Workers' Liberty

Why is the categorisation of the nation critical?
It is quite clear from Lenin's quote, that the key distinguishing characteristic that determines our support for a nation in a war is whether or not it is oppressed.
1. If Britain was an oppressor nation, and the Falklanders wanted to remain part of Britain, it was not possible to support the Falklanders "right of self determination" in the Malvinas conflict, as the exercise of that right was identical with support for an oppressor nation.
The only outstanding this is was Argentina an oppressor nation? i.e. an imperialist nation. Clearly not on the basis of an assessment of its economy, the only decisive criterion for a Marxist.
So if the exercise of the Falkland islanders "self determination" was effectively support for an oppressor "Great Power" Britain - and Argentina was oppressed, Socialists had to support Argentina in the Malvinas war. Or be chauvinist. Simple as that.
2. Again if the US/UK are oppressor nations and the Iraqi's are an oppressed nation, clearly socialists must support the Iraqi's "right to self determination" or be categorised as chauvinists.
As the AWL not only refuse to support the Iraqi's but actually support the continued occupation of Iraq by UK/US troops - then the AWL are something worse than chauvinist.

3. Israel is an oppressor nation, the Palestinians are oppressed, clearly every socialist should support the Palestinian right of self determination, the AWL not only refuse to support the Palestinian right to self determination, but support the rights of the oppressor Israelis.
Again according to Lenin's categorisation, you are something worse than chauvinists.

In every instance it is revealed that the AWL's denegration of anti-imperialism as "kitsch" "silly", etc. is simply a feeble diversion from their chauvinist pro-imperialism.

Why would PR (or anyone?) want to debate a load of pro-imperialist chauvinists? Really what is there to discuss?

Bill,

If you don't want to debate the AWL, what are doing here?

Actually I've seen Bill do his stuff for Workers Power on Ireland vs the AWL and believe me, he's made the right choice to decline.

> In what sense is Britain an oppressed nation?

Where did anyone claim it was?

> Yet,the AWL are neutral between Britain and Argentina, when any objective assessment of the relationship between Argentina and imperialism, would conclude that Argentina is an imperialised nation, dominated and oppressed by imperialism.

I don't know what "imperialised" means? Could you explain? "Dominated and oppressed by imperialism" is pretty vague. Do you mean Argentina was denied its national rights? In what sense? By who? And when you say "relationship between Argentina and imperialism" what do you mean? British imperialism?

Clive describes what you seem to be trying to do in terms of blurring concepts pretty well.

Part of the problem seems to be that you think any nation not near the top of the hierarchy of capitalist states is a semi-colony. So eg India is a semi-colony, Iran is a semi-colony, Argentina is a semi-colony. Brazil? But clearly this is just nonsense.

> In what sense are the USA and UK oppressed nations? Yet the AWL refuse to call for the withdrawal of occupying forces from Iraq.

Where did we ever say that the US and UK were oppressed nations?

We don't raise a demand whose immediate consequences would be a disaster for the Iraqi working class, that's true. We pose our opposition to the occupation in a particular way.

> And if Iraq isn't an oppressed nation, I don't know what is.

We're for Iraq's national rights, against the occupation etc. But there are a number of factors at play in Iraq. The denial of Iraqi national rights isn't the only one. Given the sectarian civil war going on, balancing the different slogans is quite difficult.

> Maybe that's the reason you don't see the AWL on troops out demos.

Yes, I'd noticed that was the new Permanent Revolution line. Regardless of whether you saw us, but we were there. In fact, I remember clear talking to one of your comrades, Dan, on the last big Stop the War demo. We were there to show opposition to US/UK imperialism in Iraq, even though we pose it differently from many other demonstrators.

> They disagree with the essential demand of the movement.

It's not clear to me that most people who demonstrate are saying "Out now"! as opposed to general opposition to what the US and UK are doing in Iraq.

> In fact I would hope that they wouldn't attend anti-war protests, given that they support the occupation.

Except that we don't.

> And of course you support the oppressor nation of Israel above the rights of the Palestinians.

No, we agree Israel is an oppressor nation which is why we call for it to get out of the occupied territories, stop oppressing the Palestinians etc, let them form an independent state. Your comment is just gibberish.

Sacha Ismail

Dear comrades from Permanent Revolution,

Further to these discussions, we would like to formally invite you to debate these issues at a session of our Ideas for Freedom event (30 June-1 July). The exact title and format of the meeting are up for discussion, but the basic themes would be the revolutionary left's understanding of what "imperialism" and "anti-imperialism" mean.

When we asked Workers Power to debate in the past, they invariably shied away from the fight. We hope that you will not do so. Since you are evidently keen to debate us online, you will surely agree on the usefulness of a properly organised public debate?

Sacha Ismail
On behalf of the AWL

Arthur, what is the point of all the insults?
Where does 'kitcsh', 'idiot' , 'inability to understand' get us?
There's no point at all.

You say we should start from a concrete assesment of reality not mantras- couldn't agree more.

In much of the world the imperialised world or semi-colonies ('the third world' or 'developing countries') the working class is dominated by the local bourgeois acting on behalf of the ruling class from US, Britain, France, Germany etc.imperialist nations ('the West', 'the developed world').

That means that the stuggle for working class emancipation in those countries will immediately come up against the arms and almost immediately the armies of imperialism. That is why in those countries we must stand for the military defeat of imperialism and organise here for all action that hastens that end- a direcxt action mass movement and movement in the trade unions to build strike action, blockades and refusal to handle/ transport armaments.

In Palestine it means supporting the Palestinian working class democratic rights not just in West Bank and the occupied territories but throughout 'Israel' supporting the right of immigration and armed resistance to Israeli and settler agression. We should be for maximum unity with the Jewish working class who recognise and support these things whilst recognising that the main support is likely to come from the wider Arab working class. Of course the working class should be for complete political and social equality between Jew and Arab (and other ethnic groups such as Ethiopian, Fillipino, Rumanian and other migrant workers in the region)

In Iraq it means arguing for the working class to come to the fore of the resistance movement, supporting workers in struggle such as the Basra oil workers and fighting here for troops out now and solidarity in the British trade union movement with these objectives.

In Argentina it meant being for the military defeat of imperialism. Actually this case which started tthis debate clearly shows that the victory of 'our' bourgeois led directly to the major defeats on the working class from the defeat of the miners.

Finally, on debate with the AWL- I see no problem with debates such as this online etc. However, in terms of priorities in the working class movement here we should be both for building rank and file actions in workplaces and communities that strengthen the working class- unity in action (if the awl join or are active in such campaigns then good) and re-elaborating socialist theory - I'm afraid I don't see specially seeking out debate with the awl (pleasant though it is) as a major route forward to this goal. However, where it should arise I'm all for it. And if there is a wider debate on the left bringing in all sorts of currents including ourselves and the awl as part of a movement committed to action as well as theoretical reformulation then again excellent.

According to Arthur among other things "there is nothing in Lenin that asserts that socialists MUST support the right to self-determination."
Quite simply Arthur is wrong - according to Lenin socialists must support the right of oppressed nations to self determination.
Therefore the question comes back to the original starting point.
In each instance we need to ask whether the nation we support is an oppressor or an oppressed nation. That is the essential criteria of our support.
The AWL have a similar method but with the opposite result - rather than support the oppressed - they always support the oppressor. That's why the AWL are a pro-imperialist chauvinist group.

