Before responding at any length, best wait until Mark Fischer gets further in his promised series of articles. By then WW readers should have an idea of his substantive arguments, and, with luck, sight of the "substantial piece" by Sean Matgamna which he is "centrally" responding to, Sean's "Critical Notes" , rather than just quotations filleted so as to "prove" that the AWL misrepresents CPGB/WW politics.
One point, however, cries out for immediate comment: Stalinism.
In WW 403 (11/10/01) Mark himself proudly introduced a reprint of an article published in 1982 on the April 1978 Stalinist coup in Afghanistan. Mark admitted some "flaws, reflecting the illusions and theoretical errors characteristic of the extreme left wing of 'official communism'", in the article, but did not find it necessary to specify those "flaws" further, and on the whole praised the article as excellent proof that the Stalinist PDPA had led "a genuine democratic revolution". The article itself compared the April 1978 coup at length and without disfavour to October 1917 in Russia.
Sean was "astounded... that you still hold to the line on Afghanistan while you held when you were Stalinists". Mark responds: "We were not 'Stalinists' in 1981, when we begun publishing... our previous stance [before the early 1990s, when the CPGB/WW broke from the idea of the Stalinist USSR having been any sort of workers' state] had far more of 'Trotskyism' about it than 'Stalinism'..."
I turn to From October to August, a book published by the CPGB in 1992. "For all his faults, his mistakes, his championing of bureaucratic socialism, nothing should be allowed to detract from the positive developments in the Soviet Union during the years when Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin led the USSR...
"The conditions were established for a string of socialist states in Eastern Europe and the emergence of the Soviet Union as the second most powerful country on earth. To say the least, this achievement owed not a little to Stalin...
"Against Gorbachev we obviously defend the Stalin of the five year plans, the Stalin of collectivisation, the Stalin of industrialisation, the Stalin of World War II and the Stalin of the spread of socialism into Eastern Europe. We proudly and unhesitatingly defend the forward march of socialism over which Stalin presided..."
"The Soviet Republic's war against Poland [in 1920]... was no different in essence from its war against Nazi Germany, except that the war against Poland failed and that against Nazi Germany succeeded. They were both revolutionary wars which from being defensive became offensive. Being an international continuation of the Soviet state's policy by violent means, the victories of the Red Army of 1944 and 1945 created extremely favourable conditions for the creation of socialist states in Eastern Europe. This is as clear an example as one could want of the class struggle conducted on an international scale by the Soviet Union".
The book also contained criticism of "bureaucratic socialism" and even of the great Joseph Vissarionovich himself. In 1955, say, that criticism would have got you expelled from the (real) CPGB as "Trotskyites". By 1992 it was commonplace.
You didn't see any "Trotskyism" in your views then! "Because of their worship of anti-bureaucratic spontaneity [i.e. their support for elemental working-class resistance to Stalinism] the Trotskyites have always in practice been calling for counter-revolution in the socialist countries".
That the SWP, in particular, espoused "the most reactionary conclusions" was "clear from its response to the August [1991] counter-revolution [in the USSR]: 'Communism has collapsed' it headlined, and this supposed 'fact' should 'have every socialist rejoicing'. The SWP is simply the most explicit anti-communist group on the revolutionary left".
"There can be no playing 'Neither Washington nor Moscow' games when it comes to counter-revolution", you insisted. "What the SWP indulges in is typical of most of the left in Britain - workerism and a worship of abstract democracy".
You also denounced the SWP for another of its more creditable activities, its money-raising for an attempted independent socialist-oriented trade union movement in the USSR in 1990. "Communists should guard the unity of the trade union movement in the USSR".
You took pride in your slogan of "unconditional defence of the socialist countries" - against the working class if necessary. "Tony Chater, the editor of the Morning Star - whom the ignorant bourgeois media dubs a 'tankie' - says tanks don't solve anything. Well, that's not true. Under certain circumstances tanks do solve things. Ask Stalin. He solved the problem of German invasion with tanks".
Retrospectively you endorsed the Russian invasions of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). "The only way to save the situation for socialism in Hungary was... a call by the new government, led by Kadar, for Soviet intervention". "What was posed in 1968 was defending existing bureaucratic socialism or the Dubcek capitalist road. For genuine communists the interests of the world revolution demanded the former and we must have the courage to say that faced with such a choice Czech and Slovak national rights had to take second place".
You "supported the banning of Solidarnosc in 1981 because of the imminent danger of counter-revolution". You "support[ed] the presence of Soviet forces in Afghanistan". You semi-supported the attempted conservative coup in the USSR in August 1991. "The road to counter-revolution in the USSR will not after all be paved with Gorbachevite good intentions. The State Emergency Committee has seen to that. For communists, for all genuine partisans of the working class, anything that, even momentarily, stays the hand of counter-revolution is good!"
You thought that by 1991 the power of bureaucratic tanks to "solve things" for socialism was reaching its limits. "You can only keep the masses passive with tanks if, after you have sent them [tanks, not the masses] onto the streets, you give the population steadily increasing living standards. Yes, that might have been a crude bureaucratic way to handle problems, but as long as bureaucratic socialism was only a relative fetter, it could do it".
Nevertheless, your chief pride was that even at the last, "genuine Leninists never wavered in our pro-Soviet stance". Right up to the end, you defended the USSR as "the world revolutionary centre".
In previous discussions with the AWL, you conceded frankly that you used to be "left Stalinists". There is no shame in coming to think that one started off at the wrong place in politics, and that one has learned many things since - so long as one's previous errors are unsparingly recognised and analysed. But how can you learn the lessons of your break from Stalinism if you deny that it ever had to take place?
Martin Thomas
CPGB/WW: Never Stalinist?
Submitted on
Comments
Re: Never Stalinist?
By Mark Fischer, from the RCNBritain list
Martin,
What was the substance of our political approach to the USSR and eastern Europe?
1. In 'The Leninist' No2 (I think, certainly very early) we explicitly rejected the theory of socialism in one country. We rejected popular fronts. We condemned the class collaboration of WWII, etc. We pointed to the bureacratisation of what we termed the "socialist countries" and speculated that the bureaucracy was so alienated from the working class that these countries could move in the direction of capitalist restoration without civil war. Not really a set of views characteristic of mainstream 'Stalinism', I would suggest.
2. We regarded these countries as workers' states of some sort primarily because of things like 'socialised property forms', 'the monopoly of foriegn trade', 'the planned economy' - the usual Trot nonsense, in other words. And you really should look at what we wrote about the USSR as the "world's revolutionary centre", rather than just frighten your readers with the phrase. We said this is an objective fact, not a subjective one. Regardless of the leadership of the USSR, this was the largest, most powerful workers' state, the one that allowed the other to exist in that sense. The term actually implied no political endorsement of the content of the politics of the CPSU - something we explained time and time again to critics. (And it's there in From October to August, Martin. Page 11 if the index confuses you).
3. As individuals, we came from "left Stalinism". 'The Leninist' was not left-Stalinist, however. That's what we said to you, just to be clear.
4. Now it's good to see you quoting so extensively from From October to August. And yes, that did come out in 1992. But it is actually composed of journalism, internal documents, etc dating back to the early 1980s - as it makes clear. Jack Conrad's personal introduction, for example, states that "with the advantage of hindsight the limitations, mistakes and unrealised hopes are easy to detect. No matter - the reader must judge warts and all". The material was written "written in the heat of the moment", as momentous events unfolded. So your implication that this was - in that sense - the considered opinion of the CPGB in 1992 is a little wide of the mark.
5. As for your 'shock-horror' quote culling from our past material, it really doesn't work does it? Again, if you strip most of it of its 'official communist-speak' and you look at the substance of what we were writing, I could provide you with quotes from Deutscher (or the Sparts when it comes to Poland) that say more or less the same stuff. It was wrong. But was it 'Stalinist'? No, I think the picture was more complex than that.
6. By the way, when will 'Solidarity' be printing Sean's 10,000 word burblings? Oh yes, silly me! You told me that it "would not be appropriate" for your paper - but you are demanding that we print it. No, comrade. We will not be taking up six or so pages of our paper with Sean's ill-thought out, unreferenced stream of consciousness about our organisation. (At least, I think it's meant to be about us - I really had some difficulty in recognising the CPGB from Sean's nonsense). Just to make it clear for you, Martin. We think it is 'appropriate' that you have put this rather shoddy document up on your website. (As the polemical material appears in the WW, we will probably be putting it up on ours). We will reply to some of the more serious parts of it and refer people to your website to read the whole thing if they feel moved to do so. If you think this is not good enough given its high quality, can I suggest that you reconsider your decision not to print? What d'you think? 7. You seem to have moved on since you were confidently informing our readers that the CPGB believed that the Afghan revolution was the only other genuine revolution in the 20th century apart from the Russian. We don't. We have never written anything like this. We do believe that the Kalq wing of the party led a revolution, but as we make clear in my article in the current issue, not a proletarian revolution. It is an unfortunate feature of leading AWLers polemical style that you make totally unsubstantiated, wildly inaccurate, mildly scurrilous accusations, then simply scurry on to the next one. You appear to substitute quantity for quality in your polemics - the tactic seems to be to slow opponents down by creating a rather expansive lake of shite for them to wade through. I look forward to rather more considered material from you as the polemic develops in our paper.
Re: Never Stalinist?
By Martin Thomas
Mark:
"As individuals, we came from 'left Stalinism'. 'The Leninist' was not left-Stalinist, however". You're claiming that you had broken from Stalinism by the time you launched 'The Leninist'? I repeat my point:
"There is no shame in coming to think that one started off at the wrong place in politics, and that one has learned many things since - so long as one's previous errors are unsparingly recognised and analysed. But how can you learn the lessons of your break from Stalinism if you deny that it ever had to take place?"
Or if you think that disavowal of a few particular Stalinist tenets is enough to constitute a comprehensive break from Stalinism?
1. Yes, "From October to August", which I quoted to show you were still Stalinist in 1992, was a selection of stuff written over years up to 1991. But the selection was endorsed in the Introduction - with only the sort of critical reserve that virtually anyone would append to a collection of reprints about a fast-moving situation - as having expounded a "true" "substantive analysis, polemic and prognosis". The blurb further endorses the book's contents as having shown how you "never wavered" etc. A stance you "never waver" from has to be reckoned as a "considered opinion", doesn't it?
2. I never said your Stalinism was "mainstream". Yes, it was quirky, and yes, I remember early issues of "The Leninist" rejecting popular fronts.
3. It's not true on the evidence of "From October to August" that you based your idea that the Stalinist states were socialist on the "economic base" in Grantite style. For example, on page 221 you mock the idea that nationalised property equals socialism in order to conclude that the USSR post-August had ceased to be socialist, not because of any denationalisations, but because the CPSU no longer ruled.
4. Yes, you criticised the CPSU - but while considering it your party, and arguing that the Soviet Union was "the country where the proletarian struggle finds its highest expression".
5. Were Deutscher and the Spartacists on similar lines to yours? Only in so far as they were Stalinoids. (Deutscher never claimed to be a Trotskyist after around 1940; in his "Prophet Outcast", he forthrightly rejected the "new Trotskyism" which he considers Trotsky to have developed after going over to the idea of a new "political" revolution against the autocracy in the USSR).
6. Afghanistan. Your latest article says that you "have written" that April 1978 was not a proletarian revolution. Good, except that, so far as I can tell, that is the first time you have actually written that down.
Your introduction in October 2001 glowingly endorsed an article which claimed that April 1978 was a proletarian revolution. You qualified the endorsement only by minor and unspecified reference to "flaws" in the article. Your introduction (not the article) praised April 1978 as a "genuine democratic revolution". In that introduction (and in other material in WW around that time) you declared that the Taliban counter-revolution was the opposite of the April 1978 revolution, and that the answer to the Taliban counter-revolution was the opposite again, i.e., so you spelled it out, democratic, secular, working-class revolution. That was identifying April 1978 with "democratic, secular, working-class revolution", wasn't it?
OK, so now you say it was only a "genuine democratic revolution", not proletarian. Good. Of what class character? What other successful revolutions beside the Russian in the 20th century rank above it as "genuine democratic revolutions"?
Re: Never Stalinist?
Martin's piece is something of a sectarian rant, aiming to justify a polemic which illustrates to a tee your insistence on programmatic agreement, rather that commitment to a joint party project, before you are prepared to collaborate systematically with anyone. I, and am sure I speak for many other members of the CPGB, am not interested in 'regroupment' with the AWL on the basis of 'agreement' with the historic programme and record of the AWL. I am only interested in unity on the basis of a party project where public debate of political differences is guaranteed as part of the unity itself. I have a strong suspicion that this cacaphony of exaggerated polemic from the AWL is being presented to the AWL membership as a justification for ducking out of the unoffical Socialist Alliance paper, which is where the 'freedom of criticism, unity in action' ethos the AWL has sometimes said it stands for could be given concrete, tangible form, as a project broader than just the publication of some narrow sect.
In my view, the fact that the Leninist grouping emerged as a left opposition within pro-Moscow Stalinism in a different period from the Trotskyist movement, is a strength, not a weakness. It means that our organisation has not inherited some of the flaws of the Trotskyist movement - an insistence on building narrow sects that formally or in practice proscribe real debate and disagreement, for instance. In my view, the 'Leninist' organisation in the early 1980s, *despite* its (more residual as time went on) remaining illusions in some aspects of Stalinist ideology, was a far healthier, more revolutionary-inclined grouping than the then Socialist Organiser, even then.
Your polemic on Afghanistan is bizarre. I have disagreements with some residual softness on the PPDA and its revolutionary rhetoric displayed by Some of our ex-Stalinist comrades. However, they were still on the right side of the barricades in the Afghanistan war in the 1980s. Socialist Organiser was on the wrong side of the barricades. But the assesment of the comrades today, that the PDPA's revolution was fundamentally of a similar type to the 'revolution' of Nasser in Egypt, or Ataturk in Turkey, is more or less correct. (Even the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua bears some real comparisions, in my view.) In essence, their evaluation is correct, and an accurate description of this upheaval, which was led by a radical, modernising petit-bourgeois layer which overlapped into the army in a very backward country.
I notice that on your website you make reference to the affinity of the Muslim Association of GB with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which you describe as a "moderate, reformist" form of Islamic fundamentalism. You have also made the point elsewhere that since these organisations are in many ways akin to fascism, that there are also 'moderate' forms of fascism.
You do this, of course, to scandalise the left for blocking with the Muslim Association to organise the massive antiwar demo on 28th September.
Now the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt these days is indeed 'moderate and reformist' in seeking an 'umma' state. 'Moderate' and 'reformist' are not terms generally associated with fascism and militant fundamentalism, are they? Whatever - the real point is that the relationship between the Muslim brotherhood of old, when it was a militant 'fundamentalist' organisation, with the secular modernising wing of Arab nationalism (i.e. in Egypt, Nasser and the Free Officers movement) was identical to that of the PDPA with the Mujahedin, who Socialist Organiser, along with the SWP, supported.
If the left can be scandalised for making agreements with an organisation allegedly connected with the 'moderate, reformist' Muslim Brotherhood of today against a threatened armed attack by their own government on a (secular) Muslim-inhabited state, how much more should the then Socialist Organiser be scandalised for supporting a distinctly non- reformist, non-moderate form of fundamentalism (backed with massive covert aid by their own government, as well as that of the USA) against the PDPA regime, which in essence was the same kind of modernising nationalist regime as Nasser's? To be consistent, why not then support the Muslim Brothers against Nasser (who by the way, imprisoned and executed their cadres) in the name of democracy?
Of course, for then Socialist Organiser, the involvement of Soviet Troops clinched it. It is permissible to support people it otherwise characterises as 'fascists' in a holy war against 'Russian imperialism', in the name of national liberation. The scruples you at times correctly and sometimes even exaggeratedly display today against supporting Islamic reactionaries against the Western powers mattered nothing to you when the damned Russian Stalinists were the enemy. But the prescence of the USSR's troops did not change the fact that while the overwhelming bulk of the progressive and secular forces in Afghanistan were in the camp of the PDPA and in supporting the 'national liberation' struggle of the Mujahedin, you were supporting the Osama bin Laden's, the proto-Talibans and the Gulbuddin Hekmatyars against what semblance of a left there was in Afghanistan. They were no better then than they are today.
You might as well have supported Franco's falange forces against Republican Spain on the same grounds, of the terrible totalitarian Stalinist terror that existed behind Republican lines in Spain at that time (and it did, ask the POUM!!). In reality, there are some things in this world that are even worse than Stalinism - Francoism was one of them, the Mujahedin Afghan contras were another, as subsequent events have proved. It was not the PDPA who reduced Kabul to rubble - and it was not the PDPA who erected the obscene Taliban regime which was rightly seen by many leftists as the most reactionary regime on the planet (the Taliban would probably have regarded Hitler himself as a dangerous pinko). It was their enemies.
As a final aside, as a one-time member of the Spartacists, notwithstanding the enormous problems with that now-pretty-nasty organisation, it is amusing to see you re-write history and make them into 'Stalinoids'. They were never any such thing - the truth is that all the worst aspects of their politics derive from Trotskyism, not Stalinism, orthodox Trotskyism elevated to holy writ.
Given the history of the left on such questions as Ireland, and the Middle East, for instance, I would venture that the record of the AWL on *these* questions is much more 'Stalinoid' than the Spartacists. Until you belatedly changed your position in the 1980s, you were arging the same kind of nonsense about Ireland and the Middle East as most 'orthodox' Trotskyists and the more left-wing Stalinists. I.e 'self-determination for the Irish people as a whole', and "Democratic secular Palestine". As someone who since I left the SWP as a very young left critic has never believed that these oversimplified nostrums offered a real solution to these national/communal questions, I find it very strange that you can simply dismiss people who held a more consistently democratic position than yourselves (acknowledging in programmatic terms the national/communal rights of the Israeli nation and the Protestant community) for a rather long period in your history, as 'Stalinoids'. If anything, in the earlier history of your tendency (in the days of Workers Fight and then Workers Action) you were more 'Stalinoid' than the Spartacists on these questions. And you have since flipped over into the opposite error to a large extent (i.e. a degree of softness on Zionism and Ulster Loyalism) since breaking with these arguably Stalinoid positions.
This is a another reason why I think comrades in both organisations should take with a pinch of salt the AWL leadership's attempt to portray themselves as some sort of oracular authority on questions of consistent democracy in situations of mixed/overlapping populations such as Ireland and the Middle East. You have some correct positions, mixed in with some erratic and bizarre and unfortunately characteristically Trotskyist over-the-top nonsense.
Of course, all these questions should be debated, if necessary over again, to achieve clarity. But again, I get the strong impression this is being used as an means to excuse the AWL leadership backing off from a project where 'unity of the left' could be given a concrete, meaningful form - the unoffical SA paper project. After all, how can there be such a united project with 'Stalinists'?
Re: Never Stalinist?
Ian Donovan's contribution (no 'ranting' here, of course) has the advantage over Mark Fischer's in at least being about something political, beyond whether or not it's reasonable to think the CPGB means what it says in its published books and whether or not they have criticised 'Nairnism'. Ian disagrees with us about Afghanistan. Excellent. At last, a position to argue with! The tone in which Ian writes suggests he thinks this disagreement quite important - the AWL having committed grave errors in principle in the past. Apparently, though, unless we had 'started it' he would have kept quiet about this considerable criticism, because to argue about such things is just an excuse to wreck the possibility of a joint paper. I would like to think we could do joint work and still argue the toss. But if doing joint work, up to and including sharing organisations, means we can't, heaven forbid, talk about things where we might get cross with each other, the unity won't last long.
There are two main points I want to respond to. First, what it means to call Deutscher and the Spartacist tendency 'Stalinoid', and whether such a description is disqualified by our own former positions on Palestine and Ireland; and second, whether we were scandalously pro-Mujahedin when the USSR was napalming Afghan villages.
Ian argues that since 'democratic secular state' for Palestine and 'self-determination for the Irish people without rights for Protestants' are Stalinoid positions, it is outrageous for us to call the CPGB Stalinoid in the past on the USSR. Ian seems to have a knack for bizarre logical non-syllogisms, as I learned in my debate with him in the pages of WW about Zionism. Whether or not these positions on the national question could meaningfully be called Stalinoid, the point at issue is the CPGB's old position on the USSR, which Mark Fischer said was similar to Deutscher and the Sparts, therefore more Trotskyist than Stalinoid. We would judge Deutscher Stalinoid because he opposed the call for political revolution in the USSR and thought the bureaucracy progressive; and the Sparts because, for example, they headlined their view on the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan with 'Hail the Red Army! (not even 'support the USSR', mind you, but 'hail' the 'red army'), and supported the crushing of the Polish working class by the Stalinist military. It's true that such views are consistent with much post-war Trotskyism; but that's only another way of saying that post-war Trotskyism became an ideological satellite of Stalinism. And in any case, on the continuum of workers statists, I don't see how you can disagree that Deutscher and the Sparts are the, let's say, 'soft-on-Stalinism' end.
I didn't know until this spate of polemics that there was much dispute over the Stalinist origins of the CPGB. I have even expressed my admiration, verbally, to CPGB comrades for how far they have moved politically, saying that such an evolution from Stalinism must be close to unique. I meant it, I think it's impressive. Now we're told it's impossibly insulting to imagine that they were still only evolving in 1982! Oh, no, they had completely moved beyond Stalinism by then. For sure, in 1982, when we found ourselves in a faction fight over whether to support Argentina in the south Atlantic, we were still only evolving towards our current positions. What's so shameful about that? The point is - what Sean said he found surprising - is that you would re-publish something on Afghanistan from 1982, when - surely - your evolution away from Stalinism (let's put it no less offensively than that) was, shall we say, less complete.
Moving on, then, to the national question. The USSR was imposing its rule by immense military force on Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan had the right to self-determination. Our support for their right to self-determination is not conditional on them not supporting one type of Islamist or another, or not accepting weapons from the CIA, or whatever. The same would be true anywhere else - and is true, for example, in Chechnya. We did not 'support' the Islamist forces when the matter was purely 'internal', after Russian withdrawal, as Sean mentioned in his open letter. This, I'm sorry, is ABC Comintern policy. You can argue that for specific reasons the Leninist tradition should not have been applied in this case, but all this wringing of hands in horror is a bit much. There are worse things than Stalinism, Ian opines. In Afghanistan, he thinks, tribespeople with reactionary ideas receiving opportunistic support from imperialism were worse than the world's second superpower napalming their villages and attempting to crush them. I'm glad you feel proud to have supported the barbarous Stalinist invasion of Afghanistan. I think it is utterly shameful. Indeed, a clear difference between Afghanistan then and now is that while the USSR attempted to transform the country into a colony, the US has not done so - client regime, etc, but not a colony. I hope you understand this distinction, or you're going to come very unstuck in the war against Iraq.
Re: Never Stalinist?
I will take the liberty of replying to Clive's piece in internet discussion format, since he
makes numerous points that really need replying to sequentially.
>Ian Donovan’s contribution (no ‘ranting’ here, of course) has the advantage over Mark
>Fischer’s in at least being about something political, beyond whether or not it’s
>reasonable to think the CPGB means what it says in its published books and whether or not
>they have criticised ‘Nairnism’. Ian disagrees with us about Afghanistan. Excellent. At
>last, a position to argue with! The tone in which Ian writes suggests he thinks this
>disagreement quite important – the AWL having committed grave errors in principle in the
>past. Apparently, though, unless we had ‘started it’ he would have kept quiet about this
>considerable criticism, because to argue about such things is just an excuse to wreck the
>possibility of a joint paper. I would like to think we could do joint work and still argue
>the toss. But if doing joint work, up to and including sharing organisations, means we
>can’t, heaven forbid, talk about things where we might get cross with each other, the unity
>won’t last long.
