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From owner-marxism-international Sun Apr 6 00:46:56 1997
Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970406074457.0068e038@mail.algonet.se>
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 1997 07:45:08 +0200
From: Robert Malecki <malecki@algonet.se>
Subject: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFT: TAKE THREE
At 13:19 1997-04-05 -0500, you wrote:
>the rear guard of this group--Malecki--is now also attempting to
>"reinvent" history by his feigned amnesia ["perhaps I have missed
>something" he bursts out]--he, like them, caught up in the nightmare of
>history just wants to "go back" (renew and reinvent) and in doing so start
>all over again contradiction-free!
What is this surpose to mean? And you still have not answered a fairly
simple question. What is it you exactly do for poor and working class people?
>We do not believe that jokes, grammar lessons, "deep thinking" or
>"allusions" to the "deep" left experience (those untheorizable
>"intensities" that have always been put forward as the source of wisdom
>and authenticity in the fascist imaginary ) should dictate the terms of
>this space or for that matter what passes for historical analysis (Cox's
>"serious" text, Proyect's cynicism, Malecki's amnesia..).
Are you saying that people who support Trotskyism are facists?
>Pt. 2). The panicky lefts' implication--however marked by retreats and
>flutters of panic--in the reemergence of fascism in the moment of late
>capitalism is our focus here.
And if you believe that facism has re-emerged (which in a sense is
partially true) I doubt that it is "flutters of panic" we have to worry
about but the various versions of the Stalinist popular front politics.
>
>
>I. Allusion and the "Deep" Left Experience
>
>
>Cox's text ("Playing Word Games") calls above all for attention to
>"history" (we admit first off that the fleeting traces of concepts in her
>texts set her apart from her accomplices--but not far enough apart). The
>violent underside of Cox's distorted version of "history" is that those
>who don't get it simply need to "shut up"; they are in her words in "no
>position to... understand" even the simplest goings on in the world today.
>Cox's pseudo-"history" in short, is one of the fascist devices
>deployed by the panicky leftist for shutting up some "presumptious"
>revolutionaries. Take her rebuttal to Mr. Rothrock that one cannot even
>speak of "ideology" in polemics without "confronting its varied history".
Are you saying the Stalinists are fascists. I guess you really missed the
historical boat. Then again I guess there are not to many *real* facists in
Buffalo! I think you need a trip to Europe to see the difference between
real facism and the Stalinist school of falsification and tactics of
silencing the opposition.
WHY NOT ANALYZE OUR CRITIQUES HERE AND NOW? What
>is this space for if not analysis and theorization for social change?
>With Cox's/Proyect's/Dumain's endless fetishization of the "deep" left
>"experience" this is perhaps the point to move on to ....
Once again what critiques? What analisis? What the fuck are you talking
about. Other then whining that everybody is a fascist or a supporter their
of because you are asked a simple question. What are the Buffalo "Marxists"
doing to change reality. Is it coming here and accusing the Stalinist and
neo Stalinists of being fascist and Malecki as being some sort of hanger on
to the Stalinists?
>
>II. The Death of Intelligence in the Left Mafia
>
>
>We will turn now to the history of the panic left--a tumultuous series of
>reversals and shufflings that have attempted to construct some sembleance
>of radical thinking. In doing so this left falls back on the cliches of
>history. The panic left has been using "Stalinism" to represent its foes
>as "gang" of uniform thinkers and itself as independent thinkers who act
>individually, write individually... This use of "Stalinism"--as we have
>already indicated--is simply a cover up for an underlying fascism. It is
>mark of this fascism that the panic left on the net is now acting like a
>mafia: defending each other (C. Cox annotating Louis Proyect., Henwood's
>coming to Cox's rescue by announcing that STYLE is the lynch pin of
>ideological struggle.....Henwood and Scott McLemee rushing to rescue what
>is left of Dumain/Proyect...Proyect's glee towards Andy Austin: "He's
>one of us!"...Dumain's defense of Henwood and Proyect and his summing
>it all up in the networking slogan of the new left mafia : "socialism is
>who you know"). The members of the "reinvented" center--the left
>mafia--we are finding are getting to "know" one another better and
>better.