Arthur, you say using the term 'semi-colony' is a mantra. Actually it's not but it is a technical term not in common use which is why, if you read what I wrote, I also used neo-colony 'Third world' and 'developing world' the last two though are inadequate particularly the last as it obscures the way in which capitalism forcbly under-develops.

You ignore the lived experience of hundreds of millions of workers and small farmers in the underdevloped world. You ask:

"What is a semi-colony? Is it like being half pregnant? In what way was the Argentine local bouregoisie acting on behalf of Britain??? If they were then surely the British ruloing class would have welcomed them invading the Falklands wouldn’t they. Haven’t you put yourself in a clear logical contradiction. The fact is that very few states in the world have comprador bouregoisies that act on behalf of some foreign imperialist power. Some, the more undeveloped do, but the majority of states in the world, particularly those with developed economies such as that of Argentine do not fall into that category. Nor do most of the states in the Middle East. The local ruling class does not exploit its working class on behalf of foreign Capital, it exploits its working class on behalf of itself. That is why socialists should oppose them rather than attempt to form Popular Fronts with them."

Basically, the bourgeois anywhere tries to maximise profits, itw own self-interest. If it can it will do so at the expense of anyone else, primarily the workers it exploits but will certainly act in its own interests not on the instructions of others.

Of course the local bourgeois don't directly follow orders for the sake of it.So how does my argument add up?

Because international trade agreements enforced at gunpoint mean that through Stuctural Adjustment Programs, through debt relief, through aid from the IMF and World Bank, through having their economies forcibly opened to mulitnationals sometimes with accompanying armies and miltia (e.g. Congo) it becomes in th eimmediate self-interest of the local bourgeois to comly. If they don't there's always gunboat diplomacy- assasinations, economic sanctions, funding and arming of militia and rebel armies, aerial bombardment and direct invasion. This system is pretty monolithic and most of the time the threats work- the West turns a blind eye as workers' organisations are smashed as long as its interests are served-but on occassions of course military force is used.

We don't at all advocate a 'popular front' with the bourgeois but the independent action of the working class against imperialism which may at times include temporary military alliances with bourgeoisw or petit-bourgeois forces fighting imperialism.

So in Iraq we recognise that Sadr is a threat so that is why the working class must come to the fore of the resistance to win workers and small farmers away from the reactionary forces and be armed against them. Why don't you read our piece on Iran on the front page of the website or just do a simple search?

The truth is always concrete- there may be times, the Taliban for example, where even a temporary military alliance is not possible.

But read what we write - in no way should the reactionary politics of Hisbullah etc be supported but independent working class action against imperialism.

You ask for specific examples:
“That means that the stuggle for working class emancipation in those countries will immediately come up against the arms and almost immediately the armies of imperialism. That is why in those countries we must stand for the military defeat of imperialism and organise here for all action that hastens that end- a direcxt action mass movement and movement in the trade unions to build strike action, blockades and refusal to handle/ transport armaments.”

Could you give some examples. In Chile its true the CIA helped the coup against Allende, but by and large it was the forces of the Chilean state that suppressed the working class."

Examples? The DR Congo - over 100 British multinationals with their won militia in many cases, Ethiopia- the strikes and protests last year put down by soldiers firing from British donated vehicles, Venezuala the failed coup immeidately recognised by the US, sierra Leone, Britain invading a few years back, Chad a whole village massacred by French forces last month: corrupt dictatorships all over the world bank-rolled and feted by governments and companies from US, Britain, France, Germany.

It's not a big conspiracy- it is the global operation of the capitlaist market. It requires a gloabl working class response- support armed resistance and organsiation by the working class, for the military defeat of imperialism. It is on that that you and the AWL are on the wrong side- because sitting on the fence and refusing to actively campaign for and organsie for the military defeat of imperailism is playing into their hands and is part of a rightward trend in the working class and tremendously damaging.

You have begun to see the problems with the AWL on Impeiralism. There are good militants on bread and butter issues in the AWL but they are seriously misled and reactionary in refusing to stand with workers in the underdeveloped world (call it what you will) against imperialism.

Of course the AWL 'stands with workers in the underdeveloped world' against imperialism - in the struggle for equality, social justice, trade union rights, and so on - and, of course, beyond that in the struggle for socialist - that is, international - revolution. What we do *not* stand with is the self-aggrandising posturing of local bourgeoisies - like military adventures to impose their will on small groups of people who don't speak the same language, etc - or nationalist mythologies they tell their workers to obscure the truth of the international system.

'Argentina' - as some classless entity - is not 'oppressed by imperialism.' Fighting for 'independence' for Argentina is pure mystification. Workers' rights, not to mention socialism, require a struggle against the international social and economic system, not 'independence'. 'Indpendence' can only mean, in practice, some sort of disconnection from the world economy (Argentina's had enough of that!). And *no* kind of independence is meaningfully expressed by the military seizure of islands in the middle of the sea where no Argentines even live.

The term 'semi-colony' (about which there has been enormous, critical Marxist literature since at least the late 1970s) is a confusing one in this context. There are meaningful contexts - for one example, Egypt from the 1930s to the fall of the monarchy, when it was a formally independent country with a huge - direct - amount of control from Britain.

But to define a country as a semi-colony by virtue only of the relative weakness of its bourgeois state and capital to other, bigger, states and capitals, is to collapse Marxist categories into populist ones. Your operational theory is 'dependency theory', developed by bourgeois economists to explain Latin American subordination to US capital, and then adopted by a certain type of radical anti-imperialist in the 1960s.

Arthur, you seem to be denying that imperialism meaningfully exists. Is this what is behind your views?

But imperialism is first and foremost not to do with military hardware- it is to do with the scarcity of capital, the imposition of favourable terms for foreign capitalist investment, the ripping up of tariffs, the prevention of the formation of cartels- in short the imposition of the market on the underdeveloped world. This is then backed up by military intervention- from blockades, assasinations, funding of one side of the bourgeois, right through to aerial bombardment and miltary invasion.

You seem very dismissive of my examples- for example-
"Ethiopia – troops firing from British donated vehicles, come on please. "

What do you mean 'please'? That this is too small an example to consider? Yes it's a detail- a detail chosen as an evocative one by an Ethiopian Teachers' Association activist we interview in our current magazine. Imperialism in Ethiopia is to do with the way that there is comparitively very little domestic capital in Ethiopia, with coffee prices collapsing, and what capital there is is completely tied into to the world market. The government is largely dependant on aid, and meanwhile the fact that Britain and the US have supplied help, material and funds to the Meles regime- which recently sent Ethiopian soldiers to Somalia- is far from irrelevant. The ETA correspondant sees Ethiopia as being in effect a cleint state of the US.

In this context firing on demonstrators and trade unionists with US and British support and even hardware is not something to be met with your dismissive 'please' as if this is utterly irrelevant.

I lived in Ethiopia for two years and the majority of people I came into contact with from fellow workers to students ad small farmers understood imperialism- the majority for example supporting Iraq against the US.

