Difference of opinion

[hariette@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (hariette spierings)]

The question is now, in this list, which is the central political question?
> The reason to have this debate is because Hugh Rodwell, Malecki et all,
> assert of view of history which is totally anti-proletarian and fits like a
> glove the point of view of the class enemy, particularly Anglo-American
> Imperialism.  They do that day in and day out - ranting against "Stalin and
> Stalinism" every two sentences and for the most unrelated purposes.  I do
> not have to refer you to the archives because I am sure you must be just as
> fed up as anyone else with those mantras.
>

Louis: I just don't agree. I actually think that Matt D. had a point when
he said what was necessary was an examination of current-day problems
about which Trotskyism has very little to say. You yourself made the same
point when we had our "debate". You said that a discussion of the current
situation rather than what happened in Shanghai in the 1920s would make
more sense.

I actually raised a series of questions about the problem of proletarian
revolution in the current period in the context of the collapse of the
USSR and the political retreat of revolutionary regimes in general.

We got sidetracked into a discussion of "state capitalism" when Adam Rose
said the problems of socialism in Cuba are actually the problems of
capitalism.

I hear much too much from Hugh Rodwell each day and I don't want to give
him an excuse to hold forth any more than he does currently. (By the way,
pay close attention: This weekend I am posting an analysis of the nature
of Cuban communism and the legacy of Che Guevara. For all of his bluster
about "Stalinism" in Cuba, he will not have the intellectual or political
means to reply to me.)


Hello Louis:  Yes we do have a difference of opinion in this regard and you
are right in reminding me of what I held formerly regarding substantive issues.

Yes, I have changed my mind.  But that does mean that I have changed the
principles which guided me in the first place.  What has made me change my
mind are concrete circunstances and concrete experiences in the list.

First we did actually debate the Peruvian revolution at lenght and the view
that it is a legitimate revolution led by Marxists (whether correct or
incorrect, according to the different appreciations) has been firmly
established and cannot longer be controverted with any degree of
seriousness.  So we did actually already advanced that discussion to the
point in which it would - while present conditions prevail in this list -
not be possible to advance any further in understanding its significance in
the present world situation without elucidating other more basic issues.

It is precisely around the question of the Peruvian revolution and Maoism
that these issues keep surfacing again and again.  Concretely the issue of
the attitude towards the historical experience of the proletarian
dicttorship, the International Communist Movement, etc.

There is where Rodwell is right in something:

>There are fundamental disagreements among subscribers regarding the most
>important events of this century and the policies responsible for them.
>People with the same disagreements have been killed for it in real life
>(I'm thinking of the Stalinist slaughter of Trotskyists in, say, the Soviet
>Union and in Vietnam at the end of the Second World War).
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>Hugh

And as Rodwell with such matter of fact non-chalance gives us a veritable
black view of such things as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet
regime under such dictatorship, its judicial system and its other organs of
the state which are really INSULTING for us, whether he realises it or not,
it is therein inevitable that we will answer with our counter-charges:

Adolfo:

What he is thinking is about the just punishment of Nazi collaborators,
spies, wreckers, sabouteurs and imperialist agents this cheerful Rodwell
dresses up as "revolutionary communists".  People like MI6 agent George
Orwell, and other British and American agents of imperialist
anti-proletarian propaganda who would present, in line with the line of the
Anglo American imperialists a exchange of spies between two states of
different class dictatorship, such as Germany and the Soviet Union PRIOR to
Germany attacking the latter, as "delivering German communists to the
Gestapo"!  Churchill and Chamberlain were AT THAT TIME SAYING EXACTLY THE
SAME THING, as was also the Daily Mail and the fascist Rothermere press in
England.

That kind of disagreement that would slander the Vietnamese people for
settling accounts with corrupt elements who served the pro-imperialist
regimes and betrayed their national liberation struggle.  That sort of
disagreement!

History seen from the standpoint of the Anglo-American imperialist
propaganda machine disguised as "The IV International" and the view from the
standpoint of the proletariat of the world.  That sort of slight differences.

However, Mr. Rodwell asserts but does not prove.  He thinks that it would
have been better that the Nazis would have occupied the whole of Poland,
that the Soviet Union should have entered the war while the Hitler war
machine had not committed itself sufficiently on its Western front.  In
other words, the point of view of those in Britain and in America who fought
hard to make the anti-communist anti-Soviet alliance between the fascist
powers and the rest of the imperialist powers a counter-revolutionary
reality:  The Totrskyst wreckers, saboteurs, assassins, criminals, spies and
despicable snitches like George Orwell!

That sort of disagreement.


Adolfo Olaechea


As you see this is certainly a rift of unreconciliable views that have to do
with very concrete issues where there is historical evidence.  In fact
uncontrovertible historical evidence which, for example, in the case of the
Moscow Trials, fully vindicates not only the justice system in Soviet
Russia, but the very truthfulness of the testimony of the accussed.

