Ludo Martens

Ludo Martens (12 March 1946 – 5 June 2011) was a Belgian communist political activist who also produced several works on the political history of Central Africa and the Soviet Union.

Ludo Martens
Born(1946-03-12)12 March 1946
Torhout, Belgium
Died5 June 2011(2011-06-05) (aged 65)
NationalityBelgium
OccupationPolitical activist

In 1968, Martens founded the group Alle macht aan de arbeiders ("All Power to the Workers"), which in 1979 became the Workers' Party of Belgium. He also served as chairman of the Workers' Party.

Martens was the last foreigner to meet North Korean President Kim Il Sung prior to his death on 8 July 1994.

According to a press release by the Workers' Party,[1] Martens died on the morning of 5 June 2011, after a long illness.

Another View of Stalin

In 1994, Martens published Another View of Stalin (Un autre regard sur Staline),[2][3] a positive biography of Stalin that challenges in particular the commonly accepted view of collectivisation in the USSR and the Great Purge. He explained his motivation for writing the book in the introduction:

Defending Stalin's work, essentially defending Marxism-Leninism, is an important, urgent task in preparing ourselves for class struggle under the New World Order.

Martens writes primarily in French; however, his books, especially Another View of Stalin, have been translated into Dutch, English, and numerous other languages. In Another View of Stalin, Martens regards as the main factor behind the Ukrainian famine to be bad conditions and alleged class enemies.[4] With regard to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel Gulag Archipelago, Martens stated:

This man became the official voice for the five per cent of Tsarists, bourgeois, speculators, kulaks, pimps, maffiosi and Vlasovites, all justifiably repressed by the socialist state.[5]

The current leadership of PTB, particularly president Peter Mertens in 2016, clearly distanced himself from Martens' vision on Joseph Stalin, whom they call a dictator.[6]

International Communist Seminar (Brussels)

Within the International Communist Movement, he is noted for having proposed the unification of the four main tendencies of the Marxist-Leninist movement. These are the pro-Soviet groups, the pro-Chinese, the pro-Albanian, and pro-Cuban. In addition, there are "independents". Martens has put forward that while at a certain time these separations were important and based on principle, they can now be overcome and the movement can be united on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. In order to develop this unification process, the Workers Party of Belgium used to host the International Communist Seminar in Brussels, which is attended by 150 organizations around the world. According to Martens:

Today, as a result of the restoration of capitalism under Gorbachov, the "pro-Soviet" tendency crumbled into innumerable tendencies. In the sixties, a "pro-Chinese" tendency emerged but split into various tendencies after Mao's death. There has been a "pro-Albanian" tendency, which also split after the collapse of socialism in Albania, and a so-called "pro-Cuban" tendency, mainly in Latin America. Some parties, finally, maintained an "independent" position vis-a-vis the tendencies mentioned. Whatever one's opinion about the correctness or the necessity of these splits at a certain point in history may be, it is nowadays possible to overcome these divisions and to unite the Marxist-Leninist parties, which are divided in different currents.[7]

Books authored by Ludo Martens
  • Pierre Mulele, ou, La seconde vie de Patrice Lumumba (Antwerp: Éditions EPO, 1985). OCLC 23219832
  • Sankara, Compaoré, et la révolution burkinabé (EPO, 1989). ISBN 2-87262-033-8.
  • Abo: une femme du Congo (EPO, 1992). ISBN 2-87262-103-2.
  • L'U.R.S.S. et la contre-révolution de velours (USSR: The Velvet Counter Revolution) (EPO, 1991). ISBN 2-87262-057-5.
  • Un autre regard sur Staline (Another View of Stalin) (EPO, 1994). ISBN 2-87262-081-8.
  • Kabila et la révolution congolaise: panafricanisme ou néocolonialisme? (EPO, 2002). ISBN 2-87262-191-1.
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References
  1. En mémoire de Ludo Martens (1946-2011) Archived 20 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Another View of Stalin. Complete and free PDF of the text of the book in English.
  3. Un autre regard sur Staline Archived 14 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine. Complete and free PDF of the text of the book in the original French.
  4. Archived 12 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Archived 2 June 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  6. https://www.knack.be/nieuws/belgie/zijn-regeringspartijen-zo-bang-van-pvda-dat-feiten-niet-langer-van-tel-zijn/article-opinion-796297.html
  7. "Proposals for the Unification of the International Communist Movement"
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