Oh bullshit. Comparing the little click of neo-Stalinists on this list to
the "Maffia" and "facism" is and insult to people's intelligence. And
coming from Buffalo (a university at that) which is not exactly the center
of world revolution shows how really far you are away from any kind of
sociaL REALITY. There are people on this list from Turkey who can tell you
about real "facist" tendencies and Maffia like operations not to mention
that *real* blood is flowing on the streets of Europe. Most recently a
Turkish family with two or three children burned out and murdered in the
middle of the night by real facists in Germany for example. I guess the
closet our "Marxists" in Buffalo have come to "facism" is perhaps some of
the racist tendencies in the Buffalo Police corps. Notice I said "Police"
and not Peace corps..
> The primary issue that unites this mafia is its fear and loathing
>of intellectauls.
Why you little piece of shit. But you are right I hate your kind of
intellectuals who under the name of "Revolutionary Marxism" coming marching
in here from Buffalo and start screaming that all the Stalinists and neo-
Stalinists and Malecki the Trotskyists are "facists" and the "Mafia". And
you are telling me that we should take you seriously?
> It is scandalous that in the last several days during which
>members of the mafia have all announced and re-announced their "opinions"
>on our text, none (not a single one) has actually ANALYZED it--not one has
>discussed/critiqued its ideas...all we have is "opinion"
<snip>
What? Yesterday I posed a simple question in a short letter about what do
you do for poor and working class people. And today you are screaming that
I am a facist and part of the Mafia! I know that theater types are surpose
to be a bit melodramatic but this is ridiculous.
You people I must say sound like a bunch of clowns who use facist and mafia
rhetoric the same way as I use marmelade on my toast in the morning. You
are completly unserious about any kind of serious debate facing poor and
working class people around the world.
Is this what the American left has to offer? On the one hand a bunch of
neo-Stalinist has beens who at best want to clean up Stalinism and
Stalinist politics and bring back the great days of the anti-imperialist
popular front and a bunch of Buffalo university wackos who appear to have
nothing to do during the days other then accuse the neo-Stalinists and
Stalinists of being "facists" and "Mafia" types.
How quaint! No wonder any serious poor and working class person must feel
at best just a little bit sick in the stomach when he sees what our
"intellectuals" have to offer..
Well, my friends in Buffalo. Yesterday I was confused and politely asking a
few questions about your activities. You answer puts you on Malecki's
political hit list. As a few petty bougeois intellectuall opportunists with
big mouths who just scream a lot of "facist" and "maffia" hot air
around here as if M-I is some sort of student "specks" or something.
I suggest that you should grow fucking up and come back in a few years. But
by then you probably will have a fucking job as a yuppie in some wall
street firm. Hopefully you are going to find out that by leaping in here
and doing your circus number (which might make a joyful deversion for the
Metrepolitan crowd) will soon show itself for what it appears in reality to
be. A little click of Buffalo intellectuals that appear not to have any
contact with living reality and are doing a masturbation number here on M-I
in order to impress somebody?
Well, as I said in my first letter. I am not realing impressed at all.
PS: attaching a little piece called "Lumpen Rage!". It is sort of a
standard answer I like to use for creeps like you. Hopefully it will
confirm how horrible Malecki really is...
Another thing I would like too take up here is morality, and intellectual
snobbery! There have been many times I have met people in my life
who because of circumstances have had better education's, better
morals, better everything, if one were to believe all their bullshit.
Some of these people have, but the majority of them were and are
bullshit artists. You would think that these people would treat people
like me and my friends at least as equals.
But that is never so.
They are always trying to twist and turn our heads in all kinds of
directions. All the isms, Communism, Capitalism, Fascism were introduced
to poor and working class people by people who came from another world.
These ideologies were introduced into the workers movement and the
workers and poor people were tricked into walking under one flag or
the other, usually leading to devastating effects for the worker
themselves.
One thing these people have in common is that they think that working
people and poor people have to be enlightened, educated, brought into
the light, to just some sort of ideology, in order to lead a better
life. Sort of reminds me of the missionaries who went out into the
bush in Africa to learn the natives how to be civilised. Or the
white Europeans who wripped off America from the Indians by making
deals like, "buying Manhattan for 24 dollars in trinkets" stuff.
In reality these people imposed there lifestyles on the Africans and
enslaved them. They killed off most of the American Indians and later
on in history they have been using working class people and the poor
as meat to be killed off for their latest ideological whim. They are
so self serving and smart.
They think that poor and working class people can't think and
therefore are always trying to stuff more bullshit down our throats!
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...
