Workers' Liberty

Who in this discussion is saying the Iraqi parliament is classless; that the working class should be a 'loyal parliamentary opposition'; that class struggle in the form of strikes etc should be subordinated to democratic forms; that the ruling class will go quietly; or indeed any other bloody thing that Lenin is referring to?

The example Lenin gives of a successful boycott, Arthur, was during the 1905 revolution! You quote him:

"we succeeded in preventing a reactionary government from convening a reactionary parliament in a situation in which extra-parliamentary revolutionary mass action (strikes in particular) was developing at great speed, when not a single section of the proletariat and the peasantry could support the reactionary government in any way, and when the revolutionary proletariat was gaining influence over the backward masses through the strike struggle..."

Nobody - absolutely nobody - is suggesting that the working class should quietly permit itself to be crushed, should make a fetish of parliamentary forms, shouldn't depend on its own strength outside parliament (and anyway, unlike the SPD, doesn't have any power inside parliament to 'fetishise').

What I have argued is that the elections did not bring to power a Khomeini-ite, still less a fascist, government. They were a popular event, because the Iraqi people had been denied the opportunity to express any democratic will at all by a very brutal dictatorship for a long time. They were therefore not simply a sham. For these reasons, it would have been (was) wrong for socialists to denounce the elections or, worse, support the boycott called by the reactionary Sunni insurgency (or tried to organise their own boycott. If they were too weak to stand candidates they were too weak to do that). The task for socialists, as elsewhere, is to hegemonise the popular desire for democracy, not pooh-pooh it. (In practice, without candidates, that comes down to a general broad attitude, it's true. But better an attitude which says 'elections are good, but we need to build our movement so we can fight in them in the future, and fight whoever wins them, etc' than 'aaaah, nooooo, not elections, the majority might win!')

The government is reactionary, dominated by Islamists - though there are counterveiling tendencies - and real power 'on the street' tends to be in the hands of militias. The general trajectory is towards less democracy, not more. Workers should give it no support.

But they were not going to prevent this government from forming by criticising the class content of democracy. The working class needs democracy, even bourgeois democracy, to grow and develop. There is, right now, a struggle taking place over democratic questions, and the labour movement should be at the forefront of it. There is a danger of a worse situation than that which now exists. We do not help the class struggle by declaring the worst outcome already to have occurred.

With that I really do have to get on with other stuff. :-)

“Who in this discussion is saying the Iraqi parliament is classless; that the working class should be a 'loyal parliamentary opposition'; that class struggle in the form of strikes etc should be subordinated to democratic forms; that the ruling class will go quietly; or indeed any other bloody thing that Lenin is referring to?“

Clive. Kautsky was not saying that Russia was classless either. But Lenin was pointing out that to simply use the term “democracy” as though it is something that can exist outside classes is to miseducate the working class. It is to fail to educate the workimng class in the fact that this democracy merely masks a class dictatorship. The reason for putting in this quotation was in response to Janine’s comment that she could imagine no situations in which having no elections was better than having elections. It seems to me that that position is indeed pretty close to Kautsky’s of ignoring exactly what those elections are for and to. That also is the reason for putting in Lenin’s quote about Kautsky not recognising that such elections can produce “counter-revolutionary Parliaments”. It is also the reason related to this latter for making the point that Lenin eleaborates that for Marxists the interests of the class struggle are primary, and so Marxists cannot fetishise elections because three will be conditions udner which Marxists have to either boycott elections, or because they will have to call on workers in advance to ignore the result of those elections, and instead will need to help workers organise for a battle on the streets for a Civil War, sometimes a Civil War in which as in 1905 the workers are in the ascendant and so a bourgeois Parliament is irrelevant other than as a platform for propaganda, or a Civil War in which the forces of reaction are in the ascendant and the workers need to organise their forces not for a Parliamentary struggle – and Lenin says that the basis for taking part in elections is never to gain seats (on which I disagree with him) – and indeed in which such Parliamentarism is a diversion from the real tasks that are required.

“The example Lenin gives of a successful boycott, Arthur, was during the 1905 revolution!”

I agree, but as I made clear in placing that quote, and as I have stated above the conditions of a revolutionary or counter-revolutioanry situation are effectively the same in this regard. In both cases what is involved is a life and death struggle in which Parliamentarism/electioneering is a diversion. Indeed Lenin makes the point that such Parliamentarism is relevant only to times of peace. Can anyone claim that what exists in Iraq is a time of peace! What we have is a situation in which workers and socialists are daily being kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the Islamic militias attached to the very parties that you insist are not proto-fascist or clerical fascist parties. Parties that are already banning trade unions, murdering trade unionists, forcing women to wear the veil, issuing fatwas for the murder of gays, and in the words of the previous issue of Solidarity creating “Mini-Taliban states” around the country. And that according to that issue of Solidarity is not just the Sunni militias, or the foreign fighters, not even the the sadrist militias, but the militias attached to the main Islamist organisations.

