The revealing debate continues...

As could be expected, the debate around the exile of Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union has inevitably ranged into a number of broader issues. The two letters by Terry Auld and Don Franks in the March 27 issue of Salient give ample evidence of this.

Auld and Franks both comment on how revealing this debate is, and on that point I couldn't agree more. In this letter I wish to take up only three if the issues they raise, and in doing so point to how much they reveal about their sick brand of politics.

1) In my article I explain how in Stalinist Russia and China a system of monolithism has been established. There is one line—that of the leaders—and any divergence from it is labelled as "bourgeois" and crushed. It is interesting that neither Auld nor Franks seriously challenge this charge; and in fact Auld, with his customary clumsiness, gives us further evidence of its correctness. When admitting that dissidents will inevitably emerge in China and in the future, he blandly claims "They will be the bearers of bourgeois ideology, as the Soviet dissidents are". How convenient. Regardless of their political ideas and programme, Auld knows in advance that these people "will be bearers of bourgeois ideology". This kind of "logic" has a practical usefulness, of course; it is much easier to crush political opponents who have been tried and convicted in advance.

2) As a justification for the repression of dissidents in the Soviet Union and China, Auld and Franks attempt to hide behind "the dictatorship of the proletariat". As Mao or Brezhnev might say to the masses: "We are the dictatorship; and you are the proletariat".

But the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" refers simply to the working class having power in a society, as opposed to capitalist rule or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. And while socialist strive to preserve and strengthen working class power by any means necessary, this does not mean that opposition viewpoints should inevitably be suppressed. At times of intense crisis, such as during the civil war following the Russian revolution, it may be necessary to suppress opposition viewpoints; but Lenin and the Bolsheviks always saw this as a last resort, a necessary measure in order to ensure victory in the civil war.

In general, however, as Don Franks correctly quotes Lenin: "proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy". This means that different working class tendencies should have full freedom to publicise and win adherents to their views, and that there should be free debate and discussion of ideas. Slander and vilification of dissidents is, of course, incompatible with this.

Moreover, in today's Russia and China the stifling of dissent actually serves to weaken the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism cannot be built around the suppression of all critical thought, around a system where the masses must adhere to one line which is set "for them", or else risk being labelled "reactionary".

3) In my article I explained that "when faced with critics, the Stalinist system does not debate with those critics ideas, and engage in open discussion". Auld seems to take exception to this point, declaring that "Readers will judge for themselves the validity of his assertion", so I think the time opportune for a few specific example. I refer readers to the slaughter of thousands of Trotskyist Left Oppositionists (indeed, any oppositionists!) in the Soviet Union during the late 1920s and into the 1930s; to the Chinese Trotskyists who are in exile or rotting in Mao's jails; and, no less significantly, to the fact that people like Auld and Franks proudly boast that if they have any say in the New Zealand revolution the "Trots" will be among the first to go to the wall. After all, Trotskyists are "counter-revolutionaries" and "agents of the CIA", aren't they?

In this debate we have seen again how those who choose to defend the Stalinist systems in the Soviet Union and China are reduced to mindlessly apologising for the outrages which have been committed in the name of socialism by Stalin, Mao, and company. People need large doses of blind faith in order even to attempt such an impossible task; but faith has never yet managed to overthrow oppression and build a socialist society. It only stands in the way.

Handed in

A directive from our masters. CSC sessional assistants: do Not give advice to INFO 201 students.

A conversation.....

"Can you help me?"

"Are you an INFO 201 student?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"Hard luck. Ask the Info Science department." Subsequent events....

Mindless Me

My sympathies to the reporter of the MSA curry evening. To have it inferred that he is without a mind is not flattering. Yet I am finding it difficult to disagree with this charge. For Salient continues its mindless attack on Moral Re-Armament under the heading 'Christian Anticommunism' (March 27).

Why can't Salient give us the truth instead of digging up the old-hat criticisms and inaccuracies, e.g. 'the influence of MR's influential American bankers.' For the information of the writer, the Keswick referred to is in the UK and not the US.

