[Marxism] [A-List] Moldova

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

Last things first.

Thomas writes:

 >
 > I regret that I sent the communique to the list. In order to foster a
 > deeper understanding of what is taking place in Central Eastern
 > Europe, we should definitely spend more time reading Wikipedia and the
 > New York Times, not listening to what pseudo-Trotskyists on the ground
 > are saying.
 >

I regret, and more than you, Thomas, this reaction. I have never 
intended to smother anyone´s opinions, particularly if they run against 
mainstream opinion-makers.

But allow me to step a little bit ahead.

My posting of what, yes, looked like a Wikipedia article (thank you for 
confirmation) attempted to show that the general situation in Moldova 
cannot be understood by _just_ working against the deprivation that has 
fallen on the Moldovan people, nor that this is the main job to be taken 
up, _politically_, by a Marxist group. I accept that the RP group does 
not label itself Trotskyist, and thus I apologize for a grumbling 
response to what was not what I thought it to be.

But the problem is exactly the one we are facing with the "What to do 
next?" question.

If we think that struggling against the so to say "economic" evil that 
has fallen upon the poor and the workers in Central Eastern Europe is 
the gist of a Marxist position there, then we are relapsing in the old 
"economicist" mistake against which Lenin built a revolutionary and 
socialist movement.

I tried to say (even though I recognize from the very beginning my own 
ignorance of facts Moldovian) that a serious Marxist position should of 
necessity begin by understanding the complex set of class and national 
issues involved in the fate of this splinter of European land. Moreover, 
I would add that nothing can be fully understood without reference to 
the "longer" history of Moldava, its geopolitic situation, the influence 
of the bourgeoisie, both local and Western, in the shaping of its fate, 
the complex derivations of the onslaught by Stalin and his people on 
Georgia in 1922, the relations of the local bourgeois parties with the 
Fascist parties in Romania during the 30s, the eventuality that there 
exist some "bourgeois" parties in Moldova today that are just a front 
for further subjection to the European Union, and so on.

In fact, I hoped to spark some debate around some of these issues, which 
I regret to have failed to do because what I wanted was to LEARN, not to 
state a position, which in fact I should by any means avoid to do.

The key issue here is that methodological cornerstone of Marxism, the 
supremacy of the totality.

This, I am sorry to insist, is sorely absent in the communiqué you, 
Thomas, sent to the list. And of course I am not requesting Moldova 
comrades to tell their own fellow countrypeople the story of how they 
ended up with former Communists ruling the country, which is irrelevant.

What is relevant, however, and I don´t see in that communiqué, is the 
issue as to why, among other issues, the ruling party in Moldova still 
calls itself Communist, and as to why does it obtain half the popular vote.

This is the first thing to be explained to the Moldovans, which the RP 
comrades seem not to have considered worthy their efforts.

So, they relapse in a not very revolutionary definition of what has 
happened, what is going on, and certainly a not at all useful definition 
of the elections as elections between "two bourgeois fractions". 
Perhaps, I rashly venture to add, this is precisely why they have had so 
bad a turnout.

But who am I to give lessons to anyone.