[Marxism] South Africa: Time for a new democratic left party? | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

[glparramatta]

October 20, 2009 -- Rhodes University, Grahamstown -- "The left movement 
outside the South African Communist Party is weak, fragmented and 
disorganised", said Mazibuko Jara, former South African Community Party 
(SACP) spokesperson and editor of /Amandla/ magazine during a public 
dialogue at Rhodes University on October 16.

"The majority of the people in South Africa still look up to the ANC as 
their only hope and anyone who wants to start a new left party must take 
this into account," he said.

According to Jara, a new left wing political party must try to mobilise 
as many people as possible and unite all the left organisations in the 
country. Jara, together with Vishwas Satgar, a former Gauteng provincial 
secretary of the SACP, are leading an initiative to establish a new left 
political party in South Africa because of the dissatisfaction with the 
SACP's leadership.

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1327

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism



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Re: [Marxism] Fight far from over in Honduras: Will pact allow Zelaya to use the bully pulpit?

[S. Artesian]

Certainly you can work within a united front, class-based, around a 
constituent assembly, but the fact of the matter is, such an assembly is 
incapable of resolving any of the issues that drive the revolution forward. 
So any support really has to be critical support.

You think this is about Zelaya getting thrown out of the country?  At core? 
Not hardly-- that's just the triggering incident.

Democratic revolutions don't come to power period, I would think that much 
is painfully obvious based on the last 92 years of history.

Not for nothing, but the demand for a constituent assembly in Russia was 
never realized, never acted upon, and never separated from the existence of 
the soviets, and the growing demands for the soviets to take power.

And there is no evidence that agitation of for around a constituent assembly 
leads to anything beyond retreat, retrenchment of the struggle.  I know it's 
a tender issue for some, but look at the history of the MNR in Bolivia. 
Look at the MAS in Bolivia now and the demand for a constituent assembly. 
Where did that go?  The constituent assembly, which is the radical version 
of a government of "national reconciliation," resolved almost nothing, and 
its "sovereignty" was jettisoned by those who proclaimed the CA as central 
to democracy.

I don't know that those struggling in Honduras are struggling more for 
"democracy" than they are for "socialism."  You don't know that either. 
What you see is the movement erupting from deep-seated social reasons, 
economic reasons, class reasons, that are, in essence, irresolvable by 
democracy or a "democratic revoluton."

No, soviets do not exist in Honduras-- but strike committees do and did, and 
perhaps there are other self-defense organizations that represent the kernel 
of self-organization of the urban and rural poor.

So... so it's one thing, if in these initial eruptions, democracy is token, 
the proxy, the appearance, of what is at core a class struggle.  It is 
something else altogether to accept this appearance as the essence, and the 
limit to the struggle.

- Original Message - 
From: "nada" 
To: "David Schanoes" 
Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2009 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Fight far from over in Honduras: Will pact allow 
Zelaya to use the bully pulpit?




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Re: [Marxism] Fight far from over in Honduras: Will pact allow Zelaya to use the bully pulpit?

[nada]

A rather unfortunate blog item, then. It is written as if the illusions 
that define the current state of consciousness in Honduras do not exist, 
as if only they could hear of "The Good News" all would by Right and Red.

What brings the masses into continual strikes in Honduras, the workers 
out in demonstrations, clashes etc *never* changed: return of the Prez 
to office. What got his ass thrown out was his *suggestion* of a 
Constituent Assembly. The CA is too radical for Pinochetti and the 
Honduran national Oligarchy. They don't want a democratic solution. They 
like the fact that the democratic implications of Honduras' 150 years of 
independence from Spain never made it pass the formality of the Republic 
and picture of democracy: 2 dimensional and flat.

If the masses are for democracy, it is not for anyone to say otherwise. 
Is it? If it was the return of the Prez to office booted out by their 
class enemy, how do remote admonitions about the need to to "abandon 
illusions in democracy" (my paraphrase) at all have any resonances *what 
so ever*

Revolutionaries will not only support the call for the Constituent 
Assembly and that which the Oligarchical capitalist compradores oppose 
enough to out the President, they will be the best builders of it. I 
*strongly suspect* that Revolutionaries there, if they actually *lead* 
the movement there, are or part and parcel of this movement, they will 
raise the fact that they the Honduran democratic revolution will call 
for any CA to be completely *sovereign* and write a social constitution. 
Building peoples and workers organizations to base such a CA on, or 
exist parallel to it, will be something that has to grow *organically* 
out of that movement, but it won't happen unless there is a mobilization 
*for* a Constituent Assembly [because that is where "people with 
property" are drawing the line]. They are all tied together. Democratic 
revolutions only come to power based on what people are willing to fight 
and die for. They are not fighting and dying for soviet power or a 
socialist revolution. They are fighting for democracy.

