution.

That reveals the bureacratic soul of the Trotskyist point of view in
relation to the "state of the dictatorship of the proletariat".  While there
is a need for a state a need for a bureacracy exists, since there cannot be
a state without a bureacracy and as soon as a "state" is possible with no
bureacracy whatsoever, it would cease to be a state just as much as the
"workers" would have ceased to be workers in the bourgeois sense to
transform themselves in human beings of a new type, with no class divisions
whatsoever!.

You see Hugh, Marx and Engels were MAOISTS in the full sense of the word!
You are only ocassionally a maoist in deeds (just about once every 16 years
and just as a postcript to your learned dissertations on the price of
commodities).  Their program for the revolution went much much further than
yours, and that is our programme too!

Our corner is the corner Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao and
Chairman Gonzalo.  We gladly stay in that one chiselling away at the
mountains of bourgeois rubbish, while once in a blue moon you turn up to
give us a pat in the back to wish us another year of struggle from the side
lines and as belated thought!

It is indeed very good that we mark the differences for everyone too see!


Cheer then

Adolfo


PS:  (We also have our postscripts too!):

We would like to commend the following  formulation as a minimum programme
to unite all democratic, progressive and revolutionary people in Defense of
the Peruvian revolution, which at this stage is the democratic revolution of
a POOR and oppressed nation among the POOR And exploited nations of the world:

"The Fujimori regime has no legitimacy, and has no right to hold political
prisoners for opposing the semi-colonial state and its oppression - Freedom
for all political prisoners"!

"I salute all the poor who have taken up arms against the imperialist puppet
regime of Fujimori and his predecessors".

Hugh Rodwell!





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