COCKROACH! #35 A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscriptions are free at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Now on line! Check out the Home of COCKROACH! http://www.algonet.se/~malecki How often this zine will appear depends on you! -------------------------------------------------------- 1. List Sociology 2. To the "American Marxists"... 3. General strike in Ecuador 4. Reform Vs Revolution 5. Special Announcement! -------------------------------------------------------- List Sociology >Malecki writes: >"That is just not enough. People's politics and criticism's are just not >"enough. It is a question of grasping which class and which party and "program >can lead to successful revolutionary overthrow of this decadent "system. In the >final analysis that is what really counts. And as long as "this process is >delayed by the present leaderships of the International "Proletariat by their >reformist and centrist politics the only blood "flowing is unfortunately the >blood of poor and working class people. > > Bob Scheetz answers; > >You'd's well be a Mc ...uh,uh...no offence, no offence... >really itching to get on with it. >There's no question re the urgency, but I'm sceptical regarding the mature >revolutionary consciousness/potential you are relying on from working people. >Far from class righteousness, I don't even think they hate the rich. Dear Bob, This is very interesting and very funny stuff you write! Unfortunately you are dead wrong both in your reasoning and the words you use to justify this kind of thinking. To say that you are "sceptical regarding the mature revolutionary/consciousness" I am relying on can be taken in two ways. The first and immediate reaction from the gut can be quoted from a short paragraph in put in my book. I said ; "Well many of us certainly can not express our thoughts in terms exceptable to these circles. Nor even put forks and knives on the right side when setting the table. Yeah, the rich even have rules for this kind of stuff... " Because in the present society where bougeois culture and "norms" for existing in a certain way appear to be raised to the absolute law of history! Naturally the truth is that oppression oppresses and one of the weapons in bougeois society is this kind of stuff. But the poor and working class will have to start with the basics of taking political power and build a new society and new values. Naturally this has nothing to do with the Stalinist Prolo culture nor the Chinese cultural revolution. But I think Trotsky in his "Problems of Everyday life" take up this question. And Trotsky was also very clear on the point of working class consciousness. Something along the lines of "reaching trade union consciousness" what is needed is a vanguard party to make the leap from economic struggles to revolutionary struggles in its own name. This is not just romantic bullshit but a science. And to say that the poor and working class do not hate the rich is a bit ridiculous. Every time the classes clash in society whether it be a strike or a rebellion like the recent events in Florida the true nature of society is shown to the core and the *real* hate of the class enemy comes to the surface. Sometimes it takes very violent expressions at other times at least on the surface a compromise. But I think your assertion comes because we have had an era of relative class peace in the advanced industrial countries since the 2nd world war. But the price of this relative class peace was millions upon millions of dead and the destruction of a good part of Europe, the former Soviet Union and parts of Asia including Japan. So I think you are rocking the baby to sleep in believing that the post war development is the norm. Hardly! The whole historical era of imperialism is bathed in blood,starvation, and oppression on a gigantic scale. The relative peaceful development after the 2nd world war was just a hiccup before the coming storm.As once again the major imperialists are preparing for a new redivision of the spoils on a world level. Bob S. continues; >There's the case in the late 70's in Youngstown, Ohio (than which >there was almost no place with a stronger tradition of labour militancy) >where Stoughton Lynd led a failed worker take-over attempt on the mills that US >Steel et.al. had decided to shut-down. Here was precisely the proletarian >revolution in miniature. It wasn't so much that the >steel industry, local chamber of commerce, finance, gov't, media, all the >anticipated hysterical opposition to Socialism, nor even that the >International in neighbouring Pittsburgh colluded with the industry >to insure a peaceful demise and burial of its "brother" (nor BTW the CPUSA, tho >Chair Gus Hall had cut his teeth there in the 30's organizing struggle); but the >workers themselves, in critical mass, were incapable, even tho there was no >alternative, of conceiving themselves taking over the plantation to continue >working it for a dignified living (if not a small profit) absent "Massa", the >familiar capitalist structure; nor that it would be a distinctive and prideful >way to restructure a community and move into the future. Today Youngstown, its >history and identity down the memory