It's hardly imaginative either to try to reform supposed anti-communism with anti-Moral Re-Armament.

I would like to see a greater number of positive articles in Salient. Newspaper should not only expose society's wrongs but report the hopeful changes that are occuring.

The can business?

It is immensely encouraging to see a bright new spirit of student involvement in various facets of social interactions within the University environment Gone are the days of student apathy. We are in the 'can' business.

A perfect example of student participation, co-operation and good-will was evidently shown recently by a small group of overseas students. It was most pleasing to come across such an enterprising, friendly and interesting group of people who had organised a dance evening in the student union. I am referring to the Fijian students. In my opinion these students deserve a closer recognition from we Kiwis whose support is essential to enable a much better understanding between our fellow students.

Does SRC condone the Red peril?

I feel I must write and query the article in Salient (March 27 issue) about the SRC. Of the four students from Vic I asked nobody knew what the hell SRC stood for, so please excuse this apparent lack of 'home work' on my part.

Does SRC infact condone the spread of communism and the most horrible violence that Africa has seen since the Mau Mau?

It appears so in their 'first major project' which as the article states will be 'fund-raising for the Zimbabwe freedom-fighters'.

How much does this SRC actually know about the freedom-fighters, their aims and methods?

If their fund-raising goes ahead they will be contributing to the deaths and horrible injurys of innocent people, both black and white. Some of these people are totally apathetic as to the government or policies of their leaders, or should I say, to whoever may be in control of their area at the time.

As the 'Zimbabwe Freedom-Fighters' are communist backed, and provided for by the communist countries, it appears that either the SRC is pro-communist and condones the deaths and maiming of innocent people or are so bloody arrogant as to go into a situation and problem area, without doing their homework on the topic.

I do realise the fact, that the parties concerned in the conflict, are not 'innocent people'; but the African villagers and local white population mainly women and young children have little say in what happens, and, so are innocent to the whims of the Smith regime or the Zimbabwe freedom-fighters.

All I can say is that the SRC is moving into an area where they are out of their depth, to use light terms, and will, like small children who play with fire, get their fingers burnt.

All I ask is that they take a good bloody hard look at the whole situation in Rhodesia, on both sides of the conflict and then if they still feel that they are in the same league as the big boys, act accordingly.

Crumbs from the table of the rich

This is a reply to an article entitled "Leftovers" in March 27 edition. As a member of the elite of the university students (i.e. those living off the profits of capitalism) I accept the thanks of 'well fed and read' and I assure him of our continued generosity and indirect financial support.

Long live indifference?

It is because there are doubtless freshers this year, who inspired by the prospect of liberty on campus (as opposed to classroom confinement), except more of university than that the only, genuine cry be 'Long live indifference' that this reply is written. Dianne's point of view in her report last week of the gay forum is that of reaction to indifference, whereas true radical renewing passes through that stage and comes out on the other side—to offer what we cannot be indifferent to. I do not think people here are necessarily indifferent or otherwise. It is that people have potentialities for care and/or indifference, and people who are conditioned by their environments are those who conform to the average reaction within the environments.

VUW is at present a very dull boring place because the reasons for its instigation are exhausted. Research has become an end in itself, and people are disillusioned with the rewards it offers either as an end in itself or as a menas to social prestige and wealth. Consequently we are experiencing here a sense of loss of purpose and meaning. This is frustrating and cannot be overcome either by stolid indifference or cynicism.

Those who are the most persuaded that there is some purpose left in the university are the activists. There are many differently-motivated activists on this campus. Some are individuals slotted together; others are institutionalised bodies—the chiefly successful groups are the ones made up of the oldest students, who are well-acquainted with the philosophy of study and why it doesn't work and want some practical alternative. For example those who work for Salient are a small group who seem to understand their aims and have achieved some sort of solidity, status and sense of working within common aims. (That leaves out political back-fighting which has always seemed necessary to omit since so much of it is motivated by pride and egoism). Similarly another group, of which it could be said that anyone with a little application and open-heartedness could come to be gathered into, would by the Christian population, which centres in Ramsey House Kelburn Parade. This is a unified group comprising over the double hundreds, of individuals from many different backgrounds. Then there are other smaller more specific groups and gatherings which are not indifferent, but rather are concerned with the core-cause of their unity. One thinks of the Chemistry Society, Physics Society etc, all of which to the uninitiated seem esoteric and to the self-centred and uninitiated, seem boring. Also the Car Club and Motor Bike Club offer a wider range of interest, which in due consideration to Women's Liberation one sees, are not limited to men but to driven.

