Reflecting on the Lessons of the 1960’s

What do you comrades think about this Platypus Review?

My impression is that it is a group of "ex" or "neo-trotskyists" who like to talk about Adorno, Marcuse and other intellectual swine. They are oh so critical but what is this attraction that people have to the Frankfort School? Why do they think that talking about bourgeois philosophers from Kant and Hegel to Adorno and Marcuse serves any sort of purpose. At least some of their writers also seem to think that Trotskyism was the only political current that opposed Stalinism and they ignore left-communists while borrowing political theory developed not by the likes of any Trot or Frankfort philosopher but from the Communist-Left, specifically in the critiques of nationalism, nationalist liberations, and state-capitalism.

They say the left is dead but then they are indistinguishable from any other leftist group, with the exception of not having any sort of ideological focus, Marxist or otherwise. They have posted stuff by Cliff Slaughter. They seem like a confused and ideologically diffuse group that is afraid to believe in anything or stick with it. They suffer from the same lack of reflection and activism that the rest of the "left" (acting as left-wing of capitalism rather than the "center or right" of a workers movement). I have a feeling that a working class person would be treated by such an group in an all too typically patronizing manner. I think workers can tell when they are being patronized by middle-class elements and it drives them away from revolutionary politics.

When does the newness of their ideas give away to become more of the same old rehashed "bolshevik-leninism" both in theory and tactics? It is ironic too as they also deny being Trotskyist, though I can't see where they are not Trotskyist.

January 14, 2009
Wednesday

Comrades:

I thoroughly enjoyed your post on SDS and the 1960s, being, myself, 62 years old, and a former SDS member in 3 different chapters of the 1960s SDS, one of which I personally organized.

I've been politically schizoid between left communism as embodied in your organization, and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, and, on the other hand, leftish Trotskyism akin to the politics of the Spartacists, for awhile now. There's many areas in which I disagree with you.

But I was amused at the refusal of the two former 1960s SDS leaders to discuss what you wrote, and at their withdrawal from a forum because of it. It didn't surprise me, although it saddened me, because I separate out the subjective sincerity and subjective revolutionary impulses and aims and desires of left revolutionary militants on one side and, on the other side, their often objectively counter-revolutionary politics. I think in the 1960s, for instance, there was a lot of subjectively revolutionary feeling in the Weatherpeople, in the Black Panther Party for Self-defense, in folks who, on the other hand, operated on the basis of the objectively counter-revolutionary politics of Stalinism. But in the expulsion, for instance, by the Revolutionary Youth Movement-majority SDS in 1969 of the Progressive Labor Party-supported Worker Student Alliance SDS, I think probably there was just as much subjective revolutionary feelings in the expelled people, and they, at least, in a subjective sense -- though still Stalinist, although left-Stalinist -- possessed a formal adherence and support to the working class as agent of revolutionary change.

I am torn between what your comrades wrote as interpretation of what revolutionary Marxism is, and, on the other hand, the claim of Trotskyism to embody revolutionary Marxism. I know pretty much what your attitude is about Trotskyism. I tend to copy and paste articles from your press and the press of the IBRP on various sites, to introduce people to left Marxist views, but I also copy and paste articles of the Spartacists to various sites, and also articles occasionally of other ostensibly Trotskyist, as well as left Marxist, organizations and individuals.

Still, I enjoyed your post.

Comradely greetings,
A. a/k/a tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Would you mind making it clearer on which points you agree with from the Spartacist, ICC, and IBRP analyses?

Please forgive the above mangled sentence.

Dear Comrade Zimmerwald:

I think one as one ages often learns that one's more ignorant than one originally thought. I publicly defended Spartacist politics from the time I had joined them in 1973, and even after I left their party in 1976, pretty much right up through about 2005.

I should mention that, however, I'd acquainted myself over the years both prior to 2005, and since then, with left communist literature, and writings, including of the ICC and IBRP, but also of Loren Goldner, and more recently of Internationalist Perspectives. I've also been over the years trying to acquaint myself with the views of Bordiga, Pannekoek, Gorter, and others associated with the tradition and heritage of left communism. I here have to publicly thank Loren Goldner for bringing Gabriel Miasnikov's name to my attention, and I have to publicly thank the ICC for publishing the book by the late comrade, Ian Hebbes, on the Russian Communist Left I read which contained some documents translated into English of comrade Miasnikov. I'd been entirely ignorant about Miasnikov up to becoming aware of his name from correspondence with comrade Goldner, and then, because of that, reading the ICC's book on the Russian Communist Left. I also particularly honed in on Bordiga's writings because of my pretty hardline Leninist-Trotskyist centralism, and the quite obviously hardline centralism of Bordiga, with which I was in solidarity.

But the primary reason for finally breaking me publicly from public defense of the International Communist League-Fourth Internationalist (Spartacists), www.icl-fi.org, had to do with my reading -- belatedly, I now realize -- their 3 documents entitled, "The Logan Regime," in 2005-2006, and drawing from my reading of those documents conclusions regarding my own personal experience in their organization in 1973-1976 which persuaded me there was something fundamentally anti-Marxist, anti-communist, anti-Leninist, anti-Trotskyist, counter-revolutionary, in their primary leadership, particularly and specifically including James Robertson, his chosen successor, George Foster, and their long-time member till he was pushed out of their party in 1996, Jan Norden, who now runs his own Trotskyist group, the Internationalist Group (www.internationalist.org). I broke pretty hard from the Spartacist leadership after reading the 3 "Logan Regime" documents. I didn't particularly object to what they said about Logan, but, rather, discovered in my reading of their documents information which shed new light for me on experiences I'd had in their party in 1973-1976 which led me to infer from said experiences an anti-Marxist character to their organization.

The problem I have, however, is I still retain many Trotskyist positions on many programmatic issues, which separates me from left communism theoretically and programmatically. On the other hand, I find the analysis of both the ICC and the IBRP on decadence to be insightful, and, particularly, their analysis that implies the entire international situation from at least 1914 on implied a kind of statification of capital and counterrevolution in Russia leading to a kind of statification of capital was inevitable without extension of the 1917 Revolution internationally. My difference with the ICC and IBRP, however, lodges in the issue of whether or not statification of capital is at least some kind of social and economic progress as over and against private capital, and I'm inclined to see it as such, which leaves me defending Trotsky's position in his 1937 book, Revolution Betrayed, and in his 1939-1940 polemics with the Shachtman opposition in the American Socialist Workers Party on the Russian question. That is, the political conclusions I draw are basically those of Trotsky, though terminologically, I might quibble a bit with characterizing the Soviet Union as a "bureaucratically degenerated workers' state."