But we have one thing that they do not understand at all and that
is historical experience... That is, I mean poor and working class
people have the experience of suffering from the various ideas
presently popular in the upper-class circles. We are beginning to
understand that when these people start pointing their finger at
the enemy and scream kill, we had better watch our asses, because
it is usually poor and working class who wind up killing each other.
Everytime in history the rich became convinced of one particular
theory or another poor and working class people died in the millions.
During the second world war there was Imperialism, Nazism, feudalism,
and Stalinism. That little ideological trip cost the poor and working
class millions and millions of lives.
I took up earlier in this book a little Vietnamese girl running down
a highway in Vietnam with Napalm burning holes in her little body.
Well that little girl, who was running for her very life had something
very much in common with myself and my childhood friends. We were and
are running for our lives just as she was. We were running from the
enemy. For this little girl the enemy came from the sky, the ideology
was the domino theory.
Nick was and still is running for his life, he was a smalltime gangster
and the they was capitalism, i.e. rich people exploiting poor people
likes Nick's dad on the docks so that they could drive cadillacs.
Eddie was running away too, his experience was how the English were
and still are trying to colonise Northern Ireland and Eddies relatives
were trying to stop it by building the I.R.A.
Bob was running too...When I was a kid I was running from my stepdad
Harry. Harry was being destroyed down on the docks by the rich people.
He was a union man and the rich were trying to destroy the unions.
The problem with Harry was that he was pointing the gun at his own
stepkids instead of the fatcats. We were all running from something
that rich people and there intellectual lackies were trying to push
off on us.
Our experience is a common one.
Our history is a pyramid of skulls!
Our skulls!
A lot of these people who come from this other world are always trying
to get us killed in one way or another. Even when I read the letters in
the foregoing chapter of solidarity with my fight for amnesty I find
that these letters are permeated with ideological advice which if I
swallowed would be devastating to poor and working class people like
myself.
For many years now people have been trying to convince me of one or the
other ideologies. However I have no trust in any of it... Because
every time I turn around it is the Nick's, the eddies, the Bob's, the
Indians, the blacks, the little Vietnamese girl who are running for
there lives. It is pretty easy for these people with there nice cars
and nice houses coming down into the streets of New York, or
into the African jungles, or the Vietnamese country side in order to
convince us of the latest dominating theory in their circles. But it
is people like myself who make the pyramid of skulls throughout history.
What I am trying to say here is there ain,t nothing these people want
to give us. In fact most of the rules made up by them in society are
to protect their interests and not the Nick's or Eddies or the little
Vietnamese girl who was running for her life.
Take the latest round of death sentences being handed down. 15 and
16 year old kids who rob a store for twenty dollars and shoot somebody
in the process. They are to be executed by the state. When was the
last time the state executed a rich person for robbing millions from
working class people. When was the last time the state executed
somebody for sending working-class and poor kids off to awar that
they started with the domino theory.
How about the mining company officials on Bougainville today who
are responsible for a genocidal war against the people on the island
in order to open the copper mine for there profits.
No the death penalty is not for rich people. The death penalty was
invented by them in order to keep poor people in line. Remember how
they screamed the couple of times in history this got turned around.
The French revolution and the guillotine for the rich by the poeble!
The Bolsheviks who put the czar against the wall. Christ they are
still talking about that today.
On the other hand what about all the Vietnamese who were turned
into dust for the domino theory. Or the 55,000 G.I.s who came back
in bodybags. Oh yeah, the GI,s got a black stone in Washington D.C.
(Idealogically that stone is being used to prepare the next generation
for a new war)
In America nobody ever talks about the millions of Vietnamese
turned into dust by the bombings.No not at all because the people
controlling things are only interested in making rules to put down
anybody Vietnamese or American who get in the way.
NO THE RICH PEOPLE MAKE THE RULES AND THE IDEOLOGIES
TO KEEP POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE IN PLACE.
So don't come with any moral or ideological judgements of the Nick's
and Eddie,s or Bob's in this story. These guys are certainly not
angels. We are at least honest in saying that we were born into a
system which has never nor will never give us a fucking chance. A
system which is built up by oppressing the poor and working class
people.Your nice houses and cars and the rest , yes your standard
of living is kept up by exploiting people like us everywhere on this
fucking planet. So don't start telling us how we should try an survive
a death sentence, from the very day we were born, imposed on us by
the rich so that you can continue your bourgeois historical domination.
Go fuck your selves.
I don't like rich people or their lackeys.
