Reply to Trotskyist Part II ======================================================================== 288 Date: Sun, 29 Nov 92 19:44:51 EST From: SCIENCE@MITVMA Subject: Reply to Trots 5 by MIM To: NYTRANSFER@IGC.APC.ORG The following is a reply to excerpts of an essay by a Trotskyist working with the Organizer. The Trotskyist position comes first followed by the MIM response. We would like the reader to notice that this is about the third back-and-forth between the authors and the Trotskyists still haven't faced up to the fact that the crimes of the status quo are greater than the mistakes of Stalinist and Maoist revolution. The Trotskyists can only blame the all-powerful Stalin-devil for preventing them from making a successful revolution anywhere in the world. We Maoists say there has been no Trotskyist revolution anywhere because Trotskyism is not a proletarian ideology. ____________________________________________________ (Trotskyist criticism of MIM) Topic 187 Response 5 of 5 More on Lies re Maoism & Pol Pot/MIM from: dwalters@igc.apc.org in gen.socialism 10:08 pm Nov 24, 1992 Revolutionary Communist Party, the MIM, and Maoists the world over are inculcated with, manifests itself with the carrying of Mao's portraits on demonstrations, the erection of thousands of statues of his holiness Mao all over China (while he was alive no less!) ------- MIM replies: MIM has already addressed this in its critique of personality cults. Send $1 to the address below for "On Personality Cults." For the record, Mao publicly discredited the personality cult constructed around him in 1972. He said that it was actually constructed by his opponents within the government --especially Lin Biao who had an interest in having himself named Mao's holy successor. In contrast, the Trotskyists have always held an implicitly individualist view of history given the nature of their attacks on Stalin instead of his line, things like calling him "a grey blur" as dwalters did earlier. If Stalin weren't attacked personally all the time by the bourgeois psychologists, biographers, Trotskyists and social-democrats, we doubt that anyone would have constructed a personality cult around him. (end MIM response) _____________________________ (continued Trotskyist criticism) As for your version of 'history' it is ironic that you quote a very fine biography of J. Stalin by Deutscher. Even a cursory reading of this book would indicate the extreme loyalty to the Communist Party held by Trotsky which you challenge by completely misreading ONE quote from the Stalin biography. Trotsky was criticized by some of his own Russian supporters for this very loyalty to Party and it norms, even as bureaucratic as they had become. There is NO EVIDENCE what ever of the charges you make. These same charges were made, at one time or an other, against EVERY member of the Central Committee of the Party!! Get real comrades. __________________________ MIM replies: No actually, Trotsky really did stand out in his particular strategy of betrayal that the majority of the Central Committee saw through. Subsequent accusations could only echo Trotsky's fundamental departure. It is typical of the dogmatist that s/he cannot admit facts. From listening to the above, one would think Trotsky did not in FACT make his Clemenceau declaration. He did and that is a fact available in a number of books. What's the matter dwalters? Why don't you just defend the idea of the Clemenceau declaration the way Trotsky did? Or maybe you haven't read that much Trotsky? I see none of Trotsky's defense of why he was calling for civil war in Russia EVEN WHILE HITLER WAS MARCHING THROUGH EASTERN EUROPE. Perhaps I should do a better job defending Trotsky than you do: Trotsky said that he wanted the civil war to replace incompetent leaders. He used the excuse that only in such a way could the social revolution defend its best interests. That only brings this to our next point. The proletariat did not like Trotsky's ideas and did not find it a good idea to fight a civil war to put one individual in instead of Stalin. The Russian proletariat understood that proletarian solidarity was much more important than putting Trotsky in power. History is not made by brilliant individuals. It is made by classes. Well dwalters, try denying this quote from Trotsky just before he died: "The conquests of the October revolution will serve the people only if they prove themselves capable of dealing with the Stalinist bureaucracy as in their day they dealt with the Tsarist bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie." That is a call for armed civil war within the Soviet Union. When did Trotsky say this? After Hitler took Czechoslavakia and invaded France. Why don't you Trotskyists try to explain why this was a good idea instead of attacking Stalin personally? While we are at it, we'd better give you the