Now the central thing about all these groups is that they call the individual to sacrifice time and energy, to pursue some concern external to his or her needs, and to promote inevitably, good feelings and harmony. These are the fruits of such trees. The choice of one's group involves the choice of one's identity. In this last respect it is surely the less-personally centred, more abstract, ideal and consequently far reaching causes that appeal, for they are a path of politics and a means to peace. The desire to end apathy, the hope to be free of both personal and political alienation, are the hope and desire of the peace-makers. And whatever one declares as ones means to promote world-peace it will not come until each individual knows peace in the inner self and outer world of which and in which each self is a vital part, conscious or not. Therefore the fact that we are indifferent, is merely because our eyes have not been opened to the possibilities of involvement, and involvement at VUW offers itself on a very wide scale.

Those interested in the organisations mentioned above go to Contact on the second floor of the Student Union Building. Those who disagree with this letter please express their point of view not only to their neighbours, but to their brothers and sisters per Salient.

Poisoning the people

I would like to reply to the other critics of my article on Solzhenitsyn.

1) Anthony Skipper (publish whole or not at all) is evidently a clever chap. I am sure that if he had a single fact to confirm his phrasemongering he would not have hesitated to use it.

With a sense of irony entirely his own. Skipper asks me: "Does accomplishment, quality, make a person 'bourgeois'?"

No, but this argument is bourgeois. In a class-divided society all literature and art belongs to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is no abstract criterion for "accomplishment" and "quality". From the proletarian point of view literature and art should serve the interests of the masses, particularly the working class. Form and content are not separated from each other.

"Some works which politically are downright reactionary may have a certain artistic quality. The more reactionary their content and the higher their artistic quality, the more poisonous they are to the people, and the more necessary it is to reject them." (Mao Tsetung, Talks at the [unclear: lan] Forum on Literature and Art)

That sums up the Marxist attitude to literature and art. What is at issue with Solzhenitsyn is not his technical abilities—but the reactionary character of his politics which is reflected in his writings.

Skipper may believe that Solzhenitsyn is "a far better communist, in the spirit of Marx and Lenin.... than 'recognised' Soviet writers", but I believe that anyone who denounces revolutionary and national liberation movements, particularly the Vietnamese revolution, who defends the South African racists, who advocates a return to peasant life, etc, is a thoroughgoing reactionary who has absolutely nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism.

Skipper asks: "What is Mao? What was Fanon? Was Lenin more 'proletarian' than Solzhenitsyn? Compare the experience of his life with that of the man you are classing as bourgeois."

Like the Trotskyists, Skipper cannot understand that whether they are aware of it or not, people can express bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas while picturing themselves as proletarian revolutionaries. While in class society all kinds of thinking are stamped with the brand of a class, it does not follow that a person expresses the ideas of the class of which he is a member. Both Lenin and Mao, like Marx, Engels and Stalin, came from non-working class origins, nevertheless their teachings express proletarian ideology in concentrated form.

Skipper asks: "If Solzhenitsyn is fascist, what was Stalin—democratic? What was Hitler—pseudo-fascist? What is Kosygin? Book-based man, go back to your books and think again."

This kind of thinking would get Skipper good marks in political "science" at the University of Waikato, but it has nothing to do with reality.

Fascism is the open, terroristic dictatorship of monopoly capital. Those who support this dictatorship are fascists. When Stalin carried out the purges of the thirties, about which the Trotskyists never cease bleating, he was concerned with rooting out the counter-revolution. Whether the Trotskyists and Skipper recognise it or not, the Trotskyists, Bukharinites and Zinovievites executed by the Soviet state in the thirties were all counter-revolutionaries. Stalin's, concern was the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union. Any mistakes made during this period, and Stalin himself admitted that some had been made in his speech to the 18th Congress of the CPSU (B), were made in the process of protecting socialism.

