Looking Forward

Submitted by Janine on 30 October, 2003 - 9:27

Ruben looks at the future of the anti-war movement and asks 'where can we go from here?'
Where can the anti-war movement go from here? First we have to address our problems. It's been difficult to try and make political criticisms of the Stop the War Coalition. People who tried were simply told 'we mobilised 2,000,000 people so there's clearly nothing wrong.' This just isn't true - there are some serious political and tactical issues that the STWC never faced up to. It may seem negative to focus on the bad aspects of the movement, but if we want to build on the good, positive aspects we have to deal with what's wrong.

Many people have drifted away from the organised anti-war movement since the war ended. They were part of a movement opposing a war, but now that war is over, that movement has lost its direction. Consequently, the size of our demos has shrunk from 2,000,000 to less than 100,000 in under a year.

How could we have stopped this rot? Can we stop it now?

The anti-war movement needs to go from having no political direction to having a very clear one. We need to do now what we should have been doing right from day one - putting our energy into building support and solidarity for democratic forces in Iraq; forces who struggled against Saddam Hussein's regime, forces who struggled against the war, forces who are now struggling against the occupation.

Why is this so important?

Well, basically, because there's no point in saying 'end the occupation' if can't say how you think it should be ended, who by, and what it should be replaced with. New, growing organisations like the Union of Unemployed in Iraq provide us with a perfect immediate focus for building solidarity.

Every month, Bolshy mentions groups like the UUI and the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq - and that's because building solidarity with the progressive resistance to the occupation is absolutely vital for anti-war activists.

Iraq is in total abject economic chaos. American corporations are just about to roll in to rebuild it, and in the meantime its working class is suffering with mass-scale unemployment and is being deprived of basic necessities like running water and electricity. This is the 'liberation' America's war and occupation has brought. Of course it was right to oppose the war, of course it's right to oppose the occupation. But there's little point in opposing the occupation if you don't have a better alternative.

For the anti-war movement to have a future, it has to look to those people in Iraq building that better alternative - trade unions like the UUI or feminist groups like the OWFI.

Bolshy supporters have always argued for the anti-war movement to have an orientation around the working class. This is still necessary now; working class organisations in this country - i.e. trade unions - must build political and practical solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Iraq.

If the anti-war movement can successfully turn itself into a pro-democracy, solidarity movement against the occupation, the thousands who drifted away may start to return. Solidarity is a powerful force, and a working-class based solidarity campaign could do much to strengthen the organisations in Iraq fighting against the occupation, and for a democratic, secular society in the country.

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 12/10/2004 - 17:55

I can't see how anything which bases itself on opposition to the actions of particular states or individuals can ever call itself a "movement" in the political sense at all.

Being "anti-war" does not mean anything politically. There are awful reactionaries who have opposed this and other wars just as there are good, progressive, pro-working class people who have supported (or at least not actively opposed) the war for their own reasons.

This is not to say that socialists should not demonstrate our opposition to this war or ruthlessly expose the lies upon which it was based. But do we really want to lend any credibility to the idea that the anti war demonstrations represented anything more than a loose coalition of people that opposed the war for varying reasons?

Far better to build an international workers movement which can offer alternative political ideas to capitalism and religious extremism.

Oppose the war? Yes! Build the anti-war movement? No!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 13/10/2004 - 23:23

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

You make some solid points. There are, however, a couple of issues that you miss.

The first is that the war *was* wrong. You're obviously anti-war yourself, but your comment that "being "anti-war" does not mean anything politically," is mistaken. I totally disagree with the STWC's attempt to recalibrate the left-right axis in politics along pro-war/anti-war lines rather than class lines, and I disagree with the ridiculous notion that everyone who opposed the war was somehow on the same side (me on the same side as Jacques Chirac? No thanks!). But the fact was that opposing the war was important from a political point of view as it represented the military extension of the imperialist project of the American ruling class. It was not a trivial matter. The fact that some broadly progressive organisations and many working-class people may have supported it doesn't change this. The job of socialists was to convince any pro-war workers of the anti-war case, explaining how war was bound up with capitalism and hopefully winning them to a socialist position.

