We need to make a great break from the stalin-trotsky opposition and recover a lot of lost material from the past, lost because the dicotomies of the past distorted reality to a degree that we have lost much of our valuable history.
It is easy enough to see the brillant minds of the Trotskysist tradition (CLR James being a prime example) partly because they were uncompromised by state power. It is harder altogether to separate out the shit from the clay in the Stalinist tradition (in so far as such a classification holds).
My personal revelation came in going through old CPAustralia newspapers. At first read, the language, mode of expression and references of the paper in the 1940's (when the CP was a very significant social force) looked like that of the 1950's (when the CP was clearly in decline). Something was missing however and it took me some time to work out waht it was.
Despite all the rhetoric even in the 1950's there were articles of merit - things that rang true or contained insight. However, in the 1940's even when the rhetoric was more obscene then the more urbane articles of the 50's, insight and truth of most of what was written jumped off the page.
One article in praise of Stalin (you can imagine how unbashed this worship was in 1944) which at first sight seem to confirm all the worst steortypes, was in fact a very subtle critique of Australian leadership in the war (I suspect that much attributed to Stalin in this peice was imaginative rather then copied phrases and propaganda).
There is no need to make any apologies for Stalinism, but there is a general need to recognise that class struggle still took place and gained some sought of direct expression within this context. Likewise, there was also an explosion of theoretical insights heavily justified by quotes but not always expressing comfortable ideas. Some of it makes heavy reading, some is remarkable fresh and some clearly the inept attempts of bureacrats to justfy themselves (much more so in the 1950's).
I say this in passing, but believe that one way forward is to recover much more of our past and dispense with some of the easier means of classification. To me, the reason for the CPAs decline in 1945 became a bit of an obsession (having joined in 1975 after the party split from Moscow in 1972).
The arguments raised by apparatichiks and leaders for the decline at the time were simply echoes even in the "new" party that I joined. They were all contigent explanations and all unsatisfactory both historically and politically. I mention this because the CPA never recovered and declined at the same rate despite the obvious political changes it had made - it dissolved itself in 1991 (well rather the leaders dissapeared with much of the assets by having it dissolve).
The point being that unable to understand its past the CP failed to grasp a future. The left as a whole is in a similar position.
--- Message Received --- From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com> To: "Lbo-Talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 23:25:38 +0200 Subject: Dimitrov
To Greg & Charles:
After reading :
Unity of the Working Class against Fascism Concluding speech before the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/unity.htm#s1
which Charles was so kind to provide, I see Georgi in a different light. Let me explain.
His opening line at the 7th comintern congress that goes:
Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
has always put me off. Dimitrov went eyeball to eyeball with the fascists and stared them down (the Leipzig trial) only to become a perfect stalinist stooge, and he dutifully demonstrates his loyalty to the chief by mouthing the comintern BS about "dictatorship of the baddest meanest finance capital". Why not the fattest, most constipated owners of textile mills?
However, the speech Charles sent me, where GD traces an overall panorama of world fascism and antifascist struggles, shows that the guy knows what he's talking about much more than he let on at the 7th. Shame, really, that a mind like GD's was imprisoned in the carcass of an apparatchik.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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