This additionally means I also do not share other positions with the communist left in politics. For instance, I agree with Trotsky's 1930-1933 tactical suggestions to German union and Stalinist and Social-Democratic Parties for the forging of workers' united fronts in the streets to drive the Nazis off the streets and in so doing, stop them from continuing to acquire supporters in Germany. I know this concept of the workers' united front is opposed by the ICC and IBRP and left communists. That places me more in the tradition of the first four congresses of the CI, not limiting my tactical agreement on such issues of the workers' united front to the first congress and parts of the second congress alone, but extending it to the tactical suggestions made by Trotsky, Lenin, and other leaders of the CI in the third and fourth congresses as well. So again, I'm probably in the tactical sense closer to Lenin and Trotsky on these issues than I am to those left communists who polemicized in that period of the first four congresses against the tactic of the workers' united front, and who also held a similar position in 1930-1933 when Trotsky was advising in his polemics and letters the German labor and union and Stalinist and Social-Democratic mass organizations to engage in the tactic of the workers' united front to stop Hitler Fascism.

Additionally, on the national question, while I'm impressed by Rosa Luxemburg's position, and by the positions of the ICC and IBRP, deriving from their early Third Internationalist position that we live in the imperialist epoch or what the left communist comrades call the epoch of decadence (and in my view, using the term, "epoch of imperialism," and using the term, "epoch of decadence," mean roughly the same thing, and I don't really see the difference between Trotsky's characterization in his 1940 pamphlet, "Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay," and left communists' characterization of the epoch as the epoch of decadence; to me, calling the epoch since at least 1914, or even going back to 1900, the epoch of imperialist decay, and calling it the epoch of decadence, means the same thing), I think the national question continually reasserts itself. Following from this standpoint, I don't think it is possible to mechanically stand aside from struggles of oppressed nations and oppressed national minorities for democratic rights of equality where such issues assert themselves. One has got to take positions in such situations. That requires analyzing each situation as an historically specific situation, with its historically specific and historically evolved peculiarities. I think there is a tendency in left communist positions on, for instance, the Israeli-Gaza War, to view the issue in an abstract fashion mechanistically and mechanically, rather than taking a position on the reassertion of the issue of national rights in that situation that follows logically from analyzing that specific issue historically specifically. Marxism in its analyses in the past has been a methodology historically specific in character. I think to pretend that there are not diverse intersecting issues here is to lift the issue out of the overall complex of issues here.

For instance, it is not sufficient to say, it's a war between "equals" or "nation-states" in which Marxists must take no side. I copied and pasted the IBRP's statement on the war, which characterized it as an "imperialist war," and I've done the same with ICC statements. I have passed out literature embodying both positions of both left communist organizations. But I have also included links to postings of Trotskyists like the ICL. The reason is that looking at the Israeli incursion against Gaza as something similar to, say, the position of internationalist communists during World War One, when internationalist communists opposed both sides in that authentically inter-imperialist conflict, makes no sense. The Israeli incursion against Gaza has to be seen in terms of the question, of what politics is this war on the side of the Israelis a continuation, and also on the side of Hamas and the Gaza Strip Palestinians. To mechanically say, Hamas is a "tool" of Syria and Iran, and therefore, the war is a kind of proxy war between the Zionist state of Israel on one side who is the client state of the U.S., and, on the other side, Hamas, an alleged client-state of Syria and Iran, makes no sense in this situation. It disappears the continuing recurrence of the national question and reassertion of the national question. I think Rosa Luxemburg's position expounded in her book, "The National Question and Autonomy," which it is my impression both the ICC and IBRP more or less are in agreement with, misses the point that the national question, and more generally, issues of unresolved or only partially resolved questions of democratic rights, constantly and continually reassert themselves, including in the epoch of imperialism or epoch of decadence, and therefore, Marxists have to take a stand on such issues.

The first four congresses of the CI took account in particular of complexities on the national question such as what has existed since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 between Israel and the Palestinian Arab people when the first four congresses of the CI addressed the issue of what it called, intermixed peoples or intermixed nations, and what both the Spartacists, and split-offs from the Spartacists like Norden's Internationalist Group, and the International Bolshevik Tendency (www.bolshevik.org), have called, interpenetrated peoples. In such situations, the early congresses of the CI suggested the only way of addressing said questions was, by the class struggle unifying workers of diverse nations and nationalities. I share that perspective.

But in situations, say, of Kurdish national rights, the issue becomes, for me, a little clearer, because at least here, one can point to the 4 sort of criteria on the basis of which one could characterize a nation as existing: common language, basis for a common economic life, common territory, and common culture manifesting itself in a common psychological make-up. There is, that is, greater homogeneity among the Kurds than in the Israeli-Palestinian situation, in which intermixture of peoples is more preeminent in the historically specific situation in the Near East.

But such considerations seem mechanically -- to me, at least -- left out of both ICC and IBRP propaganda on the issues of Israel-Gaza. The primary issue in the Israeli war against Gaza is the effort of the Israeli expansionist state to destroy Gaza Strip Palestinian Arabs. The analogy with Hitler's attempt to destroy Warsaw Ghetto Jewish socialist-minded Partisans in 1943 is very clear. In such situations, one has to take a side that in military terms sides with the oppressed nation, in the first case, the Gaza Strip Palestinians, in the second case, the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Partisans. Not to clearly know how to take a side, and what is the right side to take in such situations, is to leave oneself open to being called in practical terms traitors to the exploited and oppressed.

Does that mean one closes ones eyes to the treasons to the exploited and oppressed of fake misleaderships of the exploited and oppressed, like Hamas? No. I think clearly pointing out the treasons and betrayals of such traitors is incumbent on communists. Additionally, denouncing in the case of Hamas the religiously reactionary nature of this entity is centrally important for Marxist atheistic materialist communists operating in the tradition of atheistic, dialectical and historical materialism.

But that does not mean that in the given situation, one refuses to take a side. To not do so in this situation is to side in tacit and de facto terms with the Zionist racist nationalist expansionist state of Israel.