When we as communists seek to intervene in the class struggle we must recognise that the military defeat of the imperialist troops is a good thing- in the semicolonies or underdeveloped world that would mean arms to the workers who or may not enter into a tactical alliance with anti-imperialist bourgeois or petit-bourgeois forces (as you acknowledge it';s a tactcal question)but to withdraw from the antiwar movement here is damaging and therefore it is not a 'lie' to say that the AWL is a rightward and damaging trend in the labour movement on these issues (actually it's an opinion so could hardly be a'lie'- that just seems designed to malign- but it is an opinion based on reasons).

Clive you may or may not be right about the term underdeveloped coming from dependency theory and you may also be right it is a flawed theory. I don't know the theory- but I was using it simply in terms of meaning that capitalism now by imposing terms of trade favourable to the multinationals operating out of the industrialised countries and backed up by the military might of those countries does in fact underdevelop large parts of the world.

As for Argentina- a miltary defeat for Britain and a victory for Argentina would have damaged British imperialism and the ruling class in Britain at the time. Similarly in Iraq now- the working class and small farmers are not served at all by the US-led occupation and puppet government and therefore they should organise and fight against the occupation and if class conscious workers and communists could come to the fore they could both lead Iraqi workers and small farmers away from the poisonous reaction of the petit-bourgeois (clothed in the garb of radical islam) and organise and arm themselves against clerical reaction.
This from over here though can only be sketchy- we should seek to find out more and lend practical assistance e.g. to Basra oil workers.

However, what is concrete and definite is the AWL's refusal to even participate in the antiwar movement and the blocking of motions calling for it- this is in practice pro-imperialist whatever your subjective intentions.

I have criticised Trotskyist organisations for a petty bourgeois deviation. The intention is not to use that as an insult, but to do so on the same historical materialist grounds that Marx, Lenin and Trotsky themselves did so.

Trotskyism and Petit-Bourgeois Deviations

Trotsky as a Marxist and historical materialist was keen to analyse the politics of various tendencies as flowing from material conditions, from the sociological make-up of the organisation. He was aware of this problem for the Fourth International, and recognised the need for Trotskyist organisations to immerse themselves in the workers movement, proposing measures such as that members from petit-bourgeois backgrounds such as students should only have a provisional membership, that such members had to be given the task of working in and recruiting workers within a given period, or else be reduced to a provisional membership.

In the case of various tendencies, most notably of course his criticism of the Burnham-Shachtman group he defined clearly on the basis of their method, social composition, and politics the petit-bourgeois nature of these groups – See his attack on Shachtman for example in “A Petty Bourgeois Deviation in the Socialist Workers Party”.

But this tendency goes far deeper. It goes back to the very beginning and nature of Trotskyism, and its roots in Leninism. Under the social pressures created by the problems after the Russian Revolution Leninism split in two on the one hand Trotskyism, on the other Stalinism. But the nature of this split is not what it is often portrayed in Trotskyist mythology. A clue is given by Trotsky himself. In “The Comintern and the GPU” (Writings 1939-40 p350) Trotsky himself admits that it was to him that the Soviet bureaucracy first looked as their saviour not Stalin. There were very good sociological and political reasons why they should do so, and at first they must have thought that they would be right.

Critique 2 published in 1973 on the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of the 46 carried an article by David Law entitled “The left Opposition in 1923”. Law was Lecturer in Soviet History at Keele University when I was there. He could not be described as a Stalinophile, indeed contributing to Critique that almost goes without saying. The article gives an account of how the Opposition developed during that time. As Law points out although the Declaration of the 46 brought together supporters of Trotsky and members of the former Democratic centralist opposition, Trotsky himself did not sign it. Trotsky did write to the Central Committee raising concerns, but at this time his emphasis was on trying to achieve a compromise with Stalin, and the leadership.

Trotskyist mythology presents the history effectively being one of the rise of the bureaucracy with Stalin as its titular head, with the Left Opposition being the representative of the rank and file workers in the Party, but as law points out this was not the case. Not only do we have Trotsky’s own testimony above about how things first stacked up, but the actual votes within Party organisations presented by Law give a different picture from the usual story.

“Besides considerable strength in Moscow, perhaps even an actual majority, the Opposition had managed to capture Party organisations in Ryazan, Penza, Kaluga, Simbirsk and Chelyabinsk. The Opposition’s strength in these provincial towns was plausibly attributed to there being, in those centres, a predominance of Party officials transferred as a reprisal for their dissident opinions. In Moscow the strength of the Opposition lay in the State administration (particularly in economic bodies), and student cells. The opposition was comparatively weak amongst the working class. No doubt this was partly a result of the past record of various members of the Opposition on questions of industrial management, and also partly because questions of immediate working class interest, such as wages, were not given any prominence. Whatever the reasons, in Moscow, at a time when it was gaining majorities among the students, the Opposition could only win 67 out of 346 cells of industrial workers.” (p47)

What Law has in mind here in particular is probably Trotsky’s position. The most advanced workers in Russia were the railway workers, but even after the Revolution it was the Mensheviks that maintained a majority amongst them, not the Bolsheviks. In order to get round this problem Trotsky had introduced the militarization of labour into the railways, and he was to argue for a similar militarization of labour in the rest of industry. He argued that the Trade Unions needed to be incorporated in order to act as a conduit for State, and therefore Bolshevik policy and ideas into the working class, and this led to a fairly fierce debate with Lenin who argued against Trotsky’s position, and for the need to maintain the independence of the Trade Unions precisely because of the danger of bureaucratism. It is then perhaps, no wonder, that the bureaucratic strata, and state officials saw initially in Trotsky their natural ally.

Its true as Law points out that the workers in the Party were newly recruited, and perhaps had no real understanding of the issues – though such a view is somewhat elitist, and we have no grounds for believing that – but such was the problem with the tradition of Bolshevism in respect of democracy. Lenin himself had relied on the mass of new workers that joined the Party in 1917 to win a majority for his April Theses, with the majority of the Old Bolsheviks opposing him. The same attitude was taken in respect of democracy in a wider context. At several times when Lenin believed the Bolsheviks could not win a majority in the Soviets he argued that the Bolsheviks should simply by-pass the Soviets and base themselves on the Factory Committees where they did have a majority, as Trotsky points out in his “History of the Russian Revolution”. If you are going to have such an approach to democracy whereby you pick and choose what is and what isn’t democratic to suit your own purpose based on where at any one time you have a majority, then such things are bound to happen.

But this division of Leninism into Stalinism and Trotskyism saw this split not just in Russia. On the one hand Trotskyism developed as a more healthy, ideologically pure form of Leninism, but was largely a trend composed of people that were concerned with the niceties of this ideological debate, i.e. student and petty-bourgeois intellectuals, whereas Stalinism developed largely as a tendency still based on the working class, but which because of the nature of the Soviet bureaucracy was forced to mangle Marxism in order to justify its actions, but it was precisely because it rested and depended upon that working class base that it had to do that. Had it been a new class as the Bureaucratic Collectivists and State Capitalists argue, it would have had no need to do that, it would have developed its own ideology with no need to seek acceptance for it within the working class, just as had it been a new class its privileges and wealth would have been automatically reproduced through the functioning of the economic system, rather than relying upon special treatment, the use of special shops etc.

It is the need to remain within the confines of Leninism, which simply reproduces this division. Trotsky himself largely avoided the problem because he was aware of it, and because his whole political life had been one where he had been immersed in the workers movement, and remained rooted in it. That was probably why he was so aware of the problem, and made the proposals he did, why he came down so hard on the petit-bourgeois deviationists such as Shachtman and Burnham, but Shachtman and Burnham really just were advanced guards for the future direction of Trotskyism if it could not overcome its isolation from the working class, and thereby change its sociological composition. But almost by definition the requirement to remain attached to the Leninist concept of building a revolutionary party precluded such a development.

