Re: A defense worse than the deed

[hariette@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (hariette spierings)]

>At 3:32 PM 7/23/96, Louis R Godena wrote:
>
>>This involves the fact that,  as far as some list members are concerned,
>>there are some revolutionaries whose lives have achieved a patina of
>>respectability,  almost celebrity,  while there are others whose lives,
>>clearly,  do not matter.
>>
>>That is the issue.
>
>We've been full of declarations recently that something or other is *the*
>issue. Now celebrity and its absence are the crucial issues. A lot further
>from the real issues - which center, seems to me, around the nature of the
>capitalist social order and the best strategy for its transformation - than
>the damn Stalin vs. Trotsky slugfest.
>
>Doug
>


Let try it not to make it a slug-fest, Doug.  Lets try to make it relevant
to the central question of the century:  The proletarian revolution.  Let us
keep it to the questions of historical and theoretical versions and then the
political question can be advanced.

What comrade Jim is proposing is not a slug festival but to deal with the
Trotskyst outlook regarding these fundamental questions:

Is there identity between Trotkysm and Leninism? should be the first one.
It does not matter if Rodwell and malecki keep reiterating their baseless
assertions.  The question is hardly with Trotskysm.  The question is with
the bourgeois viwe of the socialist movement.

If Orwell's and the Trotskyst charges are correct, then imperialism is
correct, because those allegations of their dove-tail to perfection with the
bourgeois imperialist vision of the proletarian movement of the XXth Century.

I too am oppossed to a slug-fest, and the responsiblity should this
challenge degenerate into precisely that will certainly not be ours, since
it is us who are interested in putting accross ideas to challenge what up to
now has been the accepted orthodoxy in this list.

Moreover, what is wrong about having this "classic debate" once about every
six months?  We could always see how the caliber of the theoretical teams
>from both sides are shaping up.  I feel that this is bound to be a vintage
year for the proletarian line!.

Regards


Adolfo




     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---