Workers' Liberty

I have just been reading the Workers Liberty pullout on the Iranian Revolution (WL Vol. 3 No. 5) It is well worth reading particularly for those that were not around at the time. Most important are the lessons that are drawn out relating to the mistakes of the Left during that revolution, and in particular the way the Left failed to warn of the dangers represented by the clerics. It should provide an object lesson for the Left in similar situations if any more lessons were required about why socialists should not give credibility let alone political support to alien class forces.

Most clearly it should give an object lesson in relation to the current situation in Iraq. Yet it seems to me that the AWL is in some respects repeating the same mistakes the Left made in Iran. The article quotes from paper of one of the the AWL’s predecessors – Workers Action – setting out its own mistakes at the time.

“Ayatollah Kohomeini, the chief leader of the Muslim Opposition, has declared many times that he does not want the barbarities of ‘Islamic Law’ as practised in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, where thieves are supposed to be punished by having their hands cut off; nor does he oppose equality for women.” (WA No121 October 1978).

Yes that was a big mistake wasn’t it, and one that perhaps with hindsight should not have been made taking at face value the words of a representative of the class enemy. So perhaps, we should be able to avoid that mistake again shouldn’t we. Well yes, we should, but apparently not.

In this discussion held some months ago Debate on Iraq exactly the same type of comments were being made in relation to Sistani by Clive. Clive says,

“I'm not sure it's right that they are 'fascists vs fascists'. Sistani is not a fascist, for sure - he's a clerical leader, obviously, and socially conservative, but on the scale of these things a relative liberal. The Da'wa Party is sort of 'constitutional Islamist'. The most unpleasant of the Islamists on the Interim (and probable post-December) government side are SCIRI, who are heavily backed by Iran. But I'm not sure even they are really fascists.

That the 'legalistic' Islamists aren't fascists doesn't mean they're our allies, of course. But I would beware of crude generalisations and false labelling. There is a form of bourgeois democracy being installed in Iraq -truncated, etc etc. But it would be wrong to think that if the Sciri/Da'wa (Sistani in the background) list wins the election that it's only fascism coming to power. Things are quite bleak in Iraq, I think, but not that bleak.”

Now to be fair to Clive he is not calling for support for Sistani here as was the case with the Stalinists and the USFI in relation to Khomeini, but Workers Action was not calling for support for Khomeini either. The mistake made then as now was not one of calling for support, but of not setting out the danger and arguing for clear oipposition.

Clive went on,

“An elected government mainly of Islamists committed (for the moment anyway) to a relatively democratic political process is surely preferable to civil war, or the seizure of power by neo-Ba'thists allied with Sunni Islamists, or whatever. This just seems to me common sense. People are going to go out and vote in two weeks in huge numbers, and probably a majority will vote for one kind of Islamist or another. If you think they're all just voting for fascism, you are, I think, at sea. (And yes, for sure, it's easier for workers to organise under an elected government with a constitution - even a crap one - than in conditions of civil war or rule by sectarian murderers).”

But this presented a false dichotomy. Yes if the choice was between “a relatively democratic political process” and Civil War then obviously socialists would choose the former. But that never was the real choice, and it has been demonstrated by subsequent events. As Martin says, in his article in Solidarity 3/94 the new government “comes more out of five months of haggling – under not at all hidden pressure from the USA to make the Shia Islamists include Sunni Arab ministers and seek ‘neutral’ figures for the interior, defence and oil ministries – than out of the elections on which it is nominally based, in December 2005." And his article titled “’Taliban mini-states’ in Iraq” goes on to tell us that those Islamic clerics who Clive wants us to believe really have nothing in common with Khomeini, have established a “Shiite militia-ruled region of East Baghdad” mirroring a Sunni mini state in West Baghdad, along with the spread of ultra-Islamist rule previoulsy typical of “Sadrist or SCIRI strongholds”.

True Clive pointed out that Sadr and SCIRI were much worse than Sistani who he says is not an Islamist at all.