If you are to believe Rodwell, people who had confessed and proven beyond
doubt their own culpability, are "exemplary communists", while if you are to
believe the facts and their own confessions, these people were in fact
degenerates who had pit themselves against the proletariat and its justice
system;  criminals, both common, and of a special kind.

The circunstances why it is possible now to approach these issues raised by
comrade Jim (and I am not here speaking for comrade Jim who may have quite a
different approach than which I intend to have) - and the importance of
doing so - are in mind as follows:

In order to advance the unity of the real left - aleft which is geared to
serve the revolution and not imperialism, whether in Peru, Cuba, the
Phillipines, etc. it is important to debunk the black legend which paints
the proletarian regimes as equally immoral as those of the Nazi-fascists.

It is necessary to demonstrate that such was not the case, that on the
contrary, only under the proletarian power could such a thing as the Moscow
Trials - for an example - take place.  That far from a "1984" or "Animal
Farm" scenario, such was justice of a new kind as never before had been seen
in human history.

I know your views on the issue raised by comrade Jim differ quite
substantially from mine if they are not diametrically oppossed.

But I have come to see that you are a person which guides himself
principally by concrete experience and are also capable to see things in a
new light when you think about them afresh.

These are very important qualities, because I believe that in discussiong
these supposedly "trite" and overdone issues - let's say, the Moscow Trials
- with an open mind, people who are really capable of thinking things trough
- and that is my intention too - will vindicate and understand not only
Stalin and the proletarian justice system, but also the accussed who will
likewise be vindicated too, if not of their guilt, of the ultimate charge of
cowardice and craveness.  Even Trotsky himself may come to be viewed on a
more objective basis, so that primary school rubbish of the
Khruschev-Khlopov school of falsification can also be laid to rest.

It is my intention too to help deepen the understanding of people of how
this sort of thing can happen, partly because a little parody of something
similar has gone on in this list under the heading of "Maoist Wars" and
lessons should also be drawn from that when things - after this debate we
are proposing - have become even clearer.

I hope you can give me the benefit of the doubt in so far as why I consider
this debate important.  I know that very easily it can degenerate into a
slanging match.  That is why the objectives of the debate should not be to
bury anyone, but to elucidate the facts and look at them in a new light.
That is my intention, and I think this is now needed in the list, precisely
because every debate will always get side tracked when two such opposing and
irreconciliable points of view are clashing.

The one thing I am proposing is that we, who have found ourselves respecting
each other, continue to do so despite the debate, and act responsibly to
keep it in track.  If this debate takes place without new grounds for a
common sense and wider agreement on a positive view of proletarian history
arising we should shoulder that responsibility too.


Adolfo


PS:  I hope Rodwell should undertand that for every slanderous and
unsubstantiated Orwellian assertion on his part there is always a
counter-assertion.  If he wants to keep the debate to that level, I can
always answer him back.  He should understand a fact:  His version of
history has lost the absolute hegemony it once held in this list.  This is
also a new factor.

He will do better putting his arguments on the basis of facts and spare us
the repetitions of the bourgeois scholars views as if these were facts.
What is the point of saying for example:  The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact handed
"german Communists" to the Gestapo.  Does that formulation correspond to the
facts?  No.

It would only if you were to consider people who were accussed of spying for
Germany as "communists" when the Soviet Union had found them as wreckers and
saboteurs.  Should the view that they were in fact wreckers and saboteurs
who held contacts with German intelligence not explain why the Gestapo
wanted them back?  To "interrogate" them?  Or to use them in the service of
German imperialism?

Would not the views which equate Hitler and Stalin even today, and which can
consider both regimes "equally deformed" not be the motive why such people
established contact first with German intelligence, maybe because they
became desillusioned and lost their "communist principles" and started to
confuse the camps.

Would people like that not have been sent to the Soviet Union in "missions
>from Trotsky" to help overthrow the "Stalin regime" which they consider
their worst enemy?  I think that is certainly a better historical
expalanation of such "exchanges of personnel".  I send you your spies back
if you send me yours!.

I am not saying here that I have proven my assertions either. Just pointed
out a completely valid alternative thesis to that of "Stalin handing over
German Communists to Hitler". It is just that to any of Rodwell's thesis -
which at bottom I hold to be just elaborations of an "Orwellian frame of
mind" a counter-thesis can be tabled.  Therefore what is needed is not
assertions but a serious study of the evidence, both ideological, political
and factual - and on my part, I add, not just that, but the sufficient open
frame of mind to come to a better and more balance understanding of the era,
and of the handling of the two-line struggle within the revolutionary and
workers movement then, and what can we do to improve the methods of the past
today.





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