Actually, I have not been shy about making clear my disagreements with the AWL clear, as
Clive certainly knows. The point being not that such discussions should not be thrashed out
in public - I have certainly criticised the AWL on Afghanistan in a number of discussions,
including on the SA list, and maybe in print at the time of the recent Afghan war I vaguely
recollect. So there should be no holding back on discussion. The point I was making,
however, is that I suspect these disagreements are being used as a talisman to ward off the
prospect of the joint unofficial SA paper - I think these kinds of debates should actually
take place in the pages of such a paper, among other places.
>There are two main points I want to respond to. First, what it means to call Deutscher and
>the Spartacist tendency ‘Stalinoid’, and whether such a description is disqualified by our
>own former positions on Palestine and Ireland; and second, whether we were scandalously
>pro-Mujahedin when the USSR was napalming Afghan villages.
>Ian argues that since ‘democratic secular state’ for Palestine and ‘self-determination for
>the Irish people without rights for Protestants’ are Stalinoid positions, it is outrageous
>for us to call the CPGB Stalinoid in the past on the USSR. Ian seems to have a knack for
>bizarre logical non-syllogisms, as I learned in my debate with him in the pages of WW about
>Zionism. Whether or not these positions on the national question could meaningfully be
>called Stalinoid, the point at issue is the CPGB’s old position on the USSR, which Mark
>Fischer said was similar to Deutscher and the Sparts, therefore more Trotskyist than
>Stalinoid.
Well, actually, the AWL has been considerably more vehement in branding the SWP et al as
effectively Stalinist over the Middle East than we have. Articles with titles like "the
Stalinist roots of 'left' anti-semitism" explicitly seek to link the likes of the SWP with
Stalinism because of their positions on the Middle East. We would make a much more modest
connection, avoiding the nonsense about 'anti-semitism' which falsely accuses these people
of being racists. We would simply note that the concept that there are whole reactionary
peoples, who have no legtimate rights, is a concept that has deep roots in Stalinism and the
oppression of nationalities under the post-Lenin regime in the USSR. It is a concept that in
its more recent form is rooted in the New Left, heavily influenced by criticial and
third-worldist variants of Stalinism and Maoism, that has in turn exercised considerable
influence on the formally anti-Stalinist elements that emerged from that movement, such as
in Britain the IMG and IS, and their various fragments and sucessors. That, concretely, is
the Stalinist lineage of the 'reactionary peoples' view of the Middle East and Ireland, and
similar such questions. So it is hardly incaccurate to say that Workers Fight held
'Stalinoid' positions on these questions.
The point, actually, is that the Spartacists' positions on the former USSR have a direct
connection to Trotsky's writings immediately prior to WWII. The new left positions on the
Ireland/Middle East questions, however, have no such connection - they are derived from
elements of Stalinoid ideology in the New Left.
> We would judge Deutscher Stalinoid because he opposed the call for political revolution in
>the USSR and thought the bureaucracy progressive; and the Sparts because, for example, they
>headlined their view on the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan with ‘Hail the Red Army! (not
>even ‘support the USSR’, mind you, but ‘hail’ the ‘red army’), and supported the crushing
>of the Polish working class by the Stalinist military. It’s true that such views are
>consistent with much post-war Trotskyism; but that’s only another way of saying that
>post-war Trotskyism became an ideological satellite of Stalinism. And in any case, on the
>continuum of workers statists, I don’t see how you can disagree that Deutscher and the
>Sparts are the, let’s say, ‘soft-on-Stalinism’ end.
Such views as the Spartacists on Poland are unfortunately, not merely characteristic of
'post war Trotskyism', but also of pre-war Trotskyism as well. The Spartacists' 'Hail Red
Army' slogan is an example of a senile softness on the Kremlin; however, that is a personal
quirk reflecting the proclivities of their leader, it is not essential to use those words to
support the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Likewise, once one admits that Polish Solidarity
preferred democratic capitalism to the so-called workers state (as Socialist Organiser did
many years ago), then one does not need to be in any way a Stalinist to support its
suppression. It is all laid down in Trotsky's 'In Defence of Marxism' and Cannon's 'The
Struggle for a Proletarian Party'. There is nothing 'Stalinist' about that? Is there? It
logically flows from the view of the former USSR and its sattelites as workers states, to be
defended against capitalist restoration from within and without. Trotsky's own writings on
Eastern Poland under Stalinist occupation provide the 'orthodox' precedent for them.
>I didn’t know until this spate of polemics that there was much dispute over the Stalinist
>origins of the CPGB. I have even expressed my admiration, verbally, to CPGB comrades for
>how far they have moved politically, saying that such an evolution from Stalinism must be
>close to unique. I meant it, I think it’s impressive. Now we’re told it’s impossibly
>insulting to imagine that they were still only evolving in 1982!
Depends what you mean. Yes, there were elements of left-Stalinist ideology in the Leninist
in those days, it would be foolish to deny it. But at the same time, they were already a
revolutionary group, that quite obviously were genuinely fighting for socialist revolution.
Programmatically, therefore, they were no longer Stalinist - insofar as Stalinism is not
revolutionary in relation to the proletariat, but completely hostile to anything that smacks
of proletarian revolution.
>Oh, no, they had completely moved beyond Stalinism by then.
In terms of moving beyond the fundamentally anti-revolutionary politics of Stalinism, they
has moved way beyond Stalinism by then. In my view, they were more revolutionary in their
overall political thrust than many Trotskyist groups.
> For sure, in 1982, when we found ourselves in a faction fight over whether to support
>Argentina in the south Atlantic, we were still only evolving towards our current positions.
>What’s so shameful about that? The point is – what Sean said he found surprising – is that
>you would re-publish something on Afghanistan from 1982, when – surely – your evolution
>away from Stalinism (let’s put it no less offensively than that) was, shall we say, less
>complete.
Unfortunately, your evolution was more erratic, more contradictory, and not entirely in a
progressive direction. For instance, you evolved from the classic left-republican position
on Ireland to giving a platform to Billy Hutchinson on the grounds of his support for the
Irish peace process and his proclaimed 'socialism', notwithstanding the fact that he is an
unrepentant sectarian killer. To denouncing the Republican killing of two British corporals
who brandished revolvers at a funeral of republican martyrs, as a couple of illustrative
examples on the Irish question to add to the differences already expressed over the Middle
East. This is jumping from one wrong position to another.
>Moving on, then, to the national question. The USSR was imposing its rule by immense
>military force on Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan had the right to
>self-determination. Our support for their right to self-determination is not conditional on
>them not supporting one type of Islamist or another, or not accepting weapons from the CIA,
>or whatever. The same would be true anywhere else – and is true, for example, in Chechnya.
If there was a left-nationalist government in power in Chechnya and Islamic fanatics were
trying to smash it, I would tend to support the left nationalist government. But what is
going on with Chechnya bears very little resemblance to the Afghan war of the 1980s - Putin
is waging a war against the very existence of the Chechens as a nation. That was obviously
not true with the USSR intervention in Afghanistan - they were fighting to keep in power
their own left-nationalist Afghan allies, albeit on the terms of the Kremlin. That is not a
colonial war.
>We did not ‘support’ the Islamist forces when the matter was purely ‘internal’, after
>Russian withdrawal, as Sean mentioned in his open letter.
Problem is, that the fanatics you were supporting saw no differnce between the war before
the Soviet withdrawal, and after it. They were fighting for the same things.
>This, I’m sorry, is ABC Comintern >policy.
Only if you assume that the USSR was the same kind of capitalist-imperialist power referred
to in the the Comintern resolutions you are biblicising about. Even Shachtman's theory of
bureaucratic collectivism implies, however, that it was something other than that.
>You can argue that for specific reasons the Leninist tradition should not have been
>applied in this case, but all this wringing of hands in horror is a bit much. There are
>worse things than Stalinism, Ian opines. In Afghanistan, he thinks, tribespeople with
>reactionary ideas receiving opportunistic support from imperialism were worse than the
>world’s second superpower napalming their villages and attempting to crush them. I’m glad
>you feel proud to have supported the barbarous Stalinist invasion of Afghanistan. I think
>it is utterly shameful. Indeed, a clear difference between Afghanistan then and now is that
>while the USSR attempted to transform the country into a colony, the US has not done so –
>client regime, etc, but not a colony. I hope you understand this distinction, or you’re
>going to come very unstuck in the war against Iraq.
Well, actually, nothing I said implies any support for the Soviet intervention itself. It is
only your own stereotyping and Stalinophobia that leads you to make that assumption. The
point being that the struggle of the PDPA against the Mujahedin clerical-fascists was just
as progressive when Russian troops were involved as when they were gone. Just as the
struggle of the KLA in Kosova was just as progressive when the Americans were bombing
Belgrade as when they were not. In both cases, we oppose the great power intervention
ostensibly in support of the side we support, but do not change sides on the 'internal'
conflict concerned. Justice is justice, whether or not a superpower gets involved. Such
involvement does not lead us to change sides in a war when social progress and elementary
freedoms are involved in a backward country. That is the height of cynicism.
Your synthetic outrage about my alleged 'shameful' support of Russian imperialism in
Afghanistan only reminds me of similar baiting I have recieved from supporters of Slobodan
Milosevic about my alleged pro-US imperialist postions in supporting the Kosovars in Albania
in the 1990s. I hope you are proud to have supported clerical-fascist s***** who murdered
schoolteachers for the crime of teaching little girls to read and write, or who threw acid
in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil, or who were in the habit of skinnning
alive 'infidels' and 'godless communists' who were unfortunate enough to be taken prisoner
when fighting for the left-nationalist PDPA. Considering the anger you rightly expressed
when the same s***** graduated from mulitation of women to crashing aircraft into skycrapers,
your outrage certainly seems to say the least a little selective.
Re: Never Stalinist?
Ian raises many issues, and I won't try to cover all of them; moreover, I'm not sure the discussions here should unfold like those on a email list (maybe they should, I don't know). I'll just refer to the main ones. Since the full text is immediately available, I've taken the liberty of only including edited bits of it. Even so, this is a bit longer than I intended, so my apologies.
Ian writes: "Actually, I have not been shy about making clear my disagreements with the AWL... The point I was making... is that I suspect these disagreements are being used as a talisman to ward off the prospect of the joint unofficial SA paper..."
In fact the gist of Ian's complaint here (and of the CPGB's in general) seems to be that when they criticise us it's all in the interests of Leninist clarity, but when we criticise them it's sectarianism, putting the spanner in the works of joint papers, etc etc etc. But Ian, it's true, does at least address the political differences (and at least has a position on Afghanistan to debate).
Much of Ian's contribution, as before, is an attempt to avoid the point at issue by quibbling over what we're talking about in using the word 'Stalinism' or 'Stalinoid'. Thus:
"... the AWL has been considerably more vehement in branding the SWP et al as effectively Stalinist over the Middle East than we have. Articles with titles like "the Stalinist roots of 'left' anti-semitism" explicitly seek to link the likes of the SWP with
Stalinism because of their positions on the Middle East. We would make a much more modest connection..."
Oh, come on. Showing that the origins of many left-wing prejudices about the Middle East and Zionism lie in Stalinism isn't an attempt to prove the SWP is 'Stalinist'. This is just hysterical 'logic'. Of course, many positions of would-be Trotskyists come, in one way or another, from Stalinism, or from the Stalinist-infected culture which surrounded them. One example would be the theory of imperialism: in fact, the theory with which most post-war Trotskyists have operated, which they think is Lenin's, is a mixture of Latin American bourgeois economics on the one hand, and more-or-less Stalinist theory (Baran and Sweezy) on the other. I could call post-war Trotskyism 'bourgeois/Stalinist' on this question on this basis. It wouldn't mean I thought they were just bourgeois or Stalinist.
This is all to wilfully miss the point.
The CPGB recently republished an article on Afghanistan written in 1982 with only mild corrections in an introduction. Whether the Leninist was Stalinist in a full-blown sense or not, it is surely true that its position on the USSR was considerably, shall we say, softer then than it is today - in theory. The fact of this republication is surprising, because it raises questions about how far, in fact, the CPGB has rethought its overall position. To have moved not simply from the attitudes quoted in Martin's contribution (above), but to - in many cases, from what I have gleaned verbally - sympathy to Ticktin's analysis, yet republish an article from 1982 in this way is simply odd.
In response, Mark Fischer gets upset to be called a Stalinist in 1982, and says his/the Leninist's position was more like Isaac Deutscher's or the Sparts. Whether that's true or not, it is not a terribly impressive distancing from Stalinism - since, in the case of the Sparts they supported the military boot crushing the throat of the Polish workers' movement.
But this is typical of the CPGB, who fulminate so crossly about our 'polemical methods' - dance round the actual point while whining about how rude we are. Have you rethought your positions on the USSR or not?
Ian goes on to refer to '... the Stalinist lineage of the 'reactionary peoples' view of the Middle East and Ireland, and
similar such questions. So it is hardly incaccurate to say that Workers Fight held 'Stalinoid' positions on these questions."
If you like. We used to be workers statists, and now think the whole theory is Stalinoid to some degree or other. We have tried to emancipate ourselves from the mire of post-war Trotskyism, believing it 'contaminated' by Stalinism. (We were always on the extreme anti-Stalinist wing, so to speak, of workers statism, but I'll grant you the general point).
But this is simply not what this argument is about. The CPGB has evolved from straight-forward Stalinism. It has evolved a very long way. But still, there are things which we think a residual from that starting-point. We think you have insufficiently rethought, for example, Afghanistan. (Ian personally comes from a different tradition, but judging by this contribution and others, I'd ask him the same question).
Ian again: "...the Spartacists' positions on the former USSR have a direct connection to Trotsky's writings immediately prior to WWII.... Such views as the Spartacists on Poland are unfortunately, not merely characteristic of
'post war Trotskyism', but also of pre-war Trotskyism as well."
Yes and no. In any case, we have published a book on this very issue, with a lengthy introduction examining Trotsky's own writings - meaning those aspects of his position which fed post-war Trotskyism's positions on Stalinism, and those which did not.
"... Once one admits that Polish Solidarity preferred democratic capitalism to the so-called workers state... then one does not need to be in any way a Stalinist to support its suppression. It is all laid down in Trotsky's 'In Defence of Marxism' and Cannon's 'The Struggle for a Proletarian Party'. There is nothing 'Stalinist' about that? Is there? It logically flows from the view of the former USSR and its sattelites as workers states, to be defended against capitalist restoration from within and without..."
What is Ian arguing here? I'm really unclear. Are we having an ultimately pointless argument about the use of the word 'Stalinist'? (Oh, this position is perfectly consistent with orthodox Trotskyism, so you can't call it Stalinist can you, nyah nyah nyah). Or is Ian defending the suppression of the Polish working class? This is a real question - I don't understand his point. If he just wants to point out the terrible consequences of the workers' state theory, well.... like, yeah. (Though I would point out that the workers' movement which was crushed in Poland included supporters of the Mandelites, who despite holding to a workers' state theory supported Solidarnosc - so the 'logic' of the workers' state theory isn't necessarily quite as bad as the Sparts' interpretation of it. Shades of Ian's own baggage, perhaps?).
Ian writes: "Yes, there were elements of left-Stalinist ideology in the Leninist in those days, it would be foolish to deny it."
So we've been arguing about it because...?
"But at the same time, they were already a
revolutionary group, that quite obviously were genuinely fighting for socialist revolution. Programmatically, therefore, they were no longer Stalinist."
The issue is the Leninist's attitude to the USSR!
"Unfortunately, your evolution was more erratic, more contradictory, and not entirely in a progressive direction."
Ian's talking here about the Middle East and Ireland. I won't go into that here. But good, there's a debate to have.
Moving on to Afghanistan. As with Poland, I'm not sure what Ian is arguing. He says the USSR's occupation was "not a colonial war" (and different therefore in quality to Chechnya); disputes that Comintern policy on the national question could apply: "Only if you assume that the USSR was the same kind of capitalist-imperialist power referred to in the the Comintern resolutions you are biblicising about"; and denies that there was any substantial difference between the war while the USSR was occupying and once it had withdrawn; but then goes on:
"... nothing I said implies any support for the Soviet intervention itself. It is only your own stereotyping and Stalinophobia that leads you to make that assumption. The
point being that the struggle of the PDPA against the Mujahedin clerical-fascists was just as progressive when Russian troops were involved as when they were gone. Just as the
struggle of the KLA in Kosova was just as progressive when the Americans were bombing Belgrade as when they were not. In both cases, we oppose the great power intervention ostensibly in support of the side we support, but do not change sides on the 'internal' conflict concerned. Justice is justice, whether or not a superpower gets involved."
I can accept Ian's argument here in principle. But to compare Russian military intervention in Afghanistan to NATO bombing of Serbia is bizarre. The Russians, it is true, went in to support an ally - which had antagonised virtually the whole population. They then stayed in occupation for several years, in a full-scale war with the mass of the Afghan population. How this compares with largely air-bombardment for a few weeks I'm not sure.
Ian 'did not support' the 'Soviet' intervention. Good. The trouble is that this implies calling for it to end - calling for Russian withdrawal. Doesn't it?
The Russian occupation was conducted with as much imperialist barbarism as, say, the American war in Vietnam. As long as they were there, the national rights of the Afghan people were being violated. I'm not clear if Ian agrees this is so or not. If he opposed the Soviet intervention, was this not on the grounds of the Afghans' national rights?
"Such involvement does not lead us to change sides in a war when social progress and elementary freedoms are involved in a backward country. That is the height of cynicism."
Social progress that can only be imposed against the wishes of the mass of the population and enforced (although not even successfully enforced) with the brutal military support of one of the world's military superpowers is of a very strange nature. Why should the Afghan people be bombed into the twentieth century against their will? They either have national rights, like every other nation (I trust we will not embark on a secondary discussion about whether they are a nation), or not. If they do, it is not conditional on which political movement they support.
And 'elementary freedoms'? Isn't national self-determination one of those?
"Your synthetic outrage about my alleged 'shameful' support of Russian imperialism in Afghanistan only reminds me of similar baiting I have received from supporters of Slobodan
Milosevic..."
My outrage is not synthetic, and I am not baiting you. The parallel in any case is weird. Supporting Milosevic would be shameful, because on the most elementary democratic basis he is a murderous dictator with untold quantities of blood on his hands, who attempted to crush a small nation (actually several). I assume Ian thinks support for Milosevic is shameful. I think support for Russian imperialism is shameful in exactly the same sense and for exactly the same reasons.
Ian says he did not support the USSR in Afghanistan - only the government they demolished villages to support.
"I hope you are proud to have supported clerical-fascist s***** who murdered schoolteachers for the crime of teaching little girls to read and write, or who threw acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil... Considering the anger you rightly expressed when the same s***** graduated from mulitation of women to crashing aircraft into skycrapers, your outrage certainly seems to say the least a little selective."
Ian's argument is exactly that of people who say that supporting the national rights of the Palestinians commits you to supporting Hamas suicide bombers walking into discos and blowing up teenagers.
It's not we who have the selective outrage. Of course we are opposed to clerical-fascists. In point of fact, though you'd never know it from the way people attack us, we did not spend the years of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan attempting to glorify the Mujahidin; we focused on opposing the occupation, on the question of national rights - and on denouncing those on the left who waved their arms in horror at the backwardness of the Afghans in order to justify a colonialist war by Moscow. (It was colonial, by the way, in a stronger sense than Ian suggests, which is why they stayed there so long). Many of those - not Ian - who ranted and raved about the illegitimacy of Afghan national rights against Russia were later to discover them against the USA; many of those who thought the Mujahidin's reactionary politics justified Russian napalm were subsequently to urge support for their successors.
Anyway, perhaps that's enough for now.
Re: Never Stalinist?
There are a few issues from Ian's first posting which I did not cover before, but on reflection can't go unanswered. Ian writes:
"I notice that on your website you make reference to the affinity of the Muslim Association of GB with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which you describe as a "moderate, reformist" form of Islamic fundamentalism... You do this, of course, to scandalise the left for blocking with the Muslim Association to organise the massive antiwar demo on 28th September. Now the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt these days is indeed 'moderate and reformist' in seeking an 'umma' state. 'Moderate' and 'reformist' are not terms generally associated with fascism and militant fundamentalism, are they? Whatever - the real point is that the relationship between the Muslim brotherhood of old, when it was a militant 'fundamentalist' organisation, with the secular modernising wing of Arab nationalism (i.e. in Egypt, Nasser and the Free Officers movement) was identical to that of the PDPA with the Mujahedin, who Socialist Organiser, along with the SWP, supported. If the left can be scandalised for making agreements with an organisation allegedly connected with the 'moderate, reformist' Muslim Brotherhood of today against a threatened armed attack by their own government on a (secular) Muslim-inhabited state, how much more should the then Socialist Organiser be scandalised for supporting a distinctly non- reformist, non-moderate form of fundamentalism (backed with massive covert aid by their own government, as well as that of the USA) against the PDPA regime, which in essence was the same kind of modernising nationalist regime as Nasser's? To be consistent, why not then support the Muslim Brothers against Nasser (who by the way, imprisoned and executed their cadres) in the name of democracy? Of course, for then Socialist Organiser, the involvement of Soviet Troops clinched it. It is permissible to support people it otherwise characterises as 'fascists' in a holy war against 'Russian imperialism', in the name of national liberation. The scruples you at times correctly and sometimes even exaggeratedly display today against supporting Islamic reactionaries against the Western powers mattered nothing to you when the damned Russian Stalinists were the enemy."
It's not true at all that the relationship between the Brotherhood and the Free Officers was, to begin with, the same as between the PDPA and the Mujahedin in Afghanistan - though it is true that Nasser turned on them, imprisoned thousands, and executed many of them, including their ideologue, Sayid Qutb. Ian's parallel with Afghanistan is unconvincing, though.
The Nasser regime carried through many immensely popular measures, beginning with a land reform which broke the power of the big landlords, and culminating in the nationalisation of the Suez canal, successful resistance to an Anglo-French-Israeli invasion, and then nationalisations, 'Arab socialism', and so on. It was markedly distinct from the PDPA regime in two, perhaps three, important respects. First, it was not a Stalinist formation; second, linked to that, the country is not on the borders of the former USSR, and never likely to experience an attempted extension of Russian Stalinism in the same way; third, and most important, it had mass support. The Nasser regime was a genuine nationalist government which mobilised the Egyptian people against neo-colonialism (using this phrase as an accurate description of Egypt's relationship to Britain, not in some broad theoretical sense). The PDPA regime was the result of a coup by a tiny party which attempted to carry out measures against the wishes of the majority of the population, provoking mass resistance, which generated a crisis causing Russian military intervention. The resemblance between the PDPA and Nasser is therefore, to put it mildly, superficial.
Of course, socialists would not support Nasser politically; he was extremely repressive (towards the CP and others on the left as well as the Muslim Brotherhood). But his regime really was quite immensely different to the PDPA.
We did not 'support' the Mujahedin against the PDPA. But there are two issues here which Ian simply refuses to address. First, can socialists support a regime which is attempting to introduce 'socialism' (meaning social reform) from above with a vengeance? Of course at a certain level we would support the personnel of the PDPA, their social base in the cities and so on, against the Mujahedin (and we did). But there is a vital programmatic issue at stake: the actions of the PDPA were a caricature of Stalinist 'socialism from above' which provoked, as in caused, catastrophe.
