The “reactionary anti-imperialists”
“Reactionary socialism… half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love…
W B Yeats
The left is defined, grouped and regrouped, and redefined again and again, by responses to major events — for example, to the October Revolution of 1917. The left is now undergoing another redefinition, around its responses to the series of wars that began with the Kosova war of 1999 and continued through to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Those who stand for working-class socialist politics are lining up on one side, and on the other are those who are for a nameless, classless, almost depoliticised and entirely negative “anti-imperialism”.
The shouting-down of Subhi al Mashadani, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, at the European Social Forum on 15 October, neatly epitomised this process of differentiation.
Al Mashadani had been invited not as a member or supporter of the Communist Party of Iraq — which we understand he is — but as a trade unionist, as a representative of the trade unions which Iraqi workers have been rebuilding since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Free trade unions were impossible under the totalitarian regime of Saddam. On things like that, Saddam modelled himself on Josef Stalin.
Those who howled down al Mashadani and would not let him speak — the meeting had to be abandoned — were, some of them anyway, people who think of themselves as Trotskyists (though the SWP, which has done most to create the political hysteria in which such things happen, has criticised those who shouted him down).
In fact they are true Stalinists, and not only in their thuggish disregard for free speech. They stand squarely on the Stalinist tradition in their attitude to the Iraqi working class and to the fate of the newly reborn Iraqi working-class movement.
They say they are anti-imperialists, and their objection to al Mashadani is that the trade union movement which he represented at the the ESF meeting does not call for the immediate withdrawal of US and British troops from Iraq; that it does not side with the military activities of the combination of Islamic fundamentalists and Saddamites who make up “the resistance”.
There are a number of Iraqi trade union groupings, divided by political affiliations. Not one of them supports the Islamist and Ba’thist “resistance” militias.
Why not? Because they know that the victory of the spiritual and political totalitarians who lead “the resistance” would create conditions in which trade unions could not exist. In which no labour movement would be possible. In which many of the militants who organise the trade union movements would immediately be killed or jailed — not as “collaborators” but as trade-unionists and “communists”.
Those who howled down al Mashadani are Stalinists also because they believe that the supreme revolutionary virtue is not, as Solidarity maintains, commitment to the working class and to the creation, growth, and education of a labour movement, but “anti-imperialism”.
They do not express it like this, but they held to a rigid and fixed Stalinist-type “stages” conception of socialist politics for Iraq.
First “the resistance” must defeat “imperialism”; and only then should those working-class activists who survive the tender attentions of those who set off bombs to kill Iraqi civilians, in Baghdad and elsewhere, organise trade unions and a political working class movement to fight for working-class power and socialism in Iraq.
(The fact that some of the hooligans may think that such a policy is “permanent revolution”, and that the war of “resistance” will somehow lead to socialism, does not make their programme any less idiotic and any less anti-working class or any less self-betraying.)
They are like the old Communist Parties — but worse; for they, after all, had a certain, albeit reactionary, coherence to their ideas. One-sided “anti-imperialism”, for the old CPs, meant politics which helped what they identified as socialism, the USSR — which was, in fact, Russian Stalinist imperialism. What was more important for them than the working class and its development was finding ways to help the real “socialist” power in the world, the USSR.
It all made a sort of horrible sense, according to their conceptions of socialism and of progress. The “anti-imperialism” of those who would not listen to a representative of the Iraqi working class at the ESF makes no sense. They are entirely incoherent and politically nonsensical.
Yet, treating al Mashadani as one would treat a fascist has its own coherence and its own terrible reactionary logic. Why did they object to him? Because the trade-union movement which he represented in London — like the other trade-union groupings in Iraq — refuses to eviscerate itself on the altar of an “anti-imperialism” whose social and political banner is that of out-and-out religious, social, and political reaction.
The militant and revolutionary-sounding slogans about “victory to the resistance”, and the calls for US and British withdrawal “now”, translate, in the real Iraq, into support for the unleashing of civil war and for the victory of clerical-fascist reaction (or perhaps, “at best”, of the Ba’thists again).
Unless socialists are to shut down their minds and their commitment to the working class, and operate by mechanical, eyes-closed deductions from super-abstract notions like “imperialism” and anti-imperialism — in the spirit of Orwell’s “Two legs bad, four legs good” — we must ask ourselves what such slogans mean in practice. That is the only rational, responsible, socialist and Marxist way to pose the issues.
Revolutionary socialists did not support the attempts to organise a Nazi “resistance” to the US, British and Russian occupiers of Germany, in 1945.
To say that the only thing socialists can do is back the clerical fascists against Britain and the USA involves giving up on the new Iraqi labour movement. It means concluding that something like the revolutionary Islamist regime that took power in Iran in 1979 — and still, slightly softened up, holds power there today — is the least bad outcome that it is now possible to hope for in Iraq.
It is to tell the Iraqi working-class and its movement that it should surrender to the clerical-fascists — and to refuse even to listen to those Iraqis who dare to disagree with the kitsch-left’s toy-town anti-imperialists.
Of course, it is possible to imagine a situation in Iraq in which the “resistance” would be not what it is now, a relatively small spectrum of Islamists, Saddamite Ba’thists and others, but a movement of more or less all the peoples of Iraq, pitted against an American imperialism committed to slug it out with them in a butcherous imperialist war of conquest.
In such a situation, socialists might have to decide that even the victory of outright reaction in an Iraq freed from the horrors of war would be better than the continuation of that terrible war.
That is what happened in Vietnam, with other parts of Indochina, such as Cambodia, being drawn into the slaughter.
Is that how things stand in Iraq?
Have things reached the stage at which socialists have to recognise that all the possibilities for the development of a working-class movement that were opened up by the destruction of the Saddam regime have been crushed, and the best thing left is a war against imperialist conquest, dominated by the religious, social, and political ultra-reactionaries — clerical-fascists, to give them their generic name — who will, having defeated their enemies, including the Iraqi trade unions, then fall heir to the state power in Iraq?
Are we at the stage where socialists have to recognise that the victory of political Islamists who will, in power, destroy even the quasi-secularism and root out the quasi-liberation for women that existed even under Saddam’s Ba’thist bloody totalitarianism, is the lesser evil now because it is preferable to continued slaughter on a Vietnamese or Cambodian scale — and there are no better possibilities in the situation that now exists?
In fact, the situation in Iraq can lead socialists to no such conclusions. The evidence is that most Iraqis do not support the “resistance” — those who set off bombs in Baghdad without warning and with the goal of killing as many Iraqi civilians as possible. Not even the brutal stupidity of the US occupying forces has so far driven them to such a despairing conclusion.
Certainly the new Iraqi labour movement has not reached such a conclusion. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions believes that the establishment of some sort of bourgeois-democratic system — even with the continued presence of US and British troops, which they oppose — is a better way forward for the Iraqi people. In that they are entirely correct.
Socialism would be better. But if the working class is not yet able to win socialism, then the IFTU is right that the establishment and consolidation of the sort of bourgeois-democratic rights that now exist de facto, despite the bloody chaos in Iraq, and without which the trade unions cannot survive — that that is the best possible option for the Iraqi working class. They are right not to rush to despair and commit the social, political and trade unionist suicide which the idiots of classless “anti-imperialism” urge on them.
For socialism to become possible, the Iraqi working class and labour movement will have to have time and space to educate and clarify themselves politically. Even the terrible situation there now is more conducive to that than the victory of clerical-fascist “anti-imperialism”.
The hard truth, however, is that the “anti-imperialist” left arrive at the crazy position of rushing to identify with Iraq’s clerical fascists and Ba’thists — even against the Iraqi labour movement, as in the shouting down of Subhi al Mashadani — not by reason but by reflex, by unreflected-upon tradition, and by pixillatedly wrong-headed politics.
Some of them believe that military struggle is, in itself, a politically higher order of things than the alternative road that is still, probably, possible — the evolution of Iraq, pushed along by working-class organisation and struggle, towards some sort of bourgeois democracy and the resumption of independence.
They are excited and thrilled by the violent “revolutionary” struggle. The “resistance” is defined for them as “revolutionary” and progressive not by what the clerical-fascists are and aim for, but by the bare fact that they are in arms against the USA and Britain. Even clerical fascists striving for the power to repress everything progressive in Iraq — workers’ rights, women’s rights, free speech, any degree of secularism, freedom to organise — even they are rendered “progressive” by their all-enobling military opposition to “imperialism”. This is what might be called “apolitical” or “de-politicised” “anti-imperialism”.
They have learned very little from either the relatively recent experience in Iran, or the more distant experience in China in 1927 — response to which was one of the pillars of Trotsky’s movement.
In Iran a powerful mass movement, led by Ayatollah Khomeiny and the Shi’ite Muslim clergy, challenged the repressive but secularising regime of the Shah. The left backed the movement for a variety of reasons — because the Shah was in alliance with the USA against the Stalinist USSR, or because there were serious working-class mobilisations against the Shah.
