[Nakived frequently writes to MIM to tell us we should be pro-Lysenko.
Lysenko is famous in the imperialist countries as an example of how
communism supposedly ruins science with politics. Supposedly politics
interfered with the advance of the theory of evolution and genetics in
the case of Stalin's support of Lysenko.
MIM takes Mao's line that Stalin was wrong to back Lysenko on
scientific questions where such subject matters belong in the realm of
natural scientific struggle and not class struggle. We base our line
on Science for the People's book on science in China under Mao.
Nevertheless, Nakived is correct that we cannot trust the bourgeoisie
and its scientists to handle the question of Lysenko accurately or
rationally. We put this article on our web page as an indication of
desire to go into this subject more deeply.]
LYSENKO IS RIGHT, 1950, by J. Fyfe.
Reviewed by Nakived
Written early, 1950, while Stalin was still in and about a
time when he was healthy and things were practiced correctly
by the Michurinists (Lysenkoites). It's a GOOD BOOK,
especially the parts about labor, views toward laborers in
the west, merging of labor with mental work and the worth of
all labor, and etc., elitist attitudes toward types of labor,
etc. A CLEAR understanding of the 2 sciences and what these
actually RESULT IN when practiced. Very good book!
I found the references Richard Lewontin gave to China in his article,
tho they were VERY spiffy and said nothing much but they
agreed with what SOYFER pointed out in much greater detail
which is: they told me that the Chinese, by that time, were
believing the HYPE against Lysenko and believing it during a
time when Krushchev WRECKED the land there and when Lysenko's
Michurin methods were NOT BEING PRACTICED. During a time
when they were chemically fertilizing the land and doing
other harebrained things Krushchev ordered, including corn
planting.
Fyfe is a BOTANIST. The book IS excellent and sort of (er) simple
when the biology parts are written. The Stalinist and/or
Michurinist REALITY is what's so damned good in his book.
FINALLY, a book someone writes about "life over there" that
AGREES with my own heresay, first hand accounts that at least
I know I got from people LACKING an agenda and who spoke FOR
no one save an audience of one or two family members.
FINALLY. ONE BOOK.
All Lewontin could do is figure out that Lysenkoism was some
kind of proto cultural revolution - tho he figured this out
from the TOTALLY OPPOSITE END of where I figured it out from,
with a lot of help from people who WERE THERE and SAW. Also,
the capitalist Mancur Olsen's facts - the economy BOOMED
under Stalin and we do realize that economy can't do shit,
nor can people, if they are HUNGRY! Mancur Olsen can't
figure out why it went to hell after Stalin was gone -not to
criticize him -it's not easy to FIND OUT that the NKVD was
removed from patrolling ALL economic sectors or that the KGB
is NOT the NKVD (which is what EVERYONE says, writes and
thinks: SO MUCH FOR WRITTEN WORDS - distortions, lies) and
that the KGB are the GUGB same old Bukharinites out to gain!
It's also not easy to know the CIA deeds in cold war which STARTED
near the end of Stalin's death and took off BIG TIME after that!
What don't you get, Mim? That 5% have it all? That maybe
now some 25% might have it GOOD and that the whole rest have
the bare minimum? Or that a "leveling" (equalizing) of the
wage so that EVERYONE makes $25 an hour would make the vast
majority of Americans RICH and make the few BITCH about
having to have A BIT LESS? It was the same there. That the few
that bitch are already in VERY POWERFUL positions like a NETWORK?
That the vast majority are NOT united or networked at all?
What Stalin did from OUR point of view is kill off all the
Old Bolsheviks who had come from WELL OFF FAMILIES! Lenin
was already dead tho his wife was a royal pain in the ass who
WOULD have been dealt with had she been anyone OTHER THAN
"Mrs. Lenin." Stalin was POOR get a clue, his family SERFS
of the Asatani warriors. That the old OGPU had to be purged
by a man who was young and NOT a Lenin Bolshevik from more
well off background and/or worldly experience, but a
Stalinist: YEZHOV. That Yezhov was NOT part of that good old
boys NEP "get rich" shit and that when that was stopped,
those Nepmen found OTHER WAYS to line their pockets? That
they weren't ALL purged out? That their GREED never went
away? Or infected others? At least my own ANTI Commie
relations were NOT western ass kissers but they saw Lenin et
al as WESTERN RULERS with WESTERN MONEY AND CONNECTIONS (they DID
have this!) lording over what they considered THEIR TURF and
they wanted their OWN government allied with Islamic
countries in accord with their OWN culture. THERE IS a
difference!
