Leftist Flacks for Saddam and ObL> Was Re: ex-radical

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Feb 5 14:11:31 PST 2003


DoreneFC at aol.com wrote:


>Re Doug's comments about the Commies and ObL, two questions:
>--Which commies? Where? When? Which Decade?

This is a thankless, dangerous task, but I'll take a brief stab. The original Russian revo was basically a good thing. Of course there were plenty of problems with Leninism itself - secrecy, hierarchy, a lack of internal democracy - but those can't be separated from the czarist state they were rebelling against. Stalin sucked - the revolution betrayed, to coin a phrase. The USSR after de-Stalinization wasn't such a bad place, as far as I can tell. But whenever western leftists get on their high horse and denouce commie repression, they have to say how they would cope with attacks from the capitalists, led by the U.S. That's especially true of Cuba, 90 miles from the U.S. and all. And there's a lot to admire, despite the repression, in Cuba.

The CPUSA also did many admirable things, even when they were apologizing for Stalinism. What other predominantly white group gave a damn about black people in the 1930s? They also did a lot of fine work organizing tenants into associations and workers into unions.

No doubt someone will mount that proverbial high horse and tell me I'm forgetting about the history of repression and lies. I'm not, which is why I'm ambivalent and not a cheerleader. But, again, how do you deal with capital strikes and external hostility? Ask Allende, the Sandinistas, and Chavez.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list