Louis wrote: I do have a pretty good sense that things are starting to unravel. That is not good.
Fred comments: Louis is right about that. Let me note a rather astonishing violation of list rules that I accepted passively -- the repeated use of my name in a series of posts. When I or others violate this rule, the next post is usually from Les pointing out the error and asking that the offender cease and desist. While I really don't care if my name appears in headlines, I think the rule exists for good reasons and should be both re-explained and re-instituted. The debate over totalitarianism seemed pretty empty to me, and the debate over mass rape tipped over into madness. Totalitarianism as a concept is not a product of bad imperialist propaganda but of twentieth century phenomena took place in the real world -- the similarities which could not be missed between Stalinist and Nazi methods of rule (which does not mean that the societies were not profoundly different and counterposed). I long since have grown weary of people denouncing Trotsky (who unconditionally defended the Soviet Union), Arendt, Orwell, and others for the unforgivable crime of noticing the similarities and generalizing about them within their class orientation and intellectual capacities. Of course no society is really totalitarian, just as no party (not even the teensy-tiny US-SWP is really monolithic) but this does not mean that ruling groups in various types of crises cannot attempt to intimidate the base by organizing along totalitarian-absolutist lines. Trotsky, I believe, held that totalitarianism, including Soviet totalitarianism, was a manifestation of imperialist decay. I think he was on the right track. Are there any phenomena similar to that today. Well, without claiming that Iran is in any sense a "totalitarian state" (any more than it is a democracy) I heard some familiar bells ringing in the trial and confession of the former Iranian vice president under the liberal Islamist theocrat Khatami. Having just the previous week having read "Not Guilty!" the report of the Dewey Commission on the Charges against Leon Trotsky and the Moscow Trials. If challenged I will quote this great democratic document at length, but reading this and the confession of the Iranian official left no doubt that we sre looking at variants of similar phenomena). On "mass rape" by the Soviet soldiers in Germany, and leaving aside any suggestions that Soviet male orgasms in Geman women represented a form of reparation for a devastating imperialist assault on the Soviet Union. I hope we have no illusions that Soviet troops entered Germany as a pure and simple "Stalinist" revolutionary army. Hiwever, these problems do arise in revolutionary armies. For instance, in at least one case, the Cuban Rebel Army of the July 26 Movement in Cubs executed a recruit for violentlu sexually abusing a rural woman. I have no idea if there were other incidents of this type, So I ask a simple question. Was any Soviet soldier executed for rape or sexual abuse of a German woman. The Soviet state and military had capital. Allow me to say that since it is basically impossible for an invasion of that scale to occur and no instances of sexual abuse to take place I would argue that if NO ONE was sentenced to death or long prison terms for rape or sexual abuse, then that behavior was ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