Mao had NO WAY to know ANY of this about Lysenko or what
HAPPENED back then -hardly anyone knows details of it NOW.
All Mao could look at and think were "THE FACTS" is what I
said and what FINALLY someone (Krementsov) exposed from
archives, which is that Mao saw PHONEYS who adopted "the
Michurin line" in order to save their skins and that
partially happened during Stalin's last days. Had Stalin
lived long enough, there'd have been a "finding out" of this
thru the NKVD and a NEW PURGE. Soyfer at least outlines well
JUST WHAT the Maoists heard and believed and thought based on it.
Whatever it is Mao COULD POSSIBLY have to make an analysis
would have been phoney data deliberatly put forth by enemies
of Michurinism, and NON-Michurin methods because NO ONE could
criticize it when it was in full bloom where economy boomed,
birth rates rose, people lived longer and were healthy and
not starving and food was abundant. That would have been
around 19 to 11 years PRIOR to Mao taking over China! NO ONE
could criticize it when laborers took pride in labor. Mao
couldn't know what he couldn't know!
It's documented in brief by this obscure guy Fyfe -but
consider that: it's OBSCURE AS HELL -NO ONE mentions his
book. And yet the book is about MICHURINISM IN REALITY -not
some hindsight half bullshit pack of twisted lies Mao HAD to
have heard. Soyfer documents it too - how the Chinese said
"Lysenko is finished" but that was during Krushchev's time.
How they mocked the stuff out, but that was NOT Lysenko's
stuff or Michurinism which NO ONE was doing anymore.
Fyfe is good also because it is THEN, 1950.
Fyfe is good exposing the WESTERN MENDELIAN tyranny in his
own country and how every agricultural breeder IGNORED it and
showing how there was NO SUCH tyranny science thing in USSR and he
writes this in 1950. He also is good at exposing a few of
those MISQUOTED DISTORTIONS the so-called "scientists" claim
Lysenko said by quoting them and then quoting Lysenko!
The SAME distortions that the CHINESE QUOTED AND SAID and BELIEVED!
You don't realize, the Maoists and Mao by the time he said
BOO about it (long after the facts were buried and distorted)
heard stories that Lysenko claimed that warbler birds give
birth to cuckoos and that foxes can turn into cats or that
wheat can grow into rye or that he put shoes on pigs to train
them to walk like people. And if it was "loyal USSR
Communists" that told Mao or his people this, they'd have no
reason NOT to believe them and that's exactly what happened:
SOYFER DOES give some detail here. It is Soyfer who sort of
spells out JUST WHAT the Chinese HEARD during that time.
They heard LIES. Look, we EAT the fucking Burbank potato.
He did what NO geneticist has YET done and his potato, unlike
that stupid Flaver Saver Tomato, is STILL on the market
because he "changed its heredity" the RIGHT WAY -like
Michurin and Lysenko would have done it - NOT by fucking
directly with the genes!
Lewontin doesn't even seem to know that vernalization WAS
INDEED applied --- since then that fact has been denied and
the more recent the writer, the more denials get stronger.
There is hardly anyone left ALIVE, if not senile, that was
THERE that could confirm or deny. I have HERESAY but my
first hand sources are also all dead from old age! NONE of
us wrote books, peasants didn't write books. All you CAN see
now is ruined land - go ahead, BLAME LYSENKO when he NEVER
had a finger in it. No one knows what his SON did on that
same experimental farm in Lenin Hills and those people are
secretive as hell about this.