Louis Armstrong is alleged to have remarked: "All music's folk music; leastways 1 never heard of no horse making it." Antony Skipper uses this kind if thinking when he throws at me the following (to him ironical) charge: "Perhaps you class 'ppoletarian' as 'people'? What are the 'bourgeois'-sub-human?"

Wrong again! The "people" is made up of different social classes and layers according to the nature of the society. In a society in which the overwhelming majority are oppressed and exploited, these layers constitute the masses of the people. In bourgeois society the working class and other labouring sections, who are oppressed and exploited by the bourgeoisie, constitute the "people". In socialist society the working class and its allies are the masses of the people.

Skipper quotes at length, but to no good purpose, from Solzhenitsyn. For example, "on war (p 26). 'Violence can only be concealed by the lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.' Is that pro-imperialist? fascist?"

No, Precisely because it is abstract, it can mean all things to all men addicted to phrasemongering, it is meaningless.

2) John Wilson says: "In China though, all decisions are made in secret, as at the 10th Party Congress last August." This is a standard assertion which has no validity. If it means that the Chinese take many of their decisions without bringing Mr Wilson, myself and other foreigners into their confidence, then he might be right. But the 10th Party Congress proceedings were no secret for the Chinese people. The main documents were discussed at great length before its convention. Delegates were chosen on the basis of mass discussion.

While I would like to know what was discussed at that congress in great detail, I do not think that the Chinese are doing anything reprehensible in not bringing me into their confidence. It is their party and their decision.

What creates inflation

As moves seem to be afoot to try to get me excluded from the use of the University Union facilities because of what I wrote about the caf, I think I will write a few last words on what I have wanted to say for a long time.

Two press extracts interested me. One was to the effect that the Singaporean Government or the Port Commission in Singapore had banned the wearing of collars and ties in that state, for its Government employees because it was felt "ties created a mood of keeping up with the Jones"

and scrambling for power. This was just a little news entry tucked away on the back page of the Evening Post sometime last year.

Another press entry that caught my eye was some billboard stating by the Women's Weekly "Does your husband suffer from impotence? and what you can do about it".

With things as they are, the caf manager's employees wearing their collars and ties, parade around the campus, and it is not possible to communicate with any of them on any but harsh, threatening terms, "a collar and tie creates sides" and most students literally cringe before authority.

One cannot even squeak out an inquiry about the costs of the various items. On my first meal I was charged 5 cents for a bottle of milk and I protested until the cashier non-chantly admitted it was only 3c and gave me back my correct change. Without apology.

I think the article on impotence in the NZ Women's Weekly is connected with the stranglehold women have on jobs that were once male, or could be male jobs if there were not such tight male job stereo types in this country. As all should know the first thing a man should have is self esteem of holding down a creative worthwhile job, and the women are taking the creative jobs away from us men.

Our friend from across the Tasman is still evidently blind to the fact that the pressure on the lower cafeteria could be eased by the simple process of opening the upper privileged class cafeteria to the rank and file students who have paid their $25 union fees.

Whether these fees go to the university/NZUSA or whatever—I have not the time to research on. All I know is that they have to be paid along with tuition fees.

"Cash register education or graceful living, Kiwi style": Sorry, Mr Catering manager, I cannot quite master the great NZ art of merging into the background, faceless, uncomplaining, like a sponge or jellyfish. Do you think Mr Catering Manager you might, on these hot humid days, provide us with a little cheap water (or H20) arranged in carafes or water jugs on each table in the caf so that we may slake our thirst like decent human beings, washing down the system after our three course midday meal, as Nature intended. If you wish, one of us shall, to save expense even collect up the water jugs at the end of mealtimes, but even Christ could not do without water. Of course watered down coffee or milk which you offer is an expensive substitute, but we prefer cheaper wholesome water. Please Mr Catering Manager, if one of us should venture meekly to ask at the queue for a glass of water, don't snap his head off for "holding up the almighty queue of willing cash-suppliers". We ourselves of course will volunteer to open the glass caf windows when the stifling humid atmosphere becomes unbearable. In fact if we ran the cafe ourselves we might do a better job all round.

