Re: Some lessons to Xxxx (was Re: Malvinas, now it is Re: a lot of things)

["Lou Paulsen" <wwchi@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Gorojovsky <Gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, October 11, 2001 11:39 PM
Subject: Some lessons to Xxxx (was Re: Malvinas, now it is Re: a lot of
things)


>Oh, God, it would be good that You existed and actually had a Paradise for
>children like Xxxx. Here goes my last on this stupid "debate" (one needs
TWO to
>wage a battle, and frankly I am bored of this particular one)


I don't blame you.  :-(

Xxxx, I was particularly struck by your contrast of Nestor's unconcern with
the right of self determination for the English-speaking residents of the
Malvinas, on the one hand, with Lenin's assertion of the right of
self-determination for the nations oppressed by Russia, on the other.  To
emphasize: OPPRESSED BY RUSSIA.

Do you really believe that there is a FALKLAND ISLANDS NATION which is
oppressed by Argentina?

If so, do you believe there is a Panama Canal Zone nation which is oppressed
by Panama?  A Guantanamo Naval Base nation which is oppressed by Cuba?

How about the British naval base at Diego Garcia, from which the people have
been expelled?  Has its right of self-determination now fallen to the
British inhabitants?

 Have the English-speaking residents of the Malvinas, which you would of
course call the Falklanders, ever attempted to secede from the U.K.?  Have
they ever displayed any NATIONAL feeling at all, other than patriotism for
imperialist Britain?

I don't know much about your traditions, but I suppose it also follows that
you believe that there is an Ulster nation which has the 'right of
self-determination' as against Ireland as a whole?  That if Israel has
expelled the inhabitants of a Palestinian village and founded a Zionist
garrison settlement thereon, a Palestinian state would have no right to
reclaim the village against the vote of the inhabitants?

I have to point out to you that your position is not really revolutionary
socialism at all.  It is no more than COMMON LIBERALISM.  It is the idea
that the question of the right of self-determination of OPPRESSED nations is
negated, and instead we apply pure vote-counting bourgeois democracy: we
count up the votes of the inhabitants of every administrative division,
island, etc., forgetful of all historical context, and allocate it to the
winner of the plebiscite.  It is Kautskyism in the sphere of the national
struggle.

Throughout your diatribe, you display absolutely no understanding of the
distinction between oppressed nations and oppressor nations, which is THE
FUNDAMENTAL AXIOM of the Leninist understanding of the national question.
You accuse Nestor of 'flag-waving bourgeois patriotism', and scorn his
national anthem, as if 'flag-waving' or anthem-singing were the same
reactionary phenomenon, whether the flag being waved or the anthem being
sung is of an imperialist power or of a neo-colony struggling for
independence.  It is singularly out of place for you to imply that Nestor is
a bad Leninist or a bad Trotskyist, while from their graves Lenin and
Trotsky denounce you as a social-chauvinist.

You go so far as to accuse Nestor of 'bourgeois' nationalism because he
dares to express 'love' for the LANDSCAPE of the Malvinas, a parcel of land
which, because of the strength of the British fleet and air force, he can
only visit on a British visa.  Frankly, I think you are displaying quite
disgusting great-nation arrogance.

However, I believe that people have the ability to grow, develop, and
change.  I hope that you do.  But the first step to change is to realize
that you have a problem.