In fact when the Islamists came to power, they quickly crushed all independent movements, and subjected a comparatively advanced and secular society to rigid medievalism. Iranian women were thrown back generations. The independent working-class movement was crushed. Political opponents of Khomeiny were butchered — in the first place, those socialists who had supported him in the struggle against the Shah.
A quarter of a century later, Khomeiny’s heirs still rule Iran.
In China, in the 1920s, a bourgeois-nationalist movement, the Guomindang, led by Chiang Kai Shek, fought to reunify the country. The relatively strong working-class Communist Party of China allied with the Guomindang and, under the leadership of Stalin and Bukharin in the Communist International, submerged themselves politically and organisationally in it.
The result was that just after the Communist Party, at the head of the working class there, had helped deliver Shanghai to the Guomindang forces, Chiang Kai Shek turned on the CP and the workers who supported it and killed many thousands of them.
The policy which the kitsch left urges on the Iraqi workers is a policy of political and possibly physical suicide. These “militant idiots”, despite what they intend, are with their classless and nameless “anti-imperialism”, for practical purposes, simply reactionaries.
They are erstwhile socialists in process of inadvertently redefining themselves as “anti-imperialist” reactionaries.
The root of it is that they are people who now operate almost entirely with negative politics. They know what they are against. Apart from a vague and undefined, and increasingly “classless”, socialism, they do not know what they are for. By negative repulsion against the USA and Britain, they back themselves into a de facto unity with the politics of downright anti-working class reaction.
Those who shouted down al Mashadani on 16 October thought they represented virtuous anti-imperialism, but, no longer caring what they represent positively or with whom they ally themselves, were in fact siding with the clerical fascists against the emerging Iraqi labour movement.
The brutal rulers of the USA and Britain are perfectly capable of bungling and blundering into the destruction of all the progressive possibilities that now exist — or may still exist — in Iraq, and thus into making their stated aim of a bourgeois-democratic Iraq impossible. They may already have dealt irreversible blows to those prospects. That is one reason why the pixillated right-wing inverse of the pixillated “anti-imperialists”, those who let commitment to the Iraqi working class lead them into backing Britain and the USA, that is, into political suicide as socialists, are in their own way no less foolish and even more ridiculous than their mirror-images.
The toy-town anti-imperialists at least maintain a pseudo-revolutionary opposition to their own ruling class. That is something. It is not enough, but it is better than self-prostration before the British and US ruling classes. Many of the young people misled by the toy-town “anti-imperialists” can and will be helped to know better.
The left that in this process is being sifted and sorted, defined and redefined, is on the “anti-imperialism first” side a purely negative populism, a politically empty receptacle willing to let itself take on the positive imprint of any “anti-imperialist” force — even, in Iraq, of clerical-fascists, as earlier (during the 2003 war) of Saddam’s Ba’thists. (Socialist Worker even made a stab at “explaining away”, that is, half-heartedly justifying, the Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women (SW, 6 October 2001).) They have let themselves be drawn into the position of opponents of the Iraqi working-class movement, so long as it refuses to become a political tool of the clerical-fascists.
The characteristics of the other side in the differentiation of the forces of the left that is now taking place are as follows. We are above all else for the development of the labour movement and the political development of the working class. We are for the freedoms without which that will not happen — without which the labour movements and the working class cannot develop politically towards socialism and the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Everything else is subordinate to that. There is nothing — except the socialism that the working class must win — higher for us than that. “Anti-imperialism” that is indifferent or hostile to the working class and the labour movement is a contradiction in terms: it is the working class and only the working class that will finally bury capitalism and imperialism.
In the early 1980s, we rejected and fought against the outlook of those who supported the Polish Stalinist state against the working-class movement, Solidarnosc, because Solidarnosc threatened state-owned nationalised property, which most of the left thought of as an all-overriding good. (The SWP was on the same side then.) Today we reject the view that the “anti-imperialism” of clerical fascists is superior to a labour movement that wants to see bourgeois democracy develop in Iraq.
Socialists who do not support those trade unions; those who seem not to care whether the Iraqi labour movement survives and develops, or is crushed by the clerical fascists or a new Ba’thist regime; the hooligans who howled down al Mashadani; and those like the SWP who have the same politics while hypocritically distancing themselves from the hooligans — all are abandoning socialism for an “anti-imperialism” which, by analogy with what Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto called “reactionary socialism”, is a species of “reactionary anti-imperialism”.
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Reactionary anti-imperialists
By the time I got half way down the article I was actually seriously considering joining the AWL - and then you had to spoil it all with the inept comment about those of us 'who let commitment to the Iraqi working class lead them into backing Britain and the USA'.
This utterly undermines your whole argument - if the best workers can reasonably hope for in Iraq is a bourgeois democracy (and only the most infantile ultra-leftists imagine otherwise) then we have to support the forces internally and externally that are fighting to bring this about.
It is the same situation as 1939-45: supporting the bourgeois democracies (and from 1941 the stalinist dictatorship) in their war against fascist totalitarianism wasn't an act of political suicide then and it is not now.
As you so eloquently argue, for leftists in Iraq true political suicide there would be to support the Islamo-fascist and Baathist 'resistance'.
Here and in the US it is precisely the great mass of the anti-war left who have already committed political suicide by placing themselves on the side of reaction and terror - it will take us yet another generation to rebuild the credit that the idiots of the SWP and the other Trotskyist grouposchules have thrown away.
Still at least you're 50% right....
realignements and bedtime stories
To paraphrase: news of our death is exaggerated! We are alive and kicking and it seems we have a better grasp of the prizes Iraq offers than you have.
Overall, Sean’s editorial was fantastic. Blogsphere has welcomed it with acclaim and a little confusion. Socialism in a Time of Waiting assumes the para on ‘pixillated’ pro-regime changers was a late insertion to protect the author’s internal left flank. HarrysPlace thinks the position is at odds with the empirical reality of Iraq and interprets your talk of ‘political suicide’ as the expression of a self-censorship policed by fear of loosing space on the left. Personally, I don't think its a good idea to look for meanings in such psychologically loaded phrases.
Not having supported the war, I come at the article from a different angle. To me it’s a shame that Sean did not interrogate realignment, the subject of his opening paragraphs. It may prove to be true that a handful of his ‘misled’ reactionary anti-imperialist youth will come to you, but you will not realign the bulk. By concentrating your efforts (not the article) on recruiting some of them you are missing the main show. You prioritise one to one recruitment rather than driving through strategic change for the left of the movement as a whole.
Realignments are taking place amongst the pro-regime change left and the many people who make up ‘us’ – their ‘pixillated’ allies who opposed the war yet cheered when the stone SH toppled. Strip away the uniform, the songs, the history, your preferred codes and reference systems and look at the core of our positions. You are far closer to ‘us’ than you are to the reactionary anti-imperialist left: even closer than might seem obvious on first readings.
Essentially, those of ‘us’ who care about reading back into history might say that Sean’s previous article on the ILP in WW2 is up there with the most useful things he has written. It is as good as the work on anti-semitism, the Workers’ Government, Israel and Ireland. Find the bravery to embrace this, abandon Cannon’s double talking bed-time stories and you will see that your potential allies are not where you look for them. The jury is out on if the regime change can work and the prize of shaping the realignment will fall to collectives of people who can make most sense of its success or failure.
Lessons Socialist Have Forgotten
In the last few years there have been a number of instances where conflicts have caused confusion amongst the ranks of the left. As Martin Thomas says elsewhere such times are important for the left in reassessing, and regrouping sifting out the healthier elements. Of course that is only true if the right lessons are learned, and the organisations which grow most quickly under such circumstances are in no way guaranteed to be the ones that have learned the correct lessons.
One of the reasons the Left has strugg;ed to come to terms with some of the challenges presented by the conflicts of the last few years is in my opinion that lessons once learned seem to have been forgotten. I am not talking here about the lessons on imperialism, or the national question, or permanent revolution, which Clive Bradley has discussed eloquently and clearly elsewhere. Rather I am talking about lessons of independent socialist organisation and action.
Take the example of Kosovo. On the one hand you had a vicious and reactionary regime under Milosevic carrying out what amounted to genocide. How were workers to react to this. On the one hand there is the option of merely proclaiming disdain for such action, but with the belief that nothing can be done short of the workers of Kosovo uniting for the socialist revolution. Such a position is unlikely to gain much support from those being killed on a daily basis by a reactionary oppressor, nor even from those within the ranks of the oppressor looking for an alternative, and something that can be done in the here and now.
On the other hand there is the position adopted most frequently left social democrats of relying on the United Nations to intervene as a neutral force. The problem with this of course is that the UN is not a neutral force. The major imperialist powers will either only allow the UN to intervene where there is no conflict with their own interests, or will encourage intervention under circumstances where there influence can ensure that the intervention meets their needs. And of course as in Iraq where the UN does not act in a way that meets the oconditions of the US as the hyperpower the US simply intervenes on its own terms.
The problem for socialist here is that especially when the military intervention has begun or when an occupation is in place as in Kosovo or Iraq a conflict that is almost a moral conflict arises. On the one hand the intevention must be denounced, but on the other hand the absence of the intevention or withdrawal will lead to civil war, furtherr genocide etc. which no decent human being let alone socialist would want to encourage.
