<< I'm glad that Ken has posted his full account of the evidence, since to my mind it is less than conclusive as regards Mattick, let alone demonstrating that Rakesh is a fascist. >>
As Rakesh acknowledged, he introduced the logic in his accusations against Malcolm X. I certainly would not have initiated this thread otherwise. I don't write polemics against naifs and innocents. Except for Rakesh's peculiar logic, I would not hold him responsible for Mattick's error.
<< First the documentation is less than perfect. >>
True, but it's the best I can do until I recover my archive.
<< But taking Ken on his word, as of course I am happy to do, there are still a lot of questions. It does not quite add up in this version to 'Mattick organising Strasser's speaking tour' as we were originally promised. First the tour is not attributed to Mattick, but to 'the organisation'. Which? The Living Marxism that Mattick wrote for was not an organisation, but a journal. Was it the Councils of Correspondence that organised the tour? And the leaflet that was included in the pile of Living Marxisms, was it even a part of the publication? >>
I think it was, but I'm not positive. In the days when I was accumulating sectarian publications, the South Side Chicago SP milieu included Wobblies (I was an IWW member in 1961 and 1962) and all the old sects, including council communists. Albert Weisbord published a bilingual English-Italian socialist magazine in Chicago. My high school geometry teacher was an Oehlerite. Stammites threw monthly parties where we hand-addressed envelopes to mail anti-Franco newspapers into Spain. (Learning from that experience, we used the same technique in 1968 to send copies of our illegal paper Vietnam GI to active-duty soldiers in Nam, and Omkeer to South African soldiers in the 1980s.) My understanding from that crowd, which always included a lot of friendly sectarian give-and-take, was that Paul Mattick had been responsible for every C.C. activity during its heyday, much as Marty Glaberman was responsible for every Facing Reality activity when I was in that organization. That is the basis of my interpretation.
<< After all, memory can play tricks. >>
Absolutely true, which is why I hope I can retrieve this material, and why I've avoided other comments from memory that would be appropriate in these discussions. My SNCC archive in particular is far more important. I'm as certain as I can be that the leaflet was as I described it, partly because of the anguish it caused me, and partly because my silent thought was that it should have come from "Dying Marxism."
<< My two favourite books on German Fascism, Robert Black's Fascism in Germany and Guerin's 'Fascism and Big Business' both quote Strasser at length, as demonstration of the coalescence of Fascism and business and the suppression of the 'plebeian' element of the NSDAP. Does this make Black and Guerin fascists? I don't think so. Rather, one needs to know what the context of the speeches were. >>
These are almost certainly quotes from Gregor Strasser, true? He was purged (murdered) in 1934. Otto was his younger brother, who survived and carried the torch. My writings on Nazism quote prominent Nazis all the time, but I would not organize a speaking tour for Tom Metzger or Wiliam Pierce.
<< Also, if Ken is right about the date, it might be pointed out that at that time the entirety of the Communist International was defending the Hitler- Stalin pact of the time - an alliance with the Hitler government. By contrast Strasser had broken with Hitler in 1930 - not wishing to make any apologies on his behalf. Does it follow then that attendance at, say, the Brecht Forum qualifies as support for Brecht, ergo for the Hitler-Stalin pact, and ergo for Fascism. That chain of reasoning seems no less tenuous than this identification of Hitler-Strasser-a leaflet-Living Marxism-Mattick-Rakesh. >>
See above about the thread's logic. In addition, you have conflated two dates. 1939 was the date of the LM anti-Bolshevik article. As I wrote, the Strasser tour of North America was postwar, I think 1946.
<< That said, I do endorse Ken's critique of Mattick's spontaneism (though Rakesh would not). >>
Jim Farmelant wrote,
<< As I understand it doesn't neo-Nazi, Thomas Metzger take a quasi-socialist line? If it wasn't for the fact that whenever he refers to the working class, he always specifies the "white working class," you could almost mistake him for a Marxist. >>
Yes, Metzger has called himself a Strasserite.
Ken Lawrence