Clemenceau declaration so you can explain how the leadership of Trotsky was more important than the solidarity of the proletariat in face of Hitler's invasion. "At the beginning of the imperialist war [i.e. of the First World War] the French bourgeoisie had at its head a blundering government, a government without rudder and sail. Clemenceau and his group were in opposition to it. Regardless of war and military censorship, regardless even of the fact that the Germans stood 80 kilometers from Paris (Clemenceau said 'Precisely because of this') he waged a furious struggle against the government's petty bourgeois irresolution and flabbiness. . . Clemenceau's group took office and by means of a more consistent policy.... secured victory." (Pro-Trotskyist scholar Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky: 1921-9, pp. 349-50) In our opinion, Stalin took too long to have Trotsky assassinated. In the midst of World War II, Trotsky was calling for civil war in Russia. The proletariat could no longer afford the luxury of tolerating Trotskyist betrayal. (end of MIM response) ______________________ (Trotskyist criticism continued) You state 'classes make history and that various LINES won out inside the Bolshevik party.' True enough. This is what the fight in the Communist Party was about. The Stalin faction represented the new bureaucratic caste dominant by 1927 in the Party. The Left Opposition, in my opinion, represented the proletarian and internationalist wing of the Party. The Stalin faction used bureaucratic means to assure its domination OVER the party as a means to DESTROY it (by 'it' I mean its historic program). We now ____________________ Reply from MIM: To avoid concluding that Trotskyism is not proletarian, the Trotskyists must alternately praise socialism and villify the Stalin regime as no different than the capitalists or based on some fictitious class of people neither capitalist nor proletarian. Herein lies the problem: the reader must decide if the Stalin program favored proletarian interests or not. We at MIM believe the Communist Party line under Stalin was IN ACTION the best in proletarian interests up to that point. It matters not a bit that the Trotskyists compare the Soviet Union to their dogmas and find the Stalinist line lacking. No where in the world did the proletariat do better than under Stalinist and Maoist leadership. (end of MIM response) _______________________ (Trotskyist criticism continued) On the Shanghai massacre of 1927 I would refer readers to Harold Issacs book 'The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution' by MIT press. Its clear that the MIM is void of any understanding of this revolution. For starters ALL 'Trotskyists' everywhere, except in Greece, were still IN the communist parties of their various countries!! So I could charge the MIM with lying here by I'll pass it off as ignorance on their part. There were almost no organized Trotskyist tendencies anywhere outside of Russia and the Ukraine. So the charge that 'What did the Trotskyists do to stop the massacre in Shanghai?', falls flat on its face. Parenthetically the Left Opposition OPPOSED the strategy of welcoming in Chang kai-shek to Shanghai with open arms once it was clear what was happening in China. It was the Stalin faction that the Chinese Communists looked to for tactical and political advice (as H. Issacs points out in his outstanding book). The Left Opposition vigorously fought this betrayal of working-class independence. The MIM mouths off about the 'strategic and tactical questions that the Stalinists had to confront in Shanghai.' Would you care to explain what those 'tactics' were that resulted in the death of thousands of Communist workers?... at least so we can avoid them in the future! ________________________________ MIM replies: Those mistakes were avoided in the future by none other than Mao Zedong who successfully brought off the Chinese Revolution. In contrast, Trotskyists in China did not learn from their mistakes. (They couldn't since their line was never proletarian to begin with.) They played no positive role in the Chinese Revolution, unlike Mao who followed Stalin's line. Perhaps you should read some more Trotsky, who opposed guerrilla warfare as adventure. He would have continued work in the Chinese cities, just without the KMT. He wanted a proletarian basis for the party and hence could not support Mao's successful strategy of "surrounding the city with the countryside." Trotsky's strategy would have resulted in the slaughter of many more Chinese than had happened. It was thanks to Stalin and Mao that the CCP learned from the massacre and moved to base the revolution in the countryside. The martyrs of 1927 would have been for naught if Trotsky's anti-peasant, anti-national liberation line had taken hold, just as the Trotskyist line has been for naught everywhere