But this choice does not reflect the full range of choices open. Where workers are being threatened during a protracted strike by gangs of thugs brought in by the employers, socialists do not rely on the police to intervene to prevent it. Socialists certainly would not present to the workers involved the idea that the police are neutral in this situation. On the contrary socialists use the experience to try to teach the workers something about the nature of the capitalist state. Socialists teach the workers to rely on their own organisation to defeat the thuggery, and if necessary to extend this to the idea of creating Workers Defence Squads. Socialists would advocate the same kind of organisation to defend say black communities against fascist attacks.
During the 1930's having witnessed what happened in Germany workers did not wait for some international bourgeois policeman to intervene to counter the threat from Franco's fascists in Spain. They organised the International Brigade, which was really nothing more than a Workers defence Squad on an International scale, to help the Spanish workers. The socialists who went to fight in Spain, by no means all of them revolutionaries, contributed far more to the effort to defeat Franco than any number of analyses, and well thought out phrases.
Many of those in the Labour Party who supported the war did so because they had the understandable desire to relieve the suffering of the Kosovan Albanians, just as now they had the same feelings for the Iraqis. But more importantly no credible alternative for relieving this suffering other than military intervention was supplied by revolutionary socialists. The only people that have brought forward an alternative "practical" and immediate solution in many of these situations for example in Palestine have not been socialists, but well meaning peace activists who have put their life on the line literally by going into the conflict arena.
And of course the lesson of the International Brigade has been learned by others. Instead of socialists being the ones who organise, and put their Internationalism into practice by offering practical, physical support to workers in these situations it is the reactionary, Islamic fundamentalists.
Revolutionary socialists should give no support to the forces of the international bourgeois policeman, but counterpose their own independence including a demand that socialist and trade union organisations create international organisations capable of providing practical support to workers internationally in cases of conflict.
Arthur Bough
War is not for democracy
The one glaring error that the pro-war left make is the assertion that the war is about, or was ever about, bringing democracy to Iraq. It is true that the level of opposition to the war has meant that the US (and it is dishonest to pretend that anyone other than the US government and bourgeousie are calling the shots in the re-building of Iraq) has had to tread carefully in order for the new Iraqi government not be perceived as being a puppet government. But whichever way you look at it, a puppet government is what it is. The choice of candidates on offer in the elections will be determined by the USA and the elected Iraqi governments policy will be subject to approval by the USA. Anti-Americanism? No. Just simple facts.
So, how can anyone who supports the idea of working class liberation and self organisation support the war and give credibility to the puppet Iraqi government? From reading various pro war arguments it seems that all this is justifiable on the basis that it is better for Iraqi workers than Sadaam's quasi fascist regime. We can agree on that point but no more than we can agree with the anti-war left that the interests of the Iraqi working class are not best served by US imperialism.
The AWL is correct to distance itself from the arguments and political philosophy of the pro war left. Personally I would be inclined to take the pro war lefts arguments more seriously if it wasn't littered with childish and sectarian (and often very malicious) denounciations of "Trots" and "sects". This kind of polemic has little to do with politics. One can only guess at the motives of people that have a pathological hatred of those who choose to join active socialist organisations and attempt to put their ideas to practical use.
but who said they did...
Arthur, the motives of the US etc are not as important as the outcomes of their actions. Sure, the war was not fought for democracy. But that does not mean it might not be possible to achieve it. I did not support the war but I know it is a good thing that SH has gone. It is also a good thing that the UN will bring in elections, the new Gvt write a consitution and hopefully civil society will bloom.
Why do you have such trouble pleased about these things? Yes, campaign for union rights and so on, but recognise you will not have a chance to win them unless the UN process is successful.
For the life of me, I cannot see what is wrong with this framework for understanding what's what in Iraq.
Copyediting Nitpicks
It's not "Friedrich", it's "Frederick" Engels - you wouldn't call the English composer Handel Haendel just because that was his name when he was born in Germany.
It's not "Socialism in a Time of Waiting", it's "Socialism in an Age of Waiting" (http://marxist-org-uk.blogspot.com).
So
Would you call them Chareles Marks and Frederick Angels then?
Arthur Bough
Dont Think Twice, It's Alright
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright:
A reply to Sean Matgamna’s ‘Reactionary Anti-Imperialism’
Alan Johnson and Jane Ashworth
Sean Matgamna’s article (‘Reactionary Anti-Imperialism) was a useful brick to throw at reactionary anti-imperialists but was dishonest on three counts.
First, Matgamna pretends the AWL has had a consistent position of clear support for the IFTU. In fact, the AWL joined the idiot chorus that attacked the IFTU after Labour Party conference. Martin Thomas wrote: “The actual effect of the Labour Friends of Iraq/ Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions intervention at the Labour Party conference was to give Blair a free hand to carry on backing Bush. Whatever sophistry may be used to evade this fact, it was de facto support to Bush's policy - brutal, arrogant, militaristic, privatize-at-all-costs, "spot of trouble? Slaughter a few hundred more civilians and that'll show them!" - which, far from being a democratic alternative to the rise of Islamist reaction, has fuelled that rise”.
Stupid. Hysterical. An unwitting part - and one balanced by better things Thomas has written - of the fingering of the IFTU that contributed to the disgraceful assault at the ESF. So much for Matgamna’s assertion that they support the IFTU. The unpleasant truth is that Thomas not Matgamna represents the mainstream of the AWL on the issue of Iraq. Matgamna is often silent while this political nonsense sets the AWL’s tone.
Read these web comments from AWLers:
AWL member: “We recognize the IFTU leaders for what they are - right-wing Stalinist bureaucrats prepared to collaborate with an imperialist occupation”.
AWL member: “It would be stupid of socialists and workers, either in Iraq or here, to use the existence of a potentially more brutal force around Al Sadr to excuse the brutality of that occupation. But that as far as I can see was what the IFTU representatives, that you [Alan Johnson] are close to, did at the Party conference”.
Mick Duncan, the organiser of the No Sweat group did not even mention the attack on the IFTU at the ESF, in his ESF conference report for the No Sweat list.
Solidarity editorialised “We disagree with the IFTU's rallying to Allawi and the Interim Government as a "lesser evil" than Sadr”.
AWL member: “I think the IFTU strategy is wrong because I don't think unions should have plans for "working along with" ruling classes anywhere”.
AWL member: “The Allawi administration is not just an ordinary ruling class the same as any other. It is, additionally, the puppet of an occupying foreign power. That makes the IFTU's strategy worse”.
AWL member: “The IFTU representatives' actions at Labour Party conference are a 'level of collaboration' with the government party of an occupying power that goes well beyond what is necessary to secure the space for unions to develop in Iraq … I don't think that the US/UK occupation can or intends to create a democratic society in Iraq’.
In our opinion the best hope for democracy and the trade unions in Iraq is the UN-backed political transition process. It is codified in UN resolution1546, overseen by the UN and the Interim government, backed by the Kurds, Sistani, the IFTU, and everyone in Iraq bar the ‘resistance’. Matgamna knows this. The IFTU knows this. Everyone in the world bar the idiotarian far left knows this.
The AWL’s error is to counterpose the need for independent working class organisations to the UN process as if recognising the validity of the political process necessarily denies such independence. One AWLer, and no neophyte at that, when pushed in a web-debate, confuses the democratic with the socialist programme and demanded workers control of the economy as the alternative to the UN process!
The (difficult) task of the Iraqi democrats is to bring democratic pro-worker politics into the UN-backed political process and timetable. And the job of the western left is to support them because they are right to take this approach. It is not good enough to (just) to mimic both the old Militant Tendency, shouting ‘socialism!’ and the old IS, shouting ‘build workplace organisation!’. The AWL used to know the limits of both abstract propaganda for socialism and narrow syndicalism. But, today, this is what the AWL offer on Iraq. Matgamna wont draw a clear political programme for Iraq from his critique of ‘reactionary anti-imperialism’.
Second, Matgamna side-steps any honest accounting about the troops. He pretends the AWL has had a consistent position on the troops. In fact the AWL has been all over the place.
The AWL has argued that the call for troops out now should be ‘condemned’ AND argued that US troops only bring ‘helicopter gunships and cluster bombs’.
In Solidarity (52) the editor argued that socialists must treat the Iraq War like earlier socialists treated World War One and say ‘Not a penny for the System’. In the jargon this is a ‘revolutionary defeatist’ position. Yet Matgamna argued (Solidarity 50 and 53) that the stance taken by the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in Britain during World War Two – critical support for the allies against Nazism while continuing to work for socialism – was the better guide for socialists today. In the jargon this is a ‘revolutionary defensist’ position. The first position should logically have led to a call for the withdrawal of the coalition troops, but it hasn’t. The second position should have led to a position of ‘critical support’ to the coalition’s project (while continuing the fight for socialism) but it hasn’t. At the very least the AWL should have faced the fact that it had two positions. It didn’t. The silence on Matgamna’s article about the ILP and WW2 has been astonishing.
