Van der Lubbe - lies
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-07-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 14 →
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YOUR article on Dimitrov failed to mention that his famous defence included a typically Stalinist lie about others on the Left. The world was told that Van der Lubbe was a demented half-wit with no links to the left, manipulated by the Nazis.
He had been in fact a Council Communist, with a significant record of activity and subsequent historians have reconstructed from his personal papers a very different He despaired at the failure of effective action to stop Hitler from all the workers' groupings, and set out with no illusions to make a gesture to show that Hitler did not have the unanimous support he claimed.
LAURENS OTTER, Wellington Van der Lubbe - a communist When chauvinist socialists' during World War 1 argued for supporting one capitalist state or another to defend the national rights of Belgium, Russia, or wherever, the Marxists did not reply that those national rights were unimportant.
They said that the war was not about national rights. It was basically a war between big capitalist powers each trying to grab a bigger share of colonies. Socialists must take their stand on that fundamental assessment, and not on secondary features.
But if the recent war had shifted to a war of subjugation by Britain against Argentina - which it did not, and in my view was not likely to - then it would have been about national rights. And socialists should have taken a stand in defence of Argentina's national rights.
MARTIN THOMAS London