In order to further disabuse you of the notion that you understand Trotsky
better than Nestor does, let me quote a few lines from "On the Sino-Japanese
War".  Well, maybe more than a few!  They're good lines.  [Parallels are in
braces]

[begin excerpt]

In my declaration to the bourgeois press, I said that the duty of all the
workers' organizations of China [Argentina] was to participate actively and
in the front lines of the present war against Japan [Britain], without
abandoning, for a single moment, their own program and independent activity.
But that is "social patriotism" the Eiffelites [Lehrerites] cry!  It is
capitulation to Chiang Kai-shek [the junta]!  It is the abandonment of the
principle of the class struggle!  Bolshevism preached revolutionary
defeatism in the imperialist war. ... "The only salvation of the workers and
peasants of China is to struggle independently against the two armies,
against the Chinese army in the same manner as against the Japanese army."
These .. lines .. suffice entirely for us to say: we are concerned here with
either real traitors or complete imbeciles.  But imbecility, raised to this
degree, is equal to treason.  [I note that Trotsky was not as polite as
Nestor or myself - lp]

We do not and never have put all wars on the same plane.  Marx and Engels
supported the revolutionary struggle of the Irish against Great Britain, of
the Poles against the Czar, even though in these two nationalist wars the
leaders were, for the most part, members of the bourgeoisie and even at
times of the feudal aristocracy .. at all events, Catholic reactionaries.
When Abd-el-Krim rose up against France, the democrats and social democrats
spoke with hate of the struggle of a "savage tyrant" against the
"democracy." [VERY contemporary, this reference, by the way.]  .. But we,
Marxists and Bolsheviks, considered the struggle of the Riffians against
imperialist domination as a progressive war.  Lenin wrote hundreds of pages
demonstrating the primary necessity of distinguishing between imperialist
nations and the colonial and semicolonial nations which comprised the great
majority of humanity ...

Japan's struggle is imperialist and reactionary.  China's struggle is
emancipatory and progressive.  But Chiang Kai-shek?  We need have no
illusions about Chiang Kai-shek, his party, or the whole ruling class of
China. .. Chiang Kai-shek is the executioner of the Chinese workers and
peasants.  But today he is forced, despite himself, to struggle against
Japan for the remainder of the independence of China.  Tomorrow he may again
betray.  It is possible.  It is probable.  But today he is struggling.  Only
cowards, scoundrels, or complete imbeciles can refuse to participate in that
struggle.  [...]

Japanese patriotism is the hideous mask of worldwide robbery.  Chinese
[Argentinian] patriotism is legitimate and progressive.  To place the two on
the same plane and to speak of "social patriotism" can be done only by those
who have read nothing of Lenin, who have understood nothing of the attitude
of the Bolsheviks during the imperialist war, and who can but compromise and
prostitute the teachings of Marxism.

[...] In participating in the military struggle under the orders of Chiang
Kai-shek, since unfortunately it is he who has the command in the war for
independence - to prepare politically the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek ...
that is the only revolutionary policy.  The Eiffelites counterpose the
policy of "class struggle" to this "nationalist and social-patriotic"
policy.  Lenin fought this abstract and sterile opposition all his life.  To
him, the interests of the world proletariat dictated the duty of aiding
oppressed peoples in their national and patriotic struggle against
imperialism.  Those who have not yet understood that, almost a quarter of a
century [87 years] after the world war and twenty years [84 years] after the
October revolution, must be pitilessly rejected as the worst enemies on the
inside by the revolutionary vanguard.

[end excerpt]

I have gone to this length not just for your sake, Xxxx, I assure you, but
because I believe that a correct understanding of the national
question -continues- to be of crucial importance to all who would be
socialists in the lands of imperialism.  It's not just a question of Chiang
in the 1930's or the Argentine junta in the 1980's but of the forces of Arab
nationalism and Islamism and Afghanistan today.  There are a great many
sincere anti-imperialists in the anti-war movement today, and even people
who profess themselves to be Leninists, who still have no idea of the
correct way to deal with people like Saddam Hussein or movements like the
ones that are now carrying Osama's picture around.  They think that somehow
the world has gone beyond the 'age of national struggle'.  Well, I had hoped
we would be past it by the year 2001 myself, but unfortunately history has
not kept to its timetable.

I would like you to please THINK about the possibility that your previously
existing understanding of Lenin and Trotsky on the national question MAY
have been deficient.

Lou Paulsen
member, Workers World Party, Chicago







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