In the resultant confusion AWL members have been left picketing British Army barracks to protest troops going to Iraq while selling a newspaper that argues (Matgamna, in Solidarity No. 50) "right now the proclaimed programme of the US-UK in Iraq and their Iraqi clients and allies - the setting up of a viable democratic Iraqi government, and ultimate US withdrawal - is relatively progressive, and that of their armed opponents is reactionary by any measure you choose to use.(...) For all these reasons we condemn slogans like "troops out now" as inappropriate to the situation in Iraq". So the AWL pickets a barracks demanding no troops are sent to Iraq while selling a newspaper that ‘condemns’ calls for troop withdrawal. No troops out, and no troops in. What about those troops in transit? Keep going? Turn back?
The truth is there are two AWLs.
One AWL has argued that precipitate withdrawal of troops would open the gates to a ‘vast regression’ of Iraqi society and the death of the labour movement while a Solidarity supporter voted at Labour Party conference for, yes, the precipitate withdrawal of troops.
One AWL joins protests against multinationals ‘touting for business’ in Iraq (note, protests that do not just call for labour rights but actually demand capitalists stay out, or get out, of Iraq) while the other AWL, seemingly oblivious, argues the coalition project is ‘relatively progressive’ because, for one reason amongst many it opens the doors to trade unionism – and you cannot have trade unions without industry or jobs!.
Matgamna supports troops staying where they are to stop the Saddamist-Fundamentalist ‘resistance’ winning. Pete Radcliff dodges this question by this argument: “We don’t support a ‘fixed date for withdrawal’, or even an early date for withdrawal because, for one reason, that implies that before that date we support the troops. We don’t support the troops at any time.”
Take careful note of this. One AWL does not support the troops ‘at any time’ while another AWL ‘condemns’ calls for their withdrawal.
In fact, the AWL opposes ‘one penny’ being spent on the very soldiers whose withdrawal from Iraq they would ‘condemn’.
When a Solidarity supporter at Labour Party conference voted for an early date for withdrawal she denounced the IFTU for failing to support her, using this argument: “The fig leaf used by the Blairites to cover their naked “save Tony” strategy was the support of some Iraqi trade unions for the Allawi government. In order to persuade the Big Four union delegations that they should oppose the critical motion, representatives of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions attended delegation meetings to argue against early withdrawal of troops, and to put the case that the decision on this should be down to Iraq’s elected Government rather than Labour Party conference”. In other words the Solidarity supporter was outraged that the IFTU advanced Matgamna’s own argument, the argument carried in an editorial of the newspaper she supports.
The ambivalence is driving some mad. Martin Thomas opts for lies and fatuous abuse of LFIQ and all its works for advancing the very arguments set out by Matgamna. Presumably he fears that some AWLers who back Matgamna will want to get involved. A ‘“solidarity” campaign which crawls so far and so fast up Blair’s arse will not deliver much solidarity', belched Thomas, shortly after attacking the IFTU as ‘de facto backers of Bush and slaughter’.
AWL coverage of Party Conference privileged your desire to blood Blair’s nose above the living reality of Iraq. That is a form of chauvinism you would never have allowed over Ireland. You could have taken on the reactionary anti-imperialists over Party Conference but you chose instead to stay and keep them warm: perhaps you dare be isolated with anyone, but us…
We would have watched all this from the sidelines had it not been for Matgamna’s attack on the very people (us) who have developed the political position he now agrees with. He attacks myself and Jane Ashworth (who have joined with others to set up Labour Friends of Iraq) as ‘pixilated right wing political suicides’ who have ‘self-prostrated before the US and UK ruling classes’). The extravagant violence of the language is good knock about stuff written not only to amuse the members and licence them to try to cut up rough, but has another purpose. It is a protective shield.
The awkward fact for Matgamna is that everything politically important he says in October 2004 I or Jane Ashworth - the ‘pixilated right wing political suicides’ who have ‘self-prostrated before the US and UK ruling classes’ - have been saying, often in heated debate with his own members, since March 2004.
Compare the following quotes:
ON THE NEED FOR REALIGNMENT ON THE LEFT
Johnson (March 2004): “We now have a Pro-Tyrant left and democratic socialists should draw a line and oppose it and build something else rather than march with it. It is indeed time to move on. Such a rational and democratic left can only be built in through practical solidarity with the progressive forces in Iraq. Much of the existing left – incoherent anti-imperialists rather then democratic socialists, unable to condemn the most foul terrorist outrages without excusing them in the same breathe - is finished for that kind of progressive politics. It is time to move on”.
Matgamna (October 2004): “The left is defined, grouped and regrouped, and redefined again and again, by responses to major events — for example, to the October Revolution of 1917. The left is now undergoing another redefinition, around its responses to the series of wars that began with the Kosova war of 1999 and continued through to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Those who stand for working-class socialist politics are lining up on one side, and on the other are those who are for a nameless, classless, almost depoliticised and entirely negative “anti-imperialism”.
ON HOW TO BUILT THE THIRD CAMP
Johnson (March 2004): Political third campers want to build a third camp in real political time and in the concrete circumstances we find in Iraq. That means using the breathing space offered by the coalition occupation, for now, to build up the progressive political forces that would constitute a ‘third camp’. In short, we have to understand what the progressive forces inside Iraq have already understood, that while a progressive Iraqi political force might emerge by intelligent political struggle under and against the umbrella of a managed transition to sovereignty and democracy, such a force would be, literally, executed under conditions of civil war or Baathist dictatorship.
Matgamna (October 2004): For socialism to become possible, the Iraqi working class and labour movement will have to have time and space to educate and clarify themselves politically. Even the terrible situation there now is more conducive to that than the victory of clerical-fascist “anti-imperialism”.
ON THE IFTU
Johnson (March 2004): Do I trust the coalition? No, of course not. The task of the third camp is to fight in and against the coalition umbrella for a secular democratic Iraq. Note: ‘fight’! Note: ‘and against’! Shachtman in 1951 was for fighting. You seem to think I am for sitting back and trusting the coalition will deliver democracy. No! But I am for fighting for democracy in the breathing space provided by the coalition – and immediately that means recognising that political space exists and that ‘troops out now’ would close it – by building the size, independence, power, finances, and networks of the progressive democratic opposition. I want a future… when that opposition can cast off not only the Baath and al-Queda but also the control exerted by the coalition. But politics is always a strategic activity, always conducted in real political time. First this, so we can move on to, that. If ‘third camp socialism’ is to move on it must decide to live in ‘real political time’... That does not mean giving up on our goals. But it might mean we move towards our goals and not someone else’s. And that would be a start.
Matgamna (October 2004): The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions believes that the establishment of some sort of bourgeois-democratic system — even with the continued presence of US and British troops, which they oppose — is a better way forward for the Iraqi people. In that they are entirely correct.
ON HOW TO FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM IN IRAQ
Johnson (March 2004): The political third camper accept that being for the ‘third camp’ means doing the difficult and messy work of building an alliance of democratic and progressive political forces out of a situation of extreme weakness. This dictates we attend urgently to what we might call ‘real political time’ and develop our political programme in its light. This kind of third camper wants to be a political lever not an abstract propagandist. (…)We are working for the construction and eventual victory of the third camp not the coalition. But if we decide to live in ‘real political time’ not ‘third camp time’ we have do that work in a particular way, connecting up the brute facts about the present role of the coalition, the present strength of our forces, and our own future goals. That present is the only terrain on which we fight to carve a better future, as opposed to merely making abstract propaganda for one.
Matgamna (October 2004): Socialism would be better. But if the working class is not yet able to win socialism, then the IFTU is right that the establishment and consolidation of the sort of bourgeois-democratic rights that now exist de facto, despite the bloody chaos in Iraq, and without which the trade unions cannot survive — that that is the best possible option for the Iraqi working class.
The real difference between us and Matgamna was captured by an AWL member months ago. “At least Alan Johnson takes his position to its logical conclusion and offers critical support to the occupation in its attempts to put down the Islamists and Ba'athists and oversee a transition to something vaguely resembling national sovereignty. At least Alan admits that he does, advocating leaving the task of opposing the Ba'athist-Islamist-civil war threat to the imperialists, claiming that the workers have "no choice" but to do this”.
In other words, the real difference is that we have been willing to draw practical political conclusions and fight for them. There is no chance of a workers militia fighting back the insurgents and once that truth lays waste to flat-pack politics there are consequences to be faced: now, just as in WW2.
The road to the self-determination of the Iraqi people passes through the democratic process being overseen by the UN and the coalition. The role of the left is to build up our forces to fight within that process. Back in March Alan Johnson cited this passage written by Max Shachtman in 1951 (when he was still a left-wing socialist leading the Independent Socialist League):
"We are opposed to such defeats of the bourgeoisie whose consequences are, and cannot but be, a disaster and an inferno of exploitation for the working class. We do not exist to see that revenge is taken upon the bourgeoisie for its social crimes, but to see that the working class emancipates itself from all class rule (…) We do not for a moment suspend the class struggle, even in wartime. But, not being Stalinists and not being cretins, we do not prosecute it in such a way as to produce a defeat of the government by Stalinism. We are for the working class defeating the bourgeoisie in the class war and that is all we work for. We do not work for it in such a way as assures the defeat of the bourgeoisie by a reaction that would crush the proletariat itself”.