hole, is an industrial and social >wasteland...and very probably a vision of the future. The above proves nothing. Perhaps your having a bit of and empirical approach to the subject. Giving one example of the decline of an area in Pittsburgh thus proving that some workers taking over the plantation makes revolution impossible. Hardly! In fact as John put it new worker babies are being born everyday. And the contradictions between work and capital have not changed since Marx wrote about them. But the poor and working class are a living organism and their will be those that in some areas will take over the plantation, others who will be destroyed by the system and even others that will cross the class line like "Mike Tyson". And for every area like you mention above there is another area in the third world that is producing the stuff from the industries that have purportedly died out. This is a big lie by the way. A good example is Norrkoping here in Sweden which was once the textile industry centre of this country. Today it is only empty factories and these factories they are now rebuilding to universities. Thousands of jobs just died out they say. This is just a lie. The jobs are in the third world and now the former Eastern block countries where labour is cheap and the conditions are horrible! A good example is the recent hunger strike in Poland in a Swedish owned textile factory in Poland where conditions for these women are horrible! So this does not change the fundamental contradictions that exist on a world level. It only makes it more necessary that the future leadership of the working class is revolutionary Internationalist and aware of these kinds of things and have tactics for them. Instead much of the left gets sucked into all kinds of stuff around protectionism whether it be the "common market", GATT. or the recent American treaty that has been debated here on the lists. > >So, my point again is that the inculcation of the labour theory of value, >as a metaphysical postulate, "religion" (to use your word), to create a >consciousness specific to proletarian existence (what the Theology of Liberation >people call a "pedagogy of the oppressed") is an essential pre-condition for >revolution...and that no amount of militancy can supply the deficit. Actually if I understand the above correctly you want to bring the urban poor and the peasantry into this struggle. Well, there is nothing wrong with that. However the point is who will lead the struggle? I think that it can only be the organised proletariat because of its position in production and distribution that can do that. But also the necessity of the conscious communist vanguard element to lead and guide the struggle. So the question I put to you is "What position do the poor have in relation to production and distribution like the workers that would make them part of the revolutionary vanguard as a class? For the proletarian vanguard and its party the question would be of tactical nature. Thus the poor and the peasantry would be the natural allies of the class. And we would naturally apply special organisational forms to this. But it does not change the ABC's basics of which class because of its *real* position in society-production and distribution--is the revolutionary and leading class in this struggle. Warm Regards Bob Malecki --------------------------------------------------------- To the "American Marxists"... Dear Friends! Recently L.Proyect actually put on paper some of his thoughts and attentions about an reorganisation of the broad left in America. Unfortunately I deleted the letter thinking that I would not waste a letter to M-I in answering this stuff. But at the same time was curious too see if anybody would address this stuff. As things have calmed down, obviously the Americans have gone home to their relatives to eat Turkey I think that it actually is important enough to address. His assertion as I remember from the letter is that American Marxists have to go back to 1776 and the declaration of Independence and things like the Bill of Rights in order to build something in the United States. Something along those lines anyway. Naturally the war of Independence from a Marxist perspective is certainly defensible and also the Bill of Rights. However, I do not think that this kind of stuff can lay the basis for reorganising the left. In fact I thing it is at best a liquidation of any kind of serious struggle to build a Marxist current and Bolshevik party in the United States. Under the pressure of the decline of the left Internationally and more specifically the destruction of Stalinism as a political force, but also the leap of the Social Democracy into the camp of the bourgeoisie, our so called "Marxist" intelligensia are looking for new roads to travel. Unfortunately the new road is not new at all but a clone version of a political line belonging to the camp of both the Social Democracy and even more so the Stalinist school of politics albeit in a clone and neo-Stalinist form. It is also a capitulation to the present right wing atmosphere that pervades the political scene especially in America after the fall of the former Soviet Union. In fact the political thrust of Proyect's