> To be quite honest with you, I think that you, and
> Thomas S. too, don't have a political purpose in
> this.
> You strike me as morally nauseated by the crimes of
> Stalinism and Bolshevism, and disgusted by groups or
> people who don't hate them as much as you do.
You are right to point out that I am morally nauseated by the crimes of Stalinism and Bolshevism. There is, I will admit, even a personal element that contributes to my nausea: as a young man I duped myself into wasting a few years of my life in one such organization. I'm still somewhat bitter about that and will admit that such bitterness lends energy to my vitriol. Make of that what you will, but I thought that I should be honest about it.
However, there is ALSO a political component. Unlike you, I dont think that Stalinism, etc. is just an aberration of the past. Democratic centralism (DC)continues to have its hold over a certain part of the Left. DC creates an undemocratic structure within those organizations that stick to that model (more or less). In additon, these organizations, because they consider themselves a vanguard, attempt to get hegemony (disguised by the euphemism "unity") over anti-capitalist movements and arrogate to themselves the imperative to gain hegemony by any means necessary. Chuck0 has done a pretty good job of detailing how one such group- Workers World Party- operates accordingly. WWP is not the ONLY one of these groups that work in this way. It just happens to be the most succesful one in the United States.
This type of peculiar "negativity"- I am sure that Marx and Hegel would roll over in their grave if they knew about the distortion of the concept-whereby any enemy of our enemy is our friend is also a legacy of Stalinism/Bolshevism. According to this line of thinking, the Taliban, the Ba'athists, etc are OBJECTIVELY anti-imperialists and therefore on the side of progressives.
Democratic centralism, hegemony over the movement (the Party vs. the multitudes), and this type of obscene negativity are three components of Stalinism/bolshevism that do indeed need to be criticized. They did not go away with Kruschev or the end of the Proleterian Cultural Revolution; they are alive and kicking. So, this is my point: unlike you, I see the bolshevik legacy still exercising influence and a very worthy candidate of my criticism.
-Thomas
===== <<You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel>>
Bloodhound Gang, "The Bad Touch"
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