Staggering up the almost vertical hill of the University doing about umteen foot-pounds or joules of energy, sweating—you realise that, carrying all your own heavy bags of books without a single locker near the cafe to deposit one's books and bags in, that it is all a plot to make you replenish thirst and food at the cafe.

Do the Catering Manager and 'students committee' work in collusions?

I am relieved to think that I might not be hung drawn and quartered for my comments on the cafe seeing as how the visitor from NSW added his voice to mine. But no one never knows.

I myself have eaten at the campus cafeteria at the NSW University at Kensington and agree that their meals are better than Victorias.

Perhaps that is because Australia has a vociferous migrant population determined for their rights.

Our NSW visitor's comments appear to have been edited unless he was blind and did not visit the privileged class cafe on the second floor, I suspect he may have been bribed to say nothing in his article about the class and money distinction between the upper cafe which is reserved for the big shots with money (and which is invariably half empty) and the grossly crowded lower cafe.

By the way I suggest as a further economy measure that the Cafeteria Manager dispense with knives, folks and spoons and simply serve up a really proletarian dinner for the lower class poorer students wrapping die fish and chips (without vegetables of course, by courtesy of Watties) in old newspaper. The students then can just throw the wrapper in waste bins and this will save paying staff to clear up.

The money thus saved together with the students Union contributions each student has to make, can then be accumulated to give a really fine dinner in the upper floor class cafe for the university's own employees and visitors and big shots.....

I think the Asian students especially will like eating the rice-based meals which have been put on especially for their benefit with their fingers or perhaps with disposable pohutukawa leaves to save expense.

With the stashed up ten dollar bills, the Catering Manager and the President of the students committee can go into a huddle and divide the proceeds undisturbed.

It is sickening that while a character regularly gets up on a chair with a loud hailer in the lower caf (never in the upper caf of course) to harangue the lower class students about landlords rents and marching on Parliament, they are being exploited and didled by their own University union in their own backyard. This is too much; like Orwell's 1984—double talk and double thinking.

P.S. Why all the bilge about Solzhenitsyn-all we need to know is that Kirk himself said that Solzhenitsyn declined to live in NZ as he found New Zealanders morally cowardly. That should go into banner headlines.

Friendly NZ girls

The stories of gang rape on an assembly line principle do not surprise me. In 13 years no girl in NZ has ever spoken to me. I sat my exam in medical biology a few years ago in a lecture room full of medical ancillary staff students, nearly all females. For the whole year they sat away from me, in front of me, behind me, anything but beside me. At the end of the year as we were going into the exam hall, one of them talked in a loud whisper to her female companion, about me, "He won't get through, he'll fail." As it happened I passed, no doubt to her disappointment.

If I was looking for encouragement or a boost to my self esteem, I would rather talk to a pet dog.... as for love, out of the question. The girls set the tone by the character assassination behind a blokes back they can make him or break him. I am past caring.....They set the tone by their ingrown lack of vision, imagination, they control the mores. As for intelligent conversation, I would rather talk to a pet canary....

Bikies, homosexuals and Hells Angels are only a start. In the 1930s Germany was full of homosexuals and we all know what that led to, even after the Roen purges of the Night of Long Knives. A brutal stormtrooper type who setet their miasma throughout Europe. That will happen when male creativity is throttled.

P.S. For publication next issue, in case I am banned from the university meantime. Malayan, Chinese and Asian students generally do not seem to have any sexual hangups. They gain their MScs and PhDs in apparently effortless succession. Their sex customs cannot be so repressive as ours, where often to talk to a girl makes one feel that they may call the police. I do not think that performing endless slide rule and calculator computations, and endless tinkering with cars and motor cycles will satisfy the male ego indefinitely.