assertions actually,(although he does not state it openly) is in fact a clone version of a bougeois democratic movement in America for democracy along the lines of patriotism, democratic rights, and popular front politics. I mean who could possibly be against the "Declaration of Independence"? And in the final analysis a back handed support to the stage theory of revolution! I mean I can understand this coming from third world Maoists (even if they are wrong) but to raise issues like this in America as Proyect does is hair raising! Because unfortunately America has gone far beyond any kind of struggle for democratic rights although in certain instances they are certainly defensible. But in fact has been one of the major imperialist powers of the western world that has built its empire on the blood of millions upon millions of poor and working class people. So getting out the whistles and drums is hardly the way forward. In fact this kind of stuff is ultimately to the right of the Labour Party and in fact sound like some antics that even Gus Hall would even back down from. Although who knows perhaps this will be the Euro-Communist version of Stalinism in the United States! The enormous pressure created by the American bourgeoisie and its allies in cheering what they think is the defeat of Communism, which I thing is in fact an opening of the door for intervention by the Bolshevik Leninists for the first time in decades and great opportunities, has effected the left and it appears especially intellectuals like L Proyect. Although he has spent a life time on the new left this latest is a cry of desperation of finding or building a movement along the Stalinist conception of democratic stages of revolution. And this in America! What a shame that intellectuals like Louis in their desperation in confronting the new situation Internationally have turned towards a clone form of American wrapped Stalinism and Menshevism. It is not the Bill of Rights nor the Declaration of independence that leftists should be claiming for their banner! It is proletarian Internationalism and struggles in solidarity with the poor and working class on this planet is what is needed. In the United States and independent workers party has to be constructed in opposition to the twin parties of capitalism on a program of politics that moves the workers towards independent political power. Not popularlist patriotic crap like Mr. Proyect is claiming to be the way forward. It is and expression, in the final analysis of a desperate petty bougeois intellectual who's trajectory is towards capitulating to American chauvinism, isolationism and preparations for the next imperialist confrontation. Against this Marxists in the United States must struggle for the DEFEAT of its own bourgeoisie. And L. Proyects line is in the exact opposite direction. Against capitulation to chauvinism and patriotism! Against a cloned form of American Stalinist stage theory of revolution! It is not "Yankee doodle" but the song "The International" that is needed. For the creation of and American Bolshevik Party in a reforged revolutionary Communist International! Warm Regards Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- General strike in Ecuador Tumultuous mass protests started in Ecuador on Jan. 8, provoked by drastic rises in the utility bills. The cost of electricity went up by 600 percent, of natural gas by 200 percent. Moreover, an increase of at least 100 percent was expected in the cost of public transport. At the same time, telephone charges rose by up to 700 percent. These price rises were decreed after the government had frozen the minimum wage at the equivalent of $143 dollars a month. "Analysts estimate," The Mexican daily La Jornada wrote Jan. 9, "that these adjustments were a response to the need to put the economy in order in preparation for making the Ecuadoran currency convertible in July of this year. This is the axis of the economic program of the Bucaram government and was designed by his top advisor, Domingo Cavallo, former Argentine minister of the economy." Cavallo was the architect of Argentine President Carlos Menem's austerity plan, which aroused furious protests from the workers'¹ movement in Argentina, protests that have led up to the recent general strikes in that country. He eventually became too hot a potato for Menem to hold, and apparently decided to take his act abroad. In Ecuador, Cavallo's plan recently received the accolade of the International Monetary Fund, which sent a delegation to study the situation in the country. By the second day of the demonstrations, six people had already been hurt, two seriously‹one student who suffered a bullet wound and a TV reporter whose foot was shattered in the explosion of a tear-gas grenade. A hundred demonstrators were arrested in the capital, Quito. About a hundred demonstrators were also reported arrested in the town of Loja, 450 kilometers from the capital. In Quito, civil rights activists marched on the presidential palace in protests against attacks on the press by government officials. In the wake of these protests, a broad coalition of community and trade-union organizations has called a nationwide general strike for Feb. 5. It