In the end Trotskyism as much as Stalinism was an historical dead-end, and it is openly by Marxists recognising the roots of that in Leninism that the Marxist movement can get back on track.

Arthur Bough

For all of Arthur's thousands of words, there remains an induitable truth, all this writing is simply a mask for chauvinism.
In every instance without exception he supports the oppressors over the oppressed.
He supports Israel over the Palestinians - and then adds the insult that after the Palestinians have had their land stolen - they are now a landless "non-historic" people. Talk about blame the victims.
He supports the Falkland Islander British over the Argentinians - and then tries to pretend that Argentina is an imperialist power.
He supports the British/US occupation over the Iraqis.

That's why Arthur is a pro-imperialist.

I can reply to your piece here in very few words. "Its bollocks."

1. I support the right of the Palestinians not to be oppressed by Israel or anyone else, including the reactionaries of Hamas that apprently you support.

2.Show us where the Falkland Islanders oppressed the Argentinians.

3.I call for Troops Out of Iraq and the whole of the Middle East Now. Unlike you I call on the working class to bring that about not some bunch of reactionary clerical-fascists who will be a worse hangman for the working class even than imperialsm.

If you are going to lie about someone's position, at least try to do it intelligently.

Arthur Bough

Arthur you don't even seem to try to read what I wrote- I clearly wrote relative weakness of domestic capital which is perfectly consistent with the presences of surplus capital from the imperialist heartlands.

On th resistance in Iraq we have claerly said from the start we advocate the working class coming to the fore of the movement- arming the working class to defeat imnperialism and to defeat the local bourgeois. Do we though support Iraqis who whatever their politics fight directly against the US or British occupation forces? Yes we do- directly against imperialism (not in sectarian killings or anything else that plays into the hands of imperialism and is anti-working class). The question is do you?

Here do we support a militant direct action antiwar movement to organise in the workplaces and on the streets, to organise mass protests, strikes etc in order to directly impede the imperialist war effort? Yes. Arthur claims he also calls for Troops Out of Iraq and the whole of the Middle East (presumably he means imperialist troops or US/British). Good. He also claims the AWL are in the antiwar movement. I don't know Arthur- may be he does take an active part in his local antiwar group. I do know the AWL- they don't play any role in the antiwar movement in Manchester and their position on the war means they don't call for troops out now or mobilise around that. If any member of the AWL can point to an article where they do call for that then fine we'll debate it from there.

Go back a few posts, and we find this key thought:

"The only outstanding [issue?] is was Argentina an oppressor nation? i.e. an imperialist nation. Clearly not on the basis of an assessment of its economy, the only decisive criterion for a Marxist".

So from some measure of Argentina's economy - GNP per head, percentage of foreign ownership, size of foreign debt, I don't know - it follows that Argentina is an "oppressed nation" and therefore in any conflict with Britain, about anything, we must positively support Argentina...?

How was the settler community of Argentina oppressed by another settler community of different European origins living on small islands about two thousand miles away from Argentina's main population centres? In Galtieri's conquest of the Falklands, wasn't the actual "oppressed" community the islanders subjected to foreign conquest? No need to puzzle about that. Just get out the yearbooks of economic statistics, and the case is proven!

On such measures, Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire were not imperialist. Trotsky was dead wrong when he described Serbia's conquest of Kosova in 1913 as "Serbian imperialism". When Trotsky, on the eve of World War 2, described Czechoslovakia as "imperialist" because of the subject nationalities within its borders, he was in error in not instead consulting its yearbook of economic statistics. Etc.

Obviously, all other things being equal, richer nations are more likely to be able to dominate and conquer than poorer nations. But you can't read off politics directly from economic statistics.

Especially not in the post-colonial era. Since 1975 the rich countries of North America and western Europe have had no colonies beyond insignificant specks. They have the clout and the confidence to exert their world power through economic mechanisms, backed up (mostly in the case of the USA) by episodic military actions.

Weaker powers do not. They are more likely to resort to attempts at outright colonial-type conquest: Serbia in Kosova; Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya; Saddam's Iraq in Iran, Kurdistan, and Kuwait, etc.

The "Marxism means you take everything from the economic statistics" approach here means that you see all these drives for colonial-type conquest as... anti-imperialism, provided only that the would-be paleo-imperialist (or call it what you will) comes into conflict with the USA.

Anti-imperialism comes to mean support for primitive imperialism against more sophisticated imperialism (covered up, of course, by wild talk about those like AWL who stand against all imperialism being "pro-imperialist").

Martin Thomas

If Galtieri had won the Falklands war, it would have been a blow to Thatcher? Undoubtedly.

However, since 1945 the British state has survived several defeats in struggles to keep territory. Defeat in the Falklands war would not have shattered the state. At most it would have led to Thatcher losing the next general election (and even that is not certain).

A Labour, or Labour/ Liberal/ SDP coalition, government in 1983 would have allowed some respite to the British labour movement? Yes. But you have to be very optimistic about the Labour Party to suppose that it would have fundamentally changed the whole pattern of development in Britain - that the Labour, or Labour/ Liberal/ SDP government, would have been something radically different from France's SP administrations of the 1980s, or Australia's Labor governments of 1983-96.

About Argentina, we do not have to speculate about the consequences of defeat. They were highly positive. The military dictatorship fell, and remains fallen.

Best, of course, if we could have managed it, the defeat of both sides by working-class uprisings. But on what other than narrow British-nationalist criteria do the possible positive results for the British working class from Thatcher losing outweigh the positive results for the Argentine working class of Galtieri losing so much that we should have positively favoured Galtieri's victory?

Martin Thomas

Do I understand correctly that the Permanent Revolution group is quite happy to debate such issues with us online, but not "live" and face-to-face? They must know that "live", face-to-face debates dig deeper: I don't suppose they have scrapped all their own internal face-to-face meetings in favour of exchanges over the Internet. So, comrades, why is it that you're happy with a superficial debate but shy away from face-to-face exchanges?

Martin Thomas

Here, re-posted for convenience, is our actual 1982 resolution on the South Atlantic war (from www.workersliberty.org/node/8068.) Judge for yourself whether it is "pro-imperialist"!

Class politics versus bloc politics

Resolution for the Workers’ Socialist League (WSL, a forerunner of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty), 1982, later sections reworked in 1984

1. Marxism and war
A Marxist attitude to a war must start from an assessment of which classes are waging the war and for what objectives. On the basis of that assessment we determine our line not as supervisors of the historic process but as militant advocates of class struggle.
Where a war, even under bourgeois leadership, is about an issue like self-determination for an oppressed nation — an issue which is a necessary part of the liberation struggle of the working class — the working class should support the war while maintaining complete independence and fighting to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
Where a war between bourgeoisies has no progressive content on either side, we must fight for the defeat of both sides — i.e., against the war and for the defeat of both bourgeoisies by working class action.
In all cases we fight for working class fraternisation. We do not casually disrupt the international unity of the working class, setting one national section to slaughter another out of deference to the right of the bourgeoisie to rule as it likes. Where a war has a progressive content, we fight for working class unity on the basis of support for the progressive demands of the progressive side.
As the 1920 Theses of the Comintern on the National and Colonial Question, a basic document of our movement, put it: “...the entire policy of the Communist International on the national and colonial question must be based primarily on bringing together the proletariat and working classes of all nations and countries for the common revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the landowners and the bourgeoisie. For only such united action will ensure victory over capitalism, without which it is impossible to abolish national oppression and inequality of rights.”

