[Marxism] Re: US reveals its efforts to topple Mugabe

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Norm Dixon ask me for some advice. OK, here goes:

People make mistakes all the time. Be patient with them and try to
explain calmly so they can learn from experience. No one is advised
to cut back on organizing and struggling. They must learn to do so
effectively, within the context of the specific situation.

Remember: not all situations are the same. Armed struggle is appropriate 
in some places, peaceful struggle in others. Tactical advice requires 
real knowledge of the specific situation, which will be decisive in 
selecting appropriate tactics. Briefly, my advices, if asked, might 
include things like:

First, organize and strengthen their own political movements.

Second, study the lessons of history, try to learn from them well.

Third, when people offer solidarity, check them out. Not everyone who
says they're your friend actually IS your friend. There likely is a
difference between their morals and ours. And between their interests
and ours.

Fourth, never accept help from Washington, no matter what guise it's
offered. No money, no trips, no printing, no internet services,
NOTHING.

Fifth, spend less time reading the capitalist press. When reading it,
always be distrustful of its motives.

Sixth, Be attentive to moralistic appeals. Trotsky put it very well
in THEIR MORALS AND OURS:

"A revolutionary Marxist cannot begin to approach his historical
mission without having broken morally from bourgeois public opinion
and its agencies in the proletariat. For this, moral courage of a
different caliber is required than that of opening wide oneâs mouth
at meetings and yelling, âDown with Hitler!â âDown with Franco!â"
[today: "Down with Mugabe", "Down with Hu Jintao", "Down with Castro."]

In MORALISTS AND SYCOPHANTS AGAINST MARXISM, 
he described the program of 1930s perfectionists:

"Both sides pledge not to take hostages. Public trials remain in
force. For their proper functioning, complete freedom of the press is
preserved throughout the civil war. Bombardment of cities, being
detrimental to public justice, freedom of the press, and the
inviolability of the individual, is strictly prohibited. For similar
and sundry other reasons the use of artillery is outlawed. And
inasmuch as rifles, hand grenades and even bayonets unquestionably
exercise a baleful influence upon human beings as well as upon
democracy in general, the use of weapons, fire-arms or side-arms, in
the civil war is strictly forbidden.
------------------------------------------------------
However, so long as this code remains unaccepted as a rule of conduct
by all the oppressors and the oppressed, the warring classes will
seek to gain victory by every means, while petty-bourgeois moralists
will continue as heretofore to wander in confusion between the two
camps. Subjectively, they sympathize with the oppressed no one doubts
that. Objectively, they remain captives of the morality of the ruling
class and seek to impose it upon the oppressed instead of helping
them elaborate the morality of insurrection."

Sixth, be especially dubious of slick demagogues who who appeal to
emotions, fear and sound-byte replies, when clarity is the key to
better understanding. Stay calm. Non illigitimati carborundum!

Seventh, when seeking faults, use a mirror, not a telescope, as
Lonnie Barbach, PhD wisely said.


Walter Lippmann
p.s., The resort to personal abuse and political distortion is
contrary to the interests of clarifying disputed issues.

Trotsky's criticism of Stalinism were well-informed, and gave us
analytic tools which retain their applicability after his death.
Trotsky's attempt to create and organizational counterposition to the
Third International has not proven viable. You can argue about why
that is, but you cannot deny that it is not viable.

The Soviet Union in Trotsky's time was NOT a "socialist society".
Rather, it was a bureaucratically-degenerated workers state and
Trotsky's analysis in THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED proved to be very much
on the mark. A wing of the bureaucracy led the country to return to
capitalism, lead by a former head of the state police. This is what
Trotsky said would happen and what did happen. Today, Trotsky's 
ideas have little influence among those even interested in leftist
politics in the former Soviet Union. This is regrettable, but it 
remains a fact of life.

Capitalism was, finally, restored in the former USSR, and without a
massive bloody counterrevolution. Russia today is a capitalist
country, unstable in various ways, much smaller than the USSR was,
yet experiencing much economic expansion. Facts are stubborn things.
A tree does make noise in the forest when it falls, whether someone
is there to hear it or not. On the world arena, Russia today pursues
its own nationalist agenda, one which pits it against Washington.


Walter Lippmann
Havana, Cuba
"Un paraiso bajo el bloqueo"

====================================================================
NORM DIXON asks:
Perhaps Walter could offer some advice to those misguided socialists
and trade unionists in Zimbabwe, who are fighting a regime that
evicts hundreds of thousands of workers and poor from their homes,
meets demands for higher wages and better conditions and democratic
rights with police violence and detention, and regularly murders
activists, what they should now do to conduct their struggle against
the neoliberal Mugabe capitalist regime? Should they suspend their
struggle forthwith in the light of this? Should socialists around the
world now declare them person non grata?

LOUIS PROYECT wrote:
Trotsky was wrong in the 1930s to denounce Stalin's crimes.

Walter's descent into a kind of crypto-Stalinism is a bit like farce
following tragedy. At least in the 1930s, CP'ers were defending a
socialist country, even if ineptly so. Today, Walter and other 
people who think like him have diminished expectations. Stalin
industrialized the USSR, while Mugabe tears down the huts of
squatters. Talk about lowering the bar.

Norm.



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