“Nobody - absolutely nobody - is suggesting that the working class should quietly permit itself to be crushed, should make a fetish of parliamentary forms, shouldn't depend on its own strength outside parliament (and anyway, unlike the SPD, doesn't have any power inside parliament to 'fetishise').”

No I agree. I don’t think that the AWL not calling for workers to boycott the elections, and instead to propagandise as to why the resultant Parliament would be a thoroughly reactionary institution whose aim would be to crush them, is a big deal. As I have said the question of whether you boycott or not is a question of tactics not of principle. I do think the AWL’s position is a bit schizophrenic. On the one hand the AWL does amazing work for such a tiny organisation in doing what is the most important thing to do – giving practical support to the Iraqi Labour Movement. It is why if I didn’t feel so past it, and weren’t suffering with Depression I would probably join, though I have a problem with the continuing attachment to Leninism even if its in a relaxed form. But on the other hand it does not seem to draw out the political programme for that working class or indeed for the Labour Movement internationally that goes hand in hand with building that Labour Movement on the basis of truly independent working class politics. As I have said before I think that stems from the fact of the defeat of the Labour Movement during the 1980’s, and the creation of a feeling of pessimism in the ability of the working class to fight its own battles. So instead we have a reliance effectively on imperialism to hopefully do something progressive and defeat the Islamists, and hopefully to create something approaching a normal bourgeois democracy, and because of that hope a refusal to engage in outright opposition to the occupation. I think the same is true of your insistence that the rampaging Islamists that are killing and torturing Iraqi workers and socialists, and slowly introducing Sharia law throughout the country are not proto-fascists that will sweep away any semblance of democracy and crucify the workers at the earliest opportunity after the occupation leave or remove themselves to the borders. You are forced into that position because you have effectively said that the only hope for the workers is them gaining a breathing space through the actions of the Occupation and the Islamist Parties in the Parliament are tied to that Occupation, so any suggestion that those Parties were in fact fascist would undermine the idea that the Occupation were objectively protecting the working class.

“What I have argued is that the elections did not bring to power a Khomeini-ite, still less a fascist, government. They were a popular event, because the Iraqi people had been denied the opportunity to express any democratic will at all by a very brutal dictatorship for a long time. They were therefore not simply a sham.”

But this is the crux of the argument isn’t it. You keep insisting that, but all of the evidence points in the opposite direction. I will simply repeat. We have the militias attached to these parties acting pretty much as the brown shirts did during the 1930’s. We have the creation by these Shia militias of “Taliban mini-states” (and would you describe the Taliban as clerical fascists or not?) throughout the country. We have the leaders of various Shia factions issuing fatwas for the murder of gays, and women being forced to wear the veil, forced out of jobs etc. The result being that many people are trying to get out of the country. We have a fusing of the militias with the state apparatus of oppression. We have this Parliament banning Trade Unions. I agree its not fascism or clerical fascism yet but the full manifesatation of fascism in Germany didn’t arise immediately, and the Shia Islamists cannot show their hand too much yet because that would mean an open confrontation with the Occupation. They don’t want that ebcause the occupation is busy suppressing the Sunis and foreign fighters thereby fighting some of the coming Civil War for them. In the meantime they attack the occupation in a more surreptitious manner in Shia dominated areas.

I’ll tell you what I’ll bet you a tenner that within six months of the Occupation making a significant withdrawal or withdrawing to the borders that Sistani calls on his supporters to restore order in the country, that the Parliament is either swept away or is forced to grant the declaration of martial law throughout the country, and that will mark an all out attack on Sunni areas, followed shortly after by the declaration that Iraq is to become an Islamic state under Sharia law.

“But better an attitude which says 'elections are good, but we need to build our movement so we can fight in them in the future, and fight whoever wins them, etc' than 'aaaah, nooooo, not elections, the majority might win!')”

But that is a caricature of the position I have put forward. I have not said that socialists in Iraq should not argue that elections are a good thing and that they need to build up their forces in order to be able to win them. What I have said was that these particular elections were not a good thing for the working class. They were not a good thing because from all of the accounts that I have seen the large majority of people voting really had no idea what democracy was about, did not understand what they were doing in voting etc., and that was part of the reason, plus all of the cultural and tribal traditions, which meant that they were always going to rely on being told who to vote for. Now even as far as the limitations of bourgeois democracy is concerned it requires something more than just putting a cross on a piece of paper. Yes, Lenin says in Left-Wing Communism that even under conditions where reactionary parties might dominate – though I don’t think he meant proto-fascist parties – there can be a case for socialists to stand in order to educate the workers away from these kinds of prejudices etc., but to do that the socialists in Iraq would have needed to be a lot stronger than they appear to be. Nor have I said that the objection is that the majority might win. That really would be an ultr-left position. What I said was that fascists WOULD win and that under those circumstances the election would simply provide a legitimate cover for their real agenda.

“The government is reactionary, dominated by Islamists - though there are counterveiling tendencies - and real power 'on the street' tends to be in the hands of militias. The general trajectory is towards less democracy, not more. Workers should give it no support.”