I also think that while trade union misleaderships are, indeed, traitors to the proletariat, it is necessary to work in trade unions and seek to make communist caucuses and factions in trade unions that are in effect embryonic communist class struggle leaderships aiming to smash and displace the bureaucracies in said unions and turn such unions into fighting class-war-based workers' organizations.

I do not think that implies that in every single situation, one must automatically mechanically conclude for the claimed or alleged "viability" of a union in all situations. I personally worked for a union and was framed up by the union bureaucracy once that bureaucracy realized I was a red and I was put into a position of being forced out of my employment with that union once the bureaucracy framed me up. So I have no illusions in the rotten scum who mislead so many self-professed workers' organizations. In the union of which I speak, the particular rotten scum were the Democratic Socialists of America rotten scum, social-democratic scum, the same kind of scum who murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, or facilitated their murders, in 1919. I know what this kind of scum are. I've had their number my entire life from when I broke from social-democrats of the Socialist Party in 1967, and from social-democrats of the International Socialists in 1973. Scum are scum. But the masses of workers in these unions are not scum. The masses of workers in these unions are our class, the working class. And there is therefore a difference. We have to seek to intersect them. And sometimes that means being in unions and trying to do something that will facilitate intersection of workers and bringing class communist consciousness to them.

On some issues, like whether the economics of capitalist crisis have more to do with realization of surplus value in the process of circulation (which seems to me closer to Rosa Luxemburg's position) or rather in the issue of the law of the tendency of the falling rate of profit (which seems closer both to Marx's position, as well as to that of Lenin, of Bukharin, and of Paul Mattick, despite Mattick's council communism placing him closer to the ICC and IBRP), I'm probably closer to the latter than I am to the former, or, more specifically, closer to the concept of the law of the tendency of falling rate of profit being the source of capitalist economic and financial collapse and crisis than I am to the issue being primarily an issue of realization.

But despite these positions, I still find myself attracted to the ICC and IBRP positions, or seeming formal positions, primarily because of the, at least, seeming internally consistent integrity and integralness of their deriving their political positions and political conclusions from the nature of the epoch. I can see why the comrades of the communist left derive their positions from the nature of the epoch. But I also am of the view that the continued reassertion of issues concretely means one has to look at issues in terms of their historically specific character.

I think probably in de facto terms, I'm more a left Trotskyist than I am in programmatic terms someone who would be an ICC sympathizer or IBRP sympathizer, but my experiences with a Trotskyist party persuade me of the pretty corrupt and anti-communist -- in terms of communist morality -- nature of some key leaders of the ICL-FI, and of the Internationalist Group. The issue of communist morality is what separates me from joining a Trotskyist party or trying to adhere to a Trotskyist party, any self-professed Trotskyist party. That also had a lot to do with leading me to be much friendlier in my conclusions about Gabriel Miasnikov toward him and his efforts than I was to Trotsky himself in 1922-1923 regarding Miasnikov, or at least from my impressions from reading the ICC's book on the Russian Communist Left seems to have been Trotsky's, and the Trotskyists', approach to Miasnikov in 1923. I do not, however, necessarily share Miasnikov's view that Russia was on the verge of a capitalist counter-revolution at that time. I do think the Stalinist counter-revolution was a counter-revolution. But I don't view it as a capitalist counter-revolution. I'm closer to the view espoused on this by Trotsky in his 1935 article, "The Workers' State, Thermidor, and Bonapartism," and then subsequently expounded in 1936-1937 by Trotsky in "The Revolution Betrayed," and to the political conclusions following therefrom on Trotsky's part, although again, I might quibble with terminology like "bureaucratically degenerated workers' state" on the part of Trotsky, or, on states like China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc., terminology like "bureaucratically deformed workers' states" on the part of Trotskyists since Trotsky.

I have no problem with calling for communist revolutions in every country on earth, however, although Trotskyists would call them political revolutions, while left communists would not make such a terminological concession, viewing all states calling themselves "communist" or "socialist" as "state capitalist" in character.

I do think left communists are insightful, however, in pointing to the question, isn't capitalism in existence whereever there's wage labor? I think that's a good question. I would in that situation go back to my earlier point, however, that I'm still inclined, even if a society like the old Soviet Union is called, "state capitalist," to nonetheless view the state abrogation of private capital as embodying economic and social progress as over and against private capital.

This also implies a view of whether China, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, were imperialist different from that of the left communists of the ICC and IBRP. I don't view the old Soviet Union or contemporary China as being "imperialist." I view the U.S. as being imperialist, however, and I live here. I think profit maximization, profit accumulation, are innate and organic in private capitalism, but statification of capital at least partially expunges the law of value, as I see it. The partial expunging of the law of value in statified capital -- using the phrase, statified capital, as a terminological concession to the left communist perspective -- makes such societies embody, at least on some level, a higher level of development than private capital. That is why I don't see societies like the old Soviet Union, contemporary China, etc., as being "simply" states which, if militarily attacked by private capitalist-based states like the U.S., for instance, do not warrant military defense. I retain my old Trotskyist position that China deserves military solidarity and military defense if attacked by U.S. capitalism, even though I favor proletarian revolution in China to overthrow the Chinese bureaucracy, which I know the ICC and IBRP call, the Chinese ruling class. My calling the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy is more a Trotskyist kind of terminology than calling it a ruling class in the sense of some kind of state capitalist ruling class. I don't see it as that kind of thing. I see it more as like those trade union bureaucrats who stab workers in the back and constitute the agents of world capitalist imperialism against the workers than I see them as a distinct ruling class with imperialist appetites for the maximizing of profit.

The problem I have with Trotskyists like the Spartacists, however, goes to my view of communist morality, as it does with Norden's Internationalist Group, and with the International Bolshevik Tendency, all of which have the common Spartacist origins. I'm inclined to see these groups as being kind of what the 19th Century American novelist, Herman Melville, meant when Melville wrote a book entitled, "The Confidence Man: His Masquerade." That is, I'm inclined to see these organizations as having formally very generally not bad positions on a whole range of issues, even positions formally defensible and supportable on a whole range of issues, and yet, having leaderships who are, in effect, con men affecting a masquerade, kind of organic political psychopaths or organic political sociopaths. I here admit and acknowledge I'm no longer sure, as I was for many years, that it's possible to build a Trotskyist international party that is not characterized by this sort of sociological and political phenomenon in its leadership. But that still does not make me depart from many of the formal positions of Trotskyism, which still strike me as seeming to be right in many ways.