2. Our enemy is at home
Britain’s war over the Falklands/Malvinas was designed only to preserve a relic of empire and shore up the prestige of British imperialism. A defeatist stand towards Britain’s war was therefore the no. 1 campaigning priority for Marxists in Britain.
Instead of assisting the Tories in their crisis by “patriotic” support for the government, the British labour movement should have used the crisis to hasten Thatcher’s overthrow in the interests of the working class, and given all material and political support to the Argentine workers in the struggle for democratic and trade union rights and for the establishment of a genuine anti-imperialist workers’ government in Argentina.
We repudiate any legitimacy of British territorial claims in the Falklands or any legitimacy in related British claims to resources in Antarctica.

3. Argentina’s war aims
But the pretext on which the Argentine junta embarked upon the invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas was equally contrived. In taking its action, the junta acted not against imperialism, but in a populist ploy designed to divert and unite the Argentine masses behind the Generals’ own repressive rule.
In doing so the Argentine dictators trampled upon the rights of the Falkland inhabitants, who in themselves oppress and threaten no-one and should have the right to decide their own future. Such action did nothing to build anti-imperialist consciousness in the Argentine working class, but rather sought to generate chauvinism and “national unity”. We did not support this action, and called for the withdrawal of Argentine troops.
In its seizure of the Falklands/Malvinas, designed to boost its position at home and in the region, the Argentine regime miscalculated about the British reaction, and the US response to the British reaction.
This miscalculation could not however make the seizure, or the war to maintain the seizure, progressive.
Galtieri’s invasion did not liberate anyone from colonialism or imperialism. It did not lessen the burden of imperialist exploitation, or improve the conditions for the fight against it, for a single Argentine worker.
It embroiled the Argentine people in a war in which they could hope to win nothing of significance, a disastrous war in a false and reactionary cause.

4. Reactionary on both sides
On both sides therefore the war was reactionary. The job of Marxists in both Britain and Argentina was to oppose the war, to counterpose international working-class unity, to continue the class struggle for the overthrow of both the Tories and the military regime.

5. Self-determination for Falklanders
Support for the right of the Falkland Islanders — a distinct historical, ethnic, linguistic, economic and geographic community 400 miles from Argentina — to determine their own future is axiomatic for Leninists in the given conditions, where that community exploited no other community, threatened no other community, and was not used as, or likely to be used as, a base for imperialist control of another community.
The Falklanders’ right to self-determination cannot be invalidated by their desire to adhere to the now-imperialist state that spawned the Falklands community. That desire to adhere to Britain would invalidate their right to self-determination only if adherence had direct imperialist/colonialist consequences for Argentina or some other country, whose right to resist those consequences would (because of their size, etc.) outweigh the rights of the islanders. Only then would the “pro-imperialist” views of the islanders lead to them playing an imperialist role. Nothing like that was actually involved. The agency for imperialist domination in Argentina is the Argentine state, not the islands or any base on the islands.
To use a definition of the islanders as “pro-imperialist” against their right to self-determination is to introduce inappropriate political categories and criteria, different from those which properly apply. The Falkland Islanders are British. That is what determines their attitudes, not any pro-imperialist views they may have. The WSL is not in favour of the subjugation of a population because it has such views, or because of their origins. The ethnic tidying-up of the globe is no part of the international socialist revolution.
Support for the Falklanders’ rights plainly does not necessarily mean support for military action to enforce those rights. In the actual situation, with Britain an imperialist power, we rejected and opposed the British military action. We look to the international working class, and especially the Argentine labour movement, to secure the Falklanders’ rights.
Such a consistent democratic policy is the only basis for international working class unity, and specifically for the unity of the British and Argentine working class (which had to be our central concern) in this dispute.

6. “Against Britain” does not mean “for Argentina”
The WSL conducted itself as an internationalist and revolutionary proletarian organisation during the British/Argentine war. We raised a variant of the famous slogan of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, “The enemy is at home”, and called on the working class to actively hinder the British ruling class’s prosecution of the war by industrial action. We conducted internationalist working class propaganda against the social-chauvinist Labour leaders, while attempting to maintain a dialogue with the pacifistic Labour Left (that is, with those in the working class who listen to the Left leaders) on the question.
It is no necessary part of proletarian internationalist opposition to the war of an imperialist government to side with their opponents. Our response to the fact that it was for the British ruling class a war for authority and prestige was our defeatism; positive support for Argentina could, for communists, only be grounded in positive working-class reasons for such support.
Marxists reject the primitive rebels’ approach that puts a plus everywhere that the bourgeoisie puts a minus. We must judge events from an independent working class viewpoint.
We side with our ruling-class enemies in particular conflicts if the struggle serves our politics — e.g. in a national liberation struggle, even under the leadership of a Chiang Kai-Shek.
But in no way could the policy of the Argentine proletariat be deduced as a mere negative imprint of the policy of the British bourgeoisie.
The tendency justifies the pro-Argentine position with the view that “a victory [for Argentina] would quite likely mean the downfall of Thatcher... [And] the British have a far more important international role [than Argentina] as a primary carrier and protector of imperialism. This means that the nature of the British regime is a question of immediate international importance...” (second tendency document, p. 16); conversely, “[Argentine] withdrawal... would result in another Tory government with a massive majority... it would be an event of world significance...” (first tendency document, Workers’ Socialist Review 2 p.29).
The idea here that Argentine workers’ policy should be decided by what is worst for the British bourgeoisie — that the British revolution has priority, and the Argentine revolution should be subordinated to it — is British nationalist and utterly to be rejected as a basis for determining proletarian politics in Argentina.

7. Argentina is not a semi-colony
Argentina is far more developed than most non-imperialist countries; it is a fully bourgeois state; and it possesses political independence. It also occupies a subordinate rank within the imperialist world economy. This subordination, however, in no way gives any progressive character to the Argentine bourgeoisie.
The Argentine bourgeoisie is not a progressive force, but the major agency for imperialist domination of the Argentine working class and an assistant for imperialist domination throughout Latin America. It has moreover its own predatory ambitions. For the Argentine working class it is “the main enemy at home”. Quite apart from its foreign connections, it is the class that directly exploits them.
We reject as un-Marxist assessments of Argentina’s situation such as this:
Argentina is economically, militarily and politically dominated by imperialism — not by its own national bourgeoisie — but in particular by US interests. The whole basis of its economy is subject to the international market over which Argentina has no influence, let alone control and dominance” (second tendency document, page 2).
We reject the counterposition of the Argentine bourgeoisie to imperialism, and the measuring of Argentina’s situation by comparison with a situation where the country would escape the international market (which in a capitalist world it can never do).
Every country is more or less dominated by the world economy. No country has control over it — now not even the US colossus which was supreme after World War Two. This situation cannot be changed by war between the weaker bourgeoisies and the stronger. Not such wars, but the international workers’ revolution, can change it.
The communist answer to colonial, semi-colonial and military domination is national liberation struggle; to the domination of the weaker by the strong in the world market (as to the domination of the weak by the strong, and the pauperisation of particular regions, within capitalist nations) our answer is the proletarian revolution.
We reject the notion of an anti-imperialist united front for Argentina (a version of the bloc of classes central to Menshevism and then Stalinism, motivated on the grounds that the Argentine bourgeoisie is an oppressed class in relation to imperialism). We reject the notion that the Argentine bourgeoisie can play any progressive role either within Argentina, where it is our mortal class enemy, or against imperialism, into which it is completely integrated.
[Sections 8 and 9 omitted; section 10 abridged].

