1. Hal Draper’s piece on Israel posted by angelus novus at Contested Terrain (and linked to here) has prompted a very thoughtful, intelligent response by Mira Vogel, posted at Engage and Greens Engage, two excellent British left-wing anti-racist sites.
2. Larry Gambone has a couple of recent articles of interest, most notably his dissection of the myth of Lenin’s “libertarian” State and Revolution (a myth that Draper contributed to).
3. Via Bermuda Radical (a bit Pabloite for my liking), I came across Sebastian Lamb’s critique of J Sakai and his theory of “settler” racism – useful.
4. I also recently found the Notes and Commentaries, a very interesting communist blog. This article, on sectarianism and the party, is especially good. (Again, Draper is a key reference point.)
5. Principia Dialectica lay into Amadeo Bordiga and his cult here.
Below the fold: From the archive of struggle, no.22
Principia Dialectica:
New at Libcom:
- One of my favourite Marxists, Sylvia Pankhurst, on the emptiness of isms [1923], on the New Economic Policy [1924], on much more besides.
- A short biography of Mexican anarchist Esteban Mendez Guerra who fought with Pancho Villa and was a close associate of the outstanding anarchist Librado Rivera. And a short biography of Jacob Kaplan, stirring anarchist orator, active in Leeds and London.
- Aghis Stinas on class struggle, internationalism and revolutionary defeatism in Greece during the Second World War. [Page currently not working, but material comes from this section of the Antagonism page, and specifically from Stinas’ memoirs.
- Otto Ruhle on proletarian youth groups during the post-WWI revolutionary period in Germany [1925].
- Adam Buick on Bordigism, plus Bordiga versus Pannakoek.
Poumista 
It’s great what you’re doing here. Tons of reading material, for knowledge consumption. Keep posting.
Please note the revised version of Principia Dialectica’s Bordiga post, as published below:
More on Left-wing antisemitism
June 21st, 2009
In 1960 a Paris bases magazine called Le Proletaire (parti communiste international) (programme communiste) , a bordiguist outfit published a text called : Auschwitz ou le grand alibi ( Auschwitz or the great alibi). In it they claimed the following:” from the fact of their earlier history, Jews find themselves essentially in the middle and petty bourgeoisie. Therefore this class is condemned by the irrestible advance of the concentration of capital.”
In reality Jews were hunted down not as members of this class or another, but as Jews. For the Nazis, Jews represented evil itself. The arrest of Jews in the III Reich was a priority. For example if wehrmacht soldiers went on leave on a train, they could be disembarked at a moment’s notice if the train was needed to send Jews to concentration camps.
The Bordiguists -and there are a few still around-, have never criticized this text, hence one must assume that they still endorse it. Vulgar marxists they were in the 1960’s and they still are in 2009! Bordiguism is not like wine, it does not get better as it grows older.
To this day many other orthodox marxist outfits fail to comprehend what the Holocaust really meant. They fall for the antisemitic lie that Israel is to blame for everything in the Middle East; they support the idea that millions of Palestinians have ‘the right to return’. Antisemitism is a depraved ideology. The Grand Mufti toured Hitler’s concentration camps; he was loud in proclaiming his support for the Final Solution. Jews have never been allowed to live in peace anywhere in this poxy world, least of all in the Middle East. Antisemitism has always been a fact of life in that region – hence no effort is made by any of the governments there to help find a solution to the millions of Palestinians left displaced after all the wars fought against Israel since 1948. These elites blame Jews for everything, hence people don’t look towards finding real solutions to their problems. For many, antisemitism and anticapitalism have often been compatible ideologies.
For more analysis on antisemitism and national-socialism see Moishe Postone’s pamphlet of the same name. Available from Chronos Publications , BM CHRONOS LONDON WC1 N 3XX. £3 p and p inc./please make cheques to Chronos Publications, in sterling if possible. (cf. other documents by M. Postone)
ps: As for Bordiga (Amadeo), anti-fascism was as bad as fascism. All through the Second World War, Bordiga stayed silent, therefore Mussolini and his police left him alone. Bordiga was a Leninist, against Stalin. He never condemned the Kronstadt massacre of 1921; for him it was necessary.
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