Can these goals of a social constitution be met within the confines of 
democracy? Of course not. Only a workers and peasants government can do 
that. But the movement around the Constituent Assembly is exactly the 
kind of movement that gets people to break with capitalist democracy and 
start seeing that only such a government can accomplish those tasks. 
Simply calling for a gov't like that with dire warnings is hardly 
meeting the politics of the Honduran masses.

D.


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[Marxism] Die Linke and Class Representation

[Dan Russell]

An interesting article, I haven't seen it posted so forgive me if it has
been.

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=578&issue=124

Dan

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[Marxism] Class, Nation, and Health: with some thoughts about H1N1, and building movement capacity

[kersplebedeb]

What follows is a rough version of a talk i gave at Montreal's Native 
Friendship Center, at the Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving organized by Frigo 
Vert last Thursday night. Many of the articles and documents referenced 
here are also referenced on the new Kersplebedeb H1N1 page 
(http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/h1n1.php).

-

I’m here to say just a few words about health inequalities, with 
particular attention to this new flu, the H1N1 or swine flu, and some 
concerns around it.

The flu is something I became interested in earlier this year, when my 
husband caught it and became very sick. He spent two months in the 
hospital, most of that time on a ventilator in a medically-induced coma, 
and he probably would have died if not for the fact that he received 
excellent medical care.

People say that you have to already have a serious health condition to 
be at risk from H1N1, but my husband’s only relevant health problems 
were very mild asthma and the fact that he gets migraines. In fact, 
they’re saying now that a quarter of the people who have died of H1N1 
were in perfect health beforehand.

Now luckily my husband didn’t die, though his seven weeks in the ICU did 
make me realize some things. For one, it gave me an appreciation of the 
fact that even though not many people were dying of the flu, an unknown 
number of people were getting very very sick, and it was only the fact 
that there were enough ventilators and ICU beds that allowed them to 
survive. (The clearest figure i could find about this was that for every 
H1N1 death, there were four people critically ill with the virus who had 
to be kept alive in an ICU.)

And that got me thinking about health inequalities, and how they might 
play out with the flu.



to read the rest: 
http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/10/class-nation-and-health-with-some.html
 




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Re: [Marxism] Gore Vidal in the Atlantic

[Louis Proyect]

S. Artesian wrote:
> 
> Yeah, Vidal spoke out against the cops in 1968-- big deal, so did Abraham 
> Ribicoff and from the podium of the convention.  Are we supposed to get all 
> misty-eyed over that 41 year old stance?
> 

I will always have a soft spot for Vidal after reading this in 
"Palimpsest", one of his memoirs:

"As I left Henry Kissinger in the Sistine Chapel, gazing thoughtfully at 
the hell section of 'The Last Judgment,' I said to the lady with me, 
'Look, he's apartment hunting.'"


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Re: [Marxism] Gore Vidal in the Atlantic

[S. Artesian]

What are we to make of Alex Cockburn?  Same thing. Essentially  nostalgic 
for an era that never really existed-- "direct democracy,"  the innate 
decency of a "jury of one's peers" etc. etc. An archaic remnant of previous 
era, and as such, destined to become more and more reactionary.

Yeah, Vidal spoke out against the cops in 1968-- big deal, so did Abraham 
Ribicoff and from the podium of the convention.  Are we supposed to get all 
misty-eyed over that 41 year old stance?



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Re: [Marxism] Fight far from over in Honduras: Will pact allow Zelaya to use the bully pulpit?

[S. Artesian]

Well, as self-promoting as it might be, I simply must provide a 
counter-analysis to this "feel good, Shannon's a good guy" baloney spewed 
about by professor Grandin.  So, immodestly--

Time Up, Time Down
An Agreement Was Reached

Big surprise... an agreement was reached between... different sections, 
different agents of the same ruling class. And on what did these different 
clowns in the same circus agree? They agreed on a charade. A pantomime. A 
folie a deux.