10. The theory of “enclaves”
... Today, imperialism operates overwhelmingly through economic mechanisms (backed up, of course, sometimes, by military intervention). Residual mini-colonies like the Falklands — and various other tiny British, French and Spanish colonies — have no strategic role for imperialism. They are essentially anachronistic loose ends of the period of European settler expansion over the globe.

11. Natural resources
There is no sense in which the conflict had an economic anti-imperialist dimension. British property in Argentina, not to speak of the property of other imperialist powers, was left alone during the war. The Argentine state did not even propose to take the Falkland Islands Company from Coalite.
Better Argentine claims on Antarctica from the Falklands would most likely have led to US exploitation of the Antarctic, with Argentina as a conduit. That is the concrete meaning of the subordinate position of Argentina vis-à-vis the US and imperialism.
Conversely, one of the major reasons why Britain had been trying to give the Falklands to Argentina is that a stable political settlement is a precondition for the viability of the big investments necessary for the capitalist exploitation of the area’s resources.
The exploitation would have to be joint exploitation, on one set of terms or another. The war was not about whether the resources should belong to imperialism or not.
The Argentine bourgeoisie is not counterposed to imperialism. And imperialism cannot be identified solely with Britain (conversely, anti-imperialism cannot necessarily be identified with an anti-British stance). The British-Argentine war was a war within the network of imperialism and its clients.
The Argentine regime went to war, not for anti-imperialist reasons, but to strengthen its political position at home. They did not wait to win the Falklands by negotiation because of their domestic crisis. And thus they aborted the process of reaching agreement with Britain.

12. “World balance of forces”
The Argentine working class should never subordinate its own class struggle to estimates of the “international balance of forces” between different bourgeoisies. The view that “whatever the implications of that for the Argentinian or British proletariat, we have to base our position on the implications for the international struggle against imperialism first” (second tendency document, p.7), is anti-Marxist.
The assessment according to which British victory was a major blow for imperialism is incomplete. The British bourgeoisie certainly was strengthened politically and in its prestige by victory. But these gains may well prove shallow and temporary (indeed, the continued class struggle has already proved them shallow and temporary), and the British bourgeoisie has gained nothing material — like new military strength, new spheres of influence or new possessions.
The Argentine regime, on the other hand, has certainly been weakened by defeat. The result is a blow against imperialist and capitalist control in Latin America.
Workers in each country can act as internationalists only by fighting their own bourgeoisies, not by acting as makeweights for international bloc politics. For Argentine socialists to support their rulers’ predatory war on the basis of the estimate that the British bourgeoisie’s predatory war was worse, would violate that principle.

13. Class politics vs. bloc politics
We emphatically reject the notion that the socialist working class can orientate in world politics, and particularly in relation to conflicts among politically independent capitalist states like Britain and Argentina, by constructing a view of the world in terms of two camps, modelled on the division of the world between the degenerated and deformed workers’ states and the capitalist states: “We have to determine our position according to the basic class camps, not on conjunctural events... the class camp into which Argentina fits in a war against imperialism...” (second tendency document, p.4).
Between the USSR and similar states, and the capitalist states, there is a basic historical class distinction, despite the savage anti working class rule of the totalitarian-bureaucratic elites. No such gap exists between capitalist states.
The bourgeois foreign policy of the rulers of Argentina, even when it is expressed in acts of war, can in no sense change their class camp. Even should the bourgeoisie of such a state be in alliance with a healthy workers’ state, the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie would be the central task of the proletariat in the capitalist state — a task never to be subordinated to international diplomatic, military, or balance-of-forces considerations.
This was a central teaching of the Communist International, and it was not formally repudiated even by the Stalinists until 1935. Thereafter the notion that bourgeois forces which allied with the USSR thereby crossed the historic class divide and joined the camp of progress was the ideological basis of Stalinism to legitimise policies of class betrayal and popular frontism.
We reject as un-Marxist, and brand as “international popular frontism”, the view that the Argentine bourgeoisie and their state became part of the “class camp” of the international working class because of their conflict with Britain or during their war with Britain for possession of the Falkland Islands.

14. The regime and imperialism
We reject the notion (implicit in point 7 of the September 1982 resolution [from the Thornett grouping] and explicit elsewhere) that military dictatorships in the Third World are simply the creatures of imperialism: they are strengthened when imperialism is strengthened, weakened when imperialism is weakened.
Military dictatorships are as common in Third World countries which are relatively alienated from the big capitalist powers — Libya, Algeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Syria, etc. — as in those closely linked to the big capitalist powers (Chile, El Salvador, Nigeria, etc.).
The political regime is fundamentally a product of internal class relations. Frequently, of course, imperialist powers do intervene to prop up or install dictatorships when that suits their purpose. But dictatorial regimes in the Third World are quite capable of pursuing policies hostile to the big capitalist powers without thereby becoming progressive or unleashing a progressive “process”. Iran is a clear example.

15. The politics of wishful thinking
Support for Argentina’s chauvinist war could not be justified on the basis that it could be the first stage in a development towards militant anti-imperialist struggle. Nor could the war be defined as anti-imperialist by reading an assessment backwards from the scenario of a hoped-for anti-imperialist development.
The scenarios lack the first link: a real national liberation content to the war. A Marxist policy must be based on the realities of the actual war, not on hypothetical speculations or wishful thinking about strategic outcomes.
Argentine workers had no interest in the armed occupation of the Falklands against the wishes of the population; they should have pursued the class struggle regardless of the effects of such struggle on their rulers’ ability to maintain the occupation; and it was none of their concern to protect the Argentine bourgeois state against the humiliation it would suffer from being unable to maintain the occupation. These points should have been the basis of Marxist policy in Argentina.
The tactical ways of expressing this principled position could of course be very flexible (following the method according to which Trotskyists developed the “proletarian military policy” as a tactical expression of the defeatist policy in World War Two).
It would be the job of Marxists in Argentina to seek to develop the genuine anti-imperialist elements in the confused nationalist reaction of Argentine workers, with demands such as arming of the workers, expropriation of imperialist property and seizure of the factories. While making their own views on the war clear, they should have sought to develop common class actions with workers who confusedly saw Argentina’s war as “anti-imperialist” but wanted to go further in anti-imperialism.

16. A change of line?
A change in our fundamental attitude to the war could only be justified by a change in the fundamental political content of the war — i.e., so that it was no longer a war restricted to the Falklands/Malvinas issue. If Britain’s objectives had shifted so that the war became fundamentally one about an attempt by Britain to make Argentina a colony or a semi-colony, then Marxists should have sided with Argentina’s national independence. But that did not happen. It was always very unlikely that it would happen.