But nothing about this parliament – other than it was elected by a lot of people who didn’t understand what they were voting for, and were told who to vote for by their religious and tribal leaders – is democratic as the piece in the previous Solidarity pointed out. And when you say that the trend is away from democracy because of the actions of the militias on the streets, I repeat to whom are those militias attached.? To the very parties you want at the same time to pretend are the vehicles for democracy. Doesn’t the fact that these parties act with a ballot in one hand and a roadside bomb in the other give you a clue as to their real intentions.

“But they were not going to prevent this government from forming by criticising the class content of democracy. The working class needs democracy, even bourgeois democracy, to grow and develop. There is, right now, a struggle taking place over democratic questions, and the labour movement should be at the forefront of it. There is a danger of a worse situation than that which now exists. We do not help the class struggle by declaring the worst outcome already to have occurred.”

I have not said that it has occurred. That is precisely the point. Had socialists warned of the trajectory of Khomeini in 79 the working class in Iran could have been preparing its defences. Instead the same platitudes were given then. We certainly do not assist the working class in Iraq by telling them that the occupation protects them from the militias when clearly it does not, and has never had any reason to do so, nor by clothing the proto-fascists in the Parliament in democratic garb. Instead of printing election leaflets socialists in Iraq should be printing leaflets exposing the nature of the fascists in the Parliament, and instead of building up election fighting funds, they should be buying guns to defend themselves against those fascists when they decide to throw off the cloak of the Parliament.

“I am going to make this my last post, because I need to be getting on with stuff, and this is making me think about the wrong things! (It's been stimulating, if quite frustrating).”

I’m glad about the stimulating, but frustrating? Come on, it should never be frustrating just because someone challenges your established beliefs.

“I think on almost every point, Arthur, you are confusing categories, confusing an argument about one thing with an argument about another. Argument by analogy, which seems quite basic to how you argue, only works so far. I think in much of this argument, analogies are taking you way off.”

I agree that analogies only work so far, but the basic tenet of Marxism is to learn from what has gone before to draw out the similarities and avoid the mistakes made in the past. I think that in relation to the Protestants and the Sunnis the analogy is incredibly close. You want to argue it isn’t because to agree that it was would completely undermine your argument, but in dooing so your argument in relation to the Protestants has become increasingly strained and removed from reality.

“I don't think the difference between Sunnis is strained at all. It is absolutely central to this argument. In the actual conditions in Ireland - principally the intermingling of the populations - self-determination entailing the repartition of Ireland would be reactionary. But the basis for supporting Protestant autonomy is, or should be, that they are a national minority, not that they are a different religion. (The conflict is obviously national, rather than religious.”

Come on Clive, you can’t honestly believe that. Is it a coincidence then that the leaders of the Protestants are overwhelmingly religious leaders? Is it a coincidence that there are Protestant and Catholic religious schools that exacerbate religious communal rivalry? Is it a coincidenece that all of the priviliges or lack of them that led to the Civil Rights movement were a function of what religion you belonged to? In a previous post you said that the issue was one of territory because the Protestants main concern was “the Border”. But that simply begs the question what is it about the Border that is the issue for them. The issue is of course their fear of being dominated within the confines of what Sean describes in his review of Loach’s film as a “priest-ridden backwater”. Whenever the concerns of Protestants about being dominated within this priest-ridden backwater have been discussed by the AWL or certainly of its predecessors that I am aware of I can think of none of them that are not in fact based on religion. The only possible other one would be being forced to speak Gaelic rather than English, but come on the majority of Catholics in the orth would probably object to that too. Can you name me any other single concern that the Protestants would have about being in a United Ireland where there rights might be infringed other than those based on religion?

Yes the Protestants 300 years ago might have come from Scotland, but for God’s sake (no pun intended) that was 300 years ago. The division in Northern Ireland is quite clearly a religious divide not one of two distinct nationalities. The people of Northern Ireland share a common nationality and heritage. They are Irish. The divide is based upon one section of the community having had privileges over the other which originally stemmed from their position as settlers, but which for well over a hundred years has been based on nothing more than religion. All of the fault lines are based around religion, and the marching season is clear evidence of that. The Protestants celebrate what? The triumph of a Protestant King over a Catholic challenger. And why did the British Parliament put that Protestant King on the throne, precisely because he was a Protestant and battle lines in Britain itself were still drawn around the religious divide of the Civil War. Why did the Catholics in Ireland oppose that Protestant King? Was it because they had some class interest in doing so? No. Did they have some national/territorial interrest in doing so? No. They opposed the King and supported the challenger for no other reason that they were Catholics.

The Protestants are not a national minority. They are a minority religious community. That is why they do not have the right to self-determination, but do have the right to have their minority interests protected.

I don’t think that what you say about Israel/Palestine is true either. Elsewhere you have said that you think that there is a problem with Israel’s Immigration Policy being based on religion. It is a fact that under the Israeli constitution Jews have the right to move to Israel irrespective of their nationality i.e. you could be a US citizen, a Jew from the USSR, or from Ethiopia, your nationality is not significant, but your religoin is. But that’s another discussion.