“There is Sistani, who is properly speaking not an Islamist at all, and certainly, within the framework of Shia politics, entirely opposed to Khomeini-style Islamism (ie, he is opposed to rule by clerics).”

The problem with that of course is that the non Islamist Sistani has been issuing calls on his website for gays to be murdered etc. Only if you close your eyes very tight is it possible not to see the true nature of Sistani. Of course if you want to hope for the best then you can as was done in the case of Khomeini reject all such naysaying, and take Sistani at his word as a good bourgeois democrat. But if the USFI bears a heavy responsibility for the defeat of the Iranian left because “it had access to the history of past mistakes (such as the crushing of the Chinese Communists by the Chiang Kai Shek in 1927)” (WL 3/5) then what would we have to say about those that had access not just to that history but also the history of Iran, and the failure to warn against the dangers of such clerics.

“The working class needs to be independent of, and opposed to, all of the above. But the Sunni sectarians and the Islamists closer to the Americans are not simply the same. And if Shia Islamists win the election, it will not mean that Iraq is now a fascist state.”

No it will not mean that Iraq immediately will be a fascist state, but nor was Iran immediately a fascist state, nor technically did Germany become a fascist state immediately upon Hitler’s election. But it is politically criminal given the lessons of history not to point to the fact that all hsitory shows when such forces as these do take over the reins of government that is the natural trajectory.

“Is it better for the working class if there is a (truncated, hugely inadequate) quasi-bourgeois democracy in which the government consists mainly of Islamist parties (actually, if it's like the Interim Government, Islamists plus very anti-Islamist Kurdish nationalists), rather than sectarian civil war? I think so, yes.

He is not, however, a Khomeini-ite. The whole point to the Kheomeini strand of Islamism is that it is for clerical rule (ie rule by clerics as people, not just religious law). Sistani is from a wing of Shiism which opposes this. As I say, I don't think he is properly speaking an Islamist at all, unless you think all Muslim leaders are Islamists by definition.”

But firstly, as the article by Martin cited above demonstrates there is in reality little difference between the “Taliban mini-states” being set up by Sunni clerical fascists, and the “Taliban mini-states” being set up by Shiite clerical fascists. I doubt if you were a gay man or a woman in Iraq you would be able to make the precise distinction Clive wants to present, and there seems little doubt to me that when someone like Sistani issues calls on his website for gays to be murdered that he does seek to establish a state within which such barbarities are enshrined in law, even if such a state is established on the basis of supposedly democratic elections. Nor should we forget that it is these same forces of democracy that introduced the law making trade unions illegal. To point to Sistani’s role in putting on pressure for elections as in some way negating any of this seems to me to be to give him credibility that is totally undeserved and at a time when socialists rather than giving such credibility should be warning workers of the dangers he represents. Of course Sistani would want elections – his supporters were likely to win. Moreover, it is rather like pointing to Sinn Fein and saying they are good constitutional democrats because they take part in elections without at the same time pointing to the other half of their strategy at the time “A ballot in one hand an armalite in the other.”

The criticism of the Left in relation to Iran was that it was dominated by Stalinism, and even in respect of the supposed Trotskyist Left by the “stages theory” i.e. the idea that Iran was a backward country that first had to go through a democratic revolution before socialism was possible. This led to the idea that support for bourgeois forces such as those of Khomeini was justified because they were fighting “imperialism”. Ironically, that same approach runs like a thread through Clive’s posts above, and indeed through most of the AWL’s position on Iraq. But whilst in Iran Khomeini was presented as progresive because he was carrying through this revolution in the face of opposition from imperialism the AWL’s position seems to be that this bourgeois democratic transformation is being accomplished by these bourgeois clerical forces with the support of imperialism! No wonder then that it is necessary to paint the Shia clerics as good bourgeois democrats rather than warn the workers against them, and call them to organise themselves against them as the enemy. What we have is the stages theory, and then some.

