Serious topic - ask the expert: Marxism

[stringtapper]

But you're getting back to all the historical details.

I'm asking you how this grim reality makes you feel.

The fact that I personally most likely won't see it is neither here nor there to me. I don't fret about things beyond my control.

Well that can't be true can it? Otherwise why would you have spent your life studying this stuff in the first place?

Or did you only realize after you studied it all that there was nothing you could do to change anything?

[Sage]

One thing about British lefties is they could tell you all about the Bolshevik revolution, but probably couldn't tell you much about Lloyd George's "People's Budget" and British history around the same time.

Lloyd George was my ex's great grandfather or something like that. I bet you didn't know that.

Why would I? Wasn't a dig at you or anything, more of a general comment.

[re:dream]

So much for your apology from before. Support or retract - which organisations have been ruined by Trotskyists??

I apologised for any hurt you might have felt from mistakenly thinking I was aiming my remarks at you. I did not apologise for my view that Trotskyism in general is a dogmatic, narrow minded, sectarian and deluded strand of Marxist thought. But hey, if the cap fits, then wear it.

As for organizations ruined by Trotskyist, there are many examples from the long and ugly history of entryism. I strongly suspect that every development I would cite as an example would be seen by you as an example of how great Trotskyism is. For example, the contriution of Militant Tendency in the UK to turn labour party politics into a narrowly ideological and sectarian battle. I think it made the Labour party almost unelectable in the 1980s, and was more than a little to blame for the eventual raise of Tony Blair, the best Tory Prime Minister ever to be elected on a Labour ticket.

Hilarious. Most British people hate Blair. His useless Blair Witch Project ended with the unelectable Tories back in power!

.

Oops. I left my irony indicators off. Sorry. I was being sarcastic. Blair is a tosser. And not really a Tory. Though sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

[TomViolenz]

I don't think there is much support for you claim that he was "nationalist", at least not in the implied meaning of "ultra-nationalist", and "bourgeois" just means "traitors" or "naive weaklings" for communists.
Don't forget I learned communist speak already in school. I know all the code words!

Peter Taaffe gives tons of evidence that Castro was not a communist. I already quoted one Cuban revolutionary. Taaffe gives many other examples on that page from many different highly credible sources. You are in denial. You can't face the fact that you were wrong.

No as usual you can't read (or understand the meaning of the words you read)
Nowhere did I claim Castro was a Communist. In fact you quoted a post from me before where I stated as much very clearly.
What you aimed to prove with that link and run was that he was a Nationalist.
And please don't pull out any quotes where he says that he loves his country and then claim victory either.
You know very well that when Communists speak of Nationalists they mean "Ultra Nationalist" and it has a very evil implied conotation to it!
So put up, or shut up! (yeah right...like you ever will....)

[re:dream]

I see you know fuck all about even South Africa. The Marxist wing of the ANC published Inqaba ya basebenzi and they backed the ANC despite huge reservations which have since been proved correct. Black people are no better off than they were in the 1980s. Most black South Africans identified as socialist but they did not get socialism, so a historic opportunity was thrown away by the ANC. By the way, I knew 3 Marxists from SA personally, one of them very well, so I am quite aware what was going on there.

Eish. Now you really are bringing back the memories. Yup. I read Inqaba. Yikes. Probably every one of the first 25 issues.

(Cue background music: The Internationale; or possibly Venceremos) There was a (mercifully) short time when I and my friends (Afrikaans lefties trying to figure out what the fuck to do in the mayhem that was South Africa in the 1980s, trying to work out who to believe and who knew what was going on) latched on the the Marxist Workers' Tendency of the ANC. This was scary stuff, since the ANC was still banned, and having anything to do with them could get your scrotum cut off or worse. But we were young and foolish...

Eventually we managed to hook up with some of the cadres. Yes, that's what they called themselves. (I remember the directions: you drove into Athlone (the middle class coloured township in those days), down Gatesville Road, and then you turned left... and then left again, and then left again, and then left again... It was actually quite funny). Well, after a few meetings we realized that if it was up to these folks, absolutely nothing would happen other than the consumption of positively unhealthy amounts of red wine and spliff, endless discussions of who did what to whom in 1928 and sarcastic talk about the stupidity of the UDF.( What was rather yucky and creepy was that they seemed to hate other lefties even more than they hated the Apartheid government.) So we left them to their devices. I got involved in war resistance politics and farm worker issues & have been busy with those & related issues ever since.