Second, following from this: the Mujahedin with their CIA backing did not drop from the sky. The USSR's barbaric military invasion and occupation created them, gave the CIA someone to support, drove the Afghan population in the countryside into the arms of organised reactionaries. From the way Ian writes, from the imaginary parallel with Egypt, you would think: here they were, a nice left nationalist government doing good works, suddenly violently besieged by raving fanatics descending from the hills purely out of bloodlust and reactionary ideology. The picture of Afghanistan is an absurd fantasy.
So indeed, the presence of Russian troops slaughtering Afghans, napalming them, razing villages to the ground, etc, makes a bloody difference, and not just because it was the 'damned Russians', but because what the Russians were doing was terrible, a violation of everything democratic socialists should hold dear.
We did not 'support' the Mujahedin in the way Ian insinuates. But even if we had - if we defended the right in principle of the Afghan people to defend themselves against military assault by Moscow, if Ian can't see the difference between that and actively collaborating with Islamists to build a campaign in Britain, he is very far out at sea indeed. We most certainly would not have organised a campaign against the war in Afghanistan with the Muslim Brotherhood!
Two issues here. First, there is a general question of popular fronts. Whatever else the Brotherhood is, even if it was sweet as pie democratic, it is not a working class movement; socialists should not be co-organising a campaign with them. (And they should doubly not be doing so in plain ignorance of who they are).
And sure, in comparison to Jihad, say, the Brotherhood are 'moderate' and 'reformist'. But they are not as moderate and reformist as all that! They may not be responsible for murdering secular intellectuals, tourists, etc; but they are not a benign force in Egyptian politics. They were not a benign force in Sudan, where they were in effect the government for 10 years carrying out a brutal war against the south. And their political weight in Egypt plainly encourages the more militant variants of Islamism.
Ian is playing words with this business about fascism. For one thing, we describe the Islamists as analogous to fascism; for another, there are indeed 'moderate fascists': the FN in France is not a fully-fledged, thugs-on-the-street fascism, is it? But we understand its real nature, don't we?
Re: Never Stalinist?
Clive writes:
"It’s not true at all that the relationship between the Brotherhood and the Free Officers was, to begin with, the same as between the PDPA and the Mujahedin in Afghanistan – though it is true that Nasser turned on them, imprisoned thousands, and executed many of them, including their ideologue, Sayid Qutb. Ian’s parallel with Afghanistan is unconvincing, though.
The Nasser regime carried through many immensely popular measures, beginning with a land reform which broke the power of the big landlords, and culminating in the nationalisation of the Suez canal, successful resistance to an Anglo-French-Israeli invasion, and then nationalisations, ‘Arab socialism’, and so on. It was markedly distinct from the PDPA regime in two, perhaps three, important respects. First, it was not a Stalinist formation; second, linked to that, the country is not on the borders of the former USSR, and never likely to experience an attempted extension of Russian Stalinism in the same way; third, and most important, it had mass support. The Nasser regime was a genuine nationalist government which mobilised the Egyptian people against neo-colonialism (using this phrase as an accurate description of Egypt’s relationship to Britain, not in some broad theoretical sense). The PDPA regime was the result of a coup by a tiny party which attempted to carry out measures against the wishes of the majority of the population, provoking mass resistance, which generated a crisis causing Russian military intervention. The resemblance between the PDPA and Nasser is therefore, to put it mildly, superficial. "
I find it peculiar indeed that your list of the faults of the PDPA and the Nasser regime are purely on the grounds of the Stalinism of the former. My critique of Stalinism in this kind of context is precisely that, among other things, it degrades 'communism' to the level of mere bourgeois nationalism, and therefore engages in oppression of the working class which does not represent an improvement on capitalism. Your analysis, on the contrary is that Stalinism is something worse than capitalism. In other words, you are not genuine third campists, but rather in effect first campists.
The PDPA regime did not have a Suez Canal to nationalise, however its own progressive measures, centrally an attack on the bride price and the power of feudal and even pre-feudal exploiters in the countryside, were just as progressive as anything Nasser did. They did not provoke a direct imperialist invasion, merely a prolonged imperialist-supported insurgency that was just as reactionary as any imperialist invasion. The West funded the most bloodthirsty reactionary elements they could find, and are now reaping the whirlwind.
"Of course, socialists would not support Nasser politically; he was extremely repressive (towards the CP and others on the left as well as the Muslim Brotherhood). But his regime really was quite immensely different to the PDPA.
If Nasser's regime had been threatened with being overthrown by Islamic fanatics, socialists would have been right to support it against such overthrow.
"We did not ‘support’ the Mujahedin against the PDPA. But there are two issues here which Ian simply refuses to address. First, can socialists support a regime which is attempting to introduce ‘socialism’ (meaning social reform) from above with a vengeance? Of course at a certain level we would support the personnel of the PDPA, their social base in the cities and so on, against the Mujahedin (and we did). But there is a vital programmatic issue at stake: the actions of the PDPA were a caricature of Stalinist ‘socialism from above’ which provoked, as in caused, catastrophe."
The PDPA's social base in the countryside was undoubtably pretty small, no doubt some of the things it did were over-ambitious. But when a shooting war breaks out over such things and reactionary forces try to destroy all the progress achevied by such a regime, socialists should stand with the secular, leftist petty bourgeois forces against the feudal and tribal reactionaries, without of course blunting our criticism of the petty-bourgeois left-nationalist regime. In the name of 'self-determination', you stood with the reactionary forces.
"Second, following from this: the Mujahedin with their CIA backing did not drop from the sky. The USSR’s barbaric military invasion and occupation created them, gave the CIA someone to support, drove the Afghan population in the countryside into the arms of organised reactionaries."
This is simply not true. Zbigniew Brezhinsky, Carter's then National Security Adviser, has admitted that the United States was massively funding the Mujahedin and actively seeking the armed overthrow of the PDPA regime well before the Soviet intervention. They very nearly suceeded, which is why the USSR intervened. The Soviet High Command interfered with the factional alignments within the PDPA regime as to promote those they considered most co-operative (shooting those they didnt like) which is one VALID reason why socialists should have opposed the USSR intervention - from the standpoint of Afghan national independence in the real sense. But any campaign against the Kremlin's undoubtedly bureaucratic and counterrevolutionary activities in Afghanistan would have had to be on the basis of solidarity with the progressive petty-bourgeois forces in Afghanistan against medieval reaction.
"From the way Ian writes, from the imaginary parallel with Egypt, you would think: here they were, a nice left nationalist government doing good works, suddenly violently besieged by raving fanatics descending from the hills purely out of bloodlust and reactionary ideology. The picture of Afghanistan is an absurd fantasy."
Not so. The people you supported were motivated by fanatical reactionary bloodlust, then, just as they are now.
"So indeed, the presence of Russian troops slaughtering Afghans, napalming them, razing villages to the ground, etc, makes a bloody difference, and not just because it was the ‘damned Russians’, but because what the Russians were doing was terrible, a violation of everything democratic socialists should hold dear. "
By that logic you should support Saddam Hussein in the coming war against Iraq. After all, in previous war, the Western forces have used fuel air explosives, depleted Uranium weapons, cluster bombs and other foul weapons that are just as bad, if not worse, then napalm. The use of nasty weapons by one side does not make the other progressive.
The fact that Russian troops behaved brutally in this war does not detract one iota from the fact that the Mujahedin were not fighting a war of 'national liberation', but effectively represented a pre-feudal Vendee against the progressive measures initiated by a left-nationalist government. The victory of the mujahedin did not result in 'national liberation', but the victory of barbarism.
"We did not ‘support’ the Mujahedin in the way Ian insinuates. But even if we had – if we defended the right in principle of the Afghan people to defend themselves against military assault by Moscow, if Ian can’t see the difference between that and actively collaborating with Islamists to build a campaign in Britain, he is very far out at sea indeed. We most certainly would not have organised a campaign against the war in Afghanistan with the Muslim Brotherhood!"
You certainly did support the Mujahedin, you called them a national liberation movement against "Russian imperialism" - to your shame. There is a massive difference between being prepared to support arch reactionary elements against a left-nationalist government in such a war, and being prepared to ally with Muslims, some of whom hold reactionary views, when one's own government is threatening to invade a Muslim country.
If for instance, there was a real wave of anti-semitism in the West, pogroms against jews, or whatever, I would be quite prepared to ally with zionists who hold reactionary views, against such things. Same thing.
"Two issues here. First, there is a general question of popular fronts. Whatever else the Brotherhood is, even if it was sweet as pie democratic, it is not a working class movement; socialists should not be co-organising a campaign with them. (And they should doubly not be doing so in plain ignorance of who they are).
And sure, in comparison to Jihad, say, the Brotherhood are ‘moderate’ and ‘reformist’. But they are not as moderate and reformist as all that! They may not be responsible for murdering secular intellectuals, tourists, etc; but they are not a benign force in Egyptian politics. They were not a benign force in Sudan, where they were in effect the government for 10 years carrying out a brutal war against the south. And their political weight in Egypt plainly encourages the more militant variants of Islamism.
Ian is playing words with this business about fascism. For one thing, we describe the Islamists as analogous to fascism; for another, there are indeed ‘moderate fascists’: the FN in France is not a fully-fledged, thugs-on-the-street fascism, is it? But we understand its real nature, don’t we? "
Hah. In France, the FN can act as fascists, because they are based on the dominant national group. Islamists (particularly 'moderate' types such as the MAB) can no more act as fascists in an advanced European capitalist country than can the Jewish Defence League.
You are hypocritical on this - it is OK to support 'radical' Islamists who are killing secular leftists (and Russian soldiers) in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but verboten to organise a united front mass demonstration with an organisation that has some links with a qualititatively more 'moderate' strain that resulted in tens of thousands of their ordinary followers being exposed to large amounts of completely uncensored socialist propaganda in protest against a threatened war against Iraq. Sorry, I think that demonstration was a good thing, a step forward, not in any way a 'popular front'.
I will reply to Clive's earlier piece when I get time.
Re: Never Stalinist?
Ian writes:
"I find it peculiar indeed that your list of the faults of the PDPA and the Nasser regime are purely on the grounds of the Stalinism of the former."
What? There were plenty of other faults of both, some of which I mentioned. I think what Ian wants to say is that there was no meaningful difference between Nasser and the PDPA, so my point, that the Free Officers 'were not a Stalinist formation' is irrelevant. He goes on:
"My critique of Stalinism in this kind of context is precisely that, among other things, it degrades 'communism' to the level of mere bourgeois nationalism, and therefore engages in oppression of the working class which does not represent an improvement on capitalism."
This is true up to a point. As a graphic example, the Egyptian CP liquidated into Nasser's Arab Socialist Union in the 1960s. But there are Stalinist formations, and Stalinist formations, so to speak. Plainly, the Stalinist formation in Vietnam, say, which carried through a revolution of its own sort, was a different animal to the Egyptian CP. But just as there are distinctions to be drawn between Stalinists, so too between Stalinists and bourgeois nationalists. There were, of course, some similarities between the PDPA and Nasser; but the PDPA was a Stalinist party (or two Stalinist parties) and Nasser was not. My point is that the PDPA's ultra-commandist, caricature-Stalinist 'socialism from above' was radically distinct from the mass-supported nationalist government in Egypt. Or take another example: Algeria. Nationalist movement, mass support, radical measures in power. And absolutely nothing like the PDPA beyond the most superficial resemblances.
Ian does not really respond to my main point about the difference between Nasser and the PDPA - the level of popular support.
"The PDPA regime did not have a Suez Canal to nationalise, however its own progressive measures, centrally an attack on the bride price and the power of feudal and even pre-feudal exploiters in the countryside, were just as progressive as anything Nasser did."
Except that these measures remained on paper only, for the most part, because - as Ian concedes - the regime had no support in the countryside.
"Your analysis, on the contrary is that Stalinism is something worse than capitalism. In other words, you are not genuine third campists, but rather in effect first campists."
No, we think Stalinism is worse than advanced capitalism in certain respects (er... democracy, labour movement, etc), but in general terms (development of the forces of production, eg) 'parallel' to capitalism.
"Zbigniew Brezhinsky, Carter's then National Security Adviser, has admitted that the United States was massively funding the Mujahedin and actively seeking the armed overthrow of the PDPA regime well before the Soviet intervention."
Do you really think the Russian occupation played no role in driving more and more Afghans into the arms of the reactionaries? Of course the US was backing them beforehand - so what? The scale of opposition, first to the PDPA, then to the Russians, was way beyond what the US could have achieved simply by 'backing' the 'rebels'. The US backs 'insurgents' all over the place with rather less impressive results from their point of view than in Afghanistan. Why? Because the Afghans were particular susceptible, extra stupid or reactionary? No, because of the Russian occupation.
"The use of nasty weapons by one side does not make the other progressive."
No, of course not. But Ian seems to think that Russian occupation for nine years, and full-scale war with the Afghan people, is not 'colonial' in any sense. Or rather, he continues to talk about the nine years of military occupation by a brutal imperialist oppressor as if it was a mere detail in the fight between a 'progressive' government and the reactionary mass of the rural population. It was not a mere detail, it was the essence of the matter. If the coming war in Iraq ends up being the same sort of thing - a long-term occupation to defend a client regime - we would take a similar position.
In what sense was the PDPA regime progressive? It wanted to carry out some measures which, by themselves, were progressive. Its social base was 'modern' and urban, as against the backward countryside. But it is not part of our programme, or anything socialists can support, to attempt to impose 'progress' on millions of people - either by fiat, or later, by enormous military force.
On the STWC's alliance with the MAB, Ian says: "If for instance, there was a real wave of anti-semitism in the West, pogroms against jews, or whatever, I would be quite prepared to ally with zionists who hold reactionary views, against such things. Same thing."
Well on one level I'm glad to hear it - last time I asked him this question (in the WW), he didn't answer. But hold on - what, you'd organise a demonstration with Likud, say, would you?
"Islamists (particularly 'moderate' types such as the MAB) can no more act as fascists in an advanced European capitalist country than can the Jewish Defence League."
Of course they can't be a fascist movement in Britain! Who on earth said they could? But Ian's logic here would take us to some very strange places (reactionary movements from foreign countries are harmless in Britain....). And is there not an obligation on us to show solidarity with people from those countries - whether living in them, or living here - who are the genuinely progressive, secular, socialist enemies of movements like the Brotherhood? I think, categorically, we have that obligation. Organising marches, however big (and I remain to be convinced it would not have been big without the MAB) with the Brotherhood violates that obligation.
Interestingly, and rather confusingly, I remember a meeting in London some time late last year organised by the CPGB, at which I spoke (on the war and 'fundamentalism'). I think it was just after the first anti-war demo, where there had been something of an Islamist presence. John Bridge, speaking from the floor - I can't remember his exact words, but this is the gist - said that if we could we should 'drive these reactionaries off the demonstration.'
What's happened to the CPGB since?
Re: Never Stalinist?
Below is my response to Clive's latest posting:
(Clive)
"...the Egyptian CP liquidated into Nasser’s Arab Socialist Union in the 1960s. But there are Stalinist formations, and Stalinist formations, so to speak. Plainly, the Stalinist formation in Vietnam, say, which carried through a revolution of its own sort, was a different animal to the Egyptian CP. But just as there are distinctions to be drawn between Stalinists, so too between Stalinists and bourgeois nationalists. There were, of course, some similarities between the PDPA and Nasser; but the PDPA was a Stalinist party (or two Stalinist parties) and Nasser was not. My point is that the PDPA’s ultra-commandist, caricature-Stalinist ‘socialism from above’ was radically distinct from the mass-supported nationalist government in Egypt. Or take another example: Algeria. Nationalist movement, mass support, radical measures in power. And absolutely nothing like the PDPA beyond the most superficial resemblances. "
(Ian)
Actually, it is the differences that are superficial, not the resemblances. The actual social programmes the two regimes carried out had a great deal in common, allowing for the different levels of development between the two countries concerned.
(Clive)
"Ian does not really respond to my main point about the difference between Nasser and the PDPA – the level of popular support."
(Ian)
The PDPA's social base was smaller, because it was mainly an urban movement in a country where the rural population had a greater weight. It had considerable popular support in the cities. This has implications for wise tactics in implementing its programme, but it does not make the programme of its reactionary opponents one iota less reactionary.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
"“The PDPA regime did not have a Suez Canal to nationalise, however its own progressive measures, centrally an attack on the bride price and the power of feudal and even pre-feudal exploiters in the countryside, were just as progressive as anything Nasser did.”
Except that these measures remained on paper only, for the most part, because – as Ian concedes – the regime had no support in the countryside. "
(Ian)
In the cities, the widespead education and literacy programmes, particularly for women, that the regime initiated and carried out were not on paper at all. These were smashed by the victory of the mujahedin.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
"“Your analysis, on the contrary is that Stalinism is something worse than capitalism. In other words, you are not genuine third campists, but rather in effect first campists.”
No, we think Stalinism is worse than advanced capitalism in certain respects (er... democracy, labour movement, etc), but in general terms (development of the forces of production, eg) ‘parallel’ to capitalism. "
(Ian)
Most, if not all, Stalinist states, however, never were on the level of advanced capitalism in the first place. I regard Stalinism and backward, third world capitalism as interchangeable 'parallel' pheonomena, and am prepared to block with modernising elements of either or both against reaction. You seem to prefer the reaction, at least where Stalinism is concerned.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
"“Zbigniew Brezhinsky, Carter's then National Security Adviser, has admitted that the United States was massively funding the Mujahedin and actively seeking the armed overthrow of the PDPA regime well before the Soviet intervention.”
Do you really think the Russian occupation played no role in driving more and more Afghans into the arms of the reactionaries? Of course the US was backing them beforehand – so what?"
(Ian)
That just about sums up your first campism. US involvement? So what! Soviet involvement - scream bloody murder. The US involvement with these lowlife killers should by rights lead to leading elements of the US ruling class being indicted for support of 'international terrorism', in their own terms. Even some bourgeois mavericks in the US have hinted at this. BUt the AWL says 'so what'?
(Clive)
"The scale of opposition, first to the PDPA, then to the Russians, was way beyond what the US could have achieved simply by ‘backing’ the ‘rebels’. The US backs ‘insurgents’ all over the place with rather less impressive results from their point of view than in Afghanistan. Why? Because the Afghans were particular susceptible, extra stupid or reactionary? No, because of the Russian occupation."
(Ian)
Except your argument contradicts itself. 'First to the PDPA', there was no Russian intervention to 'provoke' the population, was there? What there was was a popular rural-based counterrevolution against modernity, which you supported. Of course the Afghan rural environment was 'particularly' reactionary and backward - that is why the reactionary revolt occurred. Reactionary revolts do errupt from time to time among backward rural populations - that unfortunately has been true since the days of the Vendee.
(Clive)
"But Ian seems to think that Russian occupation for nine years, and full-scale war with the Afghan people, is not ‘colonial’ in any sense. Or rather, he continues to talk about the nine years of military occupation by a brutal imperialist oppressor as if it was a mere detail in the fight between a ‘progressive’ government and the reactionary mass of the rural population. It was not a mere detail, it was the essence of the matter. If the coming war in Iraq ends up being the same sort of thing – a long-term occupation to defend a client regime – we would take a similar position."
(Ian)
No, not every military conflict that involves brute force is a 'colonial' war. Fact - the social programme of the forces you were supporting against the PDPA before 1989 were the forces of barbarism. The United States is not going to be interventing in Iraq to defend a left-nationalist regime against an insurgency by 'radical' Islamists, the very idea comes from somewhere in a parallel universe, and as a comparision, this is a non-starter.
(Clive)
"In what sense was the PDPA regime progressive? It wanted to carry out some measures which, by themselves, were progressive. Its social base was ‘modern’ and urban, as against the backward countryside. But it is not part of our programme, or anything socialists can support, to attempt to impose ‘progress’ on millions of people – either by fiat, or later, by enormous military force."
(Ian)
It carried out progressive measures. Those measures meant it had a social programme that was in some way progressive. Couldnt be clearer. As for the latter remarks, just because a regime uses ill-advised methods to carry out such a programme does not mean that socialists should support the ultra-reactionary forces that seek to overthrow it.
(Clive)
"On the STWC’s alliance with the MAB, Ian says: “If for instance, there was a real wave of anti-semitism in the West, pogroms against jews, or whatever, I would be quite prepared to ally with zionists who hold reactionary views, against such things. Same thing.”
Well on one level I’m glad to hear it – last time I asked him this question (in the WW), he didn’t answer. But hold on – what, you’d organise a demonstration with Likud, say, would you? "
(Ian)
Maybe - if there was a real basis for such a thing to mobilise jews alongside non-jews against resurgent Nazism or something similar (I'm not talking about your fake slanderous accusations of 'anti-semitism' against the left, but a real threat to the jewish population of the type that existed in Europe in the 1930s)
I mentioned the Jewish Defence League - who are to the right of Likud.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
“Islamists (particularly 'moderate' types such as the MAB) can no more act as fascists in an advanced European capitalist country than can the Jewish Defence League.”
"Of course they can’t be a fascist movement in Britain! Who on earth said they could? But Ian’s logic here would take us to some very strange places (reactionary movements from foreign countries are harmless in Britain....). And is there not an obligation on us to show solidarity with people from those countries – whether living in them, or living here – who are the genuinely progressive, secular, socialist enemies of movements like the Brotherhood? I think, categorically, we have that obligation. Organising marches, however big (and I remain to be convinced it would not have been big without the MAB) with the Brotherhood violates that obligation. "
(Ian)
But you would be fine about marching with Likud in defence of Jewish rights. Says a lot about your double standards, doesnt it? Why would 'secular leftists' pass up the opportunity to mass distribute their propaganda to the large number of supporters of the MAB?
(Clive)
"Interestingly, and rather confusingly, I remember a meeting in London some time late last year organised by the CPGB, at which I spoke (on the war and ‘fundamentalism’). I think it was just after the first anti-war demo, where there had been something of an Islamist presence. John Bridge, speaking from the floor – I can’t remember his exact words, but this is the gist – said that if we could we should ‘drive these reactionaries off the demonstration.’"
(Ian)
Nothing has changed. We were talking about people carrying slogans that openly applauded September 11 2001, which were a disgusting provocation in the circumstances of the Afghan war. The MAB, as its website makes clear, regards Sept 11 as an atrocity. Even devout Muslim groups are not all the same.
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
(Clive)
Do you really think the Russian occupation played no role in driving more and more Afghans into the arms of the reactionaries? Of course the US was backing them beforehand – so what?
(Ian)
That just about sums up your first campism. US involvement? So what! Soviet involvement - scream bloody murder. The US involvement with these lowlife killers should by rights lead to leading elements of the US ruling class being indicted for support of 'international terrorism', in their own terms. Even some bourgeois mavericks in the US have hinted at this. BUt the AWL says 'so what'?
(Janine)
Really, Ian, Clive obviously does not mean 'so what?' as in 'We don't give a toss'. He means 'so what?' as in 'that doesn't make a difference to the point I'm making about the USSR invasion driving Afghans into the arms of the reactionaries'.
You equate US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan. Do you not think there is a difference between, on the one hand, funding the Mojahedin, and on the other, invading the country and occupying it for nine years?! (Just to be clear, I don't think either is a good thing to do.)
I also want to ask Ian why he puts "USSR imperialism" in quote marks. Is this because you do not accept that such a thing existed?
e-mail: JBooth9192 at aol.com
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
Janine writes:
Really, Ian, Clive obviously does not mean 'so what?' as in 'We don't give a toss'. He means 'so what?' as in 'that doesn't make a difference to the point I'm making about the USSR invasion driving Afghans into the arms of the reactionaries'.
You equate US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan. Do you not think there is a difference between, on the one hand, funding the Mojahedin, and on the other, invading the country and occupying it for nine years?! (Just to be clear, I don't think either is a good thing to do.)