The working class and socialists in Iraq can give no support to bourgeois democratic institutions that will be dominated by such reactionary forces because these institutions will just give democratic cover to the reactionary fascistic politics of the clerics. The only force capable of bringing about the democratic revolution in Iraq is the working class, and it can only do that in opposition to those forces not just by giving no credibiltiy to them, but by being openly hostile to them, and in demanding an end to the occupation by the imperialist forces that stand behind the clerics. The working class cannot rely on imperialism to be its saviour, and implying that it can even by abstention from calling for the immediate removal of troops only miseducates the Iraqi working class and the working class internationally. The only allies the Iraqi working class can and should rely upon is the international working class, and the job of socialists is to make that case, and do all in its power to rally that working class politically, economically, physically and militarily to the support of the Iraqi workers.

Now I can hear the cries of the pragmatists go up, “but that is utopian. The Iraqi working class is too weak to defeat the occupation and the “Insurgency”. The international working class is not strong enough or organised enough to come to the assistance of the Iraqi workers in the way the International Brigade intervened in Spain. Its necessary to rely on imperialism to give a breathing space for the workers in Iraq to become stronger.”

But this is not the argument of socialist principles. It is not Marxists trying to educate workers in struggle. It is not the advice Trotsky gave of “Tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant.” It is simply pragmatism, accommodating to current weakness. What is the truth. The truth is that there are no good scenarios for the working class in Iraq. Trying to dress it up by pretending that, well maybe things will turn out if we believe that Sistani and the clerics are really good bourgeois democrats and not Islamists, and that they will establish something approaching a normal bourgeois democratic state with the help of the occupation, will lead the working class to disaster as it did in Iran in trying to paint a similar picture of Khomeini. The most likely outcome of Iraq of an escalating Civil War also offers nothing good for the Iraqi working class. And the probable outcome of that Civil War the break-up of Iraq nothing better.

The only answer for Iraq’s problems is a united working class fighting for a democratic secular state that will inevitably lead on towards the need for the working class to fight for its own class interests. The basis of that fight will have to come not through elections to a Parliament circumscribed by the Occupation, and inevitably dominated by the power of the religious organisations and parties, but through workers own organisations in the factories, shops, and offices, and within their own communities. The establishment of workers militas in the communities is a positive step in that direction. But it also requires the active mobilisation of the international working class to assist it in that struggle. The working class is the biggest class in the world. It has tremendous resources if it chooses to use them, far greater than the resources of the tiny number of resistance fighters oppressing the workers and people of Iraq as much if not more than fighting the occupation, and greater even than the clerical forces of Sistani, or Sadr and co.
Weakness is not an argument for putting forward alternative policies that ultimately will lead to defeat, even if doing the right thing from a position of weakness might also lead to defeat. If I am suffering from some illness that has made me weak, and makes it dangerous for me to have the operation needed to cure the illness, I am still better to have the operation and risk dying than to avoid the operation and rely instead on some quack remedy that will lead with certainty to my death. And if I die having the operation due to my weakness it will not be an argument against others having the operation, only to have it sooner to avoid the weakness in the first place.

We should tell the truth. The prospects for the Iraqi working class are bleak. Its only hope is a fight on the basis outlined above, and even then it is likely to be doomed unless the working class internationally comes to its aid. In many ways its similar to the position the Bolsheviks found themselves in in 1917. They knew that the chances of their success were very small. They knew that without the support of the international working class their chance of holding on to power was even smaller, but given that they knew that unless the revolution was carried through the likely alternative was a reactionary counter revolution, they chose to do the right thing rather than accommodate to their weakness and seek a pragmatic solution. As Lenin put it at the time when he fully expected to die in the process, if they fought and lost their fight would at least provide an inspiration and lessons for the international labour movement. But to seek instead a pragmatic solution in Iraq in the face of this weakness, to give false hope in the prospects of reactionary forces bringing about anything good is worse. It not only means the ultimate defeat for the Iraqi working class, it miseducates the working class for future battles.