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New 5-part MLM-Rolf Thought!!(or, the quintessence of cyber-idealist thinking)



Once again we're treated to a multi-part post from that quintessential
dealer in idealist philosophy: Rolf MLM (Martens Loves Martens)
Martens! This one purports to show how Chris is a cop (What!? that
Jesuit, PC, etc etc etc, a COP?!?! NOOOO!!). His evidence of
this "copperhood" seems to be exclusively drawn from the fact that
Chris has been a voice of reasoned arguement and pleader for
concilliation among the feuding factions on this list. That may
prove him a libera of some sorrt, but how does that equal a COP?

A while ago an essay by Mao was posted, "Where do Correct Ideas
Come From?", May, 1963. It reads:

"Where do correct ideas come from?...They come from social
practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social
practice: the struggle for production, the class struggle and
scientific experiment....

"...Man's knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice.
This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this
leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the
first leap in cognition, I.E., of the ideas, theories, policies, plans
or measures formulated in the course of reflecting the objective
external world. There is no other way of testing the truth."

What practice has indicated to Rolf that Chris is a cop, or that Luis
and Marcelina of the New Flag are one person (on the petty end of the
spectrum)? Or that the international line of the PCP is wrong (at the
other end)? In fact, NO SOCIAL PRACTICE AT ALL! In the case of
Luis/Marcelina, he has only idle speculation. And it is for not going
along with this kind of idle speculation that he lables Chris a cop.

In the case of the PCP, in fact social practice has shown just the
opposite of Rolf's thesis. Unless you think that an organization can
just "luck out" and continuously defeat armed forces backed up by
the most powerful imperialists on earth, the only conclusion that can
be drawn from the revolutionary success of the PCP is that their
understanding of the international situation is AT LEAST principally
correct.

It is unprecedented in the history of revolution, and expecially of
proletarian revolution, for a vanguard party to recover from the loss
of its main leader and ideological guide, and continue advancing
toward victory after the "bend in the road". It is only a correct theory
of the national and international situation that could have produced
this social practice. It is equally unprecedented for women to be
incorporated into the party and the army on a fully equal basis with
men. This accomplishment of the PCP is the application to social
practice of the theory of Proletarian Feminism.

Yet Rolf, that great follower of "Mao Tsetung Thought" denies this
social practice as the test of the correctness of theory, and instead
whines that the PCP isn't following the lead of his favorite ghost, the
previous incarnation of Neue Einheit, whose social practice was so
correct that it no longer exists in the form Rolf so admires.

And neither Rolf nor Adolfo can deal with Proletarian Feminism.
Adolfo can't even bring himself to type the words. He must turn
summersaults to hide his male chauvinism and total lack of
understanding of the three "colors" of feminism as Mariátegui
delineated. He invokes Carole Andreas rather than Mariátegui or
the PCP as an example of correct feminism.

What never ceases to amaze me is how people like Martens
and Oleachea, who tout themselves as followers of Mao Tsetung
(Zedong) can completely disregard and throw out the window even
the APPEARANCE of applying the Maoist theory of knowledge
as based on and serving social practice.

Here we have people who raise abstract words in cyberspace above
ALL else as their criterion for truth and reality. I believe it was Lenin
who said (to paraphrase) "Paper will accept any shit that's printed on
it." But here in cyberspace, we are even a few steps removed from
paper and print. The words we see on our screen don't even show
who wrote them or how or when or with what materials, as ink on paper
would. They don't even appear in the type style they were written in,
but rather in the type style chosen by our own server.

There is no voice inflection, facial expression or body language to
add information to the words the way there is when talking to someone
in person; no voice inflection as there is when talking on the phone;
no handwriting as there is in a longhand letter; not even the
characteristics of a particular typewriter, or even an actual signature
to indicate that the person sending the words actually wrote them,
or at least consciously stands by them.

The words appearing on the screen tell us NOTHING about the
social practice or the specific character of person writing them; they
only reflect the abstract thoughts of the writer, and that only to the
extent that the particular writer is able to successfully translate those
thoughts to text. This obviously poses more of a problem for those
who write in a language that is not their first, than for those who
grew up using the language we post in. This fact aparently has
been lost on a number of contributors (and recognizing this fact is
another thing that got Chris labeled "cop" by the great disembodied
brain, Mr. Martens)

Yet the great Rolf claims certainty that Marcelina and Luis have been
"proven" to be one and the same person. HOW? by what social practice?
There is no more evidence showing these two "signatures" as coming
>from one person than there is showing that "Luis" is actually a team of
two individuals, or that "Marcelina" is actually ten! Similarly, there is
also no actual evidence that "Rolf" is one individual, and not a team of
3 or 4. Or that "He" is not actually a "she."

The fact is that these words in cyberspace prove NOTHING about the
real material world. The words of the person who spends every
waking hour transfixed in front of the screen appear no different than
those of the person who taps out a few paragraphs after coming in
exhausted from a long day of tramping from one end of the city to the
other passing out literature, organizing a demonstration, editing a
newsletter, etc.

These words in cyberspace give no indication as to whether the
ideas expressed here have ever stood the test of practice. Especially
when the various contributors live and work in far-flung areas of the
world, it's easy to simply lie about what you do in the rest of your life.
Who will know? Who can check up on you?

Mao continues:

"Furthermore, the one and only purpose of the proletariat in
knowing the world is to change it. Often, correct knowledge
can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process
leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter,
that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to
practice. Such is the Marxist theory on knowledge, the
dialectical materialist theory on knowledge...."

To sit at their keyboards, as these guys do, and pass judgement
on everything and anything, without ever attempting to change the
world thru social practice; to diss and vilify as "imposter" "fake" "cop"
honest people who are trying to apply theory to practice, and making
mistakes in the process (which is how humans LEARN!) is nothing
but good old-fashioned bourgeois idealism, NOT Maoism, or Mao
Tsetung Thought, or M-L-M-, GT, no matter how many quotes they
can call up on a moment's notice, or how many bytes of
"Informationsblahh" they can post.

Gina/Detroit






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