Said Alphonse to Gaston, "After you." Said Gaston to Alphonse, "Oh no, after 
you. I insist."

Said Micheletti to US assistant secretary of State for Western Hemispheric 
Affairs Thomas Shannon, "I'll pretend to agree to recognize that Zelaya 
might return to office four weeks prior to new elections, with no control 
over the military, with no agitation for a constituent assembly, with no 
penalty to coup-iers."

Said Zelaya to Shannon, "I'll pretend that I'm actually returning to office, 
with no control over the military, with no constituent assembly, with no 
penalty to coup-iers, and proclaim a great victory."

Said Tom to Hillary, channeling the former president, "Mission 
accomplished."
This agreement is an attempt at misdirection, at disorientation of the 
resistance to the coup, which of course, is more than a resistance to the 
coup but the initial eruption of a revolutionary struggle.

Even if accepted by the Congress and the Supreme Court, the agreement 
pretends to allow Zelaya to return to office in only a ceremonial role, as 
the military would be under the control of the electoral commission, and the 
election is going to be held in 4 weeks. And of course, the old 
razzle-dazzle of truth commissions, a government of national reconciliation 
blahblahblah will function as spectacle, to obscure and distract from the 
real, material, economic circumstances that precipitated the movement into 
the streets at the opportunity of Zelaya's removal.

The police, secret police, paramilitary organizations, the practitioners of 
terror against the rural and urban poor, are maintained in their positions 
without penalty except of course the revolutionary penalty that the movement 
can impose itself-- and if that should occur, Zelaya, Micheletti, Shannon, 
Clinton, Reich, the OAS, will be united in a government of international 
reconciliation denouncing such self-defense by the poor as "destabilizing" 
to the prospects of "democracy," detrimental to the legitimacy of the truth 
commissions blahblahblah-- all that junk that capitalism circulates as 
exchange value without any corresponding use value.


The agreement prohibits action on behalf of a constituent assembly until 
after January, when a new government is in power. The bourgeoisie know that 
the key to maintaining political power when bankruptcy looms is the same as 
the key for maintaining property and business by any individual capitalist 
when economic bankruptcy looms--- delay. Restructure, reorganize, even if 
its only the deck chairs on the sinking ship. In short, buy time-- buy time, 
buying time, of course is literally what makes the bourgeoisie bourgeoisie. 
The time expropriated, equally of course, is that time that might,could, 
must be seized by others; that time that belongs to those others; that time 
that belongs to those others who labor in the maquiladoras, on the 
plantations, on their minifundias.

A constituent assembly is no solution to the problems faced by the workers 
and poor in Honduras as such an assembly is a political form, reproducing in 
essence the illusory separation of property from social struggle, an 
illusion that, like the buying of time, also allows the bourgeoisie to 
function as the bourgeoisie, as a ruling class with class obscured. The 
conflict in Honduras is, however, exactly the social combat that dispels 
such illusions, that identifies class and property as the content, the 
substance of the struggle. As such, success for the workers, urban and rural 
poor of Honduras, exists outside and beyond the demands for a constituent 
assembly. Any possibility of success necessarily exists only in the 
organizations those workers, those poor create in the self-defense of the 
reclamation of their own time.

The bourgeoisie, however, see, feel, sense, behind the demand for the form 
of the constituent assembly just that substance. In their recognition of the 
historical impossibility, the obsolescence of their own political forms, the 
bourgeoisie are in substance admitting the obsolescence of their property, 
of themselves, of their time.

http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com


- Original Message - 
From: "Fred Feldman" 
To: "David Schanoes" 
Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2009 3:42 PM
Subject: [Marxism] Fight far from over in Honduras: Will pact allow Zelaya 
to use the bully pulpit?


> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091116/grandin
>
> Honduras: Solution or Stall? By Greg Grandin



YOU MUST cl

[Marxism] Publication Project and Panel on Henri Lefebvre and the Third World (McGill University)

[Gurcan Efe Can]

New Readings on the Theory of Production of Space: Lefebvre and the Developing 
World 
 
(For the book project, please send your proposal to efe.can.gur...@umontreal.ca)

Panel for the Conference "A Measure of Place: Space in Text and Context" (5-7 
February 2010, McGill University, Montreal) 

Nowadays, one could observe the regeneration of Henri Lefebvre's perspective on 
the questions of production of space, urbanism and modernization. 