Being an old fogey of 62, about to turn 63 in May, however, as I earlier said, I'm always of the view that I may be mistaken in some of my own impressions and views on left communism, and I'm always open-minded to listening and learning if I think I've made a mistake.

I also view left communists as genuine communists, not as betrayers, not as traitors. While I think mechanistic positions can leave one open to being construed sometimes as traitors, I don't think left communists are traitors subjectively, anymore than I think rank-and-file Trotskyists are traitors subjectively. I think there's often a disconnect between sincere rank-and-filers subjective desire to smash capitalism and all forms of exploitation and oppression to smithereens and, on the other hand, the disservices misleaderships of organizations professing themselves to fight against, oppose, hate, exploitation and oppression, do to subvert and undermine fights against exploitation and oppression inside their own organizations, including what they do to destroy the morale of rank-and-file fighters in their own organizations. I think those in organizations' leaderships who subvert and undermine the professed aims and goals of such organizations to fight against exploitation and oppression are the worst kinds of scum of the earth, and while I'm a militant atheist materialist who detests and despises religion, I'm inclined to think of such scumbag misleaderships in the terms spoken of by the mythical and fake Jesus in the bible when he allegedly said that this sort ought to have a millstone put around said traitors' necks and be thrown into the sea.

That's kind of how I view these issues, however.

I openly acknowledge the somewhat incomplete nature of my views.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Dear Greene,

I am a left communist from turkey and I was interested with your comment on Kurdish nationalism. So I just wanted to make a small comment on it.

You said in your post that;

"But in situations, say, of Kurdish national rights, the issue becomes, for me, a little clearer, because at least here, one can point to the 4 sort of criteria on the basis of which one could characterize a nation as existing: common language, basis for a common economic life, common territory, and common culture manifesting itself in a common psychological make-up. There is, that is, greater homogeneity among the Kurds than in the Israeli-Palestinian situation, in which intermixture of peoples is more preeminent in the historically specific situation in the Near East."

I should say that actually this is not a very correct expression of the actual situation. There basically three kurdish dialect.

And since the other 3 are connected;

For instance in turkish case, most of the working class sections of Kurdish population are libing in western parts of the country where turkish people are on the majority. This where also Kurdish big burgeoisie resides... On the more ethnically homogenous Kurdish parts
-southeast- there is also a clear class differentiation. There are distinctive Kurdish classes there; petty burgeoisie, middle peasantry, landed-burgeoisie (who are in drug-weapen dealing bisuness aligned with turkish burgeoisie) and also workers.

This situation can be seen reflected similarly in other countries where Kurd's live (syria, iraq, iran)

On other respects (culture, etc), I may say that turkish and kurdish working class people share more similarities rather than their own respective burgeoisie in daily life... as far as I could observe. Here you can not differentiate an ethnic Kurd from a Turk -there is no color difference- . However class differences are more clearly appearent...

fraternally
mikail

Thanks Allen,

I've just quickly read through your thoughts on the Sparts etc and, as someone who over the years has wasted far too much of my time reading the ICL's material along with their mini-me's the IBT etc., found it very interesting and I may come back when I have read it a little more closely.

But, on the Logan texts, they do show an organisation, a tradition, incapable of understanding what proletarian morality is.

FC! Morven

Dear Comrade Mikail:

First, thank you very much for your response to my earlier post, Comrade Mikail. I appreciate it very much.

I probably was unclear. If so, my apologies. I will try to be clearer.

I must first defer to your knowledge of the peoples and geographical area in which you live.

But having done that, I want again to try to explain my point about the constant reassertion of democratic rights struggles in the epoch of what left communists call decadence, and what Lenin and Trotsky used to call imperialist decay. (Again, it offhand seems to me that what Lenin and Trotsky originally meant by the epoch of imperialist decay, and what left communists like the ICC mean by decadence, mean the same thing, roughly.)

I realize there is a clear difference to Marxists of the past -- say -- century or so between the epoch of what comrades of the left communist milieu call decadence, and the preceding period of the ascension of capitalism internationally and the maturation of capitalism internationally. The epoch of the ascendancy of capitalism internationally was the epoch in which the bourgeoisie in at least some countries was still a revolutionary class fighting to overthrow feudalism, medievalism, and in my own country of the U.S., in the 19th Century, slavery. In the 19th Century, when, for instance, the U.S. revolutionary bourgeoisie mobilized against slavery in North America, led by Lincoln and the bourgeois federal government here in 1861-1865, Marx and Engels passionately supported the North in the U.S. Civil War, viewing this as what Marxists have called the Second American Revolution, a social revolution to complete the tasks of the First American bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1775-1783, a revolution that merely split off the country from British imperialism and the British empire, but did not internally smash the slavery-based chattel system, the combined class-exploitative and race-oppressive system which it required the Second American Revolution to begin to smash in 1861-1865. I also think that though the Second American Revolution smashed the class exploitative system of chattel slavery, one could feasibly and viably argue that a kind of caste oppressive system of race-caste oppression persisted against black Americans that to this day, 2009, still remains in effect in my country, and the election of the black president, Obama, did not fundamentally change that institutionalized race-caste oppression of the great bulk of the black masses in my country.

My point here is on this democratic question of racism in my country, this question is not a national question, I would argue, but it is a democratic rights question, nonetheless, and it continually reasserts itself in my country. The black male proletarians of my country are not only exploited as workers (that is, produce surplus value as all workers do), but are oppressed as black people (that is, oppressed in their capacity of having black skins and being discriminated against in that capacity), and when they are black female workers, they are triply oppressed, being additionally oppressed in their capacities as females on a sex-caste basis, and not only are they workers producing surplus value (profit) for bosses, but being discriminated against on a skin color basis, there is the racial-caste oppression and discrimination, and secondly, they are discriminated against as females, and here is the sex-caste discrimination issue. This, too, is a democratic rights issue that continually reasserts itself. In the 1960s, there was an organization in my country called, the Black Panther Party for Self-defense. It adopted a kind of black nationalist or black separatist politics. It also adopted the slogan of the right of self-defense against racist terrorism, and practiced it, and it was framed up by the cops and the state (and both Marx, and Engels, and Lenin, and Trotsky, and Luxemburg, and all Marxists, know that the state is the cops -- that is, the state is the armed men plus prisons defending a given set of class exploitative relationships, and is not, therefore, impartial, but is partial and inherently so). Now, those of us who were of my position had a dual attitude toward the Panthers. We felt politically and morally it was incumbent on us to defend them against the capitalist and racist state, and cops, but at the same time, we did not solidarize with their nationalist separatist politics. My view on the issue of black liberation in my country is what I call, revolutionary integrationism, and this view was expounded and codified by an American Trotskyist named Richard S. Fraser. Fraser died in the later 1980s, but spent 40 years on this issue. He studied the race question in my country for 40 years and was a lifelong champion of black freedom and black equality, as well as a proletarian Marxist and worker. His study of the history of black people in my country persuaded him that throughout the 400 years of the history of the black equality and freedom struggle in my country, the goals overwhelmingly of most of the black masses were not to separate out from the U.S., but, instead, to integrate into the country on a basis of unconditional equality. Fraser coined out of this the slogan of revolutionary integration. He saw the black freedom struggle in my country as an expression of Marx's and Trotsky's strategy of the permanent revolution -- the meshing of the fight for democratic rights with the fight for proletarian socialist power.