The second point is that while the anti-war 'movement' was indeed a disparate coalition including some very, very dodgy groups and individuals (the MAB and the Lib Dems are the two most obvious), the point of socialist intervention into it wasn't to say "oh look, isn't this wonderful?" It was to argue for a working-class orientation, and to point out that only the organised labour movement could actually stop the war. Intervening in the broad anti-war movement (or 'mobilisations,' if you're unhappy with the word 'movement') was about uncritical endorsement, it was about trying to do what little we could to drag the mobilisations towards a working-class, internationalist perspective.

I'd argue that the precise point of socialist intervention into the big anti-war mobilisations of 2003 was "to build an international workers movement which can offer alternative political ideas to capitalism and religious extremism."

-

Daniel Randall

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 16/10/2004 - 17:57

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

In response to Daniel's points I'd argue that the state of the anti war movement at the moment is such that active participation in it can be likened to active participation in the John Kerry election campaign or the UK Liberal Democrat election campaign next year. It has become a movement based around the anti-cult of Bush/ Blair.

We have got past the point where the war can be stopped by mass demonstrations. In reality the only force that is capable of forcing the withdrawal of US/UK troops in Iraq are the resistance terrorists.

The official British anti war movement is led by a coalition of people whose aim is to inflict political damage to Bush and Blair at any cost. This extends to supporting anti-war opponents no matter how reactionary, being completely uncritical towards Islamic chauvenism and publicly denouncing Iraqi trade unionists. It is a movement that serious socialists can have absolutely no truck with.

Yes the war was wrong and we should not be silent about that. And yes we should do everything we can to mobilise people against any further attempt by the American government to make war against the enemy of its choosing. But there is a clear difference between intervening into the anti-war movement and declaring ourselves to be a part of that movement.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 20/10/2004 - 21:10

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

On your point about active participation in the anti-war movement, I'd probably agree. My point about intervention into the anti-war movement - which basically meant the structures of the the STWC, local meetings etc. - really reffered to the big anti-war mobilisations of 2002 and 2003. I agree that certainly the STWC is pretty much a rump organisation now.

However, I think you're missing the point on Iraq. It may be true that right now, at this very moment in time, the only people capable of forcing the withdrawal of the imperialist presence are the so-called "resistance." The point is not to deny this - or to pretend that this would be a good thing - but to do whatever we can to help the Iraqi workers' movement grow to a point where it is able to hegemonise the struggle against the occupation; to help it reach a point where it can be a force capable of forcing out the imperialist presence and replacing them in power. To the extent that the "anti-war movement" still exists, we should argue for this perspective within it for the sole reason of winning any newly radical or thinking people around it to working-class politics.

I agree that it's wrong for revolutionaries to submerge themselves in broad movements without vigorously arguing for our politics and retaining our own political identity. The current political and organisational state of the SWP shows what happens if you think all we need to do is "be the best builders of the movement."

But to the extent that we opposed the war and wanted to mobilise people against it, we *were* part of the anti-war movement, even if we wanted to push it in a completely different direction politically and change its orientation to one of working-class politics and international solidarity.

Fixation with the "official structures" of the anti-war movement is, at this stage, fetishistic. Work within the structures of the STWC is a very minimal arena of activity for most revolutionaries. Our main tasks on Iraq now are to propagandise for a perspective of international workers' solidarity, primarily within the labour movement but also within broader movements like the Social Forums, while of course doing everything we can to help the Iraqi workers' movement develop its struggles against the imperialists and other enemies.

The title of this article is "looking forward." This is what we need to do. A thorough-going over and taking-stock of the anti-war movement and our experiences within it are absolutely vital, but how we intervente into the rump STWC is no longer a pressing issue.

-

Daniel Randall

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