I also want to ask Ian why he puts "USSR imperialism" in quote marks. Is this because you do not accept that such a thing existed?
Ian replies:
Interesting that Janine now concedes that the Mujahedin were 'reactionaries'. They certainly were! It is obviously true that many things that the PDPA regime did, and even more that the USSR did, were counterproductive from the point of view of the struggle against reaction. However, my criticisms are from the standpoint of desiring a PDPA victory against the clerical reactionaries, who I repeat were in context playing a role similar to Franco's forces in Spain.
However, what really does play into the hands of the reactionaries is to surrender power to them. Let alone to paint them up as being a national liberation movement when in fact they were a national slavery movement (they certainly showed that when they gained power!)
Yes, I do think it is worse to send enormous sums of armaments and aid to armed Islamist ultras to smash all social progress in a country than to invade that country, certainly out of self-interest, in order to stabilise an allied left nationalist regime. I think the conduct of the USA in this particular context was far worse than that of the USSR. At one level in this regard September 11 was thereby poetic justice for the American ruling class (though not of course for the unfortunate civilians who died in the World Trade Center and the four hijacked aircraft).
And no, I do not think the old USSR was imperialist in the sense the AWL mean, in the sense of old fashioned colonial power. I think it was a freak, ecotopic form of society, oppressive and even exploitative in a very inefficient way, certainly not a 'workers state', but no, I do not consider it to have been imperialist in the sense that the USA is evidently imperialist.
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
Ian writes: "Interesting that Janine now concedes that the Mujahedin were 'reactionaries'."
What? Are you paying the slightest bit of attention to anything we write?
Oh, but it's we who horribly distort the CPGB, who have such nasty 'polemical methods'.
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
Clive:
What? Are you paying the slightest bit of attention to anything we write?
Ian
Certainly. And especially to your tortuous attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable. If the Mujahedin were 'reactionaries' vis-a-vis the PDPA regime, including during the years of Soviet intervention, then how could they also be supportable?
Reconciling that is your problem. For my part, as I have stated before, my criticisms of the PDPA regime in this regard were always based on solidarity with it against the reactionaries.
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
Ian:
"If the Mujahedin were 'reactionaries' vis-a-vis the PDPA regime, including during the years of Soviet intervention, then how could they also be supportable? "
Clive:
We did not, as I am now bored with saying, 'support' them in the way you imply. We 'supported' them only in the entirely negative sense that we opposed the USSR's war of occupation.
The Afghan people certainly had the right to resist the miltary occupation of their country. But the political movements conducting such resistance were, in all other respects, reactionary. If you think this is reconciling the irreconcilable, I'm afraid that is your problem.
This last comment only proves the point, Ian - you're not addressing what we say. (Though you get very upset by what you think is my 'stereotyping' of you: apparently you didn't support the USSR either... I await your explanation of this.)
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
Clive:
We did not, as I am now bored with saying, 'support' them in the way you imply. We 'supported' them only in the entirely negative sense that we opposed the USSR's war of occupation.
The Afghan people certainly had the right to resist the miltary occupation of their country. But the political movements conducting such resistance were, in all other respects, reactionary. If you think this is reconciling the irreconcilable, I'm afraid that is your problem.
This last comment only proves the point, Ian - you're not addressing what we say. (Though you get very upset by what you think is my 'stereotyping' of you: apparently you didn't support the USSR either... I await your explanation of this.)
Ian
Fortunately, I have a long enough memory to remember what Socialist Organiser did say on Afghanistan - and that did not limit itself to a passive opposition to the USSR. You were in favour, as you said repeatedly, of the USSR getting the same kind of treatment in Afghanistan as the US got in Vietnam. You repeatedly made that equation and repeatedly said that the USSR should be 'driven out'.
I take that to mean you did give them some sort of 'support'. You were not talking about some hypothetical, other forces fighting the Soviet army and the PDPA - you were talking about the actual ones doing the fighting - the Mujahedin.
The fact that you are now embarassed and seek to distance yourselves from this is a concrete manifestation of trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Many people on the left remember your position and attitudes on this, so this kind of pretence is not viable. And that, comrade, is *your* problem.
Actually, I did support the USSR at the time. I think this was understandable, but wrong, since I was an orthodox Trotskyist at the time, but now believe that position to have been mistaken. However, that does not alter the fact that the civil war in Afghanistan is one in which the international working class should have opposed the Mujahedin and supported the PDPA, irrespective of the Soviet presence, on grounds of simple democracy (the right of women to show their faces, have an education, be treated as human beings etc is a basic democratic right).
Some complex tactical questions are posed by this, but one position is utterly ruled out by it - any support for the clerical reactionaries fighting the regime.
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
Best if I dig into the archives and post some of what we actually wrote at the time. Yes, we were on the side of the peoples of Afghanistan against the USSR occupiers. We made no bones about it then and make no bones about it now. That meant no political endorsement of the Mujahedin, any more than we politically endorse the leadership of the Chechen national struggle, or the leadership of the KLA. In fact, we were outspoken at the time about the fact that the Mujahedin were reactionaries in everything other than their fight against USSR imperialism. After the Russians withdrew, we sided with the remnants of the PDPA against the Mujahedin. (There was some debate about this, the now-departed Tony Dale and others favouring a plague-on-both-houses policy, but the majority view was to side with the PDPA).
Re: US and USSR 'involvement' in Afghanistan
Martin wrote:
Best if I dig into the archives and post some of what we actually wrote at the time. Yes, we were on the side of the peoples of Afghanistan against the USSR occupiers. We made no bones about it then and make no bones about it now. That meant no political endorsement of the Mujahedin, any more than we politically endorse the leadership of the Chechen national struggle, or the leadership of the KLA. In fact, we were outspoken at the time about the fact that the Mujahedin were reactionaries in everything other than their fight against USSR imperialism. After the Russians withdrew, we sided with the remnants of the PDPA against the Mujahedin. (There was some debate about this, the now-departed Tony Dale and others favouring a plague-on-both-houses policy, but the majority view was to side with the PDPA).
Ian replies:
In some ways it is fortuitous that you even had the chance to make a distinction between the USSR forces and the PDPA regime. If the USSR had been defeated and driven out as you originally wanted, the client regime would have been toppled at the same time. But of course, the USSR withdrew as part of a wider deal with the United States to improve 'relations', leaving their client regime still in place, to last a further three years.
How can you therefore justify belatedly giving support to a 'Russian client regime' against the people you had been supporting for years? This doesnt make sense at all. If that regime was simply a vile Stalinist regime and a quisling of Russian imperialism, and the other side were fighting for 'national liberation', then logically it was no more legitimate in national liberation terms after the USSR left than the regime of Thieu, General Minh, and co was in South Vietnam after the American troops withdrew in 1973.
In reality, this volte face was an acknowledgment of reality - that the PDPA stood for something qualitatively better than its reactionary enemies. But this qualitiative difference also existed for the whole period of 1978-92, not just for the last couple of years or so. Russian intervention did not and could not change that.
Reply
Through all the many messages and words that have been exchanged on this subject here, I think the major difference boils down to this.
Ian does not believe that the invasion of a country by its (much larger, more powerful) neighbour makes much difference to the issue. He also does not think such action is 'imperialist'.
Workers' Liberty disagrees. Invasion and military occupation raise the question of national self-determination in a particularly stark way - I am struggling to imagine a way in which the right to self-determination could be more dramatically and decisively (not to mention brutally) denied. It obligates socialists to support the right of the Afghan people to drive out the invader - pretty much however awful their political leadership.
Have I summed up our differences accurately, Ian?
e-mail: JBooth9192 at aol.com
Re: Reply
Janine writes:
Through all the many messages and words that have been exchanged on this subject here, I think the major difference boils down to this.
Ian does not believe that the invasion of a country by its (much larger, more powerful) neighbour makes much difference to the issue. He also does not think such action is 'imperialist'.
Workers' Liberty disagrees. Invasion and military occupation raise the question of national self-determination in a particularly stark way - I am struggling to imagine a way in which the right to self-determination could be more dramatically and decisively (not to mention brutally) denied. It obligates socialists to support the right of the Afghan people to drive out the invader - pretty much however awful their political leadership.
Have I summed up our differences accurately?
Ian replies:
Not every instance of invasion and occupation in history is reactionary or 'imperialist'. Not every resistance to such invasion is progressive. By that logic, even the last-ditch defense of Hitlerite Germany by the so-called 'werewolves' would have been supportable when that country was invaded and occupied on two fronts at the end of WWII. I doubt the AWL would support that, though.
Were the feeble resistances put forth by the petty German principalities to Napoleon Bonaparte's invasions and occupation progressive, or were they reactionary movements of classes trying to turn back social progress. Obviously the latter.
The biggest proof that the Mujahedin were in no way a national liberation movement is what they did when they were in power, from 1992 to 1996, when they were overthrown by the (even worse) Taliban.
Their warlordism did to Kabul something similar to what the post-Stalinist Russian occupiers have done to Grozny! It was not the Russians who ruined Kabul, but the Mujahedin who demolished it. What kind of national movement, after having gained power, reduces the main economic and cultural centre of its nation to rubble?
The real 'national liberation movement' in Afghanistan, and admittedly it was on a pretty low level in many ways, was the PDPA.
Re: Reply
Responding to Janine, Ian writes:
"Not every instance of invasion and occupation in history is reactionary or 'imperialist'. Not every resistance to such invasion is progressive. By that logic, even the last-ditch defense of Hitlerite Germany by the so-called 'werewolves' would have been supportable when that country was invaded and occupied on two fronts at the end of WWII. I doubt the AWL would support that, though."
Indeed not, but Germany was an imperialist power.
Ian asks:
"Were the feeble resistances put forth by the petty German principalities to Napoleon Bonaparte's invasions and occupation progressive, or were they reactionary movements of classes trying to turn back social progress. Obviously the latter."
Indeed, but this was France just after the bourgeois revolution! Was the USSR - in 1979 - comparable to revolutionary France? Now, if you think the USSR was a workers' state of some kind, especially if you think it was historically progressive even under bureaucratic rule (and even more if you think it was some kind of socialism, as the CPGB seems to have done at the time), there is an undeniable logic to supporting them - their tanks, their troops, their army of occupation - against the people of Afghanistan. Ian says he thinks the USSR was not a workers' state. Either he is advocating some form of 'progressive bureaucratic collectivism' (and he's not, as I understand it), or his argument is bewilderingly incoherent.
Elsewhere, what Ian says he thinks is that it was the PDPA and the PDPA alone which he supported in Afghanistan, and he opposed the Russian invasion. (He seems to dispute there was ever an occupation at all). He has compared this to supporting, for example, the KLA against Milosevic but not supporting NATO (though has yet to respond to my comments on the vast differences of scale). But here, in answer to Janine, he compares the Russians to Napoleon and the Afghan people to the Nazis. Not every invasion is imperialist, you see.
The essence of the matter here was an extremely powerful force occupying its poor, backward neighbour and attempting to suppress its people for nearly a decade. If you don't like the word 'imperialism' due to some pseudo-Leninist pedantry, who cares? Whatever you call it, it ain't something I became a socialist to support or make apologies for.
There's much seeking-for-contradictions and petty point scoring in Ian's contributions to this discussion. But there are two basic positions you can take on Afghanistan under Russian occupation. Either you support the Russians in the name of some abstract idea of progress, or you oppose them. Either the Afghan people have the right of self-determination, or not.
There is a secondary question, which is your precise attitude to the PDPA regime. Ian wants to make this the main thing, and pretend that Russian occupation (not colonial, not imperialist) is somehow secondary. Only an ideological bigot could think this is sensible. But that's how he wants us to discuss it.
Thus Ian is profoundly evasive on this main question, pedantically moaning about the use of words ('Stalinism', 'imperialism', etc) while insisting he opposed the Russian occupation yet justifying the occupation ('not reactionary', apparently, comparable to Napoleon, its opponents comparable to Germans at the end of WW2).
On the secondary issue, I'll grant Ian he scores some points. To what extent, and what it would mean anyway, we 'supported' the Mujahedin is probably unclear, open to interpretation, etc. The idea that we even implicitly supported them throwing acid in women's faces, etc, is too absurd to argue with. But yes, if you like, not all the ts are dotted. But that's because we're concerned to be clear on the central issues.
Is it part of our programme to impose progress on a backward people by force? Categorically, it is not. If those who attempt to do so fall victim to reaction, of course I oppose the reaction - in terms of what I say about it (either way I have no guns to contribute to events). But that cannot commit us to supporting the Stalinist (not simply left-nationalist) state which provoked the reaction. Especially not when its survival depends on military occupation of the country by a big power (if 'imperialist' offends your sensibilities).
So, did we support the PDPA against the Mujahedin - once you subtract the Russians (I mean subtract them logically, not just when they actually withdrew)? In a limited sense, yes. Ian raises a hypothetical Islamist revolt against Nasser in Egypt. Wouldn't we support Nasser against them? We can be less hypothetical: there was a civil war in Algeria between the FLN and the Islamists. Did socialists support the bourgeois nationalist government which had cancelled elections it was going to lose? Of course not. We were in favour of an alternative to both (which, in Algeria, existed to some extent).
You can argue that by the 1990s the FLN was not the progressive force it had been thirty years before, and so not comparable to Nasser. I suppose not. But I'm not sure by what criteria the PDPA was more progressive than the 1990s FLN.
A Muslim Brothers insurrection against Nasser may well have been a different proposition to the Algerian civil war in the 1990s; I think it's hard to say in the abstract. One thing the hypothetical example reveals though, is this: there was not any such Islamist revolt against Nasser (on anything like the scale Ian means) - because the Nasser regime, far from provoking rebellion in the countryside, introduced a popular land reform. (Moreover, Egypt's countryside is socially not much like Afghanistan's). Ian thinks the differences between the two are superficial. History, unfortunately, contradicts his logical certainties.
"It was not the Russians who ruined Kabul, but the Mujahedin who demolished it."
Whereas the rest of the country was having a picnic in the fields so wonderfully untouched by the Russians...
"What kind of national movement, after having gained power, reduces the main economic and cultural centre of its nation to rubble?"
It was obviously not a 'national movement' in the sense of a bourgeois nationalist one. It was reactionary. But things are blurred here. We are not disputing that the various Mujahedin forces were reactionary. But Ian's own tradition, the Spartacists, went much further than that: I remember being regaled by a Spart about how 'they ***** goats in Afghanistan!' (I am not joking), meaning, they are so backward a good dose of napalm will do them good. Ian has broken with this appalling tradition. I ask him again: how completely, though?
Re: Reply
Further replies:
(Clive, quoting Ian)
“Not every instance of invasion and occupation in history is reactionary or 'imperialist'. Not every resistance to such invasion is progressive. By that logic, even the last-ditch defense of Hitlerite Germany by the so-called 'werewolves' would have been supportable when that country was invaded and occupied on two fronts at the end of WWII. I doubt the AWL would support that, though.”
Indeed not, but Germany was an imperialist power.
(Ian)
That does not negate its right to self-determination as a nation. As we repeatedly have to emphasise, for instance in debates over Israel, even oppressor nations, even imperialist nations for that matter, have the right to self-determination, the right not to be baldly invaded and occupied against their will. But not every movement that claims to stand for that is a valid expression of such rights - particularly in imperialist nations, but also in non-imperialist nations for that matter.
(Clive, quoting Ian initially)
“Were the feeble resistances put forth by the petty German principalities to Napoleon Bonaparte's invasions and occupation progressive, or were they reactionary movements of classes trying to turn back social progress. Obviously the latter.”
Indeed, but this was France just after the bourgeois revolution! Was the USSR – in 1979 – comparable to revolutionary France? Now, if you think the USSR was a workers’ state of some kind, especially if you think it was historically progressive even under bureaucratic rule (and even more if you think it was some kind of socialism, as the CPGB seems to have done at the time), there is an undeniable logic to supporting them – their tanks, their troops, their army of occupation – against the people of Afghanistan. Ian says he thinks the USSR was not a workers’ state. Either he is advocating some form of ‘progressive bureaucratic collectivism’ (and he’s not, as I understand it), or his argument is bewilderingly incoherent.
(Ian)
The indigenous revolution carried out by the PDPA made gains, on a national level, all proportions guarded were as valuable to the masses, particularly the urbanised, more advanced sections, but also, albeit more disputedly, in the countryside (indeed this is what detonated the reactionary revolt) as those made in revolutionary France. The Russian intervention, whatever else it did, did not reverse those gains, so as far as I am concerned the same issues were at stake. Real gains were embodied in the PDPA regime, the forces allegedly fighting for national 'freedom' were in fact fighting to smash those gains, and therefore were quite analogous to the reactionary German ruling classes fighting Napoleon. Their 'anti-Stalinism' was reactionary anti-Stalinism, just as the 'anti-capitalism' of the German princes was reactionary anti-capitalism.
This is only 'incoherent' from the standpoint of your apparently teleological view of history. I prefer to analyse history as it unfolds, not according to a preconcieved schema of what 'should' happen.
(Clive)
Elsewhere, what Ian says he thinks is that it was the PDPA and the PDPA alone which he supported in Afghanistan, and he opposed the Russian invasion. (He seems to dispute there was ever an occupation at all). He has compared this to supporting, for example, the KLA against Milosevic but not supporting NATO (though has yet to respond to my comments on the vast differences of scale). But here, in answer to Janine, he compares the Russians to Napoleon and the Afghan people to the Nazis. Not every invasion is imperialist, you see.
(Ian)
'Differences of scale' in this sense are merely differences of quantity. The same *principle* is at stake, in other words the *quality* is the same. All the sophistry in the world cannot make the Mujahedin's holy war against modernity and women's elementary humanity into a just cause.
Actually, within the framework of Afghanistan, the Mujahedin were far to the right of the Nazis. Hitler only wanted to go back to the good old days of Germany autocracy, a third Reich. The Mujahedin programme, which gave birth in turn to the Taliban, was for a seventh century theocracy.
(Clive)
The essence of the matter here was an extremely powerful force occupying its poor, backward neighbour and attempting to suppress its people for nearly a decade. If you don’t like the word ‘imperialism’ due to some pseudo-Leninist pedantry, who cares? Whatever you call it, it ain’t something I became a socialist to support or make apologies for.
(Ian)
Well I didnt become a socialist to support a movement to smash all modernity and progress that is even more retrograde in its aspirations than those of the Nazis. Sorry, that is not my idea of freedom.
(Clive)
There’s much seeking-for-contradictions and petty point scoring in Ian’s contributions to this discussion. But there are two basic positions you can take on Afghanistan under Russian occupation. Either you support the Russians in the name of some abstract idea of progress, or you oppose them. Either the Afghan people have the right of self-determination, or not.
(Ian)
There is no petty point scoring here whatsoever. There is nothing abstract about the progress embodied in the PDPA regime, and there was nothing abstract in the extreme reaction against that progress embodied in the Taliban, which in turn was the consistent expression of that of the Mujahedin - same programme, merely more effective organsation. I supported the right of the KLA to resist national/ethnic oppression and mass expulsions, irrespective of Western involvment. I supported the defence of the progressive gains of the PDPA regime, irrespective of Russian involvement. Same principle.
(Clive)
There is a secondary question, which is your precise attitude to the PDPA regime. Ian wants to make this the main thing, and pretend that Russian occupation (not colonial, not imperialist) is somehow secondary. Only an ideological bigot could think this is sensible. But that’s how he wants us to discuss it.
(Ian)
If you wish to call me a bigot, then fine. I could say something about people whose politics are such that the destruction of all rights of Afghan women is a acceptable price to pay for 'national liberation'. The question of social progress, of modernity, is the primary question in this case. The PDPA regime in no sense was engaged in ethnic oppression of the peoples of Afghanistan, if was rather trying to make Afghanistan into a modern nation.
(Clive)
Thus Ian is profoundly evasive on this main question, pedantically moaning about the use of words (‘Stalinism’, ‘imperialism’, etc) while insisting he opposed the Russian occupation yet justifying the occupation (‘not reactionary’, apparently, comparable to Napoleon, its opponents comparable to Germans at the end of WW2).
(Ian)
As I have stated, the programme of the Mujahedin was even more reactionary that that of the Nazis. There is nothing pedantic about this. Look at their social and economic policies in power.
(Clive)
On the secondary issue, I’ll grant Ian he scores some points. To what extent, and what it would mean anyway, we ‘supported’ the Mujahedin is probably unclear, open to interpretation, etc. The idea that we even implicitly supported them throwing acid in women’s faces, etc, is too absurd to argue with. But yes, if you like, not all the ts are dotted. But that’s because we’re concerned to be clear on the central issues.
(Ian)
I never said any such thing about the AWL. It is legitimate, however, since you supported these forces, to point out that this is the kind of thing that they did and still do. You are remarkably forward in polemicising on these lines against those who you see as supporting forces which you disapprove of ('how can you support PDPA, Russians, whoever. They have committed this or that killing here, that atrocity there, etc' has been your line of argument throughout this debate). *You* are also stuck with the crimes of the side you took in this conflict.
(Clive)
Is it part of our programme to impose progress on a backward people by force? Categorically, it is not. If those who attempt to do so fall victim to reaction, of course I oppose the reaction – in terms of what I say about it (either way I have no guns to contribute to events). But that cannot commit us to supporting the Stalinist (not simply left-nationalist) state which provoked the reaction. Especially not when its survival depends on military occupation of the country by a big power (if ‘imperialist‘ offends your sensibilities).
(Ian)
But you did not oppose the reaction. You supported it, in agitating and propagandising in support of the 'national liberation struggle' of the Mujahedin.
(Clive)
So, did we support the PDPA against the Mujahedin – once you subtract the Russians (I mean subtract them logically, not just when they actually withdrew)? In a limited sense, yes. Ian raises a hypothetical Islamist revolt against Nasser in Egypt. Wouldn’t we support Nasser against them? We can be less hypothetical: there was a civil war in Algeria between the FLN and the Islamists. Did socialists support the bourgeois nationalist government which had cancelled elections it was going to lose? Of course not. We were in favour of an alternative to both (which, in Algeria, existed to some extent).
(Ian)
Well, that is your view. Personally, I am not in favour of ultra-religious extremists being allowed to take power by 'democratic' means and destroy all the rights of the masses. In the absence of an independent armed force capable of stopping them from doing so, I think socialists should be prepared to bloc with bourgeois, even military, supporters of such forces, albeit with considerable caution in this case particularly given the neo-liberal nature of the Algerian regime. You ask whether 'socialists' would have done this or that. I take it you mean yourselves, in the manner of the SWP. My guess is that there could legitimately have been a variety of tactical differences between 'socialists' over what to do in this situation.
(Clive)
You can argue that by the 1990s the FLN was not the progressive force it had been thirty years before, and so not comparable to Nasser. I suppose not. But I’m not sure by what criteria the PDPA was more progressive than the 1990s FLN.
(Ian)
Well, the PDPA regime had not undermined its own crediblity by enforcing many years of neo-liberalism economic 'reforms' on the masses. The growth of Islamism in Algeria was in part a reaction to marketisation, whereas in Afghanistan the PDPA came under attack for being too radical and leftist in its social and economic programmes. Because of the neo-liberal nature of the FLN regime, more caution would be necessary in blocking with it, though I wouldnt rule out any bloc altogether.
(Clive)
A Muslim Brothers insurrection against Nasser may well have been a different proposition to the Algerian civil war in the 1990s; I think it’s hard to say in the abstract. One thing the hypothetical example reveals though, is this: there was not any such Islamist revolt against Nasser (on anything like the scale Ian means) – because the Nasser regime, far from provoking rebellion in the countryside, introduced a popular land reform. (Moreover, Egypt’s countryside is socially not much like Afghanistan’s). Ian thinks the differences between the two are superficial. History, unfortunately, contradicts his logical certainties.
