Maoist polemicist Raymond Lotta issued a reply to Keith Jamieson’s recent essay, Everything You Know About Communism is Right, and had it passed out in front of the University’s Cobb Hall today.
The reply argues that the atrocities carried out in the last century by Communist revolutionary governments are part of the “learning curve” of the revolutionary project, and corrects the claim that Stalin killed millions of people to reflect the mere 700,000 or so death sentences carried out between 1937 and 1938. He asserts that regardless of the atrocities of communism, people have been lied to about it, and that the record needs to be corrected. His rebuttal also corrects some factual errors from his recent speech.
One of Lotta’s fellow Revolutionary Communist Party members and polemicists (who is curiously unnamed on the flier) will be on campus to informally “take on all comers” next Tuesday, Dec 1, 11am to 3pm in Hutchinson Commons at the University of Chicago.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:40 am
This is the opening to Lotta’s reply to Jamieson, entitlted “On Communism, Stalin and Historical Accuracy”–the full text is available at http://raymondlottatour.blogspot.com/
“Keith Jamieson’s fevered account of my November 11 talk “Everything You’ve Been Told About Communism Is Wrong” deserves a reply (see the Chicago Weekly, 11/18/09, linked below). Since the historical part of my talk focused on Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and since there is insufficient space to reply to each and every allegation from Jamieson, I want to make some points about the historical role of Stalin.
Jamieson cites statistics about deaths during the Stalin era. Leaving aside the bogus and easily refutable claim that the Soviet government “caused the death of some 15 to 20 million people,” Jamieson provides no social or historical context. It’s history by body count. It’s as though one could understand the causes and significance of the French Revolution or of the U.S. Civil War by reciting numbers of the executed and killed (why not blame Abraham Lincoln, that obstinate defender of the Union, for the deaths of 700,000?)…”
November 25th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Do you mind if I ask why you posted that? I linked to exactly that text.