From owner-marxism-international  Mon Apr 21 17:02:15 1997
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 17:01:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: who's a fascist?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.95.970421142411.6409A-100000@gamera.syr.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.95L.970421163737.16981A-100000@inibara.cc.columbia.edu>

On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, Siddharth Chatterjee wrote:

> So the great revolutionaries of M-I have ganged up together to beat up
> on some kids (who are easy to beat) from the RMC in Buffalo. What a
> significant accomplishment of "red solidarity" which includes along
> with good people like Doug Henwood, Louis Proyect also the likes of
> Rodwell, Malecki, Levy, Austin and others. The Lord knows, they should
> congratulate themselves on this final accomplishment of the "united
> front" (especially after the departure of the "Stalinists") against
> the RMC instead of against the main capitalist or fascist enemy (the
> function of the united front according to Dimitrov). 
> 

Louis: Don't include me in an anti-RMC united front. I have sorted out my
problems with these comrades. I must say, however, that something that
they and all other incipient "vanguard" formations have in common is that
they seem to lack the ability to develop their own ideas without being
locked in combat with others. I would urge them and the Trotskyists to not
constantly try to lock various opponents on their radar screens, but
develop a critique of capitalist society instead. 

When I write about various topics that have captured my attention over the
past several years--from computers and socialism to the political economy
of cattle-ranching--there is little need for me to "destroy" any leftist
opponent. I am simply trying to apply a Marxist method to some social
phenomenon.

Another way that people can do Marxism without ripping somebody else's
throat out is to polemicize against public figures. Certainly, there were
was very little objection to my skewering the Analytical Marxists. Well,
just from Justin but that's the way it goes. Whatever happen to him,
anyhow. There's somebody I love debating with.

There are millions of topics that should be demanding our analytical
skills as Marxists: Zaire, Albania, etc. I find it dismaying that so few
people simply read a newspaper each day and comment on some item from a
Marxist perspective. This, after all, is what Marx and Engels did for the
better part of a decade.

What drives people to get into these death-lock embraces like a couple of
praying mantises is mostly a misunderstanding of how the Marxist movement
functioned at the turn of the century. For every sharp polemic between
Lenin and Trotsky, there were a dozen articles that they wrote that simply
tried to explain Russian social reality. After Stalin came to power, the
polemical style was transformed into a method for political suppression. 
The end result of a party fight in the USSR would be exile or worse. In
the Trotskyist world, nobody ever got exiled or killed. They just got
expelled. And expelled and expelled and expelled.

We have an opportunity on these Spoons lists to create a new political
culture. There is no need to draw the class line around every contested
political question. We should assume that we are all against capitalism
and for socialism. When we have differences, as I have with Doug over
black nationalism, we should discuss them calmly and without rancor.
Furthermore, we should not be on a constant lookout for who we can fight
with. Let's put our energy into highlighting the contradictions of
capitalism and uniting revolutionaries internationally. 




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