Lewontin didn't DIG OUT facts we have, nor did he DIG OUT the
information about the NKVD and such. Yeah, he read what Mao
had to say but Mao would have known ONLY AS MUCH as Medvedev
knew - wrong information and/or packs of lies. But Lewontin
DOES GIVE (in the version of his paper I have...) some very
interesting references in Michurinist work by others that
X NEVER heard of but will have to eventually ALSO get.
Lewontin didn't say ANYTHING about "Soviet Creative
Darwinism" otherwise known as Lysenkoism (said as an insult)
by the enemies of it. He didn't say he was for it or against
it. Gould only focuses on the 1948 last statement of the
speech, NOW KNOWN FOR A FACT dictated directly by Stalin TO
Lysenko in person as I wrote letter to Harry Kirpalani (you
got copy of it). Gould says he is frightened to death or
something like that, by those 10 words that shook the world.
He doesn't even CONSIDER the reasons for it or what came
before. Or at least he doesn't do that in public! The west,
led by Huxley from a radio broadcast they all heard back then
thought that Lysenko wanted personal power to hurt, torture
and kill his enemies!
This book, found by B again!, is VALUABLE. It is MORE
valuable than Lewontin's chapter on it because it's more back
then when NO ONE COULD DENY that vernalization worked and was
being massively used! Unlike YOU Mim, B has told us
all references he bumped into about Lysenko, not just the ones
either pro or con or having to do with political AGENDAS!!!
Fyfe is 100 times better than Lewontin's article as it has
DETAILS much more current and DURING Stalin's lifetime.
The anti-communist feeling in the youth of the former USSR is
that their ONLY experience of it is NOT-Stalinist. Their
exprience of what communism is, is TYRANNY! thought control!
KGB all over the place watching everyone, scarcity of goods,
food lines, shortages, STAGNATION.
What's so damned funny about all of this is that my ONLY
experience with Mendelism was at the medical school when I
tried to explain Mendelism to a young student there. So I
checked with the HEAD OF GENETICS (Dr. Searle) to make sure
it was right and his REACTION was to yell at me, throw my
paper drawing in the trash after ripping it and angrily said
"Mendelism is simplistically wrong. Most things are NON
Mendelian. The man was a fraud." That's all he said but he
got SO UPSET over it. That's it - my ONLY experience - and I
found it shocking since well, I thought that MENDEL DISCOVRED
GENES and that Watson and Crick discovered the actual DNA
!!!!! "A fraud?" What did he mean? I didn't ask, he was in
no mood to BE asked anything more.
So then, FYFE IS RIGHT! They KNOW THE TRUTH about Mendel but
they keep up the lip service to support an AGENDA.
And by the way, COSsers know ME as being the originator of
the concept of "the agenda" - whether conscious or
unconscious in what people say. I started that - so you
imagining I don't know it - more proof the gang is right:
YOU DON'T understand what I say. You think it's this, or
that. You don't know when I'm talking some alternate
viewpoint and you IMAGINE I "changed my mind." DAMN.
You HATE IT when I point out irreconcilable differences, ok,
struggles,
NOT between you and some other Communist group but between you
and the TOTALLY OPPOSITE CAMP especially when that camp consists
of young people LESS WELL OFF than YOU PERSONALLY! The group working
JUST TO
pay bills! Yet you can't show me where their views are NOT DOABLE
which would
mean "wrong!"
NOT DOABLE is wrong.
DOABLE is right!
If a thing can be done - then it can BE DONE! And if the majority of
people
here want to do it? WELL? Imperialists will either wipe them out or
CATER to their desires to avoid a revolution. You can't show
where this is wrong - in fact, your own theory line PROVES IT
IS RIGHT, they use this tactic! So when I BRING IT UP, THEIR views,
then you shift by moving the argument into the 3rd
world. Someone forgot the WEAPONS this country has or that
they would use them because they HAVE USED THEM BEFORE. Or
that they ARE USING other forms of weapons and I TELL YOU
about it but no no, you don't wanna know. You are forgetting
the THINGS going on in the USSR (I can't even bear to hear
about it) or what's going on in China (talk about EUGENICS?
They put into LAW a 2 fold eugenics policy not long ago to