(Ian)
There are differences in the level of development between the two countries, but taking these into account, the Nasser regime and the PDPA regime were of similar types. Equally supportable against reactionary threats.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
“It was not the Russians who ruined Kabul, but the Mujahedin who demolished it.”
Whereas the rest of the country was having a picnic in the fields so wonderfully untouched by the Russians...
(Ian)
In any war, people get killed, maimed, you name it. You could use similar arguments to justify the reaction against the French revolution, particularly in the countryside. The perpretrators of the Vendee revolt were massacred by the Jacobins, in a manner many would call barbaric. That does not make the French revolution one iota less progressive. The fact that similar things happened in the Afghan countryside does not change the fact that one side was fighting for progress and modernisation, the other to establish a regime of extreme reaction.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
“What kind of national movement, after having gained power, reduces the main economic and cultural centre of its nation to rubble?”
It was obviously not a ‘national movement’ in the sense of a bourgeois nationalist one. It was reactionary. But things are blurred here. We are not disputing that the various Mujahedin forces were reactionary. But Ian’s own tradition, the Spartacists, went much further than that: I remember being regaled by a Spart about how ‘they ***** goats in Afghanistan!’ (I am not joking), meaning, they are so backward a good dose of napalm will do them good. Ian has broken with this appalling tradition. I ask him again: how completely, though?
(Ian)
No, it was not a 'national movement'in a bourgeois sense, or indeed in any other sense. The PDPA was the real national movement in Afghanistan. As for the latter question, that is simply stupid - I am arguing for the support of a secular, modernising Afghan government against reaction, and I am accused of believing Afghans are so inherently backward that they deserve to be massacred. How does that follow? Its beyond me! Sound a bit like Spart logic itself.
Re: Reply
All right, obviously this is getting tiring and wearing on the nerves, and there is a danger of so much repetition that nobody will bother reading what we write. I think the fundamental differences boil down to two things. One is, on the face of it, a matter of empirical assessment - (how much support did the PDP have? How 'colonial' was Russian policy? Etc); the other is, on the face it, a judgement about which principles take priority (support for 'progressive nationalists' versus the right to self-determination). I think neither is how it seems at face value, however.
The PDP regime, even before the Russian invasion, related to the mass of the population like an occupying force. It started strafing villages before the Russians arrived; the Russians were able to do it more efficiently. Ian defines this situation - prior to the Russian invasion, and he argues the invasion didn't fundamentally change it - as one of progress against reaction. I think that in whatever limited sense the PDPA was progressive, and stood for a progressive programme (and I don't dispute it did, in a limited sense), it was cancelled out by the ultra-commandist brutality of the way they tried to implement it, and then doubly cancelled out by the occupation of the country by a military superpower which I would call imperialist (though I'm not too bothered about the semantics) not just on this evidence but on all other evidence, too.
I do not accept that this 'reform through state terror' can be assimilated to revolutionary France, Napoleon, etc., or any other instance of revolutionary violence - doubly not when it entails the occupation of the country by Moscow. We are talking about radically different historical phenomena. I don't think you can assimilate the PDPA to, say, Nasserism, either. Of course on a certain level of generality they are similar, perhaps even represent the same sort of 'class project'. But Nasserism was not born through a wholescale military assault against the mass of the Egyptian population. (Which is not to say it was all sweetness and light: one of the first things the Free Officers did was crush strikes and execute workers' leaders. But I don't think this is comparable to the actions of the PDPA). Nor was, for example, the FLN regime in Algeria. To note this radical (though 'radical' hardly captures it) distinction is not to call into question the validity of revolutionary violence; it is to deny that 'revolutionary violence' is remotely what we are talking about in the case of Afghanistan.
The various Mujahedin forces were reactionary. But what are we talking about here? A counter-revolution which mobilises the vast majority of the rural population against a small minority in the cities is not simply that, simply 'reaction', or counter-revolution. Of course, sometimes counter-revolutions mobilise mass forces. In Afghanistan we are talking about something 'qualitatively' beyond simply that. Certainly after the Russian occupation, there was an aspect to this mobilisation which was entirely legitimate desire not to be bombed to pieces by the Russian army. The reactionary Mujahedin were able to hegemonise the rural population not simply because that population was 'reactionary', but because the PDPA and then the Russians, pushed the population into their arms.
So here, as elsewhere, I would draw a distinction between the reactionary Islamist forces and their base. It's a schematic distinction - but not one I would only make for Afghanistan.
This is the point to the Sparts' position - and also that of others, like for instance, Militant. They defined the Afghan masses as reactionary, I think, in a more profound sense than simply the hegemony of the Mujahedin (plus the CIA, or whatever); their sheer backwardness entitled the PDPA, and the Russians, to do their worst. Of course, the Afghan masses were and are socially backward; of course this profoundly limits the possibilities for 'progress'. But it is not our programme - certainly, Ian, I mean mine: you're welcome to yours - to bombard backward peoples into modernity. The attempt to do so will drive them into the arms of reactionary movements. This is what Afghanistan demonstrates with such compelling power.
So indeed, I do not accept your 'progressives' versus 'reactionaries' picture. It was more complex. I don't think we actually ever referred to the Mujahedin as a 'national liberation movement', and I wouldn't now. But we are talking here not just about a reactionary political movement, but about the Afghan people - backward, often tribal, bound to reactionary leaders by all sorts of traditional, pre-capitalist (sometimes I suppose pre-feudal) bonds. It is more complex. The PDPA did not simply try to revolutionise this society with a necessary bit of revolutionary violence, like some latter day Committee for Public Safety. They launched a war against it, which failed, which prompted Russian occupation, which also failed. The Taliban were the end product of this whole process - a process for which the PDP shares some of the responsibility.
Final point on Algeria.
"In the absence of an independent armed force capable of stopping them from doing so, I think socialists should be prepared to bloc with bourgeois, even military, supporters of such forces, albeit with considerable caution in this case particularly given the neo-liberal nature of the Algerian regime... My guess is that there could legitimately have been a variety of tactical differences between 'socialists' over what to do in this situation. "
I'm sure there's room for debate about tactics. It would take a lot to persuade me, though, that the most sensible tactics would be to support the government which cancelled elections it knew it was going to (badly) lose. That this is the one Ian instinctively opts for I think is instructive indeed.
Re: Reply
Clive complains that this is getting tiring. It certainly is, but I dont have a solution to this - at least the discussion has remained political, if rather lengthy. This is not a simple subject, and I wouldnt pretend otherwise. I intend to ease off now - at least no one can say that CPGB supporters are reluctant to debate Afghanistan.
But first a few points in response:
(Clive)
"The PDP regime, even before the Russian invasion, related to the mass of the population like an occupying force. It started strafing villages before the Russians arrived; the Russians were able to do it more efficiently. Ian defines this situation – prior to the Russian invasion, and he argues the invasion didn’t fundamentally change it – as one of progress against reaction. I think that in whatever limited sense the PDPA was progressive, and stood for a progressive programme (and I don’t dispute it did, in a limited sense), it was cancelled out by the ultra-commandist brutality of the way they tried to implement it, and then doubly cancelled out by the occupation of the country by a military superpower which I would call imperialist (though I’m not too bothered about the semantics) not just on this evidence but on all other evidence, too."
(Ian)
Some of what you say is true, though I would dispute that 'commandism' cancelled out gains in terms of human rights for women, for instance. How could it do that?
There is also the question of causality. The Mujahedin, right from the start in 1978, were armed to the teeth by the West, and by a whole slew of extremely powerful external local forces who gave them a firepower and weight they would not otherwise have had. A military dictatorship, led by General Zia-ul-Haq, a general sympathetic to extreme anti-communist form of radical Islam, came to power in Pakistan in 1977 and executed its elected leader. This regime contructed a fearsome intelligence service with massive US aid to wage war against the PDPA regime (this intelligence service survived the fall of the dictatorship and also played a major role in the subsequent overthrow of original Mujahedin by the even more ferociously reactionary Taliban).
Then of course, there was also the massive boost to Islamic fanaticism given by the 'Islamic Revolution' in Iran, also 'next door'.
I would observe that, faced with external intervention and pressures on a massive scale, even the Russian Bolsheviks became pretty 'commandist' at times in the early years in Russia. Given they commanded a tiny, backward country, with little or no proletariat, the radical petty-bourgeois regime of the PDPA would have faced even more massive pressures of the same type - without of course the benefit of the political culture of the Bolsheviks, which in their case undoubtedly moderated those pressures to behave dictatorially. Given an ideology that was not revolutionary Marxist, but an admixture of petty-bourgeois nationalism and Stalinism, the PDPA would have found such pressures towards dictatorship and commandism not merely hard to resist, but impossible to resist.
The question of causality, for you, is however one sided. It is all the PDPA's fault. Not so.
(Clive)
[...]
This is the point to the Sparts’ position – and also that of others, like for instance, Militant. They defined the Afghan masses as reactionary, I think, in a more profound sense than simply the hegemony of the Mujahedin (plus the CIA, or whatever); their sheer backwardness entitled the PDPA, and the Russians, to do their worst. Of course, the Afghan masses were and are socially backward; of course this profoundly limits the possibilities for ‘progress’. But it is not our programme – certainly, Ian, I mean mine: you’re welcome to yours – to bombard backward peoples into modernity. The attempt to do so will drive them into the arms of reactionary movements. This is what Afghanistan demonstrates with such compelling power.
(Ian) But the PDPA were an organic outgrowth of Afghan society, with an urban social base and a history stretching back decades. They were attempting to modernise their country from within - and on taking power had an extremely bloodthirsty war declared against them by a reactionary coalition that covertly included the United States, a power even greater in military and certainly economic might than the USSR, that was itching to find a way to inflict bloody revenge on anyone vaguely aligned with 'communism' after its defeat in Vietnam. You are really blind to US imperialism and its role in all this, dismissing it as simply irrelevant.
(Clive)
So indeed, I do not accept your ‘progressives’ versus ‘reactionaries’ picture. It was more complex. I don’t think we actually ever referred to the Mujahedin as a ‘national liberation movement’, and I wouldn’t now. But we are talking here not just about a reactionary political movement, but about the Afghan people – backward, often tribal, bound to reactionary leaders by all sorts of traditional, pre-capitalist (sometimes I suppose pre-feudal) bonds. It is more complex. The PDPA did not simply try to revolutionise this society with a necessary bit of revolutionary violence, like some latter day Committee for Public Safety. They launched a war against it, which failed, which prompted Russian occupation, which also failed. The Taliban were the end product of this whole process – a process for which the PDP shares some of the responsibility.
(Ian)
See above. You see only one side. The main responsiblity for all these reactionary developments and their consequences lies with the much more powerful imperialists of the West who funded movements they knew full well were ultra-rightist and limitlessly bloodthirsty. The fact that they quite deliberately trained, funded and armed the most fanatical reactionary elements they could find, because these would be the most determined and bloodthirsty anti-communists, is why things didnt just settle down after the 'oppressors' left, but on the contrary gave birth to things like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. These are creations of the West, Frankenstein's monsters that turned on their creator.
(Clive, on Algeria)
I’m sure there’s room for debate about tactics. It would take a lot to persuade me, though, that the most sensible tactics would be to support the government which cancelled elections it knew it was going to (badly) lose. That this is the one Ian instinctively opts for I think is instructive indeed.
(Ian)
Depends what you mean by 'support'. If you were a leftist in Algeria, of course, it would not be so easy to justify sitting back and allowing the FIS to take power 'democratically'. What to do in this situation is a real dilemma for those on the ground. I would like to know exactly what you think they *should* have done? Of course, you could call on them to form workers militias,launch general strikes and civil war, but given the victory of the FIS in the elections, this was possibly much easier said than done. I certainly dont condemn those leftists in Algeria who blocked with the FLN regime -- in doing so, you sound like a bit like Manuilsky.
It seems to me that you get terribly upset when Islamic extremism threatens the West (and Israel is, politically if not geographically semi-assimilated into 'the West') but are actually quite complacent about it when it 'only' threatens the people of Muslim countries.
Who of course, have much more to fear from it.
Re: Reply
Me too, I'll be easing off, so I won't respond to this now - except for one point, which takes us back, actually, to how all this started.
Ian says: "... at least no one can say that CPGB supporters are reluctant to debate Afghanistan."
I could hardly accuse you of being reluctant, Ian, that's for sure. I'd be very interested to know, though, how far you've been speaking for the CPGB and how far just for yourself. Obviously everybody's speaking for themselves; and I'm not an official AWL spokesperson, or something. But I suspect that Ian has a more fleshed out - I won't say coherent ;-) - position than the ex-'Leninist' core of the CPGB, and one he had, more or less, before he joined the CPGB. How far Ian's eagerness to debate Afghanistan speaks for the CPGB as a group seems to me yet to be shown.
What AWL said on Afghanistan
A full exposition of our stance, written in 1985 (but the first part of it being a light editing of articles written in early 1980) is here.
Below: a short extract from the beginning of that exposition, and another short extract from the conclusion.
http://archive.workersliberty.org/publications/readings/trots/afgh.htm
There is little reason to doubt that the anti-Russian forces are almost entirely reactionary, conservative and backward-looking. They have allies and supporters ranging from the Chinese to the USA. Whatever about Russia's intentions the Afghans are a long way from being defeated. They have never been conquered in modern times, and today they believe they are fighting a religious war.
For Russia to complete the conquest would very likely require the commitment of some hundreds of thousands of fighting soldiers and also that a large part of the civilian population be either massacred or rounded up and herded into what have variously been called 'strategic hamlets', 'resettlement areas' or 'concentration camps'. That is what the US did to hostile civilians in Vietnam, and what Britain did at the turn of the century to the women and children of the Boer guerrillas in South Africa.
Plainly what is happening in Afghanistan is a war of colonial conquest. Those who gloated in the capitalist press in January 1980 that this would be 'Russia's Vietnam' have been proved right.
What attitude should socialists take to the war? It is a colonial war of conquest. But it is being fought by the USSR, which most of the left in Britain consider either socialist, or at any rate a workers' state of some sort. (Most Socialist Organiser supporters would define it as a degenerated workers' state). So should our attitude be different from the attitude we took to the Vietnam war?
Is the USSR's war 'progressive'? Even if we do not like what the Russians are doing, and would not have supported the invasion, does it necessarily follow that socialists should demand that the Russians get out - thereby vacating the field for the Muslim forces?....
***
Finally the supporters of Russia's conquest of Afghanistan have the fall-back argument: if the Russians go, there will be a bloodbath.
This argument was used intensely by the Mandelites and the SWP-USA in 1980; then they changed their minds and forgot about it.
In 1980 the short answer was: If the Russians stay there will be a bloodbath. There has been a bloodbath, and the bloody colonial war continues.
The argument always was and is now thoroughly dishonest. It is also incompletely stated. The complete version would say, and not just imply - a bloodbath of PDP people and collaborators with the Russians.
This is not a humanitarian objection, but taking sides with the Russians and their supporters. It is a variant of the idea that it is better if the Russians do what the PDP/army aspirant bureaucrats could not do - subjugate the population and make a Stalinist 'revolution'.
That has to be argued for and justified politically. For how many of the Afghans will the Russians shoot? Or napalm, or bury in the ruins of villages bombed for reprisal? And why is such a brutal transformation by conquest necessary?
Why should it not be what the majority of the peoples of Afghanistan want that occurs? Even if assimilation by the USSR is ultimately desirable, as Militant says, why can't this area wait until the majority of its own population decides to fight for social change, or until a socialist revolution in other countries makes it possible to attract its people to the work of transforming their own country? From the point of view of the international socialist revolution, there is no reason why not.
LESSER EVIL?
Something basic is involved in the bloodbath argument. It is impossible to work out a serious independent working-class political assessment on the basis of such gun-to-head questions as: do you want the right-wing Muslim reactionaries to triumph? Yes or no?
In any acute situation where a large revolutionary working-class movement does not exist, the gun-to-head appeal to responsibility, humanitarianism, and the lesser evil can almost always be counterposed to an independent working-class political assessment. For example, in 1969 when the British army was deployed to stop sectarian fighting in Derry and Belfast, enormous pressure was generated to support the use of the troops, or refrain from opposing their use, on the ground that they had probably saved Catholic lives and that Catholics had welcomed them. No doubt they did save Catholic lives, and certainly Catholics welcomed them, including the Republicans.
A lot of socialists succumbed to the pressure. The SWP (then IS) did. The small minority at the September 1969 IS conference who resisted and called for opposition to the British imperialist troops were met with hysterical denunciations and slandered as 'fascists' who 'wanted a bloodbath'. Yet it was those Marxists who refused to be panicked or to abandon their understanding of Britain's role in Ireland who had the better grasp of reality.
But then, Ted Grant might say, it was plainly a matter of a reactionary imperialist army. And in Afghanistan... it is a matter of the thoroughly reactionary anti-working-class army of the Russian bureaucracy.
If the Russians withdraw it might well prove to be the case that the final result of the strange episode of the seizure of power by the putschist PDP/army 'bureaucratic revolutionaries' would be a massacre of PDP supporters (though presumably most of them would leave with the withdrawing army). That would be a tragedy.
But it cannot follow that because of this, Marxist socialists should abandon their programmatic opposition to the expansion of the area under Kremlin control, or should abandon the idea that the consolidation of a Stalinist regime in Afghanistan would be a defeat for the working class.
We cannot abandon independent working-class politics for the lesser evil - for the PDP and the supporters of the Russians - in a situation which the putsch, the policy of the PDP/army, and the Russian invasion has created for them. We are not, to quote Trotsky, the inspectors general of history.
Re: Reply
Reviewing this exchange, it is very clear that Ian's whole approach is based on two fundamental props :-
(a) The assertion that the USSR's invasion in 1979 was not a colonial war, involving national oppression, etc. This is like a kid picking up a telescope and looking through the wrong end. The sheer weight of the intervention (eg more Russian "advisors" within first six months than the whole of the PDPA, to say nothing of the fighting personnel) puts a lie to this.
Ian appears much animated by the sort of reasoning based on "if you say that, then that means you must think...". It's a heritage of the Sparts, and Ian would do well to consider dropping it as a polemical method; to be accused of supporting "X", to explain that you DON'T support "X", and your accuser just shrugging their shoulders and continuing on with the same line of argument, gets tiresome after a while.
This method is used by Ian when accusing Socialist Organiser of having "supported" the mujahadeen. The fact that he is told that they didn't does not deflect him; he KNOWS they did. How? because SO supported the USSR being kicked out of Afganistan (true). Yet one does not necessarily flow from the other, either in life or in logic.
b) Ian's other device is saying that it is all a matter of supporting "reform" against "reaction". The problem of this method is that Ian ties his support for the PDPA to his support for some of the reforms proposed by them (land reform, abolition of bride-price, cancellation of peasants debts, etc).
Surely socialists are not obliged to support the forces of another class, just because they proclaim parts of our programme? There are many cases of "reform from above" where we might even oppose the reforms because of WHO is implementing them and HOW. This note is a bit brief, so I will try and illustrate what I am saying in a separate note.
Richard Bayley
Re: Reply
Richard writes:
Reviewing this exchange, it is very clear that Ian's whole approach is based on two fundamental props :-
(a) The assertion that the USSR's invasion in 1979 was not a colonial war, involving national oppression, etc. This is like a kid picking up a telescope and looking through the wrong end. The sheer weight of the intervention (eg more Russian "advisors" within first six months than the whole of the PDPA, to say nothing of the fighting personnel) puts a lie to this.
(Ian)
National oppression and a colonial war are not necessarily the same thing. National oppression can exist *within* imperialist countries, within semi-colonial countries, and in a whole range of other permutations. The tendency for Russian overlordship to overwhelm the PDPA is a *good* reason to oppose the Russian intervention. But that does not transform the war of those who fought to defeat the PDPA along with the Russians into a war against national oppression.
(Richard)
Ian appears much animated by the sort of reasoning based on "if you say that, then that means you must think...". It's a heritage of the Sparts, and Ian would do well to consider dropping it as a polemical method; to be accused of supporting "X", to explain that you DON'T support "X", and your accuser just shrugging their shoulders and continuing on with the same line of argument, gets tiresome after a while.
This method is used by Ian when accusing Socialist Organiser of having "supported" the mujahadeen. The fact that he is told that they didn't does not deflect him; he KNOWS they did. How? because SO supported the USSR being kicked out of Afganistan (true). Yet one does not necessarily flow from the other, either in life or in logic.
(Ian)
Problem is, your comrades seem to disagree with each other on how much 'support' they gave to the Mujahedin when the Soviet army was in place. This discrepancy is not of my doing - and it would be remiss of me not to point it out. The contradiction was and is obvious. I am very wary of arguments that contradict elementary formal logic, which are characteristic of not just the Sparts, but also many if not most Trotskyist groups - including the AWL. Arguments such as 'If you advocate voting for only the workers parties in a popular front, you are in fact a supporter of the popular front' are not logical. Nor are arguments like - "if you are opposed to national rights for a specific subset of jews in Israel, you are in effect hostile to all jews - a 'left' anti-semite". The conclusion does not follow from the motivation.
But it is perfectly logical to conclude that if someone calls for the defeat of one side in a war (the USSR in Afghanistan), demands that they be 'driven out' of the territory concerned, and makes no such statements about the other side, they are giving some sort of support to that 'other side' (i.e. the Mujahedin). If this is Spart logic, then Hal Draper is also guilty of using the same kind of logic in his essay 'Lenin and the myth of revolutionary defeatism' regarding much more guarded (and in fact different in meaning) statements by Lenin concerning the question of revolutionary defeatism.
(Richard)
b) Ian's other device is saying that it is all a matter of supporting "reform" against "reaction". The problem of this method is that Ian ties his support for the PDPA to his support for some of the reforms proposed by them (land reform, abolition of bride-price, cancellation of peasants debts, etc).
Surely socialists are not obliged to support the forces of another class, just because they proclaim parts of our programme? There are many cases of "reform from above" where we might even oppose the reforms because of WHO is implementing them and HOW. This note is a bit brief, so I will try and illustrate what I am saying in a separate note.
(Ian)
This is not about the verbal proclamation of 'reforms' in the abstract. It is about concrete social gains and rights for women in particular, which stood to be wiped out if the Mujahedin won (and indeed duly were when they did). The AWL's inconsistent volte face to support for the commandist, monstrously Stalinist PDPA against the Mujahedin *after* the Russian withdrawal merely means to me that you were too squeamish to follow your position to its logical conclusion. Which is, of course, to your credit as socialists. It does, however, make a mockery of your whole previous position.
And just briefly in reply to Clive's brief note. My background may not be mainstream CPGB, but I doubt that the founding comrades of the Leninist would have much disagreement with what I have written in this discussion. And my position on this did not precede my membership of the CPGB - though undoubtedly there are *elements* in it that do so precede it. I reckon a certain cross-fertilisation has taken place here - this is one of the benefits of party-ism.
I do not believe that any of the Trotskyoid sect positions on the so-called 'Russian question' have 'solved' that question - which is why no one position has suceeded in marginalising the others and gaining hegemony on the non-Stalinist left. The sect one-sideness of your approach, in being unable to properly discern and act on the real, glaring questions of real (and not merely formal) democracy at stake in Afghanistan, are a case in point. But there is hope, even you were forced to contradict your own dogma towards the end in Afghanistan.
Re: Left anti-semitism
Ian writes about arguments which are 'not logical': such as ""if you are opposed to national rights for a specific subset of jews in Israel, you are in effect hostile to all jews - a 'left' anti-semite".