17. Trotskyism and the war
The great majority of would-be Trotskyists world-wide took an Argentine nationalist position on the conflict.
The Morenists — the biggest would-be Trotskyist organisation in Argentina itself — called for national unity in the war, and demanded that the trade unions set up recruiting offices for Galtieri’s army.
They themselves summarise their position as follows: “To beat imperialism, let us strike in a united way. The war must be won. The socialists, who at no moment have hidden and will not hide their irreducible opposition to the military and bosses’ regime, are the fervent advocates of the participation in the framework of this national anti-imperialist mobilisation of all sectors, in or out of uniform, workers or bosses, on only one condition: that they should be to defeat the aggressor and to mobilise the people for that end. That is why the socialists call on the CGT, the CNT (the unions), the Multipartidaria (the bourgeois opposition), all political parties and all sectors who are in agreement to resolutely confront the aggressors, to push forward all the mobilisations and actions possible so that the Argentine people can strike with one fist and smash the aggressor.’” (From their pamphlet, Malouines, les revolutionnaires et la guerre, p. 9. See the same source for the demand for army recruiting offices.)
Politica Obrera — the second would-be Trotskyist organisation in Argentina — was more restrained, but also supported the mini-colonial war and called for an “anti-imperialist united front” (supposed to include workers and the middle class, but not the big bourgeoisie).
The SWP-USA applauded the speech of Argentine foreign minister Costa Mendes to the Non-Aligned Conference, and reprinted it.
The Mandel and Lambertist currents were more circumspect (the French and West German Mandelite organisations indeed initially took an internationalist position), but still sided with Galtieri’s war. The whole USFI press, both SWP-USA and Mandelite, carried an article on Argentina’s relation with imperialism which reproduced the crudest notions of middle-class nationalist “Third Worldism” (“Argentina — a semi-colonial economy”, by Will Reissner, Intercontinental Press, 3 May 1982).
A similar position to that we took during the war was taken — for varying reasons — only by some groups separate from the Trotskyist mainstream: Lutte Ouvrière, the SWP (Britain) and the RWP Sri Lanka; and by the non-Trotskyist, but important, Workers’ Party of Brazil.
This experience sheds further light on the politically degenerate condition of would-be Trotskyism, and the need for ideological regeneration.
The roots of the problem go back to the political crisis which shook the Trotskyist movement in the late 1940s.
In that period the Trotskyist movement declined drastically. (The French section, for example, which was central, suffered an almost complete halt in activity in summer 1948, and by 1952 was only 150 strong, probably less than one-tenth of its peak numbers.) At the same time, gigantic revolutionary events unfolded on a world scale.
Striving to understand this, the leaders of the movement essentially lost faith in the centrality of Trotskyism and the working class to revolutionary politics. In the aftermath of Tito’s surprise “break” with Stalin and populist measures designed to rally mass support against any Kremlin moves to oppose him, and in the midst of the drive to power by Mao’s Stalinist forces in China, Pablo and the Fourth International leaders increasingly looked to some “objective process” which would repeat such political developments and take them further.
The outbreak of the Korean war and the conviction that World War Three was imminent lent fuel to their fire, and the schema of the “War-Revolution” which would automatically line up the forces of Stalinism in the “camp” of the revolution made its appearance.
The independent role of the working class and Trotskyists was submerged in a conception of global “class camps” in which the Stalinist bureaucracy, petty bourgeois leaders and sections of reformism were included in the “proletarian” class camp, in which the Trotskyists merely became respectful advisers and camp followers.
Some Trotskyists took on the role of blustering denouncers of the “bad leaders” of the “Revolution” instead of advisers. But their view of the camps and the issues remained the same.
The two sides of tailist “objectivism” and sectarian arbitrariness into which Trotskyism was thus decomposed were present, in various combinations, in all the currents after 1948-50.
For all the “mainstream” currents, world politics is fundamentally not so much a story of class struggle as a story of the struggle of two forces — Imperialism and “Revolution” — deemed to operate behind and beneath class movements. While Marxists seek to analyse events as interactions of class forces, they analyse them fundamentally as interactions of Imperialism and “Revolution”. Imperialism, for them, is not a system, but a homogeneous force; “Revolution” is not an event, but a continuous process.
They are, of course, concerned for working class action. They see such action as a desirable feature of the Revolution, even an essential feature for the process to be fully healthy. But for them the (same) revolutionary process goes on, working class action or no working class action. The difference between revolutions is not a class difference, but a difference between more or less healthy and developed manifestations of the same process.
This framework is common to them all: it was common, for example, to those who applauded the Vietnamese Communist Party as good leaders of the Revolution and those who denounced the Vietnamese Communist Party as trying to sell out to US imperialism. Because of their common view of the camps and the issues, none of them could conceive that the VCP was making a revolution, but not our revolution.
There is here a mistaken view of the Stalinist states and the Stalinist-led revolutions, and of the relation of the Stalinist camp to imperialism and to the workers’ revolution. The notion that embraced Galtieri as in our “class camp” was an extrapolation from a campist attitude to the Stalinist bloc — an attitude completely alien to Trotskyism, and which appears within would-be Trotskyism as a direct reflection of the pressure of Stalinism on the weak and mainly petty-bourgeois would-be Trotskyist movement.
Central to the problems of post-war Trotskyism is the refusal to register in any stable way the fact — attested to by repeated experience in China, Vietnam, etc. — that Stalinist forces can be both revolutionary against capitalism and simultaneously counter-revolutionary against the working class. Stalinism is always counter-revolutionary against the working class, including in the process in which capitalism is overthrown to be replaced not by workers’ power but by bureaucratic dictatorship on the basis of collectivised property and the repression of the working class.
The campists operate with a concept of revolution in which such key facts as the bureaucratic counter-revolution within every Stalinist-led, anti-capitalist revolution are ignored, treated as mere details, or denied. The “Revolution” they embrace is nameless and classless, defined negatively by what it is against more than positively by what it is.
This framework led most of the would-be Trotskyists to see the South Atlantic war as a conflict — however refracted and distorted — between Imperialism and “Revolution”. Since Galtieri was fighting British imperialism, and since Imperialism was seen as one homogeneous force, therefore Galtieri’s war was against Imperialism, and must be a distorted, underdeveloped form of Revolution — even if Galtieri was a bad, sell-out leader of the Revolution.
Thus the concrete class forces were obscured and most of the would-be Trotskyists tied themselves to a crude “Third Worldist” view of imperialism and anti-imperialism. This view increasingly obscures reality given the increasing differentiation in the Third World, with the emergence there of major industrial powers, capital-exporters and regional big powers, and the increasing friction between the big imperialist powers.
Source URL:
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/8068

Martin Thomas

Why would I lie Arthur? If I made a mistake about your position people can judge for themselves, frankly in all your words I must have missed it.

Do you "support the right of the Palestinians not to be oppressed by Israel or anyone else, including the reactionaries of Hamas that apprently you support."
Clearly you don't, as Lenin made explained, support for an oppressed nation means above support for their right to self determination - which you oppose. Your support falls short of the very thing that can end the Palestinians oppression - therefore you support their oppression. In Lenin's sense your position is that of a chauvinist and pro-imperialist.