On the other hand, despite Lefebvre's overemphasis on the urban sociology, he 
was able to also grasp the importance of the rural sociology. According to him, 
the main objective of the Marxian rural sociology should be of transforming the 
peasant and agricultural reality. 

Lefebvre's radical attitude on rural questions expressed itself in the rural 
problems of socialism through the conviction that Marxism should firstly focus 
on agricultural problems. Accordingly, one should primarily solve the 
contradiction between the "agricultural and industrial eras". 

Therefore, the main problematic of the panel would be the following: 

"Is an alternative and inventive reading of Lefebvre's work possible? If yes, 
how to examine the intensification of rural and suburban struggles in the 
developing world, based on this perspective of politics of space? How to 
conceive a new strategy of production of space centered in the Third World? How 
to redefine 'the right to city' in the Global South?" 

We encourage papers on topics including but not limited to: 

- Critique of Traditional Urban Revolutionism,
- Urban Revolution or Rural Revolution? Possible Strategies,
- New Strategies of Production of Space,
- Lefebvre and the Third World,
- Rural and Suburban Spatial Struggles in Today's South America,
- Redefinition of "the Right to City",
- Rural Sociology and Politics of Space,
- Socialist Communes in Venezuela (and the "Socialist Caracas Project"),
- People's Councils in Cuba, Cuban Urban Agriculture and Production of Space,
- The Chinese Project of the Construction of Socialist Villages.

Deadline for submission of paper proposal: November 20, 2009 

The organizers plan to publish a selection of the papers presented at the 
conference. Texts should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words inclusive of notes 
and bibliography. They should be prepared according the Chicago Manual of 
Style, 15th Edition. 

Please send abstracts of 300 words or less, together with a short biographical 
statement of no more than 50 words to efe.can.gur...@umontreal.ca. 

 E. Gurcan
Université Montréal, 
C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville 
Montréal (Québec) CANADA 
H3C 3J7 
efe.can.gur...@umontreal.ca
Email: efe.can.gur...@umontreal.ca

 
 


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[Marxism] Fight far from over in Honduras: Will pact allow Zelaya to use the bully pulpit?

[Fred Feldman]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091116/grandin

Honduras: Solution or Stall? By Greg Grandin

October 30, 2009

Honduran crisis may soon be over. Maybe. The leader of the coup government,
Roberto Micheletti, agreed to a nine-point plan to end the country's
political impasse, brokered by Thomas Shannon, the former US Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Barack Obama's
yet-to-be-confirmed ambassador to Brazil. The deal would return Manuel
Zelaya, the democratically elected president deposed in a military coup four
months ago, to office; in exchange, the international community will end
Honduras' diplomatic isolation and recognize upcoming presidential
elections, scheduled for November 29. 

Roberto Micheletti has agreed to a plan to end the country's political
impasse. But the coup government is already looking for loopholes. 
Honduran Coup Regime in Crisis Honduras 

Greg Grandin: Those who seized power in June have polarized society,
delegitimized political institutions and empowered social movements. 

Hardliners in the coup government, however, see a loophole in the accords,
which gives the Honduran National Congress the power to approve or reject
Zelaya's return. And no sooner was the ink dry on the accord when a top
Micheletti advisor, Marcia Facusse de Villeda, told Bloomberg News that
"Zelaya won't be restored." In a barefaced admission that the coup
government was trying to buy time, Facusse said that "just by signing this
agreement we already have the recognition of the international community for
the elections." Another Micheletti aide, Arturo Corrales, said that since
the congress is not in session, no vote on the agreement could be scheduled
until "after the elections." 

But such a calculated reading of the agreement will not play well with most
countries, including the United Nations, the Organization of American
States, and the European Union, which have repeatedly called for restoration
of Zelaya. Brazil--whose Tegucigalpa embassy has given Zelaya shelter since
his dramatic surprise return to Honduras over a month ago--applauded
Shannon's deal, yet made it clear Zelaya had to be reinstated. And in
Honduras, the National Party, whose candidate is expected to win next
month's vote, wants this crisis to be over. Its members in Congress may join
with Liberal Party deputies loyal to Zelaya to approve the deal. 