Actually, Ian, the argument goes more like this: If you are opposed to national rights for the Israeli Jews *uniquely amongst all nations in the world* and you demonise 'Zionism' by treating it as an evil far in excess of any other nationalism, and you make political alliances with movements that want to 'kill all the Jews', then you are in effect hostile to the big majority of Jews and, even though you may be on the 'left', your politics have been tainted by anti-semitism.
Janine
e-mail: JBooth9192 at aol.com
Re: Left anti-semitism
Except, of course, the moralism of such leftists is not confined to Israel. The same attitude is displayed towards Ulster Protestants. In the 1970s, many had a similar view of Maronite Christians in Lebanon.
This is left moralism, not racism. If you seek to portray it as racism (and there is no other meaning to the term 'anti-Semitism') then you are undermining the whole polemic against these wrong-headed leftists by slandering them. The only people who benefit politically from this misdirected polemic are the purveyors of new left moralism themselves.
Re: Left anti-semitism
Sorry, me again.
I think Ian's argument here against the idea of 'left anti-semitism' is the strongest: ie that the left's attitude to Israel and Jews who support it is not unique, and similar attitudes are expressed towards Irish Protestants (and Lebanese Maronite Christians, in the past). Nevertheless, I think he misses the point.
For sure there are overlaps. An element - a major element - in 'anti-Zionism' in so far as it means the destruction of Israel is a kind of populist third-worldism. Globally, third worldism saw 'the revolution' as the masses (wretched of the earth, etc) of the periphery against the imperialist centre, and in its purest forms considered the working class of the advanced capitalist countries as 'bought off'. Israel, identified as an arm of imperialism, occupies the role of the 'centre', with the Arab revolution against it... The same sort of framework sees 'the revolution' in Ireland as Catholic, smashing against the pro-imperialist Protestants. Mainstream Trotskyism gave this a twist of 'permanent revolution' by imagining Irish Republicanism or Arab nationalism would somehow grow over into socialist revolution. (Sometimes the argument is even weirder. In Palestine, for instance, it goes like this, more or less: since only socialist revolution can overthrow Zionism - this being the theory of permanent revolution, supposedly - the struggle against Zionism is really socialist revolution already, whether it knows it or not, so to speak. Saddam Hussein's scud missile attacks, even, are really an expression of socialist revolution...)
I think Ian and we have a wide degree of agreement about this side of it.
But there are differences, too, between Zionism and Loyalism, and the Left attitudes towards them. One way to understand what we are talking about here, I think, is this: Opposition to 'Zionism' is expressed by a wide range of political forces, including - the Saudi ruling class; other Arab ruling classes; the Iranian ruling class; other ruling classes in the region; the Stalinist bureaucracy; and fascists. The gist for all these forces is that they mean 'the Jews'. The word 'Zionism' is used as code by a very wide range of reactionary social forces, on a world scale, to mean the Jews. There is, I think, no analogue for the Irish Protestants.
I am not suggesting that socialists who call themselves anti-Zionists automatically mean 'the Jews' in the same way or for the same reasons. But the coded use of the term should make us, at the very least, cautious. The anti-Zionist Left is not cautious; on the contrary, it takes as good coin the coded use of Zionism, imagining for instance that Islamists demonstrating for the Palestinians mean the same thing by 'Zionism' and 'Zionists' as they do.
Whatever else it means - and I think for the Left 'Zionism' denotes a range of different things, ranging from merely the Israeli government to the existence of Israel - Zionism is understood to be something particularly, and purely 'bad' (racist, pro-imperialist, a movement that collaborated with Nazis, indeed shared intellectual premises with Nazis, etc etc etc). The historical context in which Jews became Zionists on a mass scale is conceptually obliterated. Or it is thrown into the argument in a bizarre way: 'it took the Holocaust', the SWP like to say, to make most Jews Zionists. On the face of it this is simply banal ('it took sexism to make women feminists' etc...?) In fact, the underlying thought is that the Zionists benefited from the Holocaust...
This is not therefore merely an attitude to a people, the Israeli Jews, whose rights are denied because they are assumed to be irreparably contaminated by pro-imperialism (though that's certainly part of it, and in many ways the sharp end). It is an attitude to the historical experience of the Jewish people as a whole. For this, too, there is no analogue with the Protestants or the Maronites (and indeed, the rights of the Protestants notwithstanding, Loyalism/Orangeism is not the same as Zionism). I think to conflate these much wider problems in the Left's view of Zionism and Israel with third worldism or 'moralism' is to miss much of the point.
Similarly, the Left's attitude to Israel is out of all proportion to its real role in the world. Israel is repressive, reactionary, the US' chief ally with Saudi Arabia. But it is striking how much less bothered the left is by the surrounding Arab dictatorships. And nobody seems to think anti-Ba'thism, anti-Wahhabism, or whatever is so vital and essential.
One can impute different motives to these attitudes, but my concern is their practical effect, rather than the motives - the effect being a hysterical attitude to 'Zionists' which is, in practice such an attitude - a hostility - to the majority of Jews.
This hostility isn't racist? I think some of it probably is racist in the milder sense of the word (we all use 'racist' to refer to the implications of attitudes; not all things we call racist are out-and-out unambiguous racism). But sure, nobody is accusing anyone of 'outright' anti-semitism (as Ian called it in WW). Ian insists anti-semitism is either a form of racism or it is non-existent. There are, though, forms of prejudice, or reactionary attitudes, not based on race. Or it depends what you mean by racism.
It seems to me the Left does have attitudes to Jews unparalleled towards other people. An aspect of these attitudes applies also to Irish Protestants. But only an aspect.
I think in a way the Maronites prove the point. I suspect most people on the Left wouldn't know what a Maronite is, never mind have an attitude comparable to their attitudes about Israel, Israelis, or Jewish people generally. (Or if they do, often see the Maronites as bad because they allied with Israel.)
There are many reasons for being forceful on this question. Anti-semitism may still be only in undercurrent in the 'mainstream' far right across Europe, but it can rise. The left has educated itself to think anti-semitism is not really an issue any more; more, it routinely trots out the line that 'anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism' as if oblivious to the fact that sometimes it most certainly and overtly is. This is an unhealthy ideological environment. We have a responsibility to cleanse it.
Re: Left anti-semitism
Clive writes:
But there are differences, too, between Zionism and Loyalism, and the Left attitudes towards them. One way to understand what we are talking about here, I think, is this: Opposition to ‘Zionism’ is expressed by a wide range of political forces, including – the Saudi ruling class; other Arab ruling classes; the Iranian ruling class; other ruling classes in the region; the Stalinist bureaucracy; and fascists. The gist for all these forces is that they mean ‘the Jews’. The word ‘Zionism’ is used as code by a very wide range of reactionary social forces, on a world scale, to mean the Jews. There is, I think, no analogue for the Irish Protestants.
Ian replies:
There are a number of very good reasons why anti-Protestant/loyalist sentiment is not widespread outside the island of Ireland and does not generally have a wider currency in the European region. (1) Ireland is a smallish nation, and not part of some arguably wider common national group that shares a linguistic and religious identity with it, and thereby regards the oppression of Irish Catholics as an attack on itself. The countries immediately continuous to Ireland are the main metropolitan imperialist powers - the Irish question has been really the *only* colonial question in Europe - whereas Israel undisputedly is the product of a form of colonialism - and exists right in the middle of a whole bunch of nations who not only identify with each other - common linguistic and/or religious identity - but also have extensive experience of being colonised by imperialism itself. And (2) Israel is an aggressive state that has been known to take armed actions as far away as Tripoli and even Entebbe - and so excited hostility from a much wider area in turn. This hostility inevitably, given the history of the jews, will at least some of the time express itself in the form of anti-semitism - just as some of the hostility to Ulster loyalism among Irish catholics will take the form of religious bigotry - but the question is one of causality.
I doubt if in either case, if it were not for the gross, murderous chauvinism that infects the mainstream both in Israel and among Ulster loyalists, these kinds of symetrically chauvinist sentiments among the oppressed would be other than a minuscule lunatic fringe. Even as it is, they are the preserve of the right, not of the left, even of the moralistic New Left types.
Clive:
I am not suggesting that socialists who call themselves anti-Zionists automatically mean ‘the Jews’ in the same way or for the same reasons. But the coded use of the term should make us, at the very least, cautious. The anti-Zionist Left is not cautious; on the contrary, it takes as good coin the coded use of Zionism, imagining for instance that Islamists demonstrating for the Palestinians mean the same thing by ‘Zionism’ and ‘Zionists’ as they do.
Whatever else it means – and I think for the Left ‘Zionism’ denotes a range of different things, ranging from merely the Israeli government to the existence of Israel – Zionism is understood to be something particularly, and purely ‘bad’ (racist, pro-imperialist, a movement that collaborated with Nazis, indeed shared intellectual premises with Nazis, etc etc etc). The historical context in which Jews became Zionists on a mass scale is conceptually obliterated. Or it is thrown into the argument in a bizarre way: ‘it took the Holocaust’, the SWP like to say, to make most Jews Zionists. On the face of it this is simply banal (‘it took sexism to make women feminists’ etc...?) In fact, the underlying thought is that the Zionists benefited from the Holocaust...
Ian:
What is wrong with saying that Zionism, as a reactionary ideology, benefitted from the persecution of the jews, and indeed benefitted politically from the Holocaust? There is nothing 'racist' about saying that - and your insistence that it is, quite frankly, is a guilt reaction. Actually, the Black Muslims in America, (and now over here as well) for instance, likewise 'benefit' from racism, and from the legacy of slavery, and have been guilty of making deals with the Ku Klux Klan. Presumably, by the same logic, to point out these facts is enough to make one a racist. I reject this - in both cases.
Clive:
This is not therefore merely an attitude to a people, the Israeli Jews, whose rights are denied because they are assumed to be irreparably contaminated by pro-imperialism (though that’s certainly part of it, and in many ways the sharp end). It is an attitude to the historical experience of the Jewish people as a whole. For this, too, there is no analogue with the Protestants or the Maronites (and indeed, the rights of the Protestants notwithstanding, Loyalism/Orangeism is not the same as Zionism). I think to conflate these much wider problems in the Left’s view of Zionism and Israel with third worldism or ‘moralism’ is to miss much of the point.
Ian:
There is, however, indeed an analogy with the historic sufferings of black people. This suffering does not mean that the left should soft-peddle criticisms of black separatists who, seeing the programmatic overlap between their own views and those of white racists, collaborate with them.
The reactionary 'Christian Zionist' movement in America is another case in point. These rabid supporters of Israel today are the same kind of fundamentalists who in earlier decades would have been the core base of the Ku Klux Klan, including of course its traditional anti-semitism, pogroms, the lynching of Leo Frank and all. They now support Israel because they see its aggression as being an manifestation of predictions in the book of Revelation, presaging Armagheddon and the second coming of Christ. I think this movement is, in fact, as potentially dangerous in the US context as was the KKK after its 'rebirth'in the 1920s. Here you have a *contemporary* manifestation of the connection of Zionism with extreme reaction in the main imperialist country in the world.
Clive:
Similarly, the Left’s attitude to Israel is out of all proportion to its real role in the world. Israel is repressive, reactionary, the US’ chief ally with Saudi Arabia. But it is striking how much less bothered the left is by the surrounding Arab dictatorships. And nobody seems to think anti-Ba’thism, anti-Wahhabism, or whatever is so vital and essential.
One can impute different motives to these attitudes, but my concern is their practical effect, rather than the motives – the effect being a hysterical attitude to ‘Zionists’ which is, in practice such an attitude – a hostility – to the majority of Jews.
Ian:
This is logic chopping. If Zionism is the ideology of the majority of Jews, then by definition anyone who is hostile to Zionism is hostile to the bulk of jews - in other words an anti-semite. But of course, this is a political hostility to an ideology and political practice - not a hostility to a racial or ethnic group. I am hostile to American nationalism and militarism - and at the moment I guess these political trends are pretty hegemonic among Americans. Does this therefore mean I am hostile to all Americans? No, quite obviously not.
And of course, Israel does play a major role in the whole Middle East region - militarily it has proved it is capable of defeating all the dictatorial Arab regimes that surround it several times over in battle, in three major wars. Israel is a regional superpower.
Clive:
This hostility isn’t racist? I think some of it probably is racist in the milder sense of the word (we all use ‘racist’ to refer to the implications of attitudes; not all things we call racist are out-and-out unambiguous racism). But sure, nobody is accusing anyone of ‘outright’ anti-semitism (as Ian called it in WW). Ian insists anti-semitism is either a form of racism or it is non-existent. There are, though, forms of prejudice, or reactionary attitudes, not based on race. Or it depends what you mean by racism.
Ian:
This, again, is contradictory nonsense. Either you are hostile to a given group of people on grounds of 'race', or you are not. If you are not, then you are not a racist. In the case of jews, you are not an anti-semite. It is thoroughly unscrupulous, and crazy, to mix up the two. It destroys all possiblity of reasoned political discussion about the politics of these matters.
Clive:
It seems to me the Left does have attitudes to Jews unparalleled towards other people. An aspect of these attitudes applies also to Irish Protestants. But only an aspect.
I think in a way the Maronites prove the point. I suspect most people on the Left wouldn’t know what a Maronite is, never mind have an attitude comparable to their attitudes about Israel, Israelis, or Jewish people generally. (Or if they do, often see the Maronites as bad because they allied with Israel.)
Ian:
The reason leftists today wouldnt necessarily know much about Lebanon is because the Lebanese civil war as been over for rather a long time. If it were to break out again, they would soon know all about it. Actually, another example of left moralism was the left's attitude to the Bosnian Serbs in the conflict there in the past decade. They were regarded as an oppressor people - to the point that much of the left (including yourselves) turned a blind eye to Tudjman's 'operation Storm' that drove out a quarter of a million of the Krajina Serbs who had populated the former Austro-Hungarian military frontier region (now within Croatia) for centuries. Their militias of course engaged in ethnic cleaning of Croats and Muslims - but that did not mean their community itself deserved to be driven out in a similar way. Those who defended the Bosnian government's 'right' to rule over the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina (despite its evident lack of majority support), or turned a blind eye to actions such as those of that regime's sometime Croat nationalist allies in Krajina were in fact engaging in a similar moralism on the national question as do the SWP et al over Israel.
But I wouldnt dream of accusing you of being anti-Serb racists for your position on this. You were engaging in 'left' moralism.
It all depends on *which* people particular groups of inconsistent democrats on the left regard as irremediably imbued with chauvinism and therefore bereft of all rights. Of course, as consistent democrats, this understanding that Serbs outside Serbia also had national/ communal rights did not stop the CPGB from siding unconditionally with the ethnic Albanians of Kosova when a very clear situation existed in which the Serbian nationalists were behaving purely as oppressors (even though we also of course opposed the retaliation by Albanian nationalists against the Serbian national minority in Kosova after the war).
Clive:
There are many reasons for being forceful on this question. Anti-semitism may still be only in undercurrent in the ‘mainstream’ far right across Europe, but it can rise. The left has educated itself to think anti-semitism is not really an issue any more; more, it routinely trots out the line that ‘anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism’ as if oblivious to the fact that sometimes it most certainly and overtly is. This is an unhealthy ideological environment. We have a responsibility to cleanse it.
Ian:
You are not 'cleansing' anything by falsely accusing people who are obviously not racists of being anti-semites, i.e. racists, in the definition of anyone not blinded by the internal dynamics and oddities of the AWL. You are merely by means of hysterical, false and thereby unprovable allegations, undermining the necessary debate with the left moralists, which needs to proceed not on the basis of false allegations of racism, but rather on the basis of a political struggle for consistent democracy.
Re: Left anti-semitism
No time for a long reply, so I just want to ask Ian one question. He may have answered it in the past, but I really don't think so. What do you think of slogans, banners etc on demonstrations which equate Sharon to Hitler, the star of David to the swastika, show Stars of David dumped in bins with the slogan 'Keep Palestine Tidy' (or whatever it was exactly) or say that what's happening to the Palestinians is the 'real Holocaust'? This isn't a trick question or something, I really want to know.
Re: Left anti-semitism
I think slogans that equate Sharon to Hitler are similar to slogans that equate Suharto to Hitler (over East Timor), or Saddam to Hitler (over the Kurds etc), or whatever. Understandable expressions of outrage against racism, by an oppressed people, even if not precise. Hitlerism is after all seen universally as the ultimate example of racism elevated to a state system. Ditto for the flag - equating the Israeli flag with the swastika is no worse than equating the Stars and Stripes with the Swastika.
'Keep Palestine tidy' - I would oppose that anti-democratic slogan, and polemicise against it on the basis that Israel as a nation has the right to exist. Our position on this is well-known, in case you havent noticed.
However, it is also a paraphrase of a well-known Anti Fascist Action poster that involved a Swastika being chucked in the bin. It is the same as the Star of David = Swastika equation. I dont see that equation as necessarily anti-semitic.
As for the posters about the 'real holocaust', they are offensive, and at best show a narrow nationalism unconcerned with the suffering of any people other than one's own, and at worst illustrate the fact that the actions of the Israeli state give an opportunity for anti-semites and Nazis to inject elements of their warped worldview into the consciousness of the victims of Israeli brutality.
That you should ask such a question shows something about your own self-righteous belief that only the AWL are 'really' opposed to anti-semitism. Not so. But there is opposition to anti-semitism, and there is branding very different and varied phenomena as all equivalent to anti-semitism. The latter is stupid.
Re: Left anti-semitism
Ian writes:
"I think slogans that equate Sharon to Hitler are similar to slogans that equate Suharto to Hitler (over East Timor), or Saddam to Hitler (over the Kurds etc), or whatever. Understandable expressions of outrage against racism, by an oppressed people, even if not precise. ... Ditto for the flag - equating the Israeli flag with the swastika is no worse than equating the Stars and Stripes with the Swastika."
But Ian, Hitler didn't massacre the Americans or the Indonesians in death camps.
"'Keep Palestine tidy' - I would oppose that anti-democratic slogan, and polemicise against it on the basis that Israel as a nation has the right to exist. Our position on this is well-known, in case you havent noticed."
But apparently half-baked.
"As for the posters about the 'real holocaust', they are offensive, and at best show a narrow nationalism unconcerned with the suffering of any people other than one's own, and at worst illustrate the fact that the actions of the Israeli state give an opportunity for anti-semites and Nazis to inject elements of their warped worldview into the consciousness of the victims of Israeli brutality."
You really think that's all - "narrow nationalism"...?
"That you should ask such a question shows something about your own self-righteous belief that only the AWL are 'really' opposed to anti-semitism."
Well I'm sorry you think I'm self-righteous. Though what you say here is breath-taking. Really, I'm shocked. I'd rather be self-righteous, on balance, than utterly insensitive. You referred in your previous posting to 'the internal dynamics and oddities of the AWL' to explain our position on this. I'm not sure what you mean; presumably that we're dealing with stuff not relevant to anyone else, some sectarian or cultish thing. In fact, outside the circles of the 'anti-Zionist' left, the notion that there are problems - let's put it no more 'hysterically' than that - with much that passes as 'anti-Zionism' is completely commonplace. I don't mean just among apologists for Israel. You will find many - probably mainly Jewish, though by no means exclusively so - opponents of Israeli policy, and even many who are opposed to Zionism, who recognise the problem we are identifying. We claim no originality for doing so. (One recent example which comes to mind was a piece by Naomi Klein in the Guardian earlier this year).
Presumably you think all Jewish people who do indeed see what we're talking about, even those who are involved in protests against Israel's actions, are just contaminated by reactionary ideology.
Re: Left anti-semitism
Clive:
But Ian, Hitler didn’t massacre the Americans or the Indonesians in death camps.
Ian:
To an oppressed people who themselves are under the gun of a superpower that is quite prepared to massacre them, and has done so, I guess the persecution and massacre of a previous generation of their percieved oppressors is not foremost in their minds. Maybe it should be, but life is not like that. Lecturing Arabs in this manner as if they were guilty-liberal middle class German students, will not exactly help to promote such understanding. Here you are just moralising - the difference between you and the SWP is what you are moralising about.
Clive (quoting Ian)
“'Keep Palestine tidy' - I would oppose that anti-democratic slogan, and polemicise against it on the basis that Israel as a nation has the right to exist. Our position on this is well-known, in case you havent noticed.”
But apparently half-baked.
Ian:
Fine, believe what you like. I was defending the right of the Hebrew-speaking people of Israel to self-determination when your leaders were still advocating the same position on this as the SWP. The difference is, that I am not a vicarious nationalist - you are, but you have just switched from Arab nationalism to left Zionism.
As a left zionist, you will of course regard those who regard the rights of Israelis and Arabs as *equally* important as being 'half-baked'. Because you regard Israeli rights as primary, and Arab rights as secondary.
Clive:
“As for the posters about the 'real holocaust', they are offensive, and at best show a narrow nationalism unconcerned with the suffering of any people other than one's own, and at worst illustrate the fact that the actions of the Israeli state give an opportunity for anti-semites and Nazis to inject elements of their warped worldview into the consciousness of the victims of Israeli brutality.”
You really think that’s all – “narrow nationalism”...?
Ian:
Read what I wrote. Presumably, you think all Arabs who think like that are Nazis. Sorry to disabuse you, but life is much more complicated than that.
Clive:
Well I’m sorry you think I’m self-righteous. Though what you say here is breath-taking. Really, I’m shocked. I’d rather be self-righteous, on balance, than utterly insensitive. You referred in your previous posting to ‘the internal dynamics and oddities of the AWL’ to explain our position on this. I’m not sure what you mean; presumably that we’re dealing with stuff not relevant to anyone else, some sectarian or cultish thing.
Ian:
Indeed, I do think that. Your idiosyncratic position on this is more important to you than the 'two states' position itself. You are extremely 'sensitive' to the fears of jews - not so sensitive to the experience of Arabs.
Clive:
In fact, outside the circles of the ‘anti-Zionist’ left, the notion that there are problems – let’s put it no more ‘hysterically’ than that – with much that passes as ‘anti-Zionism’ is completely commonplace. I don’t mean just among apologists for Israel. You will find many – probably mainly Jewish, though by no means exclusively so – opponents of Israeli policy, and even many who are opposed to Zionism, who recognise the problem we are identifying. We claim no originality for doing so. (One recent example which comes to mind was a piece by Naomi Klein in the Guardian earlier this year).
Ian:
Of course there are problems with some forms of anti-Zionism. They are anti-democratic, and have ambiguities that can be exploited by anti-semites, and at times have been. But that is not the same thing as saying that the SWP et al are anti-semitic. It is simply not true, and in fact Slanderous.
There is a whole complex of psychological reasons why there is unease about this among many liberal supporters and semi-supporters of Israel, some of whom are of jewish origin, some not. Not least is the fact that the conduct of the Zionist state itself incites anti-semitism, and many of those who identify with it, even extremely critically, are uneasily aware of that fact, and therefore fearful of just how widespread that response is or will be. And of course, the historical experiences of oppression of both jews and Palestinians does not exactly make for an easy discourse on these matters - paranoia due to both past and current experiences pervades both sides.
Clive:
Presumably you think all Jewish people who do indeed see what we’re talking about, even those who are involved in protests against Israel’s actions, are just contaminated by reactionary ideology.
Ian:
Well, in my experience, even many of the most advanced Israeli jewish dissidents are not so obsessed by this as the AWL. I recall the fringe meeting on this question at Marxism 2002, where the AWL argued hard against the right to return of Palestinian refugees on the grounds that this allegedly contradicts Israel's right to exist. The left zionist (left of the AWL, that is!) Just Peace speaker argued hard that Israel *should* concede the right to return, as a recognition that a historic wrong was done when the Palestinians were driven out in the first place.