includes the Coordinating Committee of Social Movements; the Workers United Front (Frente Unitario de los Trabajadores-FUT), the country's main trade-union confederation; and the Popular Front, a federation of social organizations controlled by an ex-Maoist movement, the MPD (People's Democratic Movement). The Coordinating Committee includes Native American, peasant, neighborhood, and youth organizations, Christian groups, and the oil workers' union. It was also one of the main forces that launched the Multinational Unity Movement, Pachakutik-Nuevo Pais. The FUT played an important role in mobilizing protests against the onset of 'neoliberal' (austerity) policies in the 1980s. But until the government's latest provocations, it had been seeking a deal with the authorities, a social contract. The recent brutal measures have forced it again into opposition. In the parliament also, the reformist left and even opposition bourgeois parties have found it necessary to denounce the government¹s convertibility plan. The bishop of Cuenca, the country's third largest city, has said that the protests are the exercise of a 'natural right.' And one military commander has declared that the protests are just. In this situation, rumors are spreading through the country that the president, Abdala Bucaram, intends to suspend constitutional rule. Gerry F. -------------------------------------------------------- Reform Vs Revolution >Bill-Writes.. > >Most labour-based mass political parties in the world >advocate some form >of what they call democratic socialism. Some of them, despite >this ideological heritage, have been to one degree or another >corrupted by the influence of the rich and powerful. But all >of these parties, even the best elements of them, are obliged to work >for reforms of the system, since the working class in most >countries is not clamouring for revolution. In some countries >these reforms have actually improved the lives of most workers >(a sure sign of "bureaucratic reformist betrayal by the grave- >diggers of revolution blah blah blah" in the language of trot >drivel or Stalinist drivel or just plain drivel). Bill, now the above is not entirely true. Naturally reforms came because of the struggles of the workers and not in the least the trade unions. Many of them paid for in blood. Naturally these reforms should be defended at all costs. But the whole point about "gravediggers" is in relationship to the reformist idea of reforming the present system. Sweden is a good example where reformism in the form of Social Democracy has a very long history. It success can be laid at the door of the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution whereas the bourgeoisie in this country were prepared to make a historic compromise rather then have a development of a party here in Sweden along the lines of the Bolsheviks. (which by the way was a real threat!) Today we see that reforming the system which is the line of the Social Democracy connected to a lot Keynesian economics has utterly failed. Now the rich and powerful are taking back all of the reforms and are getting political muscle from the Social Democratic party who has deserted the working class and trade unions for the middle class. Naturally this kind of development MUST show itself as a political tendency in any kind of Labour party movement in the states also. Just as it has here and in England with the Blairites for example. It hardly has anything to do with those horrible Bolsheviks who fight in the interests of the poor and working class. But a certain part of the so called "labour aristocracy" deserting to the politics of the middle class and bourgeoisie. Much of it under the guise of "reforms" called "democracy" for the people As far as people "clammering" for revolution. Well, we shall see. Already I am beginning to hear that word more and more in the grass roots of the Social Democracy. At this point in the sense of a palace revolution against the present leadership. By saying that we need to put forth independent trade union candidates against all the parties etc. The problem is not the clammering but the central problem of without a "revolution" their is always a danger that the rich and powerful can take back things that they were once forced to give because of a successful revolution. Thus many of the reforms that came in the west can directly laid at the door of the Russian Revolution and of course some great trade union struggles. >Free health care is one example. The reforms outlined in our >Labour Party are mainly of this type. You show our program >to a political person in most countries and they would probably >call it a socialist program. I'm sure the business press in this >country will also define it that way once we get too big to ignore. >Of course, there is a huge difference between this kind of socialism >and the ultraleft fringe. I don't think it would be politically >smart for the Labor Party to self-adopt the label socialist, given >all the cold war connotations it conveys to most American workers, >but I'm sure the label will be applied to us by our opponents. >After some time, eventually workers will start saying, well if the right >to a job and health care