The accord leaves unresolved the issue of whether the widespread human
rights violations that have taken place since the coup will be investigated
and prosecuted, only vaguely rejecting an amnesty for "political crimes" and
calling for the establishment of a truth commission. More than a dozen
Zelaya supporters have been executed over the last four months. Security
forces have illegally detained nearly 10,000 people; police and soldiers
have beaten protesters and gang-raped women. And the very idea of a
negotiated solution to the crisis grants legitimacy to those provoked it. 

Still, if Zelaya were to be restored to the presidency, even just
symbolically, to preside over the November elections and supervise a
transfer of power to its winner, it would represent a significant victory
for progressive forces in the hemisphere. Here's why: 

1. The attempt by Micheletti and his backers--both in and out of
Honduras--to justify the overthrow of Zelaya by claiming it was a
constitutional transfer of power will have definitively failed. If this
justification was allowed to go unchallenged, it would have set a dangerous
precedent for the rest of Latin America. 

2. Efforts to rally support for the coup under the banner of anti-leftism,
or anti-Chavismo--much the way anti-communism served to unite conservatives
during the Cold War--will likewise have failed. 

3. It will confirm the political influence--and unity--of Latin America's
progressive governments, particularly Brazil and Venezuela, which have taken
the lead in demanding that the coup not stand--a position that aligned them
with much of the rest of the world. 

4. It will be an important push back for Republicans like South Carolina
Senator Jim DeMint and Otto Reich, who tried to use the crisis to push for a
more hardline US policy against the left in Latin America. It is DeMint who
has put the hold on Shannon's confirmation, as well as on the confirmation
of Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's pick for Assistant Secretary of State for
Western Hemisphere Affairs. 

5. It will hopefully help the Obama administration realize that in many
Latin American countries, there is no alternative to working with the left.
In Honduras, the violence of the coup government, as well as the fact that
the extended crisis smoked out its less than savory supporters, like Reich,
awoke not too pleasant memories of the Cold War. Reich recently penned an
essay urging Obama to replicate Ronald Reagan's successful Latin American
policy, which the Iran-Contra alum believed paved the way for the fall of
the Berlin Wall. Many, however, remember too we

Re: [Marxism] Gore Vidal in the Atlantic

[Tom Cod]

Well, I didn't see any of that other stuff in the the article you linked us to. 
 I haven't ever heard him speak about the Chinese, however I do recall his 
article about McVeigh in Vanity Fair written when the guy was a condemned man 
which I think focused on the civil liberties aspects of that case and the 
social causes of this phenomena, views that I recall had little that was 
objectionable.  The idea that he promoted the racist views of these folks is 
incorrect or that adheres to "right wing nativism" is ridiculous. Moreover, 
Vidal, unlike much of the sectarian left which ran for cover at the time, spoke 
out against and stood up to the Daley and the Chicago cops and their defenders 
like Wm F. Buckley (who called him a fag and threatened him on the air) during 
the 1968 protests.  Thus I think you misunderstand and therefore have 
misrepresented Vidal's views. 

> From: bhaskar.sunk...@gmail.com
 
> Not just those disgusting, reprehensible comments, but have you ever heard
> him discuss the "Chinese threat"?  His anti-imperialism is right-wing
> nativism, his defense of Timothy McVaugh,  Pim Fortuyn  and the militia
> movement aren't aberrations.  I wouldn't attach the word "left" anywhere
> near him.

  
_
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Re: [Marxism] Gore Vidal in the Atlantic

[Jim Farmelant]

So what are we to make of Alex Cockburn who has
been known to exhibit some of the same crankiness
as Vidal in a more attenuated form?

Jim F.
 
On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:34:42 -0400 Bhaskar Sunkara
 writes:
> Not just those disgusting, reprehensible comments, but have you ever 
> heard
> him discuss the "Chinese threat"?  His anti-imperialism is 
> right-wing
> nativism, his defense of Timothy McVaugh,  Pim Fortuyn  and the 
> militia
> movement aren't aberrations.  I wouldn't attach the word "left" 
> anywhere
> near him.
> 
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Tom Cod  wrote:
> 
> >
> > because of what, his comments on Polanski?  Otherwise the 
> interview is the
> > same old left-liberal he's always been.
> >
>  

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[Marxism] Naxalites Gain in India

[Tom Cod]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/world/asia/01maoist.html?pagewanted=1&ref=global-home
   
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Re: [Marxism] Gore Vidal in the Atlantic

[Tom Cod]

because of what, his comments on Polanski?  Otherwise the interview is the same 
old left-liberal he's always been.