Re: Left anti-semitism
"Presumably, you think all Arabs who think like that are Nazis. Sorry to disabuse you, but life is much more complicated than that."
No, of course they are not Nazis. Do you think we think all anti-semitism is Nazi? But it isn't just justified resistance to oppression, either. You can make this claim with some degree of validity for Palestinians. But plainly what's under discussion is not just Palestinian attitudes, nor even only Arab ones. (Though in what sense an Egyptian is oppressed by Israel, God only knows... or an Iraqi... or a Saudi... Except through the distorting prism of Arab nationalism).
"As a left zionist, you will of course regard those who regard the rights of Israelis and Arabs as *equally* important as being 'half-baked'. Because you regard Israeli rights as primary, and Arab rights as secondary."
I am not a left Zionist, and the suggestion that I or the AWL think Arab rights secondary is either straight libel or an indication of how superficially Ian is able to grasp both our position and the Middle East conflict.
"Your idiosyncratic position on this is more important to you than the 'two states' position itself. You are extremely 'sensitive' to the fears of jews - not so sensitive to the experience of Arabs."
More libel. Or do you mean that opposition to Arab nationalism is such 'insensitivity' to Arabs?
" I was defending the right of the Hebrew-speaking people of Israel to self-determination when your leaders were still advocating the same position on this as the SWP. "
I have held this postion since, if memory serves, late 1980. Considerably more recently than Sean Matgamna, incidentally.
As long as this debate consists of Ian consistently slandering us, in the name of defending the rest of the left from slander, it is of increasingly doubtful point. In the name of opposing our hysteria, Ian levels utterly hysterical accusations against us - all for 'rational debate' of course.
Re: Left anti-semitism
Clive:
No, of course they are not Nazis. Do you think we think all anti-semitism is Nazi? But it isn't just justified resistance to oppression, either. You can make this claim with some degree of validity for Palestinians. But plainly what's under discussion is not just Palestinian attitudes, nor even only Arab ones. (Though in what sense an Egyptian is oppressed by Israel, God only knows... or an Iraqi... or a Saudi... Except through the distorting prism of Arab nationalism).
(Ian)
But Arab nationalism is precisely what the SWP et al are capitulating to. Arab nationalism is exactly what we are discussing. Arab nationalism is a material factor just as much as jewish identification with Israel is a factor - it has just as much legitimacy, and has to be taken into account in just the same way. In this regard, your arguments that hostility to Zionism equates to hostility to all jews, and is therefore anti-semitic, could effortlessly be turned against you by the SWP. You seem to have the very same attitude to Arab nationalism as you ascribe to the SWP vis-a-viz Zionism.
(Clive quoting Ian and reponding, twice)
"As a left zionist, you will of course regard those who regard the rights of Israelis and Arabs as *equally* important as being 'half-baked'. Because you regard Israeli rights as primary, and Arab rights as secondary."
I am not a left Zionist, and the suggestion that I or the AWL think Arab rights secondary is either straight libel or an indication of how superficially Ian is able to grasp both our position and the Middle East conflict.
"Your idiosyncratic position on this is more important to you than the 'two states' position itself. You are extremely 'sensitive' to the fears of jews - not so sensitive to the experience of Arabs."
More libel. Or do you mean that opposition to Arab nationalism is such 'insensitivity' to Arabs?
(Ian)
No more than opposition to Zionism is 'insensitivity' to Jews. However, if you want evidence that you regard Israeli rights as primary over Arabs, I would point to your positions on the two respective 'rights of return' - the jewish and the Palestinian. You are on record as supporting the Israeli law that allows any jew anywhere in the world to live in Israel and to gain Israeli citizenship. Yet you oppose the 'right to return' of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were driven out of their homeland within living memory. In other words, jews who have never lived in the Middle East should have the right to live there, but Arab victims of ethnic cleansing have no such rights.
There is no 'libel' involved here. If you dont like this interpretation of your publicly stated, on the record, positions, then really instead of getting upset about people stating the obvious about them, you should think again about their real logic. I have no interest in libel or slander against anyone - only in political clarification.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
" I was defending the right of the Hebrew-speaking people of Israel to self-determination when your leaders were still advocating the same position on this as the SWP. "
I have held this postion since, if memory serves, late 1980. Considerably more recently than Sean Matgamna, incidentally.
(Ian). Funny, I dont remember that political line appearing in your press until a few years after that. I distinctly remember arguing against your comrades, as a member of the Spartacist League, who were arguing the opposite line.
(Clive)
As long as this debate consists of Ian consistently slandering us, in the name of defending the rest of the left from slander, it is of increasingly doubtful point. In the name of opposing our hysteria, Ian levels utterly hysterical accusations against us - all for 'rational debate' of course.
(Ian)
I have said nothing that is materially untrue. I note that Clive gets very upset when a relatively mild characterisation is made, of left zionism and double standards regarding jewish and Arab rights, yet has no qualms about throwing around the *really* scurrilous accusation of anti-semitism, against others. I will leave others to judge who is being hysterical.
Re: Right of Return
Ian comments that proof of the AWL's left Zionism is found in the attitude to the two rights of return. This is curious; does Ian demand restrictions on Jewish immigration to Israel, like the British mandate did? (I'm obviously not talking about the occupied territories here). I'm in favour of a Palestinian right of return to their state too - but opposed to "from the river to the sea" because it is OPPOSED to two states.
What does Ian mean by Left Zionist? I don't know of anybody in the AWL who thinks that Jewish workers can only fight for Socialism in a Jewish state. Ian uses the tradition of the Sparts again - here "Zionist" is used as the bogeyword, from which all else follows. The "Z" word here uses all rational meaning.
Richard Bayley
Re: Right of Return
It would probably be more accurate to describe the AWL as vicarious left zionists, just as the SWP could similarly be described as vicarious left Arab nationalists. There is no demonology in either characterisation - except perhaps in the eyes of those who consider the opposite nationalism to the one they cheer for as being akin to satanism, or whatever.
The point about the Jewish 'right of return' is that it is discriminatory, obviously. Just like the right of 'kith and kin' white colonials to 'return' to Britain while non-whites were restricted in the past. As far as I am concerned the 'right to return' of Jews should be extended to all the Palestinian refugees as well, and all other nationalities. Its called abolishing all immigration controls.
This is no more counterposed to 'two states' than open borders anywhere is counterposed to national self-determination anywhere else. Jewish workers should fight for the Palestinian right to return - and Arab workers should fight for the right of self-determination for the Israeli nation.
One way to resolve this would be for a substantial piece of the most fertile, developed territory in Israel, as well as the current occupied territories, to be handed over as reparation to the returning Palestinians. This should involve a retreat by Israeli jewish inhabitants of such territories who are not prepared to be ruled by a Palestinian state - agreed as part of a peace agreement. That would be to strike a material blow against the evident likelihood of a Palestinian state in the current arid territories of West Bank and Gaza simply being a glorified bantustan. Not just any old two states, but two equal states, as far as is practicable.
And of course, there should be full freedom of movement between these two entities -for both peoples, providing force is not involved.
Your position is not democratic at all, let alone an expression of consistent democracy.
Re: Right of Return
If it was the case that all political forces meant by 'right of return' merely the abolition of immigration controls, Ian would be right. But this is a peculiarly left-centric (actually, British left-centric) way of seeing it. In fact, I am coming to think that this utter inability to see things in a framework outside the boxes of left wing public opinion is characteristic of the CPGB and Ian in particular.
We are in favour of the free movement of peoples, in the Middle East as elsewhere.
The 'right of return' might mean that to people on the British Left. What it means in the Middle East is that the Palestinians have the right to pre-1948 Palestine.
Re: Right of Return
(Clive)
If it was the case that all political forces meant by 'right of return' merely the abolition of immigration controls, Ian would be right. But this is a peculiarly left-centric (actually, British left-centric) way of seeing it. In fact, I am coming to think that this utter inability to see things in a framework outside the boxes of left wing public opinion is characteristic of the CPGB and Ian in particular. We are in favour of the free movement of peoples, in the Middle East as elsewhere. The 'right of return' might mean that to people on the British Left. What it means in the Middle East is that the Palestinians have the right to pre-1948 Palestine.
(Ian)
So Clive is for the free movement of peoples. Good. But not all peoples equally, it seems. Some peoples are to have more freedom of movement than others. Jews who have never lived in Israel have the right to move there and immediately gain citizenship. Arabs who were born in the same territory are excluded from this freedom.
Actually, the Arabs who were driven from their homes *do* have a strong claim to Palestine. The problem is that so now, do the Israeli jewish population, who have consolidated a nation and who would otherwise be stateless, two generations, maybe three, of whom were born there. What we have here is the conflict of right and right. Therefore there has to be compromise between these two 'rights' - the creation of two states, as equal as possible. But the starting point of such a solution to the national question has to be that the two claims are equal.
The AWL do not agree. For them it is not about right against right, but right against wrong. For them, the Israelis are basically right, but perhaps a bit too greedy and brutal, but the Palestinians are flatly wrong on the question of what is now Israel proper. Israeli ethnic cleansing (and Israel was a creation of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, make no mistake about it) is for them historically not an injustice, it is excused by the Holocaust in Europe. Whereas Palestinian desires to regain the same territory by similar means that the Israelis used to gain it in the first place, are excoriated. Israeli chauvinism is excused, Arab chauvinism is demonised.
The 'right to return' to Israel of all worldwide Jewry (most of whom have never lived in the Middle East) is in practice a 'right' of the worst Israeli militarists and expanionists to recruit more fanatical settlers to steal more Arab land in the Occupied Territories. It is actually scandalous that any socialist can support such an overtly discriminatory, racist law. How can you claim to oppose jewish settlements in the Territories while supporting the very discriminatory law that makes such a policy practical in the first place?
One thing is clear - on this question, the AWL are not consistent democrats and tribunes of the rights of all peoples without favour, but have a consistent bias in favour of Israeli nationalism, albiet of a 'left' flavour. A spoonful of honey can spoil a barrelful of tar.
As for Clive's jibes about 'left public opinion', I have heard this kind of nonsense before, in another organisation which mixed rational, in its time sometimes uniquely rational in fact, insights into complex national questions like these with bizarre deviations and hysterical excesses that completely undermined the impact of those aspects of its politics that were (and are) rational. There is nothing to be proud of in undermining the impact of the correct components of one's politics with ludicrous posturing and hysterical abuse of the wider left. No thanks, having seen the Sparts do this kind of thing to themselves, I'm not interested in following you down the same road to ridicule and ruin.
Re: Right of Return
All I will say for now is that Ian's account of our position is weird, and not something I recognise at all. He seems to be extrapolating from - I don't know what: perhaps bad phrasing, arguments where full contexts aren't drawn out, or whatever. Or projecting, maybe. There are some political issues - whether it is right to use the slogan 'right of return' for the Palestinians being the main one. But Ian has wrapped so much strangeness around the content of this debate (plainly he's having nightmares about his past, too), that I have no time to distentangle it all right now.
Re: Right of Return
It's a shame that Ian chose not to define "Left Zionism", besides adding the word "vicarious". I unfortunately don't recognise any of the attitudes Ian attributes to AWL supporters, so I look (in vain) for further clarification of what Ian understands by his use of "buzz" words.
On the "RoR", Ian thinks that the Palestinian return is a subsection of the Marxist proramme of the abolition of all immigration controls. I have never been in a Palestinian solidarity meeting where it has not been put forward as a solution to the National Question - ie undoing the Jewish conquest. Ian's solution for territorial reparations is not an answer to the little old lady in Jordan with her keys to the old family home in Haifa, nor is it more "consistently democratic" than the AWL (whose policy supports reparations, monetary and territorial).
As for Israel being created by "ethnic cleansing", then it's more "no" than "yes". Unless you just discuss the War of Independence (in which case Ian would probably agree with me that the Arab Legion would have proved no less brutal than the Jewish forces), then you would have to say that a distinct Palestinian natinal identity was CREATED by Jewish immigration into Palestine; not just post-1948 common identity though dispossession, but the fact that Jewish settlement attracted an INFLUX of Arabs into the area. So "built by ethnic cleansing?" - actually, its historically misleading.
Richard Bayley
Re: Right of Return
I think unfortunately many others on the left will recognise only too well my view of the AWL, whatever the merits of some aspects of its politics and formally better attitude to disagreements, nevertheless behaving at times like the most absurd Trotskyist sects.
'Left zionist' is a 'buzzword'? I defined exactly what I meant by that political characterisation. I note that no-one has concretely denied that my rendition of your position on the Jewish 'right of return' versus the Palestinian one is accurate. This position alone defines the AWL as left-zionist. And presumably, 'left anti-semite' is not a 'buzzword' for you. Please define the term 'buzzword'.
Your definition of 'left anti-semite' appears to be not someone who hates jews as a racial or ethnic group, but someone who disagrees with the current opinions of 'most' jews about the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Political hostility
over the dominant views allegedly held by an most members of an ethnic group is equated with bigoted hostility to that ethnic group itself.
'The little old lady in Jordan with her keys to the old family home in Haifa' deserves either her old home back or a replacement as close to the place she originally lived as is compatible with a equitable compromise between the two peoples who dispute the territory of what is now Israel. There obviously is a difference between state aided resettlement and freedom of movement. The former is a special measure to ensure justice in an agreed form between the two peoples. The latter is a general democratic right that applies to all peoples. In my view, state-aided resettlement should be the means used to re-settle those elements of the Palestinian diaspora that wish to return to the territory of what is now Israel, i.e. to agreed parts of it as part of a peace settlement and equitable redivision. That freedom of movement should also exist between the two parts, albiet without state aid, is also something socialists should demand as a principle. These in my view consistute the way in which those elements of the Palestinian diaspora who want to 'return' can do so, and a democratic solution can be reached.
Of course, there is some danger that irredentist, ultra-rejectionist Palestinian fanatics would use such freedom of movement to attempt to mobilise large numbers of people to use this freedom to ethnically cleanse jews from the jewish areas. On the other hand, there is also an equal danger that ultra-rejectionist jews would do the same the other way. I reckon these two dangers, and the possibility that one could provoke the other either way, would act as an incentive for the bulk of those who did support such a genuine settlement to restrain and if necessary crush such elements on either side.
But your rejection of the Palestinian right to return as in principle counterposed to the right of Israel to exist is nonsense. Even Gush Shalom/Just Peace are able to recognise that the two are compatible. Likewise the PLO itself.
Of course the Palestinian 'right to return' is part of a solution to the national question! Without this issue being solved there will be no solution to the national question. No justice, no peace!
As a state, Israel was built by ethnic cleansing. You cannot dispute this by referring to economic developments prior to the formation of that state. It is crystal clear that there was enough of a Palestinian national consciousness to engage in a whole series of national revolts against British colonial rule and Zionist colonisation of Palestine prior to WWII. Such revolts sometimes took on an ugly form, but you cannot deny that they were national revolts. The truth is that that Palestinian national identity was so crushed by the ethnic cleansing of 1948 that it did not really reemerge until the 1960s.
Re: Right of Return
I intend to retire after this contribution, or I will end up so far behind with my work I will be evicted before Christmas. But a few points I wish I could resist making:
Ian:
"Your definition of 'left anti-semite' appears to be not someone who hates jews as a racial or ethnic group, but someone who disagrees with the current opinions of 'most' jews about the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Political hostility
over the dominant views allegedly held by an most members of an ethnic group is equated with bigoted hostility to that ethnic group itself."
Our point is that it is not simply calm, rational 'political hostility'. Of course if that's all we're talking about, we too are 'hostile' to the 'dominant views' among Jews.
But we think that for the dominant variant of 'anti-Zionism' at least in Britain, the hostility goes beyond just a political disagreement, and is a hysterical demonisation of the movement responsible for those views, the state it created, and the historical context in which its creation happened - an appallingly one-sided account of the history, at best, and an attitude to 'Zionism' as some sort of many-headed monster on a par with 'imperialism', 'racism', and many other terrible things, and worse than, say, Ba'thism (for instance the SWP pretty much supported Saddam's missile attacks on Israel in 1991 on the grounds of fighting 'Zionism'.)
On a certain level of abstraction, I accept that anti-semitism might not be the best term for this. I wish I could think of a better one. I'd ask Ian to help; only he seems to deny that this phenomenon - hysterical demonisation, etc - exists, whatever you call it.
This attitude to 'Zionism' does indeed translate into an attitude to Jews. Are most people who call themselves anti-Zionists sympathetic to Jewish people - Zionist or not - who feel alienated by the way the Middle East is discussed, by for instance the fact that the Islamist slogans on the demos this year seemed hardly to cause the faintest flutter of an eyelid? Something is going on here; all right - you can argue the toss about what precisely to call it. But it certainly ain't just 'political hostility'.
Ian:
"I think unfortunately many others on the left will recognise only too well my view of the AWL, whatever the merits of some aspects of its politics and formally better attitude to disagreements, nevertheless behaving at times like the most absurd Trotskyist sects."
Clive:
I wish to god we lived in a political environment where everything we say about the rights of the Israeli Jews could be taken for granted and we could get on with building solidarity with the oppressed. I have spent over 20 years arguing about all this (indeed, Ian, we changed position in 1985, I think, but some of us had a two state position before that, and Sean long before), and I do not enjoy it. The fact is, though, that we inhabit a Left which has got worse on the question. After Oslo, those with a one-state position seemed to have dropped it from their political agenda. With the collapse of Oslo, they still kept it in the small print. But gradually, the muck has started rising to the top. It is incredible that the Left marches along with Islamists - who do not want a state which is democratic or secular for either people - and see nothing whatever pernicious in their chauvinistic slogans. It is incredible that the Left sees nothing questionable about chanting 'no compromise with Zionism' or 'two states, no solution' in such an environment. We have done what we can to build solidarity on an adequate political basis both with the Palestinians and Israeli internationalists, some of it in collaboration with the CPGB. But we can't turn a blind eye to this awful political environment. I had thought the CPGB were allies in this task. Now I'm not so sure.
There is, inevitably, the danger that people think we're 'pro-Israeli', or because we're forced to talk about Israeli rights in an environment that denies them, think we believe Israel is more important than the Palestinians. I don't know how to overcome that, except try harder. But while I can understand young comrades not getting what we're bothered about, Ian is another matter. It is hard to avoid the conclusion he is motivated by sheer factional malice.
The 'right of return' did not used to be a slogan on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, etc (although of course it was a slogan in the more general milieu; the idea was there). Recently it has become much more prominent, because it is a coded way of saying 'single state'. Again, an argument about this is the last thing I personally want to have or enjoy having, because there is the danger people think you want the refugees to rot in camps or want to preserve the demographic integrity of Israel, or all sort of obnoxious things which as socialists you do not think. But what it means, on the whole, in the Middle East is that the results of 1948 should be reversed. Recently, on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides various ideas have been floated (for instance by Uri Avnery), for instance that a general right should be recognised (in principle - by Israel), and then a detailed plan for how many refugees to resettle per year, etc; Arafat and Barghouti have both made statements promising they don't want to overrun the Jews. Either way, these concrete proposals are short of full 'return'.
Of course, we would like to see a situation in which Arabs and Jews live side by side, happily and democratically. Such a situation will arise when the national question has been resolved, not as a method of resolving it. In the meantime, we should favour reparations, etc, as well as freedom of movement. The trouble is that there is a fight to be had with those people - vicarious Arab nationalists, etc, and increasingly Islamists - who mean something by 'right of return' which we can not support.
On the 'law of return' (for the Jews). There are lots of obnoxious things about the law itself; but I don't see on what basis we can say that Israel, if it has a right to exist, can't offer citizenship to Jews if it wants. The Israeli RCL, when I asked them, said they do not oppose the Law of Return; they advocate a Palestinian Law of Return, too. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Of course I can see why people make the connection Ian is making between what I've just said about the Law of Return, and the Arabs' right of return. But it is not a reasonable connection, just another example of hysteria.
The real problem here is that 'public opinion' on the Left has been poisonous on this question for a long time. The CPGB could help to fight all this, so that at least in the future there is a healthier environment on such questions. Or they can be part of the problem. Ian and the CPGB are consistent democrats on the national question itself. It seems to me they have yet to wake up to the whole political culture which surrounds this question and fight that too. Ian, in effect, denies that this poisonous culture exists, or thinks it's merely at a piece with what the left thinks about Lebanese Christians. I'm sorry, and I don't want to put it like this, but this is a case of your political position making you stupid. I don't think Ian is stupid (far from it). But whatever you call this poisonous culture, it is far worse than mere 'moralism'.
Re: Right of Return
Clive (on 'political hostility' to Jews):
Our point is that it is not simply calm, rational ‘political hostility’. Of course if that’s all we’re talking about, we too
are ‘hostile’ to the ‘dominant views’ among Jews. But we think that for the dominant variant of ‘anti-Zionism’ at least in
Britain, the hostility goes beyond just a political disagreement, and is a hysterical demonisation of the movement
responsible for those views, the state it created, and the historical context in which its creation happened – an appallingly
one-sided account of the history, at best, and an attitude to ‘Zionism’ as some sort of many-headed monster on a par with
‘imperialism’, ‘racism’, and many other terrible things, and worse than, say, Ba’thism (for instance the SWP pretty much
supported Saddam’s missile attacks on Israel in 1991 on the grounds of fighting ‘Zionism’.)
On a certain level of abstraction, I accept that anti-semitism might not be the best term for this. I wish I could think of
a better one. I’d ask Ian to help; only he seems to deny that this phenomenon – hysterical demonisation, etc – exists,
whatever you call it.
Ian:
I would not deny that there is hysteria and demonisation among the moralists and vicarious Arab nationalists on the left.
Problem is, by defining it as anti-semitism (which it evidently is not), you are not dispelling hysteria, but adding to it.
Just because a phenomenon contains elements of hysteria, does not mean that the hysteria is rooted in racism. To imply that
is it does not remove the clouds of obfuscation, it merely adds to them.
Clive:
This attitude to ‘Zionism’ does indeed translate into an attitude to Jews. Are most people who call themselves anti-Zionists
sympathetic to Jewish people – Zionist or not – who feel alienated by the way the Middle East is discussed, by for instance
the fact that the Islamist slogans on the demos this year seemed hardly to cause the faintest flutter of an eyelid? Something
is going on here; all right – you can argue the toss about what precisely to call it. But it certainly ain’t just ‘political
hostility’.
Ian:
What you are talking about is political hostility based on a virulent, finger-wagging moral disapproval of those who are
seen as in any way soft on Israel as a racist state, which it undoubtedly is of course in many ways. For us, you cant fight
racism with moralism - and you certainly cant fight anti-racist moralism by branding its proponents as racists - if anything
they are coming from the opposite standpoint.
It aint anti-Jewish racism (i.e anti-semitism). To call it that only adds to the climate of hysteria, it does not help at
all to dispel such hysteria. For seekers of rational debate, for Marxists who seek to dispel hysteria, that is a very good
reason for not calling it that.
Clive:
I wish to god we lived in a political environment where everything we say about the rights of the Israeli Jews could be
taken for granted and we could get on with building solidarity with the oppressed. I have spent over 20 years arguing about
all this (indeed, Ian, we changed position in 1985, I think, but some of us had a two state position before that, and Sean
long before), and I do not enjoy it. The fact is, though, that we inhabit a Left which has got worse on the question. After
Oslo, those with a one-state position seemed to have dropped it from their political agenda. With the collapse of Oslo, they
still kept it in the small print. But gradually, the muck has started rising to the top. It is incredible that the Left
marches along with Islamists - who do not want a state which is democratic or secular for either people - and see nothing
whatever pernicious in their chauvinistic slogans. It is incredible that the Left sees nothing questionable about chanting
‘no compromise with Zionism’ or ‘two states, no solution’ in such an environment. We have done what we can to build
solidarity on an adequate political basis both with the Palestinians and Israeli internationalists, some of it in
collaboration with the CPGB. But we can’t turn a blind eye to this awful political environment. I had thought the CPGB were
allies in this task. Now I’m not so sure.
