At 08:57 PM 5/22/2005, Marvin Gandall wrote:
>OK. Suppose you (Charles Brown) present us with the evidence, and let's
have done with this interminable whining.
^^^^ CB: No whining from me. I'm grinning. Kelley asked me a question. So I answered it.
The whiner in this whole thing is Michael Pug. What a fake ass move , dropping off of the list because somebody hurt his feelings. Now that's whiney.
^^^^^
MG: What sentences specifically in the post by Stephen
>Schwartz below do you consider to be "anti-communist", and why? The
problem,
>it seems to me, is that you largely equate the CPUSA and the former Soviet
>Union with "communism" while the past and present critics - social
>democrats, Trotskyists, independent Marxists, and anarchists - do not.
^^^^^ CB: No need to equate CPUSA and SU with _all_ "communism". The CPUSA is/was communist. The SU was building socialism, with Communist Party leadership. There are examples of "communism" -the main actual examples.
I agree that the past and present critics do not agree, although there are nuances among the groups you mention. I disagree with them significantly. So, some of this criticism is anti-communist. Not all of it is. My experience with Michael Pugliese from this list is that he falls into the anti-c groupings ^^^^^^^^^
>That's a legitimate matter for debate on the left, even if today it no
longer has the same urgency it once did. My own view is that the critics
have often tended towards a Manichean rather a dialectical view of these
(contradictory) institutions, which perhaps makes them guilty of
exaggeration - but not of what used to commonly be called "class treason",
>the charge you're effectively levelling at MP and his ideological kin.
^^^^^ CB: As I say, you are kind of bunching a wide range of the left altogether on this. MP, as I say , from my years of reading his posts here, is anti-c. Granted, a lot of his stuff is not very clear, as others have remarked concerning his posting style, so some of this is inference concerning slanderous innuendo. If he posts twenty-five sites from google that are criticizing Stalin, and CP's, he isn't actually saying it. But there is a sort of hint.
^^^^^
This kind of anathema was frequently pronounced in the old CP's to stifle
both outside critics and potential doubters in their own ranks - >
>MG
^^^^^^^ CB: Yea, well the critical difference here is we are not in a CP. I don't have any ability to stifle MP. I have no rank here. I'm just a rank and filer. So, I can just let her rip without any fear that I'm exercising any power.
^^^^^^^
Kelley: Thanks. Now that was helpful. With Ian's help offlist, I've been able to grasp what the dispute is just a little better. Like you, I couldn't see what was anti-communist in Stephen Schwartz's letter. Now I'm starting to get a klew x4.
appreciatively,
k
^^^^^
CB: You had asked me a question. Is it answered now ? The direct answer ,as far as I am concerned, is that the CPUSA and the Soviet Union, with all their faults, were part of the important first efforts to build socialism, and then communism. So, self-identified leftists such as MP, who use much of the same discourse and materials as the rightwing anti-c's in arguing against same, are anti-c, despite their self-identification as left. It is rightwing content with left phraesology or terminology.