  
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Re: [Marxism] Gore Vidal in the Atlantic

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

I think I posted this a while back.  It shows what a vile, revolting prick
he's become (?) in his old age.

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 11:13 AM, David Thorstad  wrote:

> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910u/gore-vidal
>

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[Marxism] Militarism, ROTC, and dont' ask, don't tell

[David Thorstad]

After being driven off campus by student protests in the 1960s, why 
isn't ROTC back? Not because students oppose it, but because 
administrators are waiting for open same-sexers to be welcomed into the 
war machine.
David

New York Times

 

*November 1, 2009*

* *

*http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/education/edlife/01rotc-t.html*

* *


  *The R.O.T.C. Dilemma *

*By MICHAEL WINERIP 
*





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[Marxism] The battle for worker's control in Venezuela

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.socialistproject.ca/leftstreamed/


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Re: [Marxism] Is the Pope a Marxist?

[Jim Farmelant]

 
On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:48:49 -0700 (PDT) Scott Hamilton
 writes:
> http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2009/10/is-pope-marxist.html
> 
> 
> 

Well, reading the piece, I guess the answer is no, he is
really a Heideggerian, which I had suspected all along,
anyway.  And that would explain why he can be appreciative
of thinkers like Horkheimer and Adorno, since they
too (while being Marxists) were also very much influenced
by Heidegger.  Also, those who are interested in that
sort of thing might want to look into Ratziner's dialogs
with Juegen Habermas.

Jim F.

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[Marxism] Tariq Ali on Trotsky by Robert Service and Stalin's Nemesis by Bertrand M Patenaude

[Sebastian Budgen]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/31/trotsky-stalin-service-patenaude

The life and death of Trotsky
Tariq Ali on Trotsky by Robert Service and Stalin's Nemesis by  
Bertrand M Patenaude

• Tariq Ali
• The Guardian, 
Saturday 31 October 2009

Trotsky: A Biography

by Robert Service 600pp, Macmillan, £25

Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky

by Bertrand M Patenaude 352pp, Faber, £20

For over half a century, Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography of  
Trotsky, a literary-historical masterpiece in its own right, was  
regarded as the last word on the subject. Many who were deeply hostile  
to the Russian revolution and all its leading actors nonetheless  
acclaimed these books: in 1997, asked to nominate his favourite book  
for National Book Day, the newly elected prime minister, Tony Blair,  
nominated the trilogy. Twelve years later the culture in this country  
has become so overwhelmingly conformist that any alternative to  
capitalism is considered outlandish.

The Service industry has now produced a stodgy volume on Trotsky to  
add to a collection that includes Lenin and Stalin. Unlike Deutscher,  
as he tells us, Service is hostile to the revolution and its leaders,  
but he is irritated by the fact that Trotsky has had such a good press  
in the west (news to me). He was just the same as the others except  
that he wrote very well and this appealed to New York intellectuals.  
The Service view can be summarised in a sentence: Trotsky was a  
ruthless and cold-blooded murderer and deserves to be exposed as such.

This counter-factual approach is nothing new and was the stock-in- 
trade of most anti-communist and pro-Stalin ideologues for much of the  
last century. Service informs us that Winston Churchill backed Stalin  
against Trotsky during the show trials. The old warhorse certainly  
knew how to distinguish between conservatives and radicals. He had  
little time for Gramsci either, and almost drowned Mussolini in praise  
as a bulwark against the evil tide of Bolshevism.

Churchill's essay denouncing Trotsky as the "ogre of Europe" is  
written with a brio and passion that almost matches that of his  
target. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Service's plodding  
account in which some of the allegations are so trivial that they are  
best ignored. On most of the important issues – the danger of  
substituting the party for the state in Russia, the necessity of  
uniting with social-democrats and liberals to defeat Hitler, the  
futility of forcing the communists into an alliance with Chiang Kai- 
shek in China, the fate that awaited the Jews if Hitler came to power  
and constant warnings that the Nazis were preparing to invade the  
Soviet Union – he was proved right time and time again.

