What is Lüko looking for?

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

El Sábado 27 de Septiembre de 2003 a las 8:17,
Lueko Willms dijo sobre (None) que:

>    No need to grieve over the loss of the old die-hard stalinists.
> They still rule in Tashkent and Ashkhabad. They are today the best
> allies of US imperialism. 
> 
>    Is that what you are looking for? 
> 
> 
> Yours, 
> Lüko Willms 
> 

Dear Lüko, 

There is no necessity to out-Trot Trotsky.

Your points may be apt, but they are, to say the least, useless. 

The struggle of LDT against bureaucracy was _not of necessity_ a 
struggle against individual bureaucrats. He even wrote extensive, 
tender and understanding obituaries of bureaucrats who had been his 
comrades and had, er, "betrayed" him. 

He did so with Pyatakov, Lunacharsky (the only important Russian 
Marxist who shared his fate in 1917 Petrograd, to be sure!), and if I 
am not wrong, many others. You can find those portraits in the French 
edition (c. 1965) of _Literature and revolution_, for example.

What I am defending is _not_ a group of persons but a societal 
structure, and I am doing it _only_ as against what replaced it. 
Trotsky himself explained that the bureaucratic system was a middle-
of-the-road-house between capitalism and socialism, and that it would 
eventually turn either socialist (that is, forwards) or capitalist 
(that is, backwards). I think that one of the consequences of that 
idea is that in the sorry case that it stepped backwards, then _this_ 
should become a central point in our thought of global issues. Marx's 
hatred for Napoleon did not distract him for a single second of his 
struggle against those who destroyed Napoleon, nor did it turn him an 
anti-Napoleonic. If you read the "18th Brummaire" carefully, you will 
realize that Marx compares Napoleon in his greatness to Louis 
Napoleon in his pettiness, which is exactly what he expected the 
French people to do.

You can, of course, blame on the bureaucrats the final outcome, in 
the same way that Marx could have -but DID NOT- dedicate a good deal 
of his political wit to showing how it was that the Napoleonic regime 
opened the gates to the 1815 defeat and Restoration. And Marx did not 
follow that path because he understood, in his times, what I am 
trying to explain for our times:

(a) It seems to me that in the current moment, it is ESSENTIAL to 
restablish consciousness of all that was lost with this violent 
restoration of capitalism in the fSU (if you read _Rouge et Noir_ you 
will see that this kind of task was accomplished in France, BTW), and

(b) as I have already told cdes. in the First World, it is also 
ESSENTIAL to understand why didn't _you_ and _your working classes_ 
in Western Europe come to the struggle when it was most necessary. 

To say it bluntly, history put the scales in your hands at least 
twice during the 20th. Century (in 1917-23 and immediately after 
WWII), and you could not turn it to the "good" side. This is fact, 
like it or not. Wouldn't it already be high time for you to search 
your hearts seeking a good answer to this failure, and stop blaming 
others for their failures _which were implicit in your own, previous 
one_?

I can't honestly understand what does a German Marxist do when, 
instead of scrutinizing the record of its own Left and working class 
as regards the Soviet Union, scrutinizes the record of the Soviet 
bureaucracy and (indirectly) of the Soviet masses who found no way to 
shrug it off their shoulders.

Honestly and comradely, Lüko, I feel that you are failing to your 
duty. Germany is still, and will be while capitalism exists, the 
cornerstone of the European building. Your responsibilities are 
highest.

Why, instead of talking to us about the Soviet bureaucrats, you don't 
talk to us on the Social Democrat bureaucrats in Germany, who have 
lost in Bayern against 61% vote to the Christian Democrats? Aren't 
there working class votes in that 61%? What are you able to tell us 
about the German working class? What about the consequences of 
unification? What about the Ostalgie?


Or else, at least, give us an explanation of why, in spite of all the 
rogue's evil features, people accepted their rule for so long a time 
that the whole building crumbled. I am no pundit at all on the fSU, 
nor on most issues raised on this list for that matter, but when I 
try to think about issues I know little about I try to do some 
exercise in -if you please-  "deductive Marxism", not public 
denounciation of rogues as such rogues that all of us know to be 
rogues.

I sometimes feel that you and many other (avowedly best-willed) cdes. 
waste their mental skills. Since Mark Jones's passing away, I have 
learnt more on the fSU from three e-mails by Chris Doss in Moscow 
(who doesn't even consider himself a Marxist) than from these 
revengeful attacks on the bureaucrats.  Sometimes I feel as if many 
self-appointed followers of LDT have forgotten that the main enemy is 
the imperialist bourgeoisie, and have substituted the criminal 
bureaucracy (mantra:"who murdered LDT, the Spanish Republic, and the 
Soviet Union") for it.

Shit, there is a thrillion zillion billion things more interesting 
than "who is that rogue at Tashkent" that a German correspondent 
should be offering to us on Marxmail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Engels once 
bestowed on the German working class the whole edifice of classical 
philosophy. Why was that edifice squandered?

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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"Sí, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Simón Bolívar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de 
Buenos Aires, 1822
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