But in some situations of democratic questions, historically, the mass goal has often taken the form not of integrating into a given country, but of separating out from it. Take, for instance, the pre-1917 Russian tsarist empire. For centuries, the Russian tsarist empire subjugated the Polish nation. For centuries, the Polish nation fought for national self-determination against the Russian tsarist empire. In the 19th century, every revolutionary socialist and every revolutionary democrat favored military defense of the Polish people's struggle for national independence from the Russian empire. Marx and Engels supported it, and so did revolutionary democrats.

In the 20th century, the main debate in the early 20th century Marxist movement over Poland and the question of whether or not revolutionary socialists ought to extend military support to the Polish struggle for national separation out of the Russian empire was between V. I. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg herself grew up in Poland, but came to argue strongly against the slogan of the right of Poland to national self-determination. Lenin grew up in Russia, but came to argue just as strongly in support of a more subtle and nuanced position. Lenin's position combined two aspects: (1) support in a situation of actual Polish struggle for national separation out from the Russian empire of military victory for the Polish people's national struggle, while simultaneously (2) opposing the actual nationalist program of always fighting for separation. Lenin made the analogy with the socialist support of the democratic right to a couple to divorce on the simple wish of either partner in a marriage. He said socialists historically defended the democratic right of divorce, but did not always in every specific situation favor a couple exercising that right.

That is, the nationalist program he opposed, but the right of national self-determination he supported.

Rosa Luxemburg did not have such a nuanced position. She essentially argued particularly in "The National Question and Autonomy" that in the imperialist epoch, the modern epoch, all issues of national rights are essentially non-issues in that the internationlization or globalization of capitalism and the interconnections of the capitalists internationally moot them and make them non-issues for socialists. Lenin persistently argued with her on this saying that such questions continually reassert themselves, and cannot, therefore, in concrete and specific instances be ignored by revolutionary socialists, who are also consistent defenders of all democratic rights, including of all bourgeois-democratic rights, even while not being supporters of a bourgeois program.

Now, I will accept your point that the Kurdish people may not have a basic difference in terms of skin color with Turkish people.

But there is a reason why the Turkish capitalist state goes after the PKK. And it is not because there is something "evenhandedly evil" about the PKK and the Turkish state. Nor is it because the PKK are a variety of Kurdish nationalism. The reason, simply speaking, is that the PKK are a particularly militant expression -- deformed as it might be -- of the Kurdish people's wish to have their own state separate and apart from the Turkish state (as well as 3 other states: Syria, Iran, and Iraq). I happen to support the Kurdish people's national right to form their own state. Does that mean in every instance I support their trying to exercise it? No. During the U.S. imperialist invasion of Turkey, if Iraqi Kurdish nationalist separatists sought help from U.S. imperialist armed forces to broker a deal by which they would get military support from U.S. imperialism, in that historically specific situation, I would argue, it would be impermissible for revolutionary socialists to extend military support to such Kurdish nationalist separatists, because in that historically specific situation, the Kurdish nationalist separatist effort was subordinated to the broader issue of U.S. imperialism's occupation of Iraq. Here, my position is more or less analogous to Lenin's position on the Polish issue of separation during World War One, when Lenin argued that the historically specific situation of the inter-imperialist First World War subordinated the Polish struggle for national separation when that struggle might take the form of aligning itself with one of the two major imperialist blocs (in World War One, the primary imperialist blocs were, on one side, England, France, before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution Russia, and eventually the U.S., and on the other side, Germany and Austria; and during World War One, at some points, the Polish national movement, or a faction of it, sought to get German and Austrian help against Russia, which was merely trying to use one of the imperialist blocs to broker support for Polish national separation).

This went on during Bush's imperialist invasion of Iraq among some of the Iraqi Kurdish nationalists, and again, I think that made those Kurdish nationalist separatists who tried getting U.S. imperialist support not engaging in supportable behavior.

But in my view, that is separate from the more general issue of whether or not revolutionary Marxists ought to in principle extend support to the Kurdish people if they fight for military separation from the 4 Near Eastern states who subjugate the Kurdish people, including Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. I think it's going to require the overthrow of all 4 of the bourgeoisies of these 4 capitalist states before the Kurdish people can even acquire a nation-state of their own, let alone what I would prefer -- an independent Socialist Republic of United Kurdistan in the context of a Socialist Federation of the Near East.

On issues of class within nations, including within oppressed nations. I was not denying that class divisions exist within even oppressed nations. They do. On that, you're right.

