[lbo-talk] Political abstension

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Sun Sep 28 01:53:07 PDT 2008


I suspect that if Loren or Gerald were in Vietnam in 1945, or Spain in 1936, they would be arguing against the revolution, on the grounds that there were leaders involved, or bloodshed was likely, or that the class struggle should not be mixed up with which political elite was in charge.

The issue is not Left Opposition vs Stalinism, but whether or not you think that the struggle for political power is an issue for the working class.

In essence Loren's position is political abstension. He considers the national question to be a distraction from the Peter-pure workers struggle (that exists in such a form only in his head). That is what is so disingenuous in this appeal to the Vietnamese Trotskyists, and their struggle to liberate the country.

Gerald reveals the symbolic uses of the Vietnamese Trotskyists by putting them in the same category as the Kronstadt Sailors. Of course, it was Trotsky who commanded the assault on the short-lived Kronstadt soviet. The Vietnamese Trotskyists would presumably have thought him right to do so.

Loren puts the Vietnamese Trotskyists in with Rosa Luxemburg. In his isolation, Trotsky was guarded in his criticisms of Rosa Luxemburg, but the truth is that he did not share her worship of spontaneity:

"Rosa's theory of spontaneity ...By the fact that it was often directed against Lenin's work of building up a revolutionary apparatus, it revealed ... its reactionary features." http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/06/lux.htm



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list