Ian:
Problem is, we can't choose the environment we struggle politically in. There are ways of struggling politically that promote
rational debate, and ways that do the opposite. A number of your characterisations come in the latter category. Obviously
there will be ebbs and flows according to external political events. While there were illusions in Oslo, there was obviously
a less polarised situation. But Oslo was a fake - it didnt stop or even moderate the continued expansion of Jewish
settlements, and the result was the rise of suicide bombings as a despairing response to that, bringing mass support for the
Islamists for the first time, really. We are opposed to the rise of political Islam, but we cannot boycott united action
with Arabs who because of these events are more sympathetic to their views. We are in favour of drawing lines against overtly anti-semitic, provocative and bigoted slogans appearing on demonstrations, but not of using that as an excuse to refuse to use united front tactics towards religious organisations that have broad support among communities of the oppressed - how else are socialists supposed to approach their base with secular, socialist ideas, literature etc?
If, for instance, Bush follows his projected attack on Iraq with a war drive against North Korea, we would like the left to
be able to mobilise at least some of the people mobilised by the MAB to protest against that as well. We think that is
possible - we do not consider them to be a monolithic, reactionary bloc.
Clive:
There is, inevitably, the danger that people think we’re ‘pro-Israeli’, or because we’re forced to talk about Israeli rights
in an environment that denies them, think we believe Israel is more important than the Palestinians. I don’t know how to
overcome that, except try harder. But while I can understand young comrades not getting what we’re bothered about, Ian is
another matter. It is hard to avoid the conclusion he is motivated by sheer factional malice.
Ian:
Perhaps you would do better if you did stopped bending the stick too far, and thereby adding to the climate of hysteria you
decry, and reconsidered some of your more questionable formulations and polemics. I have no factional malice against the AWL
- I am in fact in favour of unity between the CPGB and the AWL. Unfortunately, many of your comrades' conception of unity
appears to be a sect conception. For instance, I would cite the very revealing remark of comrade Matgamna in his 'Critical
Notes on the CPGB': "A proper discussion with us on the Afghan coup, and Russia's colonial war in Afghanistan, might help
you resolve your contradictions here, and help you ground your subjective revolutionism in consistently Marxist politics."
'Consistently Marxist politics' being of course, the politics of the AWL, its record programme and practice. Sorry, but this
is not how things are going to happen. There are undoubtedly many positive things that the AWL could bring to a merged
organisation, things we could learn from and assimilate, but as for the AWL's overall politics, there is no chance of unity
on the terms of agreement with this. Many of our comrades, including comrades such as myself who have never been in the
official 'Communist' movement and hold no brief for it after the first five years or so of the Comintern, nevertheless feel
that *despite* its origins in the far left wing of official communism, the 'Leninist' grouping had and has a superior
political record to SO/AWL. For us, unity will not be a one-sided unity, but a real synthesis, with the strong sides of both
organisations combining to bring about something higher, not an assimilation of our organisation to the AWL. That will not
happen.
That is not 'factional malice', though I understand it may be difficult for those whose conception of party is essentially
Trotskyist, to get their heads round. Unity does not necessarily imply agreement, and certainly does not mean a moratorium
on hard polemics -- only a committment to strive for an every higher unity though hard, and often public, political
struggle.
Clive:
The ‘right of return’ did not used to be a slogan on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, etc (although of course it was a slogan
in the more general milieu; the idea was there). Recently it has become much more prominent, because it is a coded way of
saying ‘single state’. Again, an argument about this is the last thing I personally want to have or enjoy having, because
there is the danger people think you want the refugees to rot in camps or want to preserve the demographic integrity of
Israel, or all sort of obnoxious things which as socialists you do not think. But what it means, on the whole, in the Middle
East is that the results of 1948 should be reversed. Recently, on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides various ideas have
been floated (for instance by Uri Avnery), for instance that a general right should be recognised (in principle – by Israel),
and then a detailed plan for how many refugees to resettle per year, etc; Arafat and Barghouti have both made statements
promising they don’t want to overrun the Jews. Either way, these concrete proposals are short of full ‘return’.
Ian:
The 'right to return' does not have to mean 'single state'. 'Full return' means the right of *all* the disapora Palestinians
who want to return to be able to live in their land of origin, not as refugees but as citizens with full rights. Since there
is another people living in that land, there will have to be some sort of deal done to allow this to become a realistic
proposition - a division of territory. In polemicising against the right of return per se, you are handing this weapon over
precisely to the people who want to use it in the way you lay out, as a means to simply subjugate or drive out the Israeli
jews. The 'right of return' of stateless refugees is elementary justice, it is our demand, and we should reclaim it from the
left moralists and Islamists.
Clive:
Of course, we would like to see a situation in which Arabs and Jews live side by side, happily and democratically. Such a
situation will arise when the national question has been resolved, not as a method of resolving it. In the meantime, we
should favour reparations, etc, as well as freedom of movement. The trouble is that there is a fight to be had with those
people – vicarious Arab nationalists, etc, and increasingly Islamists – who mean something by ‘right of return’ which we can
not support.
Ian:
There is a fight to be had over the principle of two states. The democratic demand for full restitution to refugees has to
be a means of solving it. We have to incorporate demands for full restitution to refugees, and the restoration of their full
democratic rights, into this struggle. This cannot be left as an afterthought ('trust us, it will all be solved after we get
our way'), it must be a driving force of the struggle. If we do not make it such, others will - for different ends.
Clive:
On the ‘law of return’ (for the Jews). There are lots of obnoxious things about the law itself; but I don’t see on what
basis we can say that Israel, if it has a right to exist, can’t offer citizenship to Jews if it wants. The Israeli RCL,
when I asked them, said they do not oppose the Law of Return; they advocate a Palestinian Law of Return, too. That seems
perfectly reasonable to me.
Ian:
There is no need for a 'law of return' for Palestinians, because Palestinians are a clearly defined group of people already
- mainly Arabic-speaking people who either already live in the territory of historic Palestine, or were driven out by the
Zionists within living memory, and their descendants. All they need is the restitution of their citizenship rights, and
material resitution for their suffering to allow them to begin again, if they want to, their life in that territory, sharing
it with the jewish people of Israel, most likely through an equitable re-division of the land. Beyond that, there is no need
for a special law, other than that allowing general freedom of movement, applying to any other specific group of people.
What is wrong with the Zionist 'law of return' is that it gives preferential treatment to jews who never have had any
material connection with Palestine/Israel, preferential treatment to Arabs who were born there. There should be full freedom
of movement for all - that preferential treatment is discriminatory and wrong. It also implies that all jews world wide are
part of the same nation - a central myth of Zionism. I dont believe that - I believe that Israel is a nation.
Clive:
Of course I can see why people make the connection Ian is making between what I’ve just said about the Law of Return, and
the Arabs’ right of return. But it is not a reasonable connection, just another example of hysteria.
Ian:
If it is so unreasonable, then how come so many people see the connection? How come you can 'see why' the connection is
made? I suggest it is because it is not 'unreasonable' at all, but obvious.
Clive:
The real problem here is that ‘public opinion’ on the Left has been poisonous on this question for a long time. The CPGB
could help to fight all this, so that at least in the future there is a healthier environment on such questions. Or they can
be part of the problem. Ian and the CPGB are consistent democrats on the national question itself. It seems to me they have
yet to wake up to the whole political culture which surrounds this question and fight that too. Ian, in effect, denies that
this poisonous culture exists, or thinks it’s merely at a piece with what the left thinks about Lebanese Christians. I’m
sorry, and I don’t want to put it like this, but this is a case of your political position making you stupid. I don’t think
Ian is stupid (far from it). But whatever you call this poisonous culture, it is far worse than mere ‘moralism’.
Ian:
Problem is, that some of your methods of 'fighting' the bad results of the left-moralists' and vicarious Arab nationalists'
politics do not in fact act to make debates more rational, but less so, more hysterical. Moralism, by the way, is not a
benign thing at all, but indeed can and does bring witchhunts, hysteria, and all kinds of nonsense in its train. But you do
not undermine it by attacking it as racist in motivation, or by simply putting a minus where your opponents put a plus, or
by refusing to take those elements of the matters they are moralising about that have a real democratic edge about them and
giving them a consistently democratic, as opposed to a left-moralistic and non-democratic, content. If you do that, you are
only contributing to the log-jam of left politics today, not acting to clear it.
I suppose this debate can run and run, and indeed has done. Like Clive, I certainly would like to conclude it for now, since it is quite time-consuming. Im sure the debate will continue at other times and on other media, though I think we have fleshed out a lot of stuff on this topic.
Re: Never Stalinist?
Really only time to respond extremely briefly to a couple of things.
Ian gets hot under the collar: "That just about sums up your first campism. US involvement? So what! Soviet involvement - scream bloody murder. The US involvement with these lowlife killers should by rights lead to leading elements of the US ruling class being indicted for support of 'international terrorism', in their own terms... But the AWL says 'so what'?"
It was not 'Soviet' 'involvement', as if they sent a few advisers and loaned a couple of tanks. Perhaps one and a half million people died during the Russian occupation; millions were uprooted. It was a war, fundamentally, of one of the world's military superpowers against a backward people. My 'so what' referred to whether it made any fundamental difference if the backing from the US started before the Russian invasion, not to whether I care there was such backing, though I should have known the phrase would send Ian into apoplexy.
"[Before the invasion] there was no Russian intervention to 'provoke' the population, was there?" Ian asks rhetorically. He goes on: "No, not every military conflict that involves brute force is a 'colonial' war."
By definition military conflict involves brute force! The issue is whether it is an attempt to maintain a client state, and in effect its own direct political control. This is what the USSR was doing. I would call that 'colonial'. It attempted to do it for nine years, but failed. It certainly wasn't there to uphold the progressive wonders of the PDPA's programme, now, was it?
"The United States is not going to be intervening in Iraq to defend a left-nationalist regime against an insurgency by 'radical' Islamists, the very idea comes from somewhere in a parallel universe, and as a comparison, this is a non-starter."
Duh. Suppose, then, the recent US/British war had resulted in a more colonial policy - massive military occupation of Afghanistan, facing massive opposition, likely to go on for years, etc etc. We would have (and said so) supported the resistance of the Afghan people, under these 'colonial' circumstances, even led by the Taliban. In another posting, Ian has accepted this in principle, for Chechnya. The argument, on the face of it, comes down, then, to whether you think Russia's occupation was 'colonial'. But you see it's not us 'screaming bloody murder' about the Russian Stalinists, it's Ian constantly reducing their murderous invasion to mere 'intervention', merely supporting a progressive 'left-nationalist government'. He says he didn't support the Russian 'intervention'; but so far he hasn't given me a single reason to see why not.
"... just because a regime uses ill-advised methods to carry out such a [progressive] programme does not mean that socialists should support the ultra-reactionary forces that seek to overthrow it."
'Just because...' 'ill-advised'? A political formation which thinks it can decree, and then enforce, its programme through the possession of state power and capacity for violence is more than 'ill-advised' - though, what, does Ian think he could have offered them better advice? This is what's all in a fantasy universe.
Referring to our disagreement on the MAB:
"But you would be fine about marching with Likud in defence of Jewish rights. Says a lot about your double standards, doesnt it? Why would 'secular leftists' pass up the opportunity to mass distribute their propaganda to the large number of supporters of the MAB?"
What on earth has that got to do with jointly organising a demonstration with them?
"The MAB, as its website makes clear, regards Sept 11 as an atrocity"
- so it's all right to organise demonstrations with them! If the Muslim Brotherhood are increasing their influence among British Muslims, as seems likely, this is not a good thing, Ian. It is beyond belief that the Left should (naively, since nobody seemed to ask difficult questions about the MAB till we did a bit of research) give them a leg up.
Re: Never Stalinist?
Couple of miscellaneous other points:
Clive (Quoting Ian)
“[Before the invasion] there was no Russian intervention to 'provoke' the population, was there?” Ian asks rhetorically. He goes on: “No, not every military conflict that involves brute force is a 'colonial' war.”
By definition military conflict involves brute force! The issue is whether it is an attempt to maintain a client state, and in effect its own direct political control. This is what the USSR was doing. I would call that ‘colonial’. It attempted to do it for nine years, but failed. It certainly wasn’t there to uphold the progressive wonders of the PDPA’s programme, now, was it?
(Ian)
Maintain a client state, says Clive. Well, this is one client state I was all in favour of 'maintaining', since it also embodied the achievments of the most progressive social stratum in Afghan society at that time. My quarrel with the Stalinists is that their intervention inevitably acts against any progressive thrust from that stratum, i.e. that they inevitably will play a conservative role, tame and repress the progressive forces in that country. But as for 'maintaining' the PDPA regime, there is nothing wrong with that. I am for maintaining such regimes against a Vendee.
(Clive)
"... Suppose, then, the recent US/British war had resulted in a more colonial policy – massive military occupation of Afghanistan, facing massive opposition, likely to go on for years, etc etc. We would have (and said so) supported the resistance of the Afghan people, under these ‘colonial’ circumstances, even led by the Taliban."
(Ian)
Interesting argument. Yet elsewhere, you say you never supported the Mujahedin. This reasoning says that if hypothetically you didnt, you should have. But of course, in reality you did just that.
(Clive)
In another posting, Ian has accepted this in principle, for Chechnya. The argument, on the face of it, comes down, then, to whether you think Russia’s occupation was ‘colonial’. But you see it’s not us ‘screaming bloody murder’ about the Russian Stalinists, it’s Ian constantly reducing their murderous invasion to mere ‘intervention’, merely supporting a progressive ‘left-nationalist government’. He says he didn’t support the Russian ‘intervention’; but so far he hasn’t given me a single reason to see why not.
(Ian)
Actually, I have given ample reasons 'why not'. Its just that those reasons are inadmissible for Clive, because they dont support his Stalinophobic dogma that the USSR was an old-style colonial-imperialist power like the old British Empire. But though I dont believe Russia was a workers state, I dont agree with this position either.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
“... just because a regime uses ill-advised methods to carry out such a [progressive] programme does not mean that socialists should support the ultra-reactionary forces that seek to overthrow it.”
‘Just because...’ ‘ill-advised’? A political formation which thinks it can decree, and then enforce, its programme through the possession of state power and capacity for violence is more than ‘ill-advised’ - though, what, does Ian think he could have offered them better advice? This is what’s all in a fantasy universe. "
(Ian)
I use the term 'ill-advised' because I am on their side against the clerical reactionary forces. Since you were on the other side, I'm not that surprised you reject this terminology.
(Clive, referring to our disagreement on the MAB)
“But you would be fine about marching with Likud in defence of Jewish rights. Says a lot about your double standards, doesnt it? Why would 'secular leftists' pass up the opportunity to mass distribute their propaganda to the large number of supporters of the MAB?”
What on earth has that got to do with jointly organising a demonstration with them?
(Ian)
Er... their supporters turned out in force because they were a sponsor of the demonstration... presumably for you the only united fronts possible with such people are, Thaelmann fashion, 'from below'.
(Clive, quoting Ian)
“The MAB, as its website makes clear, regards Sept 11 as an atrocity”
– so it’s all right to organise demonstrations with them! If the Muslim Brotherhood are increasing their influence among British Muslims, as seems likely, this is not a good thing, Ian. It is beyond belief that the Left should (naively, since nobody seemed to ask difficult questions about the MAB till we did a bit of research) give them a leg up.
(Ian)
"As seems likely" says Clive. I see no evidence of the MAB being a channel for Islamist extremism, these links with the (in any case in your words now 'moderate' and 'reformist') Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt hardly appear to make the MAB itself an extremist Islamist group. The MAB website has an distinctly multiculturalist aspect to it, going on at some length praising 'diversity' and the multiplicity of views and faiths in the anti-war movement, etc. It seems to me you are looking for excuses to brand everyone except yourselves as collaborators with Muslim extremism and anti-semitism, not engaging in a real polemic over real political differences. Classic sectarian 'circle the wagons' kind of tactics, and something of a shame.
Return of the repressed, 2
On 22 October I wrote a short letter remonstrating against Mark Fischer's claim that the Leninist/ Weekly Worker group was never Stalinist, not even as far back as 1981. As late as 1992, the CPGB/WW was declaring: "We proudly and unhesitatingly defend the forward march of socialism over which Stalin presided", and retrospectively supporting the invasions of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), the imposition of martial law against Solidarnosc in Poland (1981), and the Russian war in Afghanistan (1980-8); it semi-supported the attempted conservative coup in the USSR of 1991.
Mark Fischer responded; I posted my letter and his response on the AWL website; a debate has ensued with 37 contributions so far).
Debate is good. The CPGB contributions, however, have proceeded mostly by way of changing the subject, and polemicise instead about the AWL's siding with the Afghan Mujahedin against the Russian army in 1980-8.
An interesting debate. The CPGB/WW's opposition to our siding with the revolt of the peoples of Afghanistan against Russian conquest sits ill with their endorsement of the Stop The War Coalition's political alliance with Arab-bourgeois-funded Islamists in Britain (the Muslim Association, offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) against not an imperialist conqueror but "the Zionists" (WW 450, front page).
But what of the question first raised? Mark Fischer, using the vagaries of those would-be Trotskyist currents who had shipped most Stalinist water in the rough seas of the late 20th century, claims that the CPGB's position in 1992 was actually more Trotskyist. So the CPGB had already broken from Stalinism by 1992 (indeed, by 1981); it then broke from Trotskyism, and soared up to new heights, far above all previous Marxism? Bizarre self-flattering delusion!
No CPGB response yet has even started to answer the point that the positions of the CPGB/WW in 1992 were plainly, if quirkily, Stalinist, and that the CPGB/WW cannot hope to make complete and coherent the break from those Stalinist politics which it has made since then if it denies that the break ever had to take place.
Much that happens with the CPGB seems to me a sort of political equivalent of something that happens with me personally. When I am excited, so I'm told, my long-Englished-over childhood Welsh accent reappears. In the same way, when the CPGB is agitated, we see a "return of the repressed" from its unmastered Stalinist past.
That is happening now, in the controversy around the CPGB/WW's "no-platforming" (at Mike Marqusee's behest) in Leeds of the AWL's Sean Matgamna, its subsequent excusing-by-explaining of that decision, and its refusal of a right of reply on that question.
At first the WW group was apologetic and conciliatory. Marcus Strom wrote to me on 9 October. "Our aggregate discussed this and basically thought Ray [Gaston, in Leeds] made a mistake... Ray shouldn't have done it... If I had known that Sean had been dumped... because of Marqusee's bidding and Sean hadn't been consulted, I would have been against this happening, as I think would Mark and John..."
We could ask how Mark Fischer and John Bridge, being directly involved in the Leeds affair, could have not known. If Ray Gaston made a mistake, didn't they too? Given the main point - that it was "a mistake" for the AWL speaker to be "dumped because of Marqusee's bidding" - all that might be left as secondary.
But then - the return of the repressed! It was loud and clear in the accent and style of Jack Conrad's statement excusing the exclusion (WW 451). "Some are gleefully using the Leeds meeting... to put an unofficial Socialist Alliance paper on hold. There is dark talk of an underhand CPGB plot to silence the AWL. Such irresponsible nonsense is to be regretted", etc. etc.
It was a dishonest, self-serving account of the Leeds exclusion. It indicts the WW group as democrats, as pluralists, and as politically consistent people. The WW is adding to the self-indictment by its refusal to publish a reply. The old-fashioned bureaucratic excuse that we must move onto other things, and that only the irresponsible "some" who indulge in "dark talk" can fail to consider the matter settled by the word from Olympus, makes it worse.
Can non-Weekly-Worker activists still regard the WW as a useful forum for the left? Or is the WW's openness selective, available only to those opponents whom the CPGB finds easy to use as chopping-blocks for its polemics?
Was Sean's reply to Jack Conrad, at 3400 words, too long? No. That length is no more than average for Weekly Worker articles. In the past the WW has published many long polemics. For example, it recently published a two-page polemic (which I'm told the author now rather regrets) against the way Sean Matgamna used the word "barbarism" in an editorial in WL 2/1.
Moreover, the WW had the option of negotiating with the author to have the reply cut down. It has not approached him on that.
The same excuse - "too long" - has more plausibility when the WW uses it to justify not publishing Sean's "Critical Notes on the CPGB/WW". It is longer - 10,000 words; maybe four full pages - and a general discussion, not a "right of reply" on an immediate issue. If the AWL does not publish that text in Solidarity, says the CPGB, why should the WW publish it?
However, think back a few months. The AWL and the CPGB had discussions about the character of a possible joint "unofficial Socialist Alliance" paper. In our view a paper could not do the job we think needs to be done in the labour movement if it had the left-internal-bulletin character which is the "unique selling point" of the Weekly Worker.
Solidarity very rarely publishes the sort of long multi-part articles which are common in the Weekly Worker. Material of that length is usually kept on our website. For Solidarity to publish such a long intra-left polemic would be a big break from our norm. For the Weekly Worker not to publish is a break from its claimed norms.
In truth the CPGB's fundamental objection is not length but content. The "Critical Notes" are a comprehensive polemical review which mocks and debunks some of the CPGB's Olympian pretensions, as well as reasoning through the issues. It is not as respectful as the material the WW is used to publishing.
Moreover, the WW has already published two articles in which it mined the "Critical Notes" for snippets to polemicise against, while entirely evading the main drift of the argument. Virtually every quotation has been trimmed and tailored so as to construe the WW's opponent, who is not allowed to speak for himself, into seemingly saying what the WW finds easy to respond to.
Example: in a garrulous aside, the "Critical Notes" suggests that the WW's use of "democratic federal republic" as its highest political demand may be coloured by a "background, or subconscious, notion that the 'bourgeois-democratic revolution' has yet to be completed in Britain". The WW translates this into: Sean Matgamna says the CPGB/WW are Nairnites. Outrage!
This of the same stripe as the word-of-mouth response we've had from the CPGB/WW on the Leeds affair: "the AWL is saying that there was a CPGB conspiracy to do down Sean. Absurd!"
To convert your polemical adversary's points into caricatures easy to knock down is politically and intellectually shameful and discreditable, and another departure from the norms of democratic discussion.
Back in 1995 Ian Donovan wrote a polemic against the CPGB, which was then moving to its present roughly-Ticktinite views on the Stalinist USSR. He discussed at length, and with some justice, "Stalinoid conceptions that still colour the CPGB's political outlook despite their evident subjective hostility to old-line Stalinism".
Jack Conrad replied to Ian at length. But what about the charge of Stalinoid hangovers? Worth thinking about, wasn't it, given that the CPGB's shift away from "proudly" siding with "bureaucratic socialist" tanks and troops against the backward "spontaneity" of workers in the Stalinist states was only a year or so old? When you make such a huge shift in your world view, it is hard to be certain that you have completely rooted out all your old mistakes. Even otherwise-poor polemics may help you check.
Not for Jack. He expected WW readers to accept that the word from Olympus was enough. "Frankly, I feel no need whatsoever to rebuff the 'Stalinist' or 'Stalinoid' charge. Such nonsense can be dismissed with the contempt it deserves".
What is at stake here - in the argument about the Leeds exclusion, and the rest - is precisely this method. Debate that is fully open - or debate that is open until the final word comes down from the heights.