Today, Matgamna is saying something almost identical. ‘We are above all else for the development of the labour movement and the political development of the working class. We are for the freedoms without which that will not happen — without which the labour movements and the working class cannot develop politically towards socialism and the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Everything else is subordinate to that. There is nothing — except the socialism that the working class must win — higher for us than that. “Anti-imperialism” that is indifferent or hostile to the working class and the labour movement is a contradiction in terms’.
Matgamna must make up his mind. His organisation must make up its mind.
You can think troops should come out as part of a political settlement as Sean does, or you can be for their precipitate withdrawal, as the Solidarity member at Labour Party conference was, voting with the reactionary anti-imperialists to give Blair a bloody nose.
You can think the IFTU ‘correct’ as Sean does, or ‘de facto backers of Bush and slaughter’ as Thomas does.
You can think the best guide to our thinking on Iraq is the ILP during World War Two as Sean does (‘revolutionary defencism’) or think that Lenin’s analysis of World War One the better guide as the Solidarity editor did (‘revolutionary defeatism’).
But you can’t think all of these things at once. Not in logic nor in political reality.
Sean, your first thought is the right one. Don’t think twice, its alright.
Alan Johnson
Jane Ashworth
Where you're bound you cannot tell
I had started to do a line-by-line refutation of Alan Johnson's and Jane Ashworth's points some time ago here. But I actually don't think it is necessary although some reponse may be necessary. The premises are ultimately quite simple and a significant shift from any independent 'Third Camp' position.
They are
1) If you dare to criticise the IFTU leadership or its external representatives behaviour, you are as bad as those who refuse to support its right to exist or to develop.
If Alan and Jane can't distinguish between the StWC's attack on the IFTU and our criticism of its representative then that is frankly bizarre.
2) You have to take sides in war.
Well I'm so sick of hearing that argument from the reactionary anti-imperialists that I hope that it will not require a long denial. But it is given further life by Alan and Jane's playing of the WW2 card i.e. that the Iraq war is like WW2 and as in that 'progressive' war we should have supported the Allied troops so should we also in Iraq.
Now there are many ways that the Allied invasion of Europe in WW2 is different from the invasion of Iraq by the US and UK. But, even if that simple equation were to be accepted, I would not accept that our position in WW2 would have been 'support the Allied troops'. Even though the post-depression mass mobilisation of anti-fascist feeling and the politics of the rank-and-file soldiers were significant factors in the situation (far more than now), the war was nevertheless fought with a general staff steeped in nationalist feeling and traditional imperialist training. It was conducted by governments that were either eager supporters of or, at their very best, were unprepared to challenge the foreign interests of their respective imperialisms.
Just looking at UK involvement (leaving aside the even more brutal actions of the US and Soviet Union forces) there was, after all, Dresden and the saturation bombing of German citizens in many cities; and the collaboration of the UK troops in brutally putting down of the Greek communist-led partisans and keeping former Greek fascists in power.
Would we have wanted our condemnation of Dresden to be muted so as not to confuse our hostility to Nazism; would we want to inject 'pro-worker' policies into the process of the occupation of Greece? I don't believe so.
If we had had the ear of the Greek working class organisations would we not have warned them of this imperialist nature of their occupying forces? Or if we were to have Greek working class representatives at a post-war Labour Conference wouldn't we have wanted them to have warned British workers about a naïve believe in the democratic nature of the British Army, its state and its government's foreign policy? I think we would.
Would we not have said about the allied commanders 'they threw back the Nazis but they cannot be trusted. We don't trust the regime they represent or their generals neither of whom can be controlled either by their rank and file or their people at home. We need an army of, and for, democracy in order to protect and defend ourselves. If it is not immediately available then it has ultimately to be built but only by recognising that all the existing forces will do whatever they can to stop it coming about.'
Of course there are differences between post-WW2 Greece and Iraq as there are between post-war occupied Germany and the present Iraq. But in all of them we cannot forget that the army is not ‘our army’ and the foreign policy of the government (and the US govt) is not our policy.
That, simply put, is what NOT supporting the US/UK occupation means.
That policy is not as simple as 'taking sides' but it is more accurate and more honest.
Pete Radcliff
idiot wind
Pete,
Thinking the IFTU are right to try to maximise the opportunities opened up by the overthrow of Saddam and consolidate the democratic reforms that are on offer is not the same as thinking or preaching that the US have benign interests. Nor does it amount to making propaganda for the US or renouncing the need for working class organisations. Actually though, in today's climate, the cutting edge of the polemic is not against those who think the US are motivated by goodwill to all mankind but against those who cannot see how good it is that SH has been overthrown.
Criticise the IFTU all you like, but what is your political alternative to supporting the elections and the process of preparing a constitution? Organising workers on the group in unions or community orgnaisations is not a political alternative. It is necessary from the point of view of a democrat who wants to build civil society or a socialist, but it is not an alternative.
I suspect the space between us is occupied by unspoken concerns with agency. If the US/UN do drive through change and leave behind a democratic, sovereign Iraq then our expectations of the age we live in are profoundly challenged.
The logical conclusion of AWL politics...
...is support for the occupation! The only difference between them and Johnson and Ashworth is that the latter are principled, even if it is pro imperialist and pro war, whilst the AWL have not quite developed as far right as Shachtman (yet) it can only be a matter of time!
typical Magamna sophistry
A typical piece of Magamna sophistry and pseudo intellectualism.
How to adequately describe someone who's only serious contribution to Left wing theory is to rationalise support for the Great Powers imperial policy?
Not great for a life's work is it?
A suggestion...
Hi Bill.
Rather than simply spewing yet more unsubstantiated, baseless shite why don't you try and actually get to grips with some of the arguments being made?
You've proved very comprehensively throughout the entire history of your "participation" in "debates" on this site that doing this represents a rather enormous challenge for you, but do have another try, eh?
I have to say that it's completely beyond me why you bother to post here. You never have anything to say that even remotely approaches an attempt to critique something we've written (which would naturally include things like quotes and references, which you appear incapable of). All you ever come up with is sneering, two-line quips about how racist/pro-imperialist/whatever you think we are.
If I turned up to PR meetings and, rather than making any kind of constructive intervention, simply repeatedly put my hand up and said "you people are scum, you people are scum", I think you'd be within your rights to ask me to leave. What is it then, that you think gives you the right - or indeed, as I say, even makes it worthwhile from your point-of-view - to behave in the equivalent manner on our website?
So if you can't actually get to grips with real political debate can I suggest that you just stop posting here? It'll probably improve everyone's mood.
Blimey O'Reilly
Blimey O'Reilly.
Unsubstantiated? Perhaps not.
What do we get from Magamna? We discover that he owns a Yeats compendium. This is supposed to mean something. We find that he can produce a sort of pseudo Marxoid rationalisation for the Great Powers Imperial policy. This too is supposed to provide some sort of credit to his ledger.
It doesn't.
Oo er
Bill
Daniel criticised you for posting sneering two-line quips rather than engaging with the actual arguments, and you respond with ... a sneering two-line quip. Kind of makes Dan's case that, really.
This article seems to
This article seems to conflate two issues.
One is quite specific- tactics regarding the attempt by some activists to shout down Subhi al Mashadani, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, at the ESF in 2004.
I wasn’t at the meeting but from reports the heckling began by people who identified themselves as Iraqi exiles- the veracity of this has subsequently been challenged but if you were there and people said this man is part of the government who murders trade unionists and supports a brutal occupation you may indeed think twice before attempting to censor the hecklers. Should al-Mahsadani have been invited? An unelected leader of a ‘trade union’ set up by the occupation forces, the same forces who ruthlessly shoot independent trade unionists. I think the answer is no. Should he have been allowed to speak once there? I think the Iraqi exiles should have been allowed to put their case and it should have been voted on- if it had been agreed I would have supported either leaving the meeting or perhaps listening and replying- either way it is a tactical decision on the day not a matter of principle.
Unfortunately, these options were not pursued, Iraqi activists were not allowed to put their points and shamefully those shouting about their legitimate concerns about trade unionists being murdered were condemned- something this article seeks to continue, with the added spice of insult that Iraqi refugees who have escaped persecution are ‘reactionary’ ‘Stalinists’ for opposing the unelected leader of a stooge trade union.
The wider point is whether socialists here or in Iraq should support the resistance. Use of the definite article again conflates issues and sows confusion. Should we support reactionary sectarian killings? Certainly not- these do not resist imperialism rather give a cover for it. Should we support workers organising like the Basra oil workers? We should. They really are resisting imperialism. Should such workers arm themselves and seek to repel the US led occupation forces as well as the reactionary Islamists? Yes.