Unsurprisingly, the counter-factual school of historians rarely  
discusses what might have happened had Generals Kornilov, Denikin and  
Yudenich triumphed instead of Lenin and Trotsky. One thing is  
virtually certain: since the revolution was portrayed as the work of  
Jewish-Bolsheviks, a wave of pogroms would have decimated the Jews.

Patenaude's shorter and much better written book is far more objective  
and, in fact, more scholarly. Though it concentrates on the period of  
Trotsky's Mexican exile and provides fascinating pen-portraits of  
lovers, acolytes and killers alike (including details of Trotsky's  
affair with Frida Kahlo that Isaac Deutscher so sweetly veiled), it  
also encapsulates his earlier life.

The socialist revolution, unlike the bourgeois revolutions that  
transformed Europe in the 16-18th centuries, was a premeditated  
project intended for a more advanced country than Russia. Even for its  
leaders, the Bolshevik triumph of 1917 was a leap in the dark.  
Bolshevik orthodoxy did not believe that the infant republic could  
last on its own. The party leadership was waiting for the German  
revolution to break its isolation and transform Europe. Instead the  
main imperialist states decided to back the White counter-revolution,  
leading to a civil war that was won by the newly created Red Army, but  
at a terrible cost: the peasants had been alienated by forced  
requisitions and conscription. The civil war of 1918-21 exhausted the  
tiny working class. Many died and a layer that survived was rapidly  
absorbed into the machinery of the new state.

Trotsky, as the founder and organiser of the Red Army, was undoubtedly  
ruthless in ensuring the victory of his side – as was Lincoln during  
the American civil war. Exhausted at home and isolated abroad, the  
Bolshevik leaders, obsessed by the fate of Robespierre and Saint-Just,  
decided that they must hold on to power whatever the cost. An early  
outcome was the brutal repression of the Kronstadt sailors' mutiny. A  
later result was Stalinism, which destroyed not simply the aspirations  
of the revolution but most of its leading cadres.

Re: [Marxism] Paul LeBlanc: Why I Am Joining the ISO,

[Ratbag Media]

The enthralling aspect of LeBlanc's POV is that it is unashamedly
committed to  revolutionary social change rather that a sort of
dedicated deference to accommodating to the rigors of isolation. It is
not about a withdrawing from a Marxist (and Leninist)perspective at
all. In contrast, a layer of sixties exers are in the business of
advancing such a distancing rationale and blaming the parties of the
far left for their pessimistic 'analysis'.

You need to recognise the sort of spin we've been fed -- maybe for as
long as a couple of decades from within our own midst-- which tries to
blame 'party building' per se for so much of that which has befallen
the socialist movement

The complication is, of course, that the socialist parties seldom
recognize their potential role in making the best use of the here and
now, and in a sense, exaggerate the very symptoms that they are marked
down for -- the circle spirit, the bunker mentality,the dedication to
shibboleths, etc. It's almost a determined negation of the option that
presents itself. (Almost? Maybe not...)

What LeBlanc does is cut through the crap and poses a challenge both
to the layer he comes from -- as well to the party he has joined.

We know that despite their seeming similarity both in genesis (the
1990s IST purges) and outlook ( the state capitalist template) --
there is a massive world of difference between the American ISO and
Socialist Alternative here in Australia .

It's like chalk and cheese.

Similarly it would be impossible for anyone to write about SAlt as
LeBlanc has written about the ISO in his joining statement.

So LeBlanc -- and I think he has quite consciously done this --
challenges the anti-party sentiment directly by insisting that if you
are serious at all this is what you need to do. The days for wanking
on are over.

It also suggests, to my mind, that while there may be a party emporia
out there to choose from -- not all of them embrace the rigors of
political motion as LeBlanc suggests the ISO does.

So this is also about changing the ISO as much as changing the rest of
the left. It's not that  LeBlanc goes into the ISO wearing entrism sui
generis t-shit with a lobbying perspective -- a them vs me approach --
but as a willing partner to the grand party project overall.

There is a very big difference both in the way the party is engaged
with and the sort of results that may follow.

dave riley


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