Appreciation to Charles for this balanced but precise reply, which I had put to one side for closer reading.
Still worth it, and still relevant for consideration for its applications today.
Chris Burford
At 21/02/02 09:34 -0500, you wrote:
> Dimitrov
>Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 23:25:38 +0200
>From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com>
>
>^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Hakki,
>
>Yes, keep thinking about it. You still have not made an argument as to why
>"open
>terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most
>imperialist elements of finance capital " is not a splendid definition .
>Nor do I recall you providing a different defintion. Making jokes and
>hurling insults is not an argument, and I'm not the type who wouldn't
>notice that they are not an argument. Kneejerk anti-Stalinism is not an
>argument either. The fact that Stalin organized mass murder and
>represssion in the Party and in the SU does not mean ,amazingly, that
>he didn't have a brain , as Justin thinks, or couldn't make theoretical
>contributions. That's just the way the world is. It is not neat and tidy
>such that " evil = dumb " . Sometimes bad people do smart things or have
>good ideas. This is a species of the rule against ad hominem in logic.
>You have to make arguments against Stalin's arguments, not his personal
>immorality. So what is your argument ,not your attitude ?
>
>Of course, part of Dimitrov's argument is the whole of Lenin's argument in
>_Imperialism_, in which finance capital is located as the bourgeois ruling
>class in this period. Then people like Herbert Aptheker have done
>historical work demonstrating the connections between the Nazis and
>finance capital. So, you are going to have to make a pretty big argument.
>
>Perhaps this will help. Look at the U.S. right now. The ruling class is
>finance capital. Bush etc. is an agent of finance capital, as was Clinton
>( Bush, Reagan, Carter....) Yet, that is not obvious. Similarly, the
>German ruling class did not make it obvious that the Nazis ( or the prior
>governments) were their agents. The bourgeoisie do not rule openly.
>
>Perhaps that "openly" is the problem. The idea is not that finance capital
>ruled openly, but that the terrrorist dictatorship was open, whereas in
>"normal" bourgeois democracy the terrorism of the state is not as open and
>notorious as in fascism.
>
>Charles
>
>^^^^^^^
>
>
>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.
>
>Hakki