Re: Not fade away/Bullet or the rope

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 9/22/03 9:35:17 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:


>What you need to explain is the negativity, cynicism, absurdity, somberness
and nihilism, which very large numbers of Russian people feel in articulating
their outlook on life, society and culture today, in human terms. Attempts to
explain this simply in terms of Russian ethnic characteristics are just racist
and stupid, a bourgeois fiction. There are jolly good social, material,
political and historical reasons for that, at least from a Marxian point of 
view.

The brutality of Stalin's dictatorship and Stalinist "shock therapy" involved
among other things simply suppressing and killing anybody who thought or did
something different from the CPSU line, and the flat denial by the police
state that certain human characteristics even existed among the population, or
that their expression was valid. That had enormous, enduring consequences,
because if you are willing to engage in selective (cultural and human) 
extermination
programmes in order to "redirect the course of history" then you might just
wipe out intergenerationally a pool of talent and culture that is vital for the
survival of your society, you inflict longlasting damage on the moral fibre
of a whole population, and you damage it even at the spiritual level. You don't
have to be a sensitive Anatoli Lunacharsky to understand that, (try reading
Antonov-Ovseyenko's The time of Stalin, for example, or Kuusinen's Stalinism
under Stalin; one of the points being made being that you were overall better
off in a Czarist prison than a Stalinist prison). <


Reply


"What you need to explain  . . ." is of course the point of departure because
it is left to the Soviet proletariat and their intelligencia to articulate
their history. Revolutionaries in America are not required to "explain" Soviet
history or Cuban history or Angolan history for that matter. I am a little
familiar with living under conditions of police power and police murders,
incarceration rates that rival and surpass the Soviet rates (and are 
increasing), drug
infested communities and consequently have a different point of view
concerning human depravity.

I of course do not use the term "brutality" as a description of the evolution
of the Soviet power. Without violating the task assigned by history to Soviet
authors, one can state that the most "ruthless bloodletting" took place in
the building of industrial socialism. What took place in American history was
not "bloodletting" but brutality, murder and plunder - or various shapes of
fascistic rule, depending on what part of the country was lived in.

Living in Detroit offers a unique perspective for many reasons. Detroit of
course played a history-altering role in the last greatest upsurge - up to that
time, of humanity to take place in our country since the Civil War in America.
Detroit 1967 was the greatest uprising against the state of the United States
of America since the Civil War.  Detroit was also the singular larges
industrial city to carry out a fundamental purge of the police powers and 
realign the
organs of state power in a major city. Years later, even the incredible
mayoral victory of Harold Washington in Chicago could not reach this level of
purging the state structures of reaction.

The polar extreme to Detroit, operating on the same continuum was of course
the Goode administration in Philadelphia, which has to its credit the public
bombing of civilian living quarters in 1985. Somewhere in between the extreme of
Detroit and Philadelphia was Atlanta Georgia, whose history deviates from
that of the Northern industrial areas. Detroit of course was the area of the 
last
great social movement of the proletariat in American history. The logic of
unfolding events suggest that this will not change in the immediate future.

Thinking different has never gotten the most poverty stricken sections of our
laboring classes in "trouble" in America. Generally, an inquiry into ones
opinion is never made. Writing a book with "incorrect ideas" has never been a
problem because that privilege was reserved to the elite. What got us into
"trouble" was existence. Today, what keeps us in trouble is existence as a 
class.

The difference between "ruthless bloodletting" and state brutality or fascism
- depending on the time frame and what area one resides in, is the meaning of
imperialism. Soviet industrialization - (there is no such thing as "forced"
industrialization versus "unforced" industrialization as a historical process)
can be compared with the historical process of industrialization of the "New
World" and America of course.

To "inflict long-lasting damage on the moral fiber of a whole population, and
you damage it even at the spiritual level." I would of course prepare that a
state or peoples damage themselves rather than damage my family and me.

I often ponder the year 1936. Would I rather live in the Soviet Union in 1936
or the Mississippi Delta: the "Iron Curtain" (which technically did not exist
yet) versus the "Cotton Curtain?"  The most imperial of peoples of earth do
not ponder such questions and that is all right. Then during moments of boredom
I ponder the year 1928 and the bold plan to industrialize Russia. Again it is
Stalin's Russia or the Mississippi Delta?

The "Iron Curtain" for Winston implied an area of the world that the eyes of
bourgeois imperialism could not look into or utilize for their own purpose.
The "Cotton Curtain" was an area of the earth the people of America refused to
look into. Would not American history be radically different if it engaged in
bloodletting instead of "buking."  What happened is called being "buked."
"Buked" is like the word jazz and defines itself. It involved indescribable 
level
of violence and murder.

Bloodletting or buked . . .Bloodletting or buked . . . Bloodletting or buked
. . . Bloodletting or buked . . . Bloodletting or buked . . . Bloodletting or
buked . . . Bloodletting or buked . . .Bloodletting or buked . .  .
Bloodletting or buked . . . Bloodletting or buked? The Bullet or the rope? . . 
. the
Bullet or the rope? . . .the Bullet or the rope? . . .the Bullet or the rope?
Bloodletting or buked?

Czarist prison or a Stalinist prison or Mississippi's Parchmen penitentiary?
I'm dying before I do Parchmen.

Let me think this out.

With the bullet and no blindfold at least you can stand as a man and take it
in the head. The damn rope makes you involuntarily squirm and depending on
what you ate, your bowels loosen and you hanging there with shit in your pants.
Then one of those bastards wants to cut off an ear and a finger or your penis
and put it in a jar of alcohol. That is why hangings were family events in the
America South  - picnic or "pick a nigger." Bloodletting or buked? Do they
just shoot you in the head in Russia for being late or put you in prison or do
they also cut of your ear, fingers and penis? Bloodletting or buked? The Bullet
or the rope?

Damn . . .. In 1928 and 1936, if given the chance I have to take the
"ruthless bloodletting." Such thinking only occurs with those who historically 
have no
choice. The only problem is getting off the "big man" land, then hoping a
ride to the train station, then being able to get on the train and then being
able to get on the boat and make it to the land of "red."

Wait a minute! If I make it to the train station and get caught hoboing its
back to the picnic thing. If I can't get on the boat I can probably make it in
Detroit. Or escape to Canada. Bloodletting or buked? The Bullet or the rope?
I'll take the iron over the cotton becaus4e the cotton to hard.

The material difference between Stalin's government and Yankee imperialism
with Mr. Charlie as "front man" depends on where you exist in the world
equation. I am extremely clear where the overwhelming majority of humanity 
exist in
the equation. This is of course why I opt for communist revolution and leave the
"socialism" to the suckers.

There is no such thing as an abstract circumstance. At the current rate of
the curve in another twenty years - given the current incarceration rates and
wave of police violence, "ruthless bloodletting" is going to lot real good. The
idea that all one has to do to survive is go to work, be on time, shut up and
carry out the plans of the "big man" only seems strange to the naive. It looks
real good right now to perhaps 3 billion people.

Then, again the former Soviet proletarians - in their generations to come,
will describe their history. Chickens come home to roost.

One can say this is avoiding the question but the question was directly posed
as it existed in America.

Melvin P.





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