Imperialism

Marxism and imperialism

We are not a government party; we are the party of irreconcilable opposition.... Our tasks... we realize not through the medium of bourgeois governments... but exclusively through the education of the masses through agitation, through explaining to the workers what they should defend and what they should overthrow. Such a 'defence' cannot give immediate miraculous results. But we do not even pretend to be miracle workers. As things stand, we are a revolutionary minority. Our work must be directed so that the workers on whom we have influence should correctly appraise events, not permit...

Solidarity with Iraqi workers!

A Workers' Liberty/ Solidarity pamphlet, March 2005. Trade unionists or Islamists? Who represents Iraqi workers? The "reactionary anti-imperialists" Why socialists can not support the USA in Iraq (part 1) Why socialists can not support the USA in Iraq (part 2) Why socialists can not support the USA in Iraq (part 3) Self-determination and democracy in Iraq Is Iraq another Vietnam?

Critical notes on postcolonial theory

"Postcolonial theory came to prominence during a period of massive political defeats for the Left… [But in universities] there is a mass base for what we might call oppression studies…"

SWP on “anti-imperialism”: cowardice and opportunism

The Socialist Workers Party’s immediate response to the 7 October massacre of Israeli civilians (“Rejoice”) and its repeated statements of support for Hamas — all that is aimed at presenting an image of being the most militant “anti-imperialists” in the hope of recruiting people who are appalled by Israel’s horrific actions in Gaza Now, the SWP’s hatred of Israel and Israelis is long-standing. But its “tough-guy” pro-Hamas stance is sheer opportunism and entirely in line with a record of inconsistency and cowardice. The SWP’s forerunners, the Socialist Review group, started out in 1950 on the...

What Washington can teach London about history

Last week, on a visit to Washington, D.C., I spent some time in two new museums and walked away wondering why we don’t have museums like that in the UK. The first was the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This museum, established by an act of Congress in 2003 and finally opened just seven years ago, is enormously popular. It tells the story of the Black experience in America, from slave ships right up until the Black Lives Matter movement. One cannot walk through its many rooms and not be moved. Some of the rooms warn the visitor: a thick red border around an image is...

An empire massacres its own troops

On returning to their country in 1944, Senegalese troops (called “tirailleurs”) who fought for France, the colonial power at the time, found themselves herded into a detention camp. Ousmane Sembène’s moving 1988 film Camp de Thiaroye captures the intense sense of betrayal felt by these troops. They are surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. There are many complaints about the treatment they receive and particularly the lousy food. A representative is nominated to speak to the French commanding officer, who flatly refuses to do anything. When the Senegalese troops are finally due to leave...

Solidarity as the principle for the future

Hein Htet Kyaw ( Solidarity 669 and 670 ) argues that leftists in the richer countries should avoid “white saviour complex and white guilt” as political guidelines. Instead leftists should stand for “solidarity”. Otherwise, he argues, they end up as “useful idiots for the Islamists”, “campists”, or “useful idiots for Putin and Russia’s colonial war”. Costume-playing as “anti-imperialists”, with the tacit assumption that “the United States and NATO [are] the only imperialist camps on the planet”, they fall into “the anti-imperialism of the idiots”, complicit in the imperialisms or regional...

Solidarity, not saviour complex

Some leftists are equating the Ukrainian resistance to Nazism by emphasising the minority of right-wing nationalist elements in the Ukrainian resistance, acting as useful idiots for Putin and his Russia's colonial war.

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