We should support workers against the bosses and the imperialist occupation to organise free trade unions, for armed self-defence and for a war of liberation against the US led occupation. This way the working class and small farmers could be won to socialism instead of falling into the trap of reactionary Islamism which means death for the working class- repression of women, execution of gay people and more communal murderous attacks.
Of course I will no doubt be condemned as 'an idiot', a 'reactionary', 'shite', 'kitsch', 'sneering' 'spewing' 'quipping' etc. but I fear such epiphets do little to encourage dialogue or debate.
is it a dog?
After a dog has taken a roll in a mud bath, it remains a dog, albeit one covered in mud. To reveal the essence of the dog, its necessary to wash it, to remove the dirt which obscures the real thing.
What is the essence of Magamna's argument?
That is is necessary for imperialism to occupy Iraq to enable the creation of trade unions who will then pursue the struggle for socialism.
Its so feeble that to say it out loud is enough.
If ever there was a stages schema it is this one, not of course in the sense of the pseudo-classical verbiage that Magamna prefers, but in the sense of a impossible series of events that can never occur.
So what does Magamna do? He rolls his argument in mud. So for example;
"Those who howled down al Mashadani are Stalinists also because they believe that the supreme revolutionary virtue is not, as Solidarity maintains, commitment to the working class and to the creation, growth, and education of a labour movement, but “anti-imperialism”.... They do not express it like this, but they held to a rigid and fixed Stalinist-type “stages” conception of socialist politics for Iraq.... First “the resistance” must defeat “imperialism”; and only then should those working-class activists who survive the tender attentions of those who set off bombs to kill Iraqi civilians, in Baghdad and elsewhere, organise trade unions and a political working class movement to fight for working-class power and socialism in Iraq."
Which part of this statement is true? Not one word. Magamna doesn't try and prove it. He asserts it without any substantiating evidence. Yet this enough for his acolytes to defend him.
It is mud that needs to be washed away.
As one of those who howled down al Mashadani I can say better than most.
Yet David Browder and Janine want us to address not the argument but the mud. The sophistry and pseudo intellectualism that Magamna hides all his reactionary rubbish behind.
What's the point?
Assertions
Yes, Bill, and you never assert *anything* without attempting to prove it.
I don't want to get into the argument itself, because I have done so ad nauseam on this site, in detail. I want to comment on a secondary thing. I have what I take to be a position pretty similar to Sean's. In my own mind this is categorically not 'support for imperialism' so that imperialism can help set up trade unions or something. It was because they wanted 'critical support for imperialism' in Iraq that the LFIQ people against whom Sean is arguing in this article broke from us. (They weren't awl members, but had been around us in one form or another for a long time). I personally had lots of (email) arguments with Alan Johnson in particular, which were pretty heated. They saw it as a break. I certainly saw it as a break. It's true that they, also, argued that we/I simply lacked the courage of our own convictions, but then, also, I found this argument rather unconvincing.
So: I didn't support the war. I don't support the occupation. These are my own formulations of what I believe is in my own head. I don't believe the occupation is a 'stage' towards the building of socialism, or something. I have had furious arguments with people who think otherwise.
(It is a matter of empirical fact that trade unions exist now and didn't used to, and we need to both acknowledge that fact and work out how best to support them. But that, for now, is a separate issue).
So how do you account for what's in my head? All right, it might be that I'm pretty dim; that all that's in my head is mud; and that I unconsciously hold beliefs I am too afraid of to accept to myself that I do, in fact, hold, in which case I guess the best remedy is therapy.
Or maybe there's a political argument. It seems to me that in this version of it - with PR - if I have understood them, it comes down, actually, to an argument about trade unions. Jason, below, wants to define the 'resistance' so it includes trade union struggle. You can if you like, in which case obviously we too support an aspect of the resistance. But nobody usually thinks that's what 'the resistance' means. More generally, along with many on the left, there seems to be an objection to any form of trade unionism which *isn't* semi-insurrectionary - which isn't, in effect, some kind of national liberation movement instead of a trade union movement.
I think that in places like Iraq you are often going to get very tentative forms of working class organisation, focused on very narrow, economistic and reformist things, often - or probably - organised by the people with some history of doing so (like the Iraqi CP). And *even unions like that* are vital to the socialist project, more so than groups of disaffected poor youth terrorising people in Sunni districts, or whatever - and even than people taking armed action against imperialist troops.
*That*'s what's the dog, surely, whatever mud it's covered in: the trade union movement.
To Clive
Hi Clive
Some interesting points.
First, on:
“So: I didn't support the war. I don't support the occupation. These are my own formulations of what I believe is in my own head. I don't believe the occupation is a 'stage' towards the building of socialism, or something. I have had furious arguments with people who think otherwise.”
“I didn't support the war. I don't support the occupation. “
Fair enough- good. However, when the AWL refuse to call for Troops Out it is confusing and easy to see how this becomes conflated with support for the occupation in some people’s minds. It’s not of course necessarily support for the occupation but a refusal to demand troops out is not exactly against the occupation either. Of course some people I’ve had this discussion with say (I’m not saying you will) it doesn’t matter what I say. But in a sense it does. If we support demos saying troops out now or even just troops out and argue for such a position in the unions, and for building a movement based on troops out then we should take responsibility for it. Action is more important than slogans but slogans and demands are not irrelevant.
I’m not personally in favour of saying the AWL are pro-war- I think we should be more precise. But refusing to support demonstrations on the basis of troops out is poor. For example the article "Why we do not support the US/UK in Iraq" makes no demands nor suggestions about how best to create a movement here to force the troops out or how to raise solidarity with Iraqi workers to force the troops out or resist imperialism in other ways- strikes, demonstrations, organised self-defence, insurrection.
Indeed Magamna explicity rejects troops out now as causing civil war-
“The militant and revolutionary-sounding slogans about “victory to the resistance”, and the calls for US and British withdrawal “now”, translate, in the real Iraq, into support for the unleashing of civil war and for the victory of clerical-fascist reaction (or perhaps, “at best”, of the Ba’thists again).”
This is suggestive that f the troops leaving now inevitably means Islamist fascist reaction then the troops for the meantime do have some progressive role to play.
We should completely reject this. If a mass movement here or in the US forces troop withdrawal then this would be a massive victory against Bush, Blair and their successors- Brown and Obama (or McCain). It would be incumbent on British and US trade unionists to offer material solidarity to Iraqi trade unionists (as it is already) in their fight against the Islamists. Currently the imperialist occupation is the Islamists’ main recruiting card. And nor should we dignify those who murder trade unionists, women or gay people or ordinary working class people by setting off bombs in markets or mosques as ‘the resistance’- they actually strengthen imperialism by fracturing opposition and driving a section of Iraqis into tacit support for the occupation. Most of all we should not dodge the immediate priority of building an effective anti-war movement here as well as raising solidarity for Iraqi trade unionis- e.g., the oil workers' union that we have raised money for at our events.
If the point was simply to question the clarity of the slogan ‘victory tot he resistance’ then I think you would have a point as I said over a year ago on the PR website
“I think Steve might have a point that given the fracturing of Iraqi resistance movements, including many bent on a vicious sectarian war which far from being resistance to imperialism actually strengthens it, that merely saying we support 'the resistance' may not be clear enough. We should support military actions against US and UK imperialism, support the Iraqi working class organising itself (such as the Basra oil workers)and be for the working class to come to the fore of resistance against imperialism.”
However Magamna instead launches a vicious and bizarre attack on Iraqi exiles protested a leader of a stooge trade union as ‘Stalinists’, ‘reactionary’ and all manner of other insults bearing no relation to the reality of politics here or in Iraq.
I hope this helps clarify why there are disagreements and has done so in a reasonable tone and manner. If you feel misrepresented please feel free to comment or correct me and at least you have not taken the tone of insult substituted for argument that the main article takes.
Jason
How do I account for what's in your head?
You oppose the withdrawal of imperialist troops - ergo you support them staying - ergo you support the occupation.
Formal logic has its place.
In a country where according to the Lancet over one million people have been killed. Where according to the UN four million displaced. Such that from a population of 16 million around 30% have been seriously affected as a direct consequence of the occupation.
And you support the cause of this slaughter.
All the rest is mud.
In your head.
To Bill and to Jason
Hard, obviously, to reply to two responses which are so different in tone and intelligence. And I don't want to get into yet another head bang about this subject; I'll let someone else do so if they feel like it.
But just briefly, then, at the risk of simply repeating what I've said ad nauseam. I don't know what to say to someone, like bill, who simply refuses to respond to actual arguments or the things people actually say. I'm tempted just to say 'fuck off, you absurd apolitical moron'.
But the argument is about whether to raise a particular slogan, and campaign around it, and support other campaigns around it, or to do something else instead. It really don't see why thinking 'troops out now' is a bad slogan commits me to 'supporting the occupation', or 'wanting the troops to stay' or any other similar formulation, any more than thinking 'overthrow Gordon Brown' now is a bad slogan commits me to support for the British government. It's fundamentally an argument about ultra-leftism, I suppose - or vague, unfocused, pseudo-revolutionary sloganising and all that, not an argument about whether to support imperialism.