But the point I was making was, the national oppression of a nation-state of a significant national minority extends beyond class exploitation of the workers of that national minority, and in some sense embraces a kind of nationality-based discrimination and oppression against all members of that oppressed nationality -- that oppressed nation or people. And that is the case insofar as the relation of the Turkish nation or people to the Kurdish nation or people is concerned. I will here make an analogy. While black people in my country are not a nation, due entirely to the fact that overwhelmingly, they themselves in their struggle against racism and racist oppression have pretty much historically fought not for separation out into their own nation-state, but, rather, for integration into society on a basis of unconditional equality, the discrimination and oppression endured by black people in my country is not limited to black workers, but extends to discrimination against black people by white people no matter what class the black people are part of. In this sense, there is a similarity between nationality-based discrimination and oppression, and, on the other hand, race-caste-based discrimination and oppression, even if the skin-color issue does not play into it. In, for instance, discrimination on the part of the Turkish state against the right of Kurdish people living in Turkey to speak varieties of the Kurdish language (and a language is not the same as a dialect; most Americans, for instance, speak a variety of English, but there are different dialects of English in North America, although all those who speak English here pretty much recognize as English the dialects of English spoken by most English-speaking North Americans; my point, again, is that a separate dialect is not a separate language; we also have a significant element of Spanish-speaking North Americans here, and even within the Spanish spoken, there are different dialects as well, but again, different Spanish-speaking people recognize other dialects of Spanish, so again, I'm distinguishing between a dialect and a language), there is the aspect of oppression and discrimination on a nationality-based basis. (This sort of prejudice, discrimination, and oppression also exists here in North America against diverse folks of a Spanish-speaking type by the predominant English speaking majority, and that is here an aspect insofar as the whites of European background are concerned of discrimination and prejudice and oppression against the especially Spanish-speaking people deriving from either Central America, Mexico, or Puerto Rico by the whites here in North America, and insofar as it concerns the Spanish-speaking people here, it is most definitely a nationality-based kind of oppression and discrimination of the major nation-state of English-speaking U.S.A. against nations of the Mexican or Central American or Puerto Rican diaspora. And here, it combines the national issue with the skin-color issue, particularly where we're talking of Spanish-speaking people who are of darker skin color, non-whites.)

My point is, oppression on a national basis does not simply exist against workers of the oppressed nation or nationality, but extends beyond the workers to other classes of the population and it is done by the oppressing nation or oppressing people. Lenin spoke of "great Russian nationalism" or "great Russian chauvinism," and he was speaking of the attitude of the primary or predominant Russian nation in its relations with historically oppressed nations in the Russian empire, like the Georgians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Azerbaijanis, etc. This issue has existed insofar as Turkey's relations with the Kurds and the Armenians are concerned, for instance.

Does that mean that always advocating for a position of national separation out is a good thing? No, that would be formalistic. I think revolutionary socialists have to be flexible. In a situation in which the Turkish proletariat, for instance, rose up, formed its own workers' councils, and in such a revolutionary type of situation, the issue came up among Turkish proletarians of what to do about Kurdish people wishing to have their own state, I would think Turkish revolutionary socialist proletarians would have the attitude, that is up to the Kurdish people. That was more or less the Bolshevik attitude in situations of diverse nations formerly oppressed by Russian tsarism. E. H. Carr's book, "The Bolshevik Revolution: 1917-1923," especially volume one, went into great detail on that, and it's quite clear the Bolsheviks were very sincere in trying to sincerely give to the various oppressed nations, peoples, ethnic groups, of the former Russian empire their say in this matter and to tell them, if you want honestly to separate out, go ahead. But on the other hand, when German imperialism, or British imperialism, or one of the other imperialisms, sought to use self-serving bourgeois nationalist-separatist-led pro-capitalist movements' efforts to form nation-states hostile to the revolutionary socialist project of the Bolsheviks as actual military bases from which German or British or other major imperialisms could operate, the Bolsheviks in the Civil War of 1918-1922 fought in a tough, hard way to smash such self-interested movements' efforts to give imperialism military operating bases from which to launch military attacks on the then-new revolutionary Soviet republic. And I think the Soviets in that situation in 1918-1922 were right. I don't think, however, they were violating their own essential support for the right of national self-determination in doing this. What they were doing was, fighting imperialism's military effort to crush the revolutionary Soviet republic.

The Soviet Union did not originally even have the name, Soviet Union. Lenin envisioned the name as actually giving diverse nation-states within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics equality, and he envisioned it in opposition to a growing chauvinism on the part of some leading Bolsheviks like Stalin to, undercover of a pretended "federal" "equality" of non-capitalist and socialist republics, actually establish a new incarnation of the old great Russian chauvinism against which Lenin had fought his entire life. The last major fight of Lenin in 1922 was against Stalin's appeal to great Russian chauvinism against Georgian communists. This is addressed in both the ICC book, "The Russian Communist Left," as well as in Moshe Lewin's book, "Lenin's Last Struggle," and in the booklet, "Lenin's Last Testament," edited and introduced by Trotsky.

My view on the national question basically holds to Lenin's flexibility. Here in North America, for instance, I think there's a whole section of the U.S.A. -- the Southwestern U.S.A. -- which probably by rights belongs to the people of Mexico, as it was robbed from Mexico during the 1846 Mexican-American War by the U.S. Should a proletarian revolution develop here in North America among the majority of American proletarians, and should, in that situation, a great sentiment develop among the Mexican people for taking back most of the Southwestern United States for themselves, I think an American proletarian socialist revolution would say, go ahead, or, it's up to you. We would not seek to use military force to hang onto that section of a Socialist United States of North America in the eventuality of a proletarian socialist revolution in North America.

In the same way, I expect that the Turkish proletariat in the eventuality of a coming proletarian socialist revolution in Turkey would not seek to use military force to hang onto a section of Turkey overwhelmingly occupied more or less homogenously by Kurds if the vast bulk of the Kurds sought to use that situation to form their own nation-state. We communists would try, in that situation, to say to the Kurdish workers, you can do what you like; that is, if you want to become part of a Turkish socialist federation or Turkish Soviet Republic, you are welcome to become part of it with full and unconditional equal rights, but on the other hand, if you wish to form your own Kurdish Soviet Republic, you are fully within your rights to do that, too. We would also recognize the difference between the Kurdish bourgeois and exploiting classes and, on the other hand, the proletarians and also exploited non-proletarian classes, and we would not permit a bourgeois type of Kurdish separation to be used as a military staging area to fight to defeat a Turkish proletarian socialist revolution.

That's kind of how I would envision that sort of thing happening.

Finally, on this issue of intermixed nations.

When I spoke of intermixed nations, I was speaking of a situation very analogous to integrated communities where there are strong intermarriages among the diverse nations and peoples, and peoples of diverse nations living in the same neighborhoods. Nationalists who try to use forced population transfers to separate out such peoples are genocidal in what they try to do. In the Israel-Palestinian Arab situation, both the Zionist nationalists on one side, and the historically Arab nationalists on the other side, not to mention the religious fundamentalists who are even more retrogressive and reactionary than even secular nationalists have been, don't particularly like intermarriages and neighborly living together of historically different nationalities. The new Israeli elections brought, for instance, into 3rd place the racist, neo-fascist party, Yisrael Benot of Avigdor Lieberman, and this neo-fascist racist nationalist party aims to make the 20 percent of Arabs living inside Israel take loyalty oaths as a condition for continuing to live inside Israel. That is because this Zionist clerical-fascist party basically has as its program ethnic cleansing -- driving all Arabs out of Israel. Also, like the right-wing Likud, they seek to continue the violence against Gaza Strip Palestinian Arabs, because, much like Hitler's Nazi fascists, their basic position is, mass murder of the Arabs, a fascist position, although they won't admit this.

