Working class internationalism - not the United Nations!

Submitted by Anon on 1 May, 2003 - 12:09

by Amina

Many of those who initially opposed the US war on Iraq said that they would have supported it if the United Nations Security Council had passed a "second resolution". A large section of the anti-war movement, including the Stop the War Coalition, focused on the war being "illegal" - with the strong implication that, if the UN had backed it, it would have both "legal" and right. I think socialists should reject this approach, and refuse to put their trust in the UN.

There is a very obvious practical problem with making our opposition to or support for something hinge on the UN. A unjust or immoral war which the UN opposes or doesn't take a position on will still be destructive and unjust if the UN supports it. Both our predictions for and the facts of war on Iraq - eg that it would kill thousands of civilians, and the many hundreds of civilians that it did kill - did not depend on a vote in a small committee. And of course, this cuts both ways: the UN may oppose something that we support. One example: in 1971, India invaded what subsequently became Bangladesh, liberating the country from oppressive colonial rule by Pakistan. Socialists could not put their trust in the Indian capitalist government, but neither could they decide their view by the fact that India's action was illegal under international law.

One of the consequences of focusing on the UN was that much of the opposition to war was very "soft". The ambivalence of saying that war would be right with a second UN resolution left many people confused and uncertain when - despite massive public opposition - the war actually began. This must have been at least part of the reason for the anti-war demonstrations shrinking progressively, and for the massive swing in public opinion after the war had begun. A clearer stand by the Stop the War Coalition (not to mention some positive campaigning in solidarity with the peoples of Iraq) would have meant fewer people becoming disoriented and disillusioned.

No trust in the UN!

However, there is a more fundamental reason why socialists should not place their faith in the United Nations - the nature of the organisation itself. The idea that the UN is a democratic world government, able to provide or withhold legality and legitimacy, is a delusion. Even the most liberal of capitalist states is not really democratic in the sense of allowing genuine popular self-rule - but the nation state does provide a framework in which the labour movement can fight for more democracy, a better welfare state etc (what Marx called "the political economy of the working-class"). This is also true, increasingly, of the EU. The UN, by contrast, is a diplomatic thieves' kitchen in which the big powers carve up the world, with democracy and international law as a smokescreen and an excuse.

The five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council are the powers which emerged victorious from the Second World War - including, at the time, Stalin's Soviet Union, the US government which atom-bombed Japan and the rulers of the British empire. Today it includes not only the hyper-imperialist US and its UK accomplice, but Russia (visited Chechnya recently?), China (occupation of Tibet, Tiananmen Square, no trade unions) and France - a state with its own blood-soaked history of colonialism, including involvement in the Rwandan massacres of 1994. One of the most peculiar aspects of this war has been self-styled "anti-imperialists" supporting the French imperialists when - because they want to protect French oil interests in Iraq - they indulge in a bit of anti-war posturing.

Outside the Security Council, the UN General Assembly is not even minimally democratic - India, with more than a billion people, has the same number of votes as Luxemburg, and many of the states which sit in it are vicious dictatorships. At every point in the last 60 years, what has happened in the UN has been determined - as with this war - by the interaction of the great powers. If the Security Council had passed a second resolution, it would only have meant the US and UK besting France, Russia and China in a contest to bribe and bully the smaller states. The idea of a world where there is international order and security, with democratically-agreed laws and enforced rules of behaviour is an appealing one - but, in reality, these things do not exist. The idea that they do exist in the UN is a fantasy.

Our alternative: working-class solidarity

Unfortunately, this fantasy is commonplace on the British left - on the left of the Labour Party, for instance - and groups like the SWP have not used their leading position in the Stop the War movement to challenge them. Anti-UN right-wingers in the US are least honest in their critique of the organisation; but their alternative to horse-trading and thuggery in New York and Geneva is a world regulated solely by American military might. The reformist left weaves fantasies about the UN because it has no alternative of its own - but as Marxists, we do. Our alternative is the working class.

For the last 150 years, bourgeois and working-class internationalism have competed with each other. Bourgeois liberals who advocate peace and democratic co-operation between the world's states and peoples have, in certain circumstances, achieved important things - like uniting the once-warring nations of Europe in the European Union. There is an element of this liberal internationalism in the UN too. But these schemes are invariably interrupted by the re-emergence of nationalism and competition between different capitalist states. We can see this today in the disruption of the UN by the growing rivalry between the US and some of the European big powers.

As a class which lives by trying to maximise its profits at the expense of others, the bourgeoisie is by its very nature greedy and competitive, and will never be able to put into practice the ideals of peace and international order which people mistakenly think the UN represents. As Marx put it in 1846:

We have shown what sort of brotherhood free trade begets between the different classes of the one and the same nation. The brotherhood which free trade would establish between the nations of the earth would hardly be more fraternal. To call cosmopolitan exploitation universal brotherhood is an idea that could only be engendered in the brain of the bourgeoisie.

As Marx argue on to explain in the same speech, the socialist alternative to free trade is not economic protectionism, which divides the workers of one country from those of another. It is international working-class organisation to make the socialist slogan of solidarity a concrete reality. Only when the working class takes power worldwide will it become possible to put the ideals of peace, democracy and international order into practice - but even now, under capitalism, working-class organisation and activity is the key.

Even on the rare occasions when the big capitalist powers do something worthwhile (eg taking action to stop genocide), socialists should not trust them or advocate they act - because, fundamentally, they are not democratic agencies acting to maximise human welfare, but machines to defend the interests of capitalists and capitalism. They will act for their own reasons, when and how they choose. Working-class solidarity is different. Another example: when, in 1999, the Indonesian army went on the rampage in East Timor, Australian troops (backed by the UN) intervened - and at the same time, dock workers in Northern Australia took massive industrial action, completely shutting down Australian trade with Indonesia. The Australian army, commanded by a government that had until then actively supported Indonesia's hold on East Timor, acted to ensure order and defend Australian business interests; the Australian unions acted out of solidarity.

In other words, working-class internationalism is already a reality - it exist, in weak and fragmented forms, in the international ties between trade unions, the connection between working-class organisations across the world, and campaigns and movement like "No Sweat". This movement was once much stronger, before Stalinism, fascism and then liberal capitalism undermined it. Rather than nurturing fantasies about the UN, socialists should fight to organise workers and students - in Britain, the US and worldwide - in a movement for solidarity against war and capitalism.

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