and organizing unions is socialist, then >thats what I am. But it may take a generation or two to achieve >that change. Naturally I agree with the above in one sense. It is a perfectly correct demand! However, it is just these kinds of reforms that are impossible to either get or historically hold on to unless there is a real revolution that expropriates those that control things. The state is either a state that works in the interest of all working people or it is a state that works in the interests of the bourgeoisie! I glad you take up free health care. Because health care in Sweden although not free has been very very cheap. As the welfare state is being dismantled health care is being dismantled. It goes along two lines. Privatisation and raising of the fees for the services. And cuts in the public sector (in fact open sabotage of the whole system) where we have come to the point here in Sweden where many groups of people especially the old no longer get health care at all. They are put on a wait list because sickness amonst the productive population comes first. In other words old people are told to DIE! This process has gone so far because of the massive cuts mainly in personnel in the hospitals, old age homes etc. under the guise of centralisation and reforming the system. But also because the banks after the eighties had to be bailed out of the billions upon billions they were in debt for speculating in stocks and bonds and especially investments in property! In fact we had a reportage here recently that old people die of bed sores because the personnel force has been cut so thin that they no longer have time to turn the older patients. All of this stuff is the price of stream lining tax cuts for the rich and profits for the companies and bailing out the banks who were in a financial crisis! So things are fairly complicated. And in fact there is no easy path even if you try to pose it that way on this question. Because you do in fact try to hide the central contradiction in society by taking "free health care" as a relative safe reformist demand that any liberal could support at least on paper. However to keep these kinds of reforms and extend them to the entire population I believe will take a *real* revolution in the long run. Because Sweden is one of the best proofs that the so called reformist way to Socialism does not work in the long run! In fact it is only under very special conditions and only under short historical periods that this kind of stuff can work. Because without removing the central contradiction in society either the bougeois rule or proletarian rule-no real long term change for the better can be guaranteed! This does not mean naturally that one has to immediately start screaming revolution and all that bullshit. But it does mean that any serious socialist or Communist must have a program which ultimately leads to poor and working class people ultimately taking power in their own hands and expropriating the bourgeoisie or the otherway around. Because historically a middle way just does not work. Except maybe for opportunists! Warm regards Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! TO ANTI-DEATH PENALTY ACTIVISTS, ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISTS, SUPPORTERS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, AND ALL OTHERS INTERESTED IN SOCIAL JUSTICE: **** SAVE THIS DATE: MAY 3, 1997 **** AD-HOC COMMITTEE WORKS TO BROADEN COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND MOBILIZE GRASSROOTS ACTION ******************************************************** The Ad Hoc Coalition Against Racism and the Death Penalty is sponsoring an exciting media event and conference on Saturday, May 3, 1997 in Philadelphia, PA to increase the level of community consciousness and mobilize grassroots participation around issues of the death penalty including, but not limited to: 1. Education regarding the need to end the death penalty, including the roots of racism and class disparity in determining who is executed, and discussion on a national mobilization for a Moratorium on the Death Penalty. 2. Increasing and consolidating campaigns to free Political Prisoners/ Prisoners of War through community education and support; 3. Organizing to build a strong community-based movement to stop police beatings, frame-ups and murder. WHAT CAN YOU DO: Individuals and organizations who are eager to work with the Organizing Committee to insure maximum community participation by sharing mailing lists, hosting pre-conference meetings, organizing transportation to help get folks to the conference, donating educational and other materials, broadcasting live from the event, videotaping the event to use for future grassroots organizing, and offering your ideas, experience and concrete support should contact ASAP: Sis. Marpessa Kupendua - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bro. Komboa Ervin - [EMAIL PROTECTED] !! SPEAK TRUTH TO THE PEOPLE !! ALL OUT FOR MAY 3RD! MORE INFORMATION FORTHCOMING. ================================================== Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and workingclass people http://www.algonet.se/~malecki --------------------------------------------------------