But my point here is that hardline nationalists of the dominant nationalism -- Israeli Zionist racist nationalism -- as well as the nationalism of the oppressed nation, the Palestinian nation, both are run and led by people who deep down don't like mixture of peoples and nations. Revolutionary socialists, on the other hand, rather like intermixture of nations and peoples, because it makes appealing to the class line between capital and labor easier, and makes operating on the class struggle basis of bring labor of both Hebrew and Arab backgrounds together easier, and that is what we particularly have to try to do in situations of interpenetrated or intermixed nations or interpenetrated or intermixed peoples.

But in the concrete instances of prejudice, discrimination, oppression of nations and national minorities by oppressor nations' leaderships, it is incumbent on revolutionary socialists to go to the defense of the democratic rights of the oppressed nation or people. That does not mean, however, in situations of intermixed or interpenetrated nations or peoples necessarily raising the slogan of forming one's own nation-state. Rather, it means raising in the Near East where situations of intermixed peoples exist the perspective and slogan of a Socialist Federation of the Near East in the context of which all diverse nations, peoples, ethnic groups, can cooperatively, amicably, in a friendly way, decide their own fates nonviolently and peaceably -- after having collaborated and cooperated in joint socialist revolution against all oppressor and exploiter governments and states of the entire area, Zionist and Arab alike.

--Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Dear Morven:
First, thank you for your response.
Second, I don't want to give the impression I was sympathizing with Logan. I wasn't.
I came away from reading "The Logan Regime" documents in 2005-2006 more or less with the view, "Logan, Robertson, Foster, Norden: birds of a feather flock together." That was my sincere view after reading those 3 bulletins and meditating on my own experience in the Spartacist League in 1973-1976. It would take me awhile to explain, but, basically, I knew who the "Judith Hunter" and "Doug Hunter" in those bulletins was. The "Judith Hunter" was actually one Judith Shapiro Hainline and the "Doug Hunter" was actually one Doug Hainline, and they had led a tendency in the International Socialists called the Leninist Tendency in 1973 that had Spartacist politics. Independently, I came to Spartacist views and approached the Spartacists, and it was suggested I should go to an upcoming International Socialists national conference, and that was suggested because the Spartacists knew the Hainlines' West Coast-based Leninist Tendency would be at that national International Socialists conference where, Robertson hoped, I'd meet them and begin collaborating with them. I did.

But after a period of collaboration with them and having agreed with the perspective of joining the Spartacists, at the conference where we fused with the Spartacists, when the vote to put Judith Hainline on the central committee of the Spartacists came up, I was the sole vote against doing so. I was unclear at the time in my motivation, but had concluded vaguely that she had behaved in an unprincipled fashion in trying to keep from the fusion one of the members of her own tendency I had previously known in the years 1969-1970 when I'd spent a year in California and gotten to know this comrade. I reacted. I simply voted against putting anybody of the Leninist Tendency on the CC of the Spartacists. For the next 3 years, she waged a guerilla war against me from the Central Committee of the Spartacists. I didn't even know that -- but incidents in my experience in the organization persuaded me something was going on that finally impelled me to resign from the party in late 1976. I wish I had read "The Logan Regime" documents earlier, because if I'd done so, I would not have spent the years from at least 1983 through 2005 publicly defending the Spartacists. Judith and Doug were the main whitewashers of the corrupt psychopath, Logan, in the English Spartacist League. Nobody in that party ever came forth and said, "You know, Greene, you had a point in voting against putting her on the CC of the Spartacists in 1973." Nobody.

But I stupidly did not read those documents till 2005-2006. By then, I'd donated lots of money to their party and joined lots of their campaigns and defended them rabidly publicly.

But since I read those documents, I'm now persuaded that Robertson, Foster, and Norden are birds of a feather to Logan. I even have written the Spartacists since reading those documents calling them "Loganites of the First Mobilization."

That's roughly my view on them.

But even though it is, I still think they write formalistically much interesting and enlightening stuff, and a lot of their formally Trotskyist stuff, as well as that of Norden's Internationalist Group, and Logan's International Bolshevik Tendency, all seem pretty close to me to what Trotsky formalistically wrote in the 1930s in his writings.

My experience, however, terminally burned me and kept me from seriously seeking to re-join their movement. Every time I thought I was getting close in the 1970s or 1980s -- and that was even when I'd not read "The Logan Regime" documents -- I would finally stop, and turn around and not go forward.

But reading "The Logan Regime" documents in 2005-2006 and about Judith and Doug "Hunter's" role in that situation made me realize that the Robertson view of deferring to the leadership rather than the mutineers -- his own stated view in those documents -- came down to an anti-communist prejudice for the tops (the leaders) and against the rank-and-filers. And that's corrupt.

Foster set me up at the fusion conference in 1973 after I'd voted against putting Judith on the Spartacists CC. Norden in 1976 after I put down on an employment application the fake front "business" the Spartacists used to tell comrades who moved around the country for the Spartacists to put down so comrades could get income-producing employment told a prospective employer who called that fake front business for a reference on me "Never heard of him," and this at a time when I'd run out of money and had a nervous breakdown because I'd just found out that after moving around the country about 4 times, the Spartacists were breaking up my local again and I'd be moving the 5th time.

So they're corrupt. They're Loganites of the First Mobilization.

I also think Robertson's calling Trotskyism "20th Century Calvinism" in "The Logan Regime" documents, while seeming humorously metaphorical to him, was actually closer to being non-metaphorical, and I thought of the fact Calvin had had Servetus slowly roasted to death over a slow fire in Calvin's fanatical Protestant intolerance of heresy. That struck me as being more of what, in personality, Robertson was, a kind of WASP sadistic fanatic who more or less gleefully enjoyed tormenting some communist rank-and-filers of his movement. And since I grew up in a WASP background and learned something about WASP Protestant sadism, I knew something about this from the inside.

Anyway, thank you for your response, Morven.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

I'm compelled to revise my February 13, 2009 remarks in which I characterized James Robertson and George Foster of the Spartacist League, and Jan Norden of the Internationalist Group, as "Loganites of the First Mobilization."

