Pinochet and bourgeois democratic right

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Sun Nov 29 05:49:03 PST 1998


Chris Burford:
>BTW I have taken the liberty of copying the article about the Chilean
>socialist foreign minister to marxism-unmoderated. If LP can defend his
>position there rather than on a closed list, including against all the
>noise that he (and I) are mensheviks, that would be a more impressive test
>of his position. After all if I should be denounced as a liberal social
>democrat, why should LP be protected from being denounced as a menshevik?

Why wouldn't I take part in a discussion on marxism-unmoderated? That is a no brainer. It is filled with people who operate under party discipline. You defend the Democratic Left line, while the 1001 Trotskyites defend their own party lines. It is a caricature of the 1911 Russian duma, where people make endless speeches without budging an inch.

Doug and I created lists on panix in order to break away from that kind of dead subculture. In Doug's case, he wanted to include non-Marxists, so he pays over $100 per month for the privilege as opposed to the $70 I pay. I wouldn't mind paying $250 a month as long as the content remains about the same.

The one thing you will always hear on our lists is individual voices. Even when people belong to a party, they adapt to the living culture of the list and try to come up with fresh perspectives. For example, Lou Paulsen of the Workers World Party wrote a truly wonderful piece on Artaud. For the last couple of days there have been exchanges on Luigi Nono, as well as thoughts on permanent revolution from a non-party Marxist from India. If some of the Trotskyite idiots on marxism-unmoderated were around for this discussion, it would have degenerated in a heart beat. They would have denounced him for not "upholding" permanent revolution, then would have started shrieking at each other for not having completely correct understandings themselves. People like Ulhas used to show up all the time on the old Spoons lists, but were driven away by the madness. Nobody ever complains on the panix list. All I hear are compliments on the quality of the discussion. Even in the case of Charles and Henry, I am ready to accept them back after the idiotic "hate crime" discussion has been given a chance to recede into memory.

As we know from experience, you enjoy that kind of party vs. party subculture and are bored by discussions of Luigi Nono, etc. At one time I was puzzled why you would persist in keeping an insane flame war between Shining Path supporters alive on the Spoons marxism list when all sorts of independent marxists were jumping out the window to flee the babble. I remember getting mail from a group of German marxists pleading with me to DO something about the madness. My hands were tied, I explained, because the list was unmoderated. Now my hands are untied.

By the way, it never occurred to me that you were a party member yourself, since you kept that fact hidden. Now that you acknowledge being a member of Democratic Left, the whole thing makes sense in retrospect. As a member of vanguard party yourself, you seek out the company of other vanguard party members to make speeches to. Meanwhile, I want to put as much distance as I can between myself and all the rest of you. Like my dear departed dad Yankel once said when customers complained about his merchandise, "Stop making with the speeches already."

For people's information, Democratic Left is one of the shards of the British Communist Party which began to break apart after the Eurocommunist turn threw the party into a crisis. It seems to consist of middle-class people who have adapted to Blair's new Labor politics, such as Burford does. What is truly bizarre is that this rightwing adaptation is coupled with a defense of Stalinist orthodoxy, as when Burford denounced me for going against the decisions made at the 1935 Comintern. The only 1935 gathering that I respect is the Benny Goodman concert at Carnegie Hall.

The old-line working-class members seem to have scattered in different directions. These folks had a certain charm. If you recall the delicious British comedy "Morgan" about an artist with Trotskyist sympathies who fancies himself a gorilla, his mom was an old-line CPer who forgave Morgan his gorilla fixations but couldn't tolerate his Trotskyism. "Where did I go wrong," she asked.

Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)



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