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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, No. 11. May 29, 1974

Voltaire lives!.....in Mount Street

page 13

Voltaire lives!.....in Mount Street

Dear Roger,

Artwork of a woman milking a cow

It would appear that Peter Rotherham for the Young Socialists was making a subtle criticism of Salient in his letter last week. Evidently he feels that Salient needs a puzzle page and, being a generous sort of fellow, has supplied one.

For the Young Socialists, Mr Rotherham charges that Don Franks, Peter Franks and myself have treated our readers to a "disgusting display of fabrication". Readers are left to solve for themselves what these "fabrications" may be. Before they rush in to win one year's supply of The Militant for the "correct" solution, readers should recall that Rotherham called me a liar earlier and fell flat on his face. (See Salient, March 27, 1974. To be fair I must point out that then he wasn't "for the Young Socialists".)

Mr Rotherham claims that we are defenders of the Khrushchovite clique that seized power in the Soviet Union. If he read my original article, he would have realised that I denounced the Brezhnev regime. To put things as simply as I can so that even Rotherham may be able to understand, to me the Soviet Union is a country where a new type of state monopoly capitalism has arisen. Usurping Soviet state power in the 50's, the Khrushchovite clique turned the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and preceded to restore capitalist relations of production in the Soviet Union. State monopoly capitalism is the economic root of present Soviet policies of external expansionism. When he claims that we defend Brezhnev, Rotherham is lying in a rather pathetic manner. After all, readers of Salient merely have to look through the correspondence to see this for themselves.

In a tight corner, Rotherham is reduced to a Voltairian argument: "We defend Solzhenitsyn's civil rights and not his politics." What kind of "Marxists" divide a man from his politics? The struggle between Solzhenitsyn and Brezhnev is one between two different kinds of reactionaries. Anyone who had read Solzhenitsyn's writings would have realised from the start that he was a reactionary — that is, if they had any kind of political understanding. Until Solzhenitsyn became so great an embarrassment, Trotskyites the world over defended him as a "revolutionary".

The neo-nazis in West Germany are not as naive as the Young Socialists for the Socialist Action League. Albert von Thadden, leader of the NDP, said that the merit of "The Gulag Archipelago" was that it was aimed at the "left forces of the whole earth". The SAL believes that it can be a positive force in the democratisation of the Soviet Union. Unlike the SAL, being a person with political consciousness, von Thadden makes a class analysis of Solzhenitsyn.

Rotherham now tries to show that he grasps class struggle in socialist society, despite his previous performances. In his somewhat breathless style, Rotherham stales: "The working class and its allies must constantly struggle against these forces (bourgeois ideology) in defence of their state and their ultimate goal of socialism". (Salient, May 22, 1974).

Two points can be made here. Firstly, of what value is there in declaring that you have an abstract understanding of class struggle in socialist society if you are incapable of grasping its concrete manifestations? If you cannot recognise the concrete manifestations of class struggle — in the economic, political, ideological, military, and cultural fields — what kind of "Marxist" are you? Secondly, contrary to Rotherham's statement, the ultimate goal of the working class struggle is the transitional society between capitalism and communism which occupies a long historical period. During this period of lime, the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to suppress the old exploiting classes and to organise socialist construction.

Rotherham once again trots out the peculiar claim that all dissent and critical thought are suppressed in China in the name of the class struggle. That is a delusion in which he is determined to persist. That it is completely contrary to all the evidence is irrelevant to him. In China there is continuous debate on all issues from running the factories, the neighbourhood, the brigade, the commune, etc to fundamental questions of Marxist theory. In the course of this debate, proletarian ideology asserts itself. But it is a debate that arises again and again as the socialist revolution deepens in China.

The way Rotherham expresses himself, typical of petty-bourgeois radicals, shows how little he understands the problem. You can't suppress ideas and critical thought. As long as classes, class contradictions and class struggle exist in society, non-proletarian ideology will inevitably find expression. Non-proletarian "dissent and critical thought" will emerge in China in the future, and it exists at present.

What can be suppressed are the handful of capitalist roaders and die-hard reactionaries who refuse to accept the socialist regime. But people who genuinely make mistakes are not liquidated as Rotherham would like us all to believe. If all people who have expressed bourgeois thinking were repressed, how is it that Teng Hsiao-ping, the No 2 capitalist roader in China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, has once again taken a leadership position in China? Because of Mao Tsetung's policies towards people who make mistakes, he was given the chance to remould his thinking and to return to proletarian revolutionary line. Other former leaders in China showed themselves to be die-hards and have been retired from active political life.

Yours faithfully,

Terry Auld.

P.S. I wonder why Peter Rotherham failed to answer the important questions raised in my letter in the last Salient of the first term.