“Outside Baghdad – where such an arrangement would cauterise the city into religious-sectarian enclaves”

Do you mean like the religious sectarian enclaves in say Belfast or Derry?

“you might argue, there is a territorial element to the Sunni-Shia divide, ie the Sunnis are mainly in the middle part of the country a constitute a distinct quasi-national group. But

2. ‘The Sunnis’ (and it’s an unfortunate shorthand that we speak of them as if they have one collective opinion on everything) don’t tend to want merely local autonomy, because the areas where they’re a majority don’t have any oil. On the other hand those among the Shia who want to give the Sunni areas autonomy – by default, anyway, by claiming federal rights for the Shia south – want to do so precisely because it would leave the Sunnis without any oil wealth. What ‘the Sunnis’ want is control over the national state, which can only be achieved by depriving the Shia of their inevitable majority.

But I can’t see where any of this is different from Northern Ireland or a United Ireland. You could just as easily say that Local Government in a United Ireland would give protestants control where they are the majority, and we know that in those areas where that was true they did do things in terms of employment and housing etc. that was objectionable to Catholics i.e. they basically denied it to them. That is the whole point about protecting minorrity rights. But the Protestants don’t want merely autonomy either do they? The whole point about their concern about the border is that a) without it they fear being dominated by Catholicism, and b) the in built majority the border provides has been the basis of their historic privileges as the majority community. The Protestants want to dominate just as much as the Sunnis. They want control over the Northern Ireland “state” because that is the basis of their power and privilege. It is why they have and continue to object to power sharing with the minority.

“But there’s something simply different – isn’t there? – about religious and national identity. This is one of those questions which can leave you spinning around in a logical circle – for everything you can put a finger on which expresses this difference, you can think of something ‘on the other side’ which seems to say it’s the same. But even leaving aside the anti-democratic impulses to Sunni particularism, and even if you assume their fear of Shia ‘revenge’ once the Shia ‘have power’ is justified, there is something simply more backward, more reactionary, about religious communal identity than national identity. A democratic political culture can’t accommodate it, in a way that it can, in fact, notions of national identity, and national minorities.”

I think that depends on whether the religion is the dominating aspect of each community’s culture which sets them apart from the other community, and whether the different communities occupy some fairly well defined territory as do by and large the Protestants in Northern Ireland (though that is becoming less so as the catholic population increases more rapidly), and as do the Sunnis in Iraq, or (as I’ll come to later) Muslims in Pakistan and Hindus in India.

“Imagine if, instead of Scottish and Welsh parliaments, we had Christian and Muslim parliaments... (or Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian...). Devolution to Scotland and Wales (whatever debates we might have about it more specifically) is perfectly consistent with a democratic culture. ‘Devolution’ to religiously-defined groups would not be.”

I disagree. The people of Scotland and Wales mostly speak English. In terms of common heritage for the last 300 years the people of Scotalnd and Wales are indistinguishable from the peoples of England. But supposing the people in Scotland were overwhelmingly Catholic, and the people in Wales overwhelmingly Druidic. Now as you say setting aside the point that as socialists we would argue against any division of the peoples of Britain as being reactionary wouldn’t there be a case as for the protestants in Northern Ireland to say that if the people of Scotalnd found that there religion made it intolerable to live in a Britain where laws and culture were based on a majority Protestant religion that they should have the right to separate if that was what they chose. Wouldn’t the very fact of their different religion within the confines of a given geographic area held with conviction be precisely the cultural difference that separated them off as a separate people. Wouldn’t the same apply to Wales? After all religion plays a very significant role in every culture, and at the end of the day it is that identification of a separate culture which is the basis of a people’s sense of belonging to one group rather than another.

“In any case, I think the Sunni-Shia division in Iraq is more complicated than it seems at first sight. There are historical roots to it – the Ottoman empire was Sunni, and then the Sunnis were favoured by the British colonial state. But the division hasn’t always carried the weight it has now. Conversions have been common. Revolts against Britain united Sunni and Shia. I don’t think there was any particularly Sunni/Shia dynamic to the 1958 revolution (there were ethnic dimensions, but that’s different). Even though the Ba’th built its base among Sunnis, it did not do so exclusively; the Shia did not support Iran in the Gulf war; there was a dynamic which was simply to do with the role of the Shia clergy – the earlier Sadrs, for example – in opposing Saddam. Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, writing in 1987, concluded “... the fundamental division... was not ‘religious’ or ‘sectarian, but socio-economic, between the haves, and the have nots...” (Iraq Since 1958, p190). Even if this was partly wishful thinking, I think it means that the depth of sectarian feeling and conflict now is a new phenomenon.

Presumably 1991 was a major turning point – as the south rose in revolt, but the Sunni central area did not, and then the revolt was brutally crushed as Saddam’s state was allowed by the US to reassert itself.”

Very similar in fact to the history of Ireland. The fact that the first Republicans were Protestants, the history of the United Irishmen etc.