Do the Falkland islanders oppress the Argentinians? The Falkland Islanders have no separate interest from that of British imperialism, as was demonstrated 25 years ago. The Falkland Islanders wish to remain part of the British empire, an empire which currently occupies the Falkland Islands with thousands of British troops, this denies Argentina - an oppressed imperialised nation - its right to self determination. So yes the Falkland Islanders, as defenders of British interests abroad, oppress the Argentines.

Indeed the resolution above precludes a Marxist analysis it says; "We reject the counterposition of the Argentine bourgeoisie to imperialism..." In other words it rejects the scientific basis by which Marxists analyse the national question, in favour of its own chauvinist and pro-imperialist method.

I could go on, but I won't.

Arthur,

I'm afraid I've seen Bill and his mates routinely adopt this method of argument, going back 20 years.

It's very depressing, entirely predictable and will never change.

The point is that the Socialist Organiser position from 1982 seriously distorts the Marxist position, falsely equating support for Argentina against British imperialism with support for Galtieri.

Supporting Argentina or Iraq against imperialism is not at all to do with supporting their brutal regimes (e.g. Galtieri or Saddam) but saying that workers attacked by imperialism (in Iraq) have the right to fight back; the working class needs to be armed to resist the imperialist attack and through this overthrow the bourgeois. If SO in 1982 were revolutionary defeatist on both sides but took an active part in the antiwar movement here then it is a mistaken position (not supporting Argentina) but not pro-imperialist. By the way, British possession of Malvinas did become important for British imperialism not only in giving a new lease of life to a section of the ruling class around Thatcher but sending out a message that Britain and the US (ruling class) would ruthlessly defend its interests.

In the current Iraq occupation though as far as I can tell AWL are absent from the antiwar movement. I was told at one point (in person) by an AWLer that he may support troops out now in theory but it wasn't a priority- so in practice it ends up being a pro-imperialist position by refusing to engage in the antiwar movement. If the AWL threw themselves into the antiwar movement arguing for troops out now and class struggle tactics to dirsupt the war effort then that would be a different matter and then perhaps in a united front around common action there would be some point in having public debates between our two tendencies on these points.

However, the AWL's position on imperialism has seemingly led them into an impasse where they withdraw from the movement. Of course we can chat and discuss matters hopefully in an open manner (not disfigured by accusations of lying or they're never change etc.) whether in person or online but for the tendencies to prioritise debate when - on this - we're not even in the same movement seems rather impractical.

Of course where we are in united fronts around common action for example in the unions or other working class campaigns we will work and debate with the AWL.

In the meanwhile keep an open mind and remember that though opinions can and do change through debate real changes normally come through action and undertaking a common set of tasks within the working class. Whilst trying to enact those common tasks, differences will arise and need to be debated as they have practical consequences. We need to win workers to socialism, including revitalising the antiwar movement which, despite some 60% opposing the current occupation, is not able at the moment to mount a serious challenge to British imperialism.

> Why would PR (or anyone?) want to debate a load of pro-imperialist chauvinists? Really what is there to discuss?

You seem to be spending quite a bit of time and energy debating our position - both on our website and on yours. Why is this worthwhile, but not a formal debate which would, minimally, involve one of your comrades coming to speak at a meeting for an hour and a half? (Obviously, it would be better if there were numbers from both sides present.)

It seems to me the real reason you don't want to debate is that you don't want to have to defend your position in a public forum. You're scared. In this respect, you've continued a particularly laughable aspect of the Workers Power tradition, namely the combination of revolutionary bluster and bravado with refusing to actually debate other revolutionaries. (I remember in 2003, for instance, Workers Power refusing, without explanation, an invitation to debate us on your "Victory to Iraq" slogan.)

I've spoken to your comrade Jason about this, and in order to justify your refusal to debate he repeatedly counterposed joint work on issues where we agree to political discussion. So you can work with us pro-imperialists on immigration controls, women's liberation, the Labour Party etc, but there's no point debating us on imperialism? This simply doesn't make sense. Hence your substitution of abuse about social chauvinism for a rational explanation of your cowardice.

Lastly, I note you haven't bothered to formally reply. So much for democratic openness before the working class.

Sorry, I should add that was me, Sacha Ismail, not David Broder. I must sort out my own log-in for this site.

Hi Sacha
It's Jason here. As far as I am aware you approached PR through an e-mail to me and I have given you a reply. We don't have full-timers so that may account for the lack of a written reply from an official of the organisation but I did send you an e-mail and talk to you on the phone.

As I explained we are more than happy to debate, defend and extend our positions in a variety of forums but it is felt that our organisations on the issue of imperialism (and for example its relation to the current occupation of Iraq and Palestine) are sufficiently large to prirotise joint work to debate out our differences formally is not something we feel able to do at the moment. You have said joint work and debate are not counter-posed and that is of course true in general but in practice an organisation with activists already over-committed does have to make priorities. I hope that makes it clear.

I have tried not to use insults or invective as tools of argument and I have been at pains to acknowledge that subjectively I am not accusing any one in the AWL of being chauvinist. However, it is fair, I'd suggest, to argue that the end result of having politics which lead you to to all practical extents leave the antiwar movement in terms of building opposition to the occupation of Iraq is objectively pro-imperialist.

Your paper also recently had this formulation about Sudan:
"A UN force — if it happens — may help stem the bloodshed. If it succeeded only partially that would be a good thing. Even so we can have no confidence in UN interventions (remember Srebrenica!)"

This seems to imply that foreign intervention, possible of imperialist troops, may be 'a good thing' but we should have 'no confidence' in them. This is quite far from a marxist position and may reasonably without insult be described as 'pro-imperialist'.

Also comrade Mark who is a member of the steering committee did answer you on permanentrevolution.net which I see you have seen
"While a member of Workers Power I publicly debated the AWL on the Labour Party, Eastern Europe, Ireland and Afghanistan (this last in ULU at the onset of the most recent imperialist invasion). That hardly counts as shying away from debate. But following these debates with your organisation I concluded that it is utterly futile to debate with your thoroughly pro-imperialist organisation. My view is that PR should not give you the time of day let alone take part in your events.That's not shying away - an accusation that sounds like the political equivalent of "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough". It's just recognising the simple fact that our views are so far apart a debate at your summer school or anywhere else for that matter is a total waste of our time.
Mark H"

As for time and energy- I probably will leave the debate for now and get on with other tasks in the class struggle. It seems slightly bizarre to be berated about spending time and energy on debating though. I don't think there's anything wrong with chatting- which I suppose I include this as- but we should prioritise building united fronts in the working class to actually get things done. If debate organically flows out of that then all well and good. Ideas can change through discussion but they're far more likely and more usefully to change through being applied in practice as well as discussed.

Finally, just to point out this has more or less been said before:
"Of course we can chat and discuss matters hopefully in an open manner (not disfigured by accusations of lying or they're never change etc.) whether in person or online but for the tendencies to prioritise debate when - on this - we're not even in the same movement seems rather impractical.

Of course where we are in united fronts around common action for example in the unions or other working class campaigns we will work and debate with the AWL.

In the meanwhile keep an open mind and remember that though opinions can and do change through debate real changes normally come through action and undertaking a common set of tasks within the working class. Whilst trying to enact those common tasks, differences will arise and need to be debated as they have practical consequences. We need to win workers to socialism..."

Jason,

How does sending one person to a meeting in London to debate for an hour and a half (which is what, minimally, we're talking about) constitute a drain on the resources of your organisation?

Comradely,

Sacha