The argument that it is a bad slogan is based on an assessment of what is happening in Iraq, on the state of the labour movement, on its ability to survive civil war, and so on. On a certain level, yes, if you like, it's an assessment that the status quo is marginally preferable to civil war; but so is the status quo in most situations. Demanding civil war is not a good way to oppose the status quo. It doesn't mean you support the status quo. And the argument that *in principle* such as assessment is support for imperialism seems to me simply daft. Making a particular judgment about what might follow from 'troops out now' if that's what you really mean doesn't commit you to a general assessment of imperialism, or indeed to a specific assessment that in some positive sense imperialism is a 'good thing' in Iraq.
The assessment might be wrong, of course. But that is rarely argued very forcefully. Normally it's the implied 'in principle' argument. (ie that the assessment *must be* *in principle* wrong, because to make such as assessment is to make a concession to imperialism)
I agree that leaves you in need of a good way to pose sharply opposition to the occupation. I don't have a snappy answer to that question. I think sometimes situations can be quite complicated. I can see the attractions of saying 'troops out now' just as a way of saying 'we REALLY hate the Americans'. I mean that sincerely; I can see the benefits of it. At the the of the day, though, it just seems incoherent.
I can't remember the details now of the ESF business. But it's surely not true that the IFTU as it was then was 'set up' by the Americans, as someone said, I think it was Jason. Activists from the ICP, mainly, set it up. They used an opening presented by American occupation, and for sure have had a popular frontist attitude to the various pro-American governements. But the images of 'stooges' is false - or rather, by this category of stooge, any trade union movement which isn't insurrectionary - ie, any real one with a sense of how to actually build stable working class organisation - will be a stooge. So even if it was the case that the howling down was led by Iraqi exiles - and I'm not sure it is - they were exiles who were politically opposed to the whole project of building an actual labour movement on a nationalist/Stalinist basis. And that's leaving aside whoever else was involved in the howling.
There is somehting very, very basic, from our point of view, about solidarity with a workers' movement, even if it's an imperfect one, led by people we disagree with, and it's only just getting off the ground after decades of repression.
On the ESF: I was also there
On the ESF:
I was also there at the time and if I've got things correctly Subhi al Mashadani represented a "yellow union" that was in league with the occupation (along with the ICP). If this is correct then why would anyone have any qualms with him being shouted down. To be another scenario imagine the UK had been occupied by an imperialist power and the TUC was in league with them (which is why independent unions won't joiin the IFTU). Wouldn't we think it was an outrage if a continental social forum invited them to speak at their event and wouldn't we praise people who demanded they weren't given a platform?
In terms of the occupation and the whole "troops out now" debate I'd firstly point people to this article by Sami Ramadani:
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/2070
Among other stuff he says:
"Strikes were always crushed under Saddam. But in a fascist-style move, Saddam Hussain in 1987 introduced a new law (known as decree 150) declaring all public sector workers, i.e. the overwhelming majority of Iraq's several million workers, "civil servants". And guess what? Civil servants were banned from joining a trade union. Overnight, most of Iraq's workers were not allowed to join even Saddam's own yellow unions.
After the occupation, Paul Bremer decreed that Saddam's decree 150 was still in force. It is the only Saddam law that was ever specifically declared valid by the occupation regime. Furthermore, no trade unions, yellow or red, are legal in Iraq today, until such time that the government 'enacts a law which will govern the status of all associations'. That some unions are operating is due to the determination of the workers to defend the most basic of their rights. The Federation of Iraqi Oil Unions, headquartered in Basra, is the shining example of such a union.
It was no accident that the province which was least controlled by the US-led occupation and the puppet regime developed into the hub of independent trade unionism. Not a single trade unionist was killed by the Sadr movement in Basra, a city that they mainly controlled. It was the British forces which opened fire last year on a well known union office in Basra. And it was the occupation which was accused by the unions of the assassination of an oil engineer last year."
Also I really don't get the argument about civil war. The US and UK are currently arming different sectarian factions in Iraq and giving them more weapons by the day. The occupation actually makes civil war more likely the longer it goes on.
Also the stuff about saying troops out now means "we REALLY hate the Americans" is just lazy, apolitical nonsense. Who was mentioning slurs earlier in this debate?
The fact is that the AWL isn't just opposed to a slogan they don't want the troops to leave now. They were quite clear about that at the recent day school I went to. Now you can put all the nuances on it you want but if you are opposed to the troops leaving now, it means you want them to stay for the time being. There is no way round this. And this logic leads to all kinds of problems. Would it be right to call for imperialist invasions under other scenarios if you thought it would provide a breathing space for the working class?
Not only does the stance of the AWL fail to take into account the international conatations of anti-imperialist struggles, it also fails to see the picture of what happens in Iraq.
PS While I wouldn't use quite the same style as Bill I think the AWL aren't in a great position to talk about those kinda things given how rude and needlessly aggro quite a few of their leadership are. Sean M and Mark O being two examples.
IFTU and link
On IFTU I didn't claim they were set up by the Americans- they weren't as far as I know but did refer to the perception amongst some Iraqi exiles that they were a 'stooge' union- certainly they were legal whilst others weren't.
(Edited to say- actually I see I did say set up by occupation forces- this according to what I've read isn't strictly accurate but it did have the support of those political parties who worked with the occupation and was allowed to operate at least partially by the occupation forces in stark contrast to other union bodies.)
This doesn't mean that we should have nothing to do with them or indeed that socialists shouldn't under all circumstances work in them or with them in Iraq or abroad- but there is a reasonable debate to be had. I'll write more tomorrow.
Sami Ramadani disagrees with the shouting down at the ESF- he may be right. My point is that whatever we think it is rather over the top and unhelpful to label those who did so as automatically Stalinist. It may- I think it is- more complex than that.
Sami Ramadani article
On arguing style, Dan has a point though I do think Bill is too angular on this. There is something to be said for how the AWL position risks coming across but nevertheless little to be gained I think in mere accusations- though of course the lead article falls into this trap fairly comprehensively (though as the adage goes two wrongs doesn't make a right and neither is my enemy's enemy always my friend to enter the world of simplistic adages even further!).
more on IFTU and the culture of debate on the left
There are two issues here-
1) Is the IFTU a legitimate i.e. independent trade union?
2) Is the AWL’s position on the war support for occupation, clearly anti-war or something else?
However, even before addressing these questions we have to look critically at Matgamna’s polemical strategy. He takes one small incident at the ESF and magnifies this into a tirade against much of the left as Stalinists, reactionary and then completely conflates support for armed resistance to the US and allies’ occupation with support for reactionary Islamist forces. What is he trying to do here? It seesm designed to obscure the issues and create an emotional idenfication by AWL supporters as seeing others as somehow nasty bad people- Stalinists and the like.
Firstly on the IFTU; it is the only officially recognised trade union body (even if in practice the American backed administration doesn't allow any union to operate freely). Why? Because it is linked to ruling parties in Iraq and does not oppose the occupation. It was clearly set up as if not exactly a stooge trade union then one under the control of the ICP who had previously prioritsed opposing Saddam to opposing imerialism and then actually given critical support to the occupation. Of course this is not to condemn all the workers who joined it and actually there is a long history of activists working within state sanctioned and even trade unions set up by secret police to subvert them and make them work for the wroking class struggle (e.g. in the Russian revolution but also in many other cases- I know some activists in Ethiopia who have done something similar, in heroic life and death struggles, risking everything to participate in the class struggel and be true to their principles). However, in the main it does seem that more class-conscious workers tended to join other, banned, union bodies such as the Federation of Workers’ Councils and the Federation of Oil Unions. Actually as time has gone on the IFTU has, under pressure form below and the objective situation, become more opposed to privatisation and has backed strikes by other groups of workers.
In general socialists and working class activists should of course try to work alongside stooge unions, sometimes even using them to spread class-consciousness and instigate strikes. The fact that the IFTU has had to come out in support of the Federation of Oil Unions’ strike shows some of this class dynamic.
However, Matgamna raises one particular issue over a visit not by an ordinary trade unionist but the general secretary of this trade union. When members of the audience from Iraq objected this was over-ruled undemocratically by the chair who tried to talk over objections. Should he have been shouted down? It’s a tactical question with no definite answer. I’ve already suggested that it should have been put o a vote and that when it wasn’t it was fair to heckle. But what is fairly definite, even if you disagree with this, is that any one who did object to this supporter of the occupation from speaking, an occupation that has murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including shooting demonstrators and trade unionists is not for this reason a Stalinist!
It is an absurd and mud-slinging assertion. This then becomes without any evidence suddenly support for Baathists and Islamists and for the eradication of trade unions in Iraq. However, it is perfectly possible to object to the occupation, to demand troops out now, to be for the military defeat of imperialism without in any sense supporting the Baathists or Islamists.