The problem I find with my own characterization is this: despite my own personal bitterness after reading "The Logan Regime" documents, and expressing it numerous times specifically to the Robertson/Foster-led International Communist League-Fourt Internationalist group, I still find myself agreeing with them pretty much on everything they write in terms of their program and theory.

That's my problem.

Consequently, I'm compelled to stipulate one of two possibilities is correct:

1. If they are Loganites of the First Mobilization, then there is, objectively, no communist party on the planet earth today, and, consequently, probably no hope for humanity to resolve the crisis which international capitalist imperialism has visited on humanity;

2. Or, alternatively, if they are not Loganites of the First Mobilization as I called them, and I am therefore mistaken, they are the only authentic communist party on the planet today, in which case I severed my connection with them starting in 1976 with my resignation from their party, and finally culminating about 4 years ago when I began expressing my view directly toward them in communications with them, mistakenly.

There is, of course, one third possibility, which is, left communists like the International Communist Current, International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, Internationalist Perspective, etc., are right in their critique of Trotskyism-post-Trotsky. But I still find myself disagreeing with too much of what left communists say about Trotskyism-post-Trotsky. Additionally, I do not agree with what left communists write about pre-death-of-Trotsky-Trotskyism, either, and find myself, generally speaking, agreeing with most of what Trotsky wrote when he was negotiating with left communists like, for instance, Bordiga in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

At exactly the same time, I find myself in a gut sense feeling political sympathy for Gabriel Miasnikov, and thinking perhaps there might have been a better way for the regime of Lenin and Trotsky to have addressed the issue of Miasnikov which might have been more inclusive of him than excluding of him.

All this does is show I cannot be effective politically except in the broadest sense of posting on line the diverse interpretations of diverse ostensibly Marxist views with which I find myself agreeing, and I acknowledge that.

Comradely to all, therefore,
including to Trotskyists and
left communists alike,

Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

Allan, it's good to hear you say that Robertson et al. are NOT Loganites of the First Mobilization. Despite the tremendous dread and hopelessness for our future that it had caused in me, I recently too had mistakenly come to share the viewpoint that they were indeed agents of Loganiteism -- and not just Loganiteists, but Loganiteists of the especially egregious First Mobilization variety!

Your reassesment of the situation, I believe, is fundamental sound. After all, it is too awful too believe that Robertson et al. -- say what you will of them! -- could possibly have gone over to the Loganiteist camp, entailing as it would the nullifiation of all of humanity's hopes for a better future. I refuse to believe that Jan Norden would ever do such a thing, and therefore I too now reject my earlier conclusion that he was a Loganiteist rascal.

May 30, 2009
Saturday

Dear Anonymous:

I'm going to exasperate the hell out of you by saying, I flip-flop back and forth on the "Loganites-of-the-First-Mobilization" characterization of Robertson, Foster, and Norden. Since I "revised" my statement -- a revision for which you thanked me -- I've flip-flopped again in some subsequent emails to others.

The more I think over everything, and the more I meditate on stuff I read in the International Communist Current's interesting book, The Russian Communist Left -- including the International Communist Current's view of possibilities for revolutionary intervention in workers' struggles post-1923 -- the more I find myself in relatively substantial agreement with the left communist position on this issue, which is, to me, a crucial issue.

But this also increasingly compels me to view the entire focus of all ostensible communism of the Trotskyist variety on state property as innately and organically defensible as questionable. The reason is, the logic of the left communist argument of both comrades of the ICC, as well as comrades of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (www.ibrp.org), comrades of the Internationalist Perspective group (www.internationalist-perspective.org), to the effect that statification of capital was itself the way in which capital in its epoch of decadence addressed that decadence, the permanent crisis of overproduction.

This argument of the left communists increasingly makes sense to me. I say this even though I've argued with the ICC, the IBRP, other left communists, in the past on state property, coming down hard in support of the innately defensible character of state property.

There is still one issue to me that needs to be addressed on the state property issue.

It is my impression that workers' class struggles in many parts of the planet do, indeed, oppose privatization of capital. If that is the case, and if communists are to intervene in the sense of solidarity with our class, then how are we to address workers' questions to us on this issue of state property versus private property? Are we to say, it's a matter of indifference so long as we're in the epoch of capitalist decadence with its permanent crisis of overproduction, and that only the proletarian communist revolution and the formation of workers' councils can resolve the issue rightly? That answer might make sense.

But Trotskyists are overwhelmingly preoccupied with state property.

And my own personal experience increasingly makes me relate this to the concept of the appetites of Trotskyist leaders to, perhaps, become appropriators of surplus product tomorrow through the aegis of a state controlled by themselves. In this sense, I could envision the left communist perspective as arguing, that would simply be a continuation of addressing the issue of international capitalist decadence by means of statification of capital.

I have other arguments or issues with left communists.

But the more I read left communist positions, the more they make sense to me.

I think Comrade Amadeo Bordiga's position that to a significant degree, it really was not realistically viable for communist revolutionaries to do more but "hang on" and retain communist principles, program, and theory, after the end of the first revolutionary wave of class struggles of 1917-1923 has also helped me better grasp later left communist positions.

I realize there are differences among left communists over their approach to comrade Bordiga's positions. But I'm merely here stating my own attitude of friendliness toward at least some significant aspects of what Bordiga wrote, and in the past 5 or 6 years, I've read a considerable amount in English translation by him. (I wish more were translated into English.)

However, the book on Trotskyism by the IBRP, as well as the ICC book, The Russian Communist Left, and the readings of a considerable amount of Bordiga's writing translated into English, have helped me much more.

I apologize for being so damned exasperating on the Loganites-of-the-First-Mobilization issue. But increasingly, I'm thinking it has to be seen in the broader context of Trotskyism's preoccupation with state property, and the probable appetites of Trotskyist leaders to become themselves appropriators of labor-created surplus product or surplus value.

If seen in that light, with the addition of the left communist insight into the role of statification of capital in the epoch of the decadence of capitalism, my own preoccupation with the cliquism of the Spartacists starts to recede, and I better grasp the totality of the context in which left communists have told me I have to see this thing.

Comradely at any rate,

Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

PS: I was very happy to read of this national discussion conference on left communism the comrades of the ICC were able to organize in the New York area. I was also very happy to read they evidently got a considerable number of workers at this thing. That is most promising.