“In other words, the Sunni-Shia conflict is not simply a permanent fixture of Iraqi life. Sunni privilege is largely a matter of governmental favouritism: it’s not a structural feature of the political entity (like the border in Ireland). It would be wrong to do anything, or propose anything, which helped to crystallise and make permanent these forms of identity. We should be in favour of a secular state.”

But Protestant privilege was likewise the result of governmental favouritism in large part. Yes, Protestant owned firms like Harland and Wollf favoured Protestants, but they did employ Catholics, and it was not as though Catholics were banned from owning firms themselves.

“There are situations where thinking you are dealing with national groups and arguments for autonomy and self-determination are the democratic solutions would lead you to catastrophe. Think of the partition of India - which was justified on the grounds that the Muslims were a nation. They were not. The consequence was fantastically bloody.”

I don’t profess to be an expert on the history of the establishment of India and Pakistan so I am loathe to challenge the point you make without undertaking some further study. However, the prima facie evidence would seem to contradict your point. Yes, my knowledge does run to the extent of knowing that there were terrible pgroms of both communities at India’s independence, and widespread ethnic cleansing. However, despite the continual stand-off between India and Pakistan across the border isn’t the fact that the actual separation into two separate countries one in which both have managed to live in relative peace? Doesn’t that compare rather well to the continual bloodshed and pogroms that occur in Kashmir where both religious communities remain confined within the same political entity? Or even against the repeated cases of pogroms against Muslims particularly in India?

“South Africa, too: recognising the legitimacy of apartheid's artificial divisions was not progressive; the whole progressive movement saw the democratic programme as one person, one vote in a unitary state. You could protect white workers from racism without giving them territorial rights (assuming in any case that that was possible, which it wasn't: the abolition of apartheid meant the destruction of white territorial enclaves. That's what pass laws were about).”
Clive this is incredibly formalistic. It reminds me of the debates I have had with Libertarians in the US. They too think that people’s rights can be protected by a piece of paper i.e. some Constitutional arrangement. The most democratic Constitution in the world – on paper – was that of the Soviet Union. The fact is that had the black majority in South Africa decided to take revenge on the Whites, to impose on them the kind of restrictions and oppression they themselves had suffered, no Constitution in the world could have prevented them from doing so. Under those conditions it may well have been necessary to have argued for whites to have had a defensible territory, just as at one point Trotskyists argued that their might be a case for Blacks in the US to have their own territory. In the event neither was necessary, and I agree because it has not been necessary it would have been reactionary to have argued for an unneccessary separation, but that is not the same as arguing that under different circumstances it would not have been justified. There could have been no principled reason to oppose it.

“Extending your analogy between fascist regimes, comparing Turkey to Portugal, is only helpful if it is a meaningful analogy in the first place. It isn't. Turkey today is not meaningfully comparable to Portugal under Caetano - where there were no elections, the military ruled, etc. Turkey *when it was a dictatorship* is more comparable; Turkey now, despite its Islamist government, is basically a bourgeois democracy (very limited, but less limited than it used to be).”

But I wasn’t comparing Turkey to Portugal. I was merrely making the point that just as you argue that there are nuances between the islamists in Iraq compared to those in Iran, or to Turkey, there are also differences between the fascism in Spain with that in Portugal, or that in Germany or that in Italy. They were all different, but all fascist. In actual fact your example of Turkey goes against your argument. Turkey is not an example of an Islamic state, such as Iran or even Pakistan. Turkey for a hundred years has been a secular state. The forces of secularism remain dominant within the state apparatus. That is the difference with Iran or Pakistan or Iraq. In those countries the secular state was destroyed, and in its place an Islamic state has been erected or in the case of Iraq is being erected as the Islamic militias take over the armed forces and police. You of all people should realise that there is a difference between conrol of the state and merely government office.

“Islamism is comparable to fascism in certain respects but not all. Iraq is not Turkey, either; it is not a bourgeois democracy. But it isn't fascism, or an analogue-with-fascism, either. Not yet.”

Tactics and strategy should always be based on what is going to happen not what has already happened and you are too late to do anything about. As Napoleon once said a wise General always underestimates his own strength and overestimates the strength of his opponent. Recognising that the Islamists really were fascists after all when they have erected an Islamic state and shot or incarcerated all the workers leaders and even further atomised society will be little comfort to the Iraqi working class. That was the lesson the Left should have learned from Iran, but it seems doomed to repeat it.

“Of course it's a tactical question whether to *stand* in elections. And of course we should not be bound by democratic procedure if that is suicidal. I think Lenin's point against Kautsky is this, isn't it? To take an example you've used, it would have been suicidal for the German workers' movement to think that because Hitler won the election that was that. You could multiply such examples - where there are democratic realities, like survival in the face of fascism, which take precedence over the institutional formalities. This is true of almost any democratic form, in principle (for instance, self-determination, if for instance it's a matter of life and death for a workers' state - and so on and so on.) But there was never any question of denouncing elections as such because Nazis would win them. I don't think that train of thought ever occurred to anyone.”