Is Troops Out really ultra-left in the sense of being disconnected from the wider movement? Far from it. What Clive actually means I think is that whilst he does not support the troops being there in the first place he does not support amass movement bringing them out now because the situation will be worse for the Iraqi workers if the reactionary Islamists are in power. However, if a mass movement here forces the bourgeois here and/or in the US to withdraw troops this is a massive defeat for imperialism and its ability to intervene at will to privatise economies and subjugate regions. What perhaps lies behind the AWL’s position is an ambiguity with some indeed believing perhaps in a contradictory fashion that the occupation is somehow better than the alternatives. But it isn’t because a defeat for imperialism will mean less interventions in the future, more chance for an Iraqi working class movement to defeat the Islamists and other reactionaries and a mass movement here that forces troop withdrawal can also force massive aid and reparation for the Iraqi working class and indeed raise funds directly for Iraqi working class organisations.
There clearly can be a complex and intelligent debate. There are some comrades in the AWL I believe misled by the complexity into either unclear positions or ones that give tacit support for imperialism by for example opposing creating a movement demanding a clear troops out position (accompanied admittedly by a denial of but by opposing troops out – let alone now- this shows contradiction and perhaps confusion). Others- the minority- advocate troops out but still hold with the AWL positions in general for reasons I find obscure. There are yet others in the AWL who seem to prefer general denunciation and rudeness substituting insulting epithet or debate- so far at least Clive seems to have avoided this.
It may be of course that the internal culture of the AWL which seemingly encourages highly emotional attacks on people who disagree with them makes many impervious to a reasonable debate but I think at least some want to genuinely engage on these issues and anyway these debates are not confined to the AWL- for example we had something of a discussion whilst in Workers Power over the possibility of calling for a victory to the Taliban a position many of us found completely untenable and wrong-headed.
The fact that some in the AWL seem to ‘defend’ their positions through the tactic of highly emotive insults against others on the left is incidentally why I think it is extremely important to maintain a calm reasonable and polite debate- emotional counter-attacks or insults do nothing to take the emotional heat out of arguments- rather they enflame it. This culture of attack and invective is moreover something that disfigures to varying degrees much of the left- it would be not only pleasant to change this particular aspect of left culture but potentially quite important as well.
I think even if this debate only changes this and perhaps even only amongst some people it would be quite an achievement with potentially impoirtant ramifactions for creating a culture of debate that encourages participation rather than puts people off.
Ok...
... 3 points, and then I'm afraid I will have to withdraw from this discussion.
1. The IFTU no longer exists. What was the IFTU is recognised as a union, for instance, by the TUC and every British union which has developed any trade union solidarity with Iraq, and also by US Labour Against the War (who hosted a tour by reps of the IFTU and other unions and got them to put out a joint statement). The whole conception of it as a stooge union is simply false. It is, for sure, not a revolutionary movement and its leadership are ex-Stalinists. But the distinction between its general secretary and a rank and file worker you want to make is not very persuasive: much of the time, the representatives of such unions will be their full-time officials. It is a union, also, remember, whose members have been murdered by sectarian reactionary militia; and which has been referred to, in response to the fact of such murders, as 'quislings' by, for instance, the SWP.
The framework in which a non-revolutionary trade union movement is a stooge or a quisling is, I think, one incompatible with any real effort to build, or help build, a workers' movement in Iraq. (Of course there were Ba'thist pseudo unions, but they are a different matter).
2. 'Armed struggle' against the occupation of course in principle could include working class organisations. But since the start of the occupation by far the strongest need for armed working class organisation is *against* sectarian, Sunni or Shia and/or Islamist militias which have carried out murders against members of rival communities, worker activists, people selling alcohol, gay men, etc - rather than alongside them in struggle against imperialist troops.I think the 'anti-imperialist' framework (by which I mean one which imagines this is pretty closely analogous to an anti-colonial struggle) confuses this issue.
3. Would a victory for those militias against Bush etc be a victory? On one quite narrow level, I suppose so. But on a much deeper level the fate of the working class, and working class, secular, feminist etc - and of course socialist - movements in the region will be decisive for its, and humanity's, future. A victory for sectarian/Islamist militias - or, perhaps, the division of Iraq with ethnic and religious cleansing, a stronger position for the Iranian government, maybe the Saudi government too - all that - would not help advance that future.
It's true that the occupation has fostered sectarian division, boosted different sides of the civil war (though mainly the Shia side, if only by default) and what have you. The occupation has not played a progressive role. But festering poison is still not the same as all-out haemorrhaging (or something). Of course, we are against both. But we are not obliged to propose drastic catastrophe as the answer to chronic illness.
Or in other words, the ruling class's defeat is not necessarily out victory. We want their defeat. But if we lose sight of our overall socialist objectives, and see everything in terms of defeat or victory for Bush, I think we lose the plot.
I can assure you there are
I can assure you there are such things as stooge or false trade unions- for example in Ethiopia I know of several unions that were shut down, activists imprisoned or murdered and unions set up by the state. So it is not a made up notion.
The point about defeating the imperialists in Iraq from our persepective as socialists in Britain is what we do here- build solidairty links with Iraqi workers both through communciation and fund raising and by building a militant anti-war movement based on troops out now. If- and it is a big if_ I'll grant you we managed to force troops out by militant direc action it certainly would be a victory.
On "stooge unions" and the anti-war movement here...
Yes, of course there are such things as stooge unions but the IFTU wasn't one and the GFIW (its successor) isn't one either. Revolutionaries don't judge the character of trade union organisations simply by how bad the politics of its leaders are; if we did, we'd be forced to conclude that Unison, Unite and the GMB were ultimately organs of class-collaboration and essentially tools of the government.
Yes, the IFTU's leaders were right-wing, sell-out, Stalinoid social-democrat traitors. The GFIW's leaders are even worse, given that it was formed through a merger of the old ICP-led unions and some Islamist-led unions. But the relationship of a union's leaders to the state is not the only - or even the decisive - test of a union's character. It is whether that union organises workers against their bosses in workplaces. The IFTU did, and the GFIW does. Of course, the class-collaboration of a union's leadership works to constantly undermine any workplace organisation but while any such workplace organisation exists our job as socialists is to support it and defend it against reaction - even while uncompromisingly criticisng the politics of the union's leaders.
The key point for me, though, is that the argument over "stooge unions" was pretty much a red-herring from day one. Even if you ended up concluding that the IFTU/GFIW was/is a "stooge union" (and I know people with better politics than you, Jason, who did) there were still at least two (now three) trade union centres in Iraq that had arguably better records of workplace organisation and were not compromised by any links to the state. People who banged on and on about "stooge unions" in Iraq would usually argue, once you got down to it, that any kind of working-class politics was off the agenda and guerilla struggle was as good as it was going to get. I personally find the notion (which, by the way, I am not accusing Jason or PR of but which was, and remains, depressingly widespread on the left) astonishingly patronising and in-fact borderline racist; working-class politics is fine for everywhere else but imperialised brown people can only be expected to resist under the leadership of clerical-fascists and only by the means of guerilla cells. It's basically cultural-relativist, Stalinist third-worldism writ large and it is, in short, bullshit. Even in conditions where the organised working-class element is so weak and marginalised as to be almost invisible (which, actually, it never has been in occupied Iraq) the job of socialists internationally is ALWAYS to identify it and lend as much support and in whatever form we can.
Which brings me onto my second point about the role of the anti-war movement here, which Jason argues should primarily be about trying to "force" the troops to leave. I actually can't conceive of a situation in which the anti-war movement, as currently constituted, could possibly force the hand of the British government in terms of what it does with its troops so to an extent the discussion's academic. Obviously, the anti-war movement Jason's imagining probably looks a lot different to the one we've got now, but as far as I'm concerned any anti-war movement socialists would like to see would have to be "based on" a fuck of a lot more than "troops out now". Even an anti-war movement solidly grounded in working-class direct action that limited itself to placing demands on what the British ruling-class did with its military would be insufficient. Personally I wouldn't want the British anti-war movement - or any anti-war movement for that matter - to be the agency that forces the withdrawal of troops even if I thought this were possible. For Iraq to have anything like a democratic and secular - much less socialist - future, this task must be carried about by the Iraqi working-class on their terms and in such a way that they are able to impose themselves (socially and politically) on a post-occupation Iraq. THAT would be the victory.
In this context the job of the anti-war movement internationally for me is to do whatever it can to help Iraqi labour achieve this task. Certainly, anything that makes it more difficult for the armed wing of British capitalism to conduct its business in Iraq (transport workers refusing to move munitions, for example) should be supported and encouraged, but it's vital that such actions take place within the framework of international working-class solidarity that places the agency of Iraqi labour at the centre of any anti-imperialist struggle.
We - and I mean all socialists - aren't (or shouldn't be) just interested in the troops and getting them out. We are (or should be) interested in who gets them out, on what basis, and what happens afterwards. That means that demands like "troops out now" aren't enough. It means that any anti-war movement that subordinates its politics and activity to those demands becomes at best impotent and at worse on the side of reaction. And it means that solidarity with Iraqi workers must, without a doubt, be the motivating factor in everything we do and say about the occupation of Iraq.