I will never trust you because, Oh it is so fucking simple!, I don't
like you because I have been a victim , just as the little Vietnamese
girl was a victim. We were on the same side. You rich people with
your nice cars and houses are on the other side. Until the historical
inequalities built into this system are erased we are deadly enemies!
So long as there are rich and the poor we are deadly enemies. When
you talk about black mothers on welfare, or dope addicts, or criminals,
your talking about people who never had a chance in thisfucking
society. They are victims just as the little Vietnamese girl was a
victim.
And morals !
Nick and eddy and many other poor kids made their livings by selling
drugs to middle-class kids and rich kids coming in from the suburbs.
I remember the moral outrage about this stuff. Why there were articles
in the newspapers everyday about this stuff. Our kids are being
destroyed and all that shit. I even remember seeing articles about
middle-class kids running down to the village to buy pot or LSD being
a fucking communist conspiracy! We thought that it was great to see
kids from the suburbs come down into our part of town slumming.
Later on they would protest against the race riots and the war
in Vietnam.
Well it was people
like Nick and Eddie
Zeke and Clem who got
these kids to let
their hair down.
Let these kids know that their shit stinks just like our shit. The
Nick's and the eddies got all these kids pointed in a direction which
led to that the American bourgeoisie suffered the biggest military
defeat in history in Vietnam. The pot and LSD that the Nick's and
Eddies were selling to these kids was the motor which made these kids
drop out a short period of time in history. That drop out saved just
as many Vietnamese lives as the political organisations did.
I personally would like to thank the Nick's and the eddies of the world.
You were small time gangsters trying to survive in a world you never
understood. But you turned the youth of America on and got them in a
critical moment of history to turn their backs on their bourgeois
parents. And to think that those college kids still today think that
they were solely responsible for helping the Vietnamese win the war!
That is just a crock of bullshit.
We were watching you people long before you even became aware of it.
These kidswere digging music of black people who's forefathers were
slaves! These kids were buying drugs like pot and LSD from the eddies
and Nick's of the world and that money was financing the IRA and the
Cuban Revolutionaries! These kids were buying paintings and lots of
other shit in the village and that money was feeding workers on the
picket lines. This stuff was going on before these kids even new what
race riots were. These kids helped finance the civil rights movement.
The blacks who were dealing drugs were sending money to Martin Luther
King: These kids think probably even today think that the struggle
against inequality started on campus around 1968.
Well, guess what in 1917 the Bolsheviks had the hookers working in
the party. The Bolsheviks understood poor and oppressed people in
1917 and it worked. The point being that historically there have
been poor and working class kids that in very specials skills,
(sometimes skills which the bourgeoisie consider criminal) have had
an enormous effect on the outcome of historical struggles.
The hookers in the Bolshevik party are one example.
The Nick's and the Eddies of the sixties are another example. So I
hope the reader of these lines does not raise any bourgeois moral
arguments or political arguments which condemn my childhood friends.
There roll in history at this particular time saved a lot of people's
lives especially in Vietnam where in 1963 the American bourgeoisie
decided to take over the roll of the French colonialists after being
military defeated.
These street kids turned on a whole generation. The music came from
black slaves. the drugs came from Cuban, Mexican and Vietnamese
peasants. LSD came from Harvard, but peyote came from the Indians.
In fact the only thing the rich and middle-class kids had at this time
was money!, which they usually got rom their parents.
So no moral crap! O.K.
By the way. Max this is an answer to your letter dated 21/5/95.
The same old discussion of the "we,s"----"they" discussion.
In ending up this stuff on morals and intellectual snobbery I would
like to quote the words of a very old and wonderful blackman Willy!
Willy used to sit on the steps with us kids in the neighbourhood. Willy
was always there. This very old black man. And I remember to this very
day the words he often said to us kids on the hot, humid summer nights
of New York City. Willie would say:
"Watchit boy, this nigger ain,t got nothin never from rich whiteman!"
Oh Willie, you wonderful old man--how right you were... All these
years we sat with you on the steps and that was what you were trying
to hammer into our heads. Willie how fucking right you were. I think
Willie deserves a statue right next old Abe Lincoln. Because this man
new what the bottom line in the fight between the have,s and the has
not,s as Willie use to put. Willie with those few words new more about
class struggle then all the fucking liberals alive today.
Hats off to Willie a great black old man!
Warm Regards
Bob Malecki
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