in the rest of the world. The rest of the critic's response is disingenuous. There were certainly separate Trotskyist tendencies all around the world by the time Trotsky died; although they were minute and divorced from the world's oppressed. It is dishonest for the Trotskyists to try to claim credit for the success of the Stalinist line by claiming fictitious membership in communist parties. Sorry, there is just no way for you to worm out of the question: if Trotskyism is so good, why doesn't the proletariat ever take it up and save the day? (end of MIM response) _________________ (Trotskyist criticism continued) As for the Nazis coming to power with the support of Trotsky... Again no evidence is cited except the one unquoted but noted page number in the Stalin biography. We do know that the Nazis came to power with out the Stalinist leadership of the German Communist Party ordering any resistance. We know that they completely abandoned a united front approach to the masses of Social Democratic workers who mistakenly looked to there own leadership for a way to fight Hitler. We know also that hundreds of thousands of Communist, Social Democratic AND Trotskyist workers DIED in concentration camps. We also know that perhaps up to 43000 Red Army officers were purged and killed from the Red Army PRIOR to Hitler's invasion (the warning signs of which were IGNORED by the Stalin leadership in Russia). We know that this resulted in the loss of millions of square miles of Ukrainian and Russian land and the loss of MILLIONS of Red Army troops at the hands of the Nazi hordes. Your saying the Communists in Moscow knew this was going to happen?? _______________ MIM replies: Maybe if Trotsky hadn't testified to the U.S. Congress and hadn't virtually syndicated himself in bourgeois papers, the Russian proletariat wouldn't have made such grievous sacrifices. As it happened, Trotsky foreshadowed the Cold War by denouncing Stalinism as "totalitarianism" in front of bourgeois and Western working class audiences alike. With people like Trotsky whipping up anti-Stalinist hatred, we are not surprised that the British, French and Americans took up the policy of appeasement. Maybe if Trotsky and his ilk had kept their mouths shut, the imperialists would have been forced to enter the war earlier and prevent the slaughter of Russian citizens who learned through self-reliance the strength of socialism. Internally, perhaps the Soviet Union would have been slightly more united in the face of the Nazi onslaught. Thanks to the Stalinist LINE, the Soviet Union did industrialize barely in time to defeat the Nazis, the most powerful military machine, whereas the Russians had lost their war with Japan in 1905 and their war with Germany in the First World War even when Germany was fighting on two fronts. Again no where does the critic feel obliged to show where Trotskyism in ACTION was better than Stalinism. At best it amounts to backseat, hindsight driving. At worst it is a glossing over of Trotskyist idealism and betrayal. If Trotskyism were really superior to Stalinism, in World War II we would have seen lots of successful Trotskyist movements arise in the ruins of many a state shaken by World War II. Instead, we see Stalinist revolutions come to power in China and Albania and we see no Trotskyist revolutions despite the many opportunities. So in hindsight who made more mistakes? (Actually we can't call it a mistake that Trotskyism makes no contribution to proletarian revolution. By this time, it takes some deliberate idealism and opposition to the proletariat.) For more on the common bourgeois charges repeated by our Trotskyist critic above, we suggest the reader order the "Stalin Pack" for more of the history. It's $5.) (end of MIM response) _____________________________ (Trotskyist criticism continued) hands all over occupied Europe AND Asia. Trotskyists lead their own guerrilla movements in Greece, Indonesia, Vietnam, and in China and participated as active fighters in Germany itself, the Warsaw ghetto, France and other countries as well. _____________ MIM replies: As is often the case, Trotskyists can only claim to be sensible by rejecting Trotsky. Guerrilla warfare as copied from Mao Zedong this century was opposed systematically by Trotsky himself: "It must be said openly: calculations based on guerilla adventure correspond entirely to the general nature of Stalinist policy." At least Trotsky knew who should get credit for the strategy of communist guerrilla warfare. Classic Trotskyist strategy is to focus revolutionary dreams on the urban proletariat, regardless of the situation in each country. Sources: Read Trotsky himself. Read Deutscher, but also understand the historical context of what Trotsky the poet was saying when. We suggest Kostas Mavrakis, On Trotskyism and Bruce Franklin's introduction to "The Essential Stalin."