Hmm. The ANC. *sigh* It's not quite true that black people are no better off than in the 1980s (my day job is mostly concerned with understanding poverty trends and social policy, so I think I know what I am talking about here) but you are right, the ANC has generally failed to deliver on their promise of a better life for all. But we don't need Jurassic Legassick to tell us that, and it does not mean the the MWT was right. They sure as hell do not offer any coherent way forward to get us out of the mess we are in at the moment. But that's a whole nother thread. And I got some music to make tonight

Thanks for the memories, though, it is a long time since I thought about those crazy days!

[TomViolenz]

Very interesting anecdote! Thanks for sharing!

[TomViolenz]

Well, I can do my own small bit, besides, 30 years ago there was a possibility of it happening in my lifetime. The USSR was still on the go, South Africa was apartheid, the Marxists were in the Labour Party, Thatcher was in power. There was a lot more going on, and I was a lot younger.

What makes you think so?

[TomViolenz]

Peter Taaffe gives tons of evidence that Castro was not a communist. I already quoted one Cuban revolutionary. Taaffe gives many other examples on that page from many different highly credible sources. You are in denial. You can't face the fact that you were wrong.

No as usual you can't read (or understand the meaning of the words you read)
Nowhere did I claim Castro was a Communist. In fact you quoted a post from me before where I stated as much very clearly.
What you aimed to prove with that link and run was that he was a Nationalist.
And please don't pull out any quotes where he says that he loves his country and then claim victory either.
You know very well that when Communists speak of Nationalists they mean "Ultra Nationalist" and it has a very evil implied conotation to it!
So put up, or shut up! (yeah right...like you ever will....)

I'm not even sure what you mean by 'ultra nationalist' — it's not a term I would use except maybe for fascism. Castro was a petty bourgeois nationalist who's main aim was to free Cuba from American domination, plus of course the despicable regime. I thought you said he was a communist but maybe you didn't. Most people do obviously.

Now you even add a petty to the bourgeois and still don't even state why you consider him a nationalist. Don't keep on telling us that you make an objective observation, when all you do is make value statements, that you don't even support well, if at all.
And no! I didn't maybe not call him a communist, I stated clearly, before you ever did, that he was not. You even quoted me dude! So don't maybe me

[re:dream]

So we are to judge a whole political tendency by a couple of people you met, on the basis that they smoked a spliff and drank some wine

I guess one knows a wanker when one meets them. It's kind of an intuitive thing. The wine and spliff were not the major turn off. It was the arrogant air of knowing everything and the sneering at other organizations and groupings at other ppl in the struggle.

[TomViolenz]

Petty-bourgeois means middle class.

But it's not a meaningful term in this context! So he was a middle class guy fighting for the freedom of his country...a very insightful observation Mr. Scientist. You should have also added beard wearing or children loving, or how about Spanish speaking...

You know very well that what you implied by these terms was far from innocent, you just can't own up to them, because you are afraid it would show your hatefulness. But don't fool yourself, you can't hide it, it's showing in everything you write here!

[re:dream]

Maybe they thought you were a wanker too.

No doubt.

[H20nly]

[re:dream]

OK, Funken, I will grant you that. Not all Trots are wankers. Zackie, for instance, is great. I know he was part of the MWT in the 1980s. He's an imaginative activist and he has done great work with the Treatment Action Campaign. He was a complete hero during the Mbeki years, taking on Mbeki's AIDS denialism. But he's not at all a typical Troskyist: he's less concerned with ideological loyalty to particular strands of Marxist politics, and more concerned with creating multi-class campaigns around issues that matter to ordinary poor people. Not 'giving a socialist lead' but taking on concrete practical issues. I respect that.

[Galt]

Do you know that one of these 'useless' people shared a prison cell with Nelson Mandela?



http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nimrod-nathale

Mandela was also pretty useless... What, you think dropping names impresses anyone?

[re:dream]

Do you know that one of these 'useless' people shared a prison cell with Nelson Mandela?



http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nimrod-nathale

Mandela was also pretty useless... What, you think dropping names impresses anyone?

Hey! Don't diss Madiba. He's cool. And a much bigger person than you, me, or Funken.