No, because the workers movement in Germany was strong. There was good chance the workers parties (in which I would include the Stalinists though you obviously wouldn’t because of your State Capitalist or Bureaucratic Collectivist analysis of Stalinism) would gain a majority between them. Moreover, the election gave them a good opportunity to denounce both the Nazis and bourgeois democracy. Both had their own well organised and well armed Defence Squads with which to confront the Nazis during electioneering. But the point of their participation if they followed Lenin’s advice in Left-Wing Communism was precisely that. Not to enter the election for the purpose of winning seats but as a means of propaganda to win the workers away from bourgeois Parliamentarism. Read lenin that is what he says. He says, we do not enter elections for the purpose of winning seats, but purely as a means of winning the workers away from reactionary parties, and undermining bougeois democracy. In actual fact I think he is wrong on that last point, because he underestimates the potential for using Parliaments to heighten contradictions and to bring about a confrontation with the state. Had for example Allende have been building up the forces of the workers defence outside Parliament having control of the Government would not have been at all an inconsiderable advantage.

But that is not at all the situation in Iraq. It is not a case of the potential for workers parties or even bourgeois democratic parties having a chance of winning, with only the Islamists having the possibility of winning. The Islamists were guaranteed to have an overwhelming majority. Nor is it the case that having won a majority they then have to also secure control of the State apparatus which in Germany remained tied to the interests of the capitalist class until the Nazis eventually established full control, it is a situation in which the Islamists have inherited a situation where the state apparatus had already been completely smashed by the forces of the Occupation, where there increasing establishment of “Taliban mini-states” through the use of their militias is being replicated through control of the state apparratus which those same militias are taking over. In other words this is not a situation of normal “peaceful” politics which even in the 1930’s still largely applied in Germany where workers can carry out a dual strategy of building up their extra-parliamentary strength whilst continuing to conduct parliamentary propaaganda, it is precisely the conditions of Civil War that Lenin described in 1905 where the workers are under the cosh, where Parliamentarism is a distraction, and where the main task is to build the workers defence.

“But as a general rule, the holding of elections - and short of socialist democracy, a bourgeois democratic system - should be something we support. Emphatically. And we are aiming - aren't we! - to win majorities. And in dictatorial or authoritarian regimes which deny or fix elections, the call to have proper elections - whether or not 'we' have people we can stand - is a good, powerful, progressive, energising one. Socialists are never going to win much influence if they are seen as the people who oppose elections. And I think, in general, they wouldn't deserve to win it in that case, either.”

But that is a caricature of the argument I have put. I have not opposed taking part in elections on principle far from it. I have merrely argued there are times such now in Iraq where parliamentary activity is a diversion. I agree that short of socialist democracy socialists should support bourgeois democracy – whereas lenin doesn’t he argues that the aim is NOT to win seats let alone majorities but to conduct propaganda AGAINST bourgeois democracy, to undermine it from within – but I don’t consider that what exists in Iraq bourgeois democracy. If what was being proposed was the establishment of a democratic secular constitution, and the ability of workers parties to organise, propagandise, and stand their candidates without fear of them being simply mowed down by the Islamists whilst the Occupation watched on then yes I’d be in favour of workers parties standing in order to make the kind of propaganda I have outlined above. It isn’t.

“The reasons the 'resistance' opposed elections certainly are relevant - in making an assessment of the resistance, obviously, and more generally of the mood among Sunnis. That your starting point is that Sunnis have good reason to fear majority rule and this is perfectly reasonable is blinding you to the actual social truth of the situation.”

No. The Sunnis clearly do have reason to fear the position they will be in under a Shia dominated Parliament let alone a Shia state, just as the Protestants do have some reason to fear being in a Catholic Irish state – though I would suggest under the circumstances far less than do the Sunnis. I doubt the Southern Catholics would unleash violent pogroms against the Protestants. The fact of that leads me to the conclusion that a very weak working class could win some temporary repreive precisely by addressing those concerns, and hose of the Kurds for autonomy by including in its programme the proetection of those minority rights through the establishment and Constitutional enshrinement of a secular state, and in so doing would only be following the example of Lenin in 1917 in shoring up the weakness of the working class by making an alliance with Russia’s nationali minorities.

“In Algeria in 1991/92, whether or not you supported what the dictatorship had done would be the basic argument. You could say 'I refuse to give our enemies advice', but wouldn't that be just dodging the issue? In Egypt, where there is a labour movement and small socialist groups, they simply can't ignore, I would have thought, the question of whether they think there should be proper elections, whether all parties should have a right to stand in them, and so on.”

Okay specifically. In Algeria. My argument would be as follows. Compared to the Dictatorship a bourgeois democracy would be prefereable. Under a bourgeois democracy we the workers can better expose the class nature of the state, the extent to which it merely masks the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. If we the workers become strong enough we may become a powerful force in such a Parliament, but the moment we do, the moment we use that democracy to challenge the power of Capital at that moment the Capitalists will seek to sweep away that Parliament. That is why for us at the moment the real issue is not elections or not elections but the self-organisation of the workingc lass and pursuit of our own class interests, the pursuit of which we will continue whether there is a Parliament or not. In so far as the Dictatorship attacks the forces of the Islamists, who would establish a clerical-fascist regime in which not only bourgeois democratic rights would be removed, but under which our ability to organise and fight would be even more curtailed than under the Dictatorship, we are glad, but we palce no faith in the Dictatorship to do that effectively, and they will do so in their interest not in ours. We say a plague on both your houses, and look forward to the day when the workers are strong enough to sweep away both the Tweedle Dee of the Dictatorship and the Tweedle Dum of Islamism. If we are only strong enough at first to establish a bourgeois democracy, then so be it provided that such a democracy does not just provide a launch-pad for an alternative type of reaction, does not provide the cover for the installation of an anti-democratic fascist regime, a regime that merely uses the cover of “Democracy”, a democracy that is not our democracy but the democracy of the bosses used to dupe and deceive us. But our goal is not this bosses democracy, not the acceptance of the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie and our continued oppression merely softened by the velvet glove of “democracy”. Our goal is the ending of that bourgeois Dictatorship with or without its democracy, and its replacement with a proletarian Dictatorship, and the establishment of the only true democracy – a workers democracy.

In Egypt from the limited assessment of forces that I can make I would say that yes the workers movement should support the call for the establishment of a democratic secular Constitution, and for the convening of a Constituent Assembly on that basis. But in large part having done so the position of the workers party should be the same as that I have outlined above in relation to Algeria though nuanced. In other words the elections are an opportunity for socialists to conduct propaganda against both islamism and bouregois democracy. They are the potential within a heightened political environment to draw the workers and peasants away from the Islamists. They can do so in a way that they cannot in say Iraq because of the ability of workers to defend themselves and to conduct such Parliamentary activity without the restrictions they would have doing so in Iraq.

I don't have time to respond to the whole thing today; but I will make a couple of points.

Yes, as far as being murdered by the Mahdi army in Jihad goes - in the sectarian civil war now developing - Sunni fears are perfectly reasonable. I was referring to the period of the elections, when there was not yet a sectarian civil war, and when the Sunni 'resistance' called for a boycott with threats to kill anyone who voted. You're right that the fear of Shia domination, even then, was to some extent a fear of the militias (or, in so far as it's different, of the new state apparatus which the militias have 'infiltrated', if that's the right word).

But I think it is wrong to downplay the reactionary dynamic to Sunni-sectarian opposition to Shia rule. There is a Shia majority in Iraq. Any election, any democracy, will reflect that majority. To the extent that Iraqi society is sectarian, election results will be sectarian. To oppose any election because it will reflect the actual state of Iraqi society seems to me quite wrong.

For sure the Sunni-sectarian boycott of elections helped to polarise things, make the sectarian divisions worse. (As I understand it there are groups in the resistance who think so too - who think that policy helped stoke a sectarian civil war - and want to shift to a more political, ie less murderous, approach).

Compare the Kurds. The Kurds, too, would be in an inevitable minority in any national government. There was no Kurdish boycott of the elections. Not because they have any less to fear, on one level, from a Shia Islamist goverment. (They have less to fear, immediately, from Shia Islamist militias, but that might change and I'm sure they are aware of that). My point is that simply being in a minority in the face of a Shia majority is not enough to explain the attitudes of many Sunni.

I hope it doesn't need to be said that I think we should oppose all Shia chauvinism towards Sunni - and the workers' movement should not really accept these categories at all.

That both sides in a sectarian civil war are sectarian and reactionary doesn't mean that one side has not had a historical advantage and been relatively privileged. (Actually I think the historical position of Sunni and Shia in Iraq is quite complicated. But it's certainly true that under British rule the Sunni were privileged; and especially under Saddam they were also. Saddam made a big effort to stoke up the Sunni/Shia divisions. What's interesting though is that during the war with Iran, Iraqi Shia did not desert to fight with Khomeini. The current levels of sectarianism seem to be very recent indeed.)

On the elections. These were the first elections in Iraq in decades, assuming you count elections in the 1950s at all. Of course all the reactionary forces currently at work went into overdrive to their own advantage. I don't see how this could possibly have been otherwise. The evidence that very many Iraqis - not only those told what to do by tribal or religious leaders - saw the holding of elections as an event of great significance seems pretty powerful. The best thing would have been for the labour movement to have its own political voice. Without that, in a certain sense, there isn't much you can say in the elections, since there's nobody for whom you're calling for a vote. And sure, you say that whoever wins the workers must defend their organisations, rely on themselves, these guys aren't our friends and will attack us, etc etc.

But it would have been, it seems to me, far better for the WCPI, say, to have stood candidates - on an anti-sectarian programme, calling for basic economic demands, too - rather than simply denounce the whole thing as a sham. (You could stand candidates and *still* denounce it as a sham, for that matter). I suspect they didn't because they thought their votes would be derisory. But whether or not that is a legitimate calculation is a secondary matter to what attitude you take the holding of elections.

Millions of Iraqis voted. Despite death threats. Many of them, for sure, have been horribly disillusioned by the behaviour of the various politicians, their failure to get their act together, and so on. But I'm not sure that's not itself quite a bad thing: a society-wide attitude of cynicism towards democracy is not a bulwark against fascism.

I don't think the elections were comparable to the election of Hitler. This, I think, is where the dispute between us started last year, or whenever it was. I don't think Sistani is quite the same as Khomeini, let alone Hitler; and I thought that to see the election of the government as in effect the victory of fascism was wrong. I still do. I think there are important lessons from both Germany and Iran; but neither is the right paradigm for the situation since the elections.

There is a real problem that the government has no real authority at all, that real power lies in the hands of militias. This is one of the factors stoking the civil war; and the weaker the central government is, the worse that gets. The labour movement's only answer to that is to strengthen itself, fight sectarianism, etc - and so the oil workers' strike which began this thread is an immensely hopeful, positive step, even if it's a very small one. And I guess on that level, Arthur, there's no difference between us.

Of course Sistani makes cynical-politician calculations; and sure, the knowledge that he will be the power behind a Shia-majority parliament will lubricate his happiness with democracy.

But the occupation authorities didn't want to have elections. In fact they wanted a system which would give power to tribal and religious leaders - without proper elections - and in opposition to that Sistani called huge demonstrations demanding proper elections with one person, one vote. Whatever Sistani's calculations for it, the mass popular mood in its favour - which is what forced the occupation to hold elections - was, it seems to me, a good thing.

Similarly with outflanking Muqtada in Najaf. Sure, Sistani wanted to outflank Muqtada, etc etc. But that thousands responded to his call reflected a deep seated desire not to see Iraq plunge into the catastrophe Muqtada was bringing it to. Again, basically, I think, a good thing.

Sistani's role - measured in social forces, if you like, rather than his own calculations - I think has been, relatively, positive. He is a reactionary cleric, of course. But even on that scale, he's a relative moderate, compared to Sciri or the Sadrists. Sistani, for instance, doesn't have a militia to do his bidding. I'm not taking him at his word about anything. And I'm not disputing that Iraq is moving in a tragic direction. But the tragedy hasn't happened yet - or it's not finished, it's not over. There is still some reason - just - for hope.

Finally - sorry, I meant to be brief - I think there is a big general question about elections in a place where islamists are strong. Take Egypt. It's widely believed the Muslim Brotherhood would win proper elections. Should we therefore oppose them? It seems to me the workers' movement, and socialists, can't possibly hope to grow if they take that approach. In principle you could call for a general strike in the event of a Brotherhood victory, but I think if the workers' movement was strong enough to bring down a new Brotherhood government, they could bring down Mubarak...

The same basic problem arises, of course, with regard to Hamas. The fact is, they won the elections.

The general lesson of Algeria, I think, is that - whatever the labour movement could or should have done at the time of the elections - it would have been better to let FIS form a government and play out its considerable contradictions than to cancel the elections and plunge the country into a very bloody civil war. Maybe there would have been a civil war anyway. I think, though, probably not.

This is a big discussion. I'll leave it with one point, which is partly what our argument is about. There are Islamists and Islamists. The Turkish government is Islamist, but to deduce from this fact that it's victory was the same as Khomeini's would have been wrong. I don't think a Brotherhood victory in Egypt would be, either. And that has relevance to this discussion about Iraq.

Actually, no Lenin's point against Kautsky was not that there was a better form of democracy available - Soviet Democracy. He was arguing against Kautsky's fetishisation of "democracy" as a pure category. Don't forget that between April and October Lenin had got the Bolsheviks to drop the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" twice because it would have meant handing power over to the compromise parties who had already in the Provisional Government handed power over to the bougreoisie, who in turn had handed it back to the aristocracy. During those periods Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks base themselves instead on the factory committees where they had a majority. The Bolsheviks would have done the same thing had the Congress of Soviets decided not to take the power the Bolsheviks had already secured through the insurrection. In short Lenin was a revolutionary for whom democracy was merely a tool to be used to advance the position of the working class. That was why he was happy to exclude the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie from that democracy if needed not as a matter of principle but as a matter of tactics i.e. in some countries/situations the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie might be allowed to participate.

As far as the reasons the "resistance" groups have for opposing democracy I couldn't give a shit really. They can argue their own case I'm certainly not going to. I am only interested in puting forward the case as to why workers should not have been drawn into the charade of elections whose only purpose under the circumstances was to hand over state power to a bunch of clerical fascists, restrained only by the immediate interests of the occupation that stand above them for now pulling the strings, and who when the time is right will use the cover and legitimacy of state power to crush the workers and any other democratic forces within Iraq, just as Hitler did in Germany, Mussolini did in Italy, and Khomeini did in Iran.

Arthur Bough