July 31, 2014
July 31, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Michael Karadjis, I read the
exchange between Einde O and you where you state that:
For the record I see the very idea of an
"anti-imperialist camp" to be an anti-Marxist, anti-working
class aberration." (Marxmail, "Thai junta
joins anti-imperialist camp".)
Michael, what would you say ALBA is, if not an
anti-imperialist camp in the Americas oriented to promote even larger
formations of anti-imperialist forces such as UNASUR, CELAC, PETROCARIBE,
CARICOM, and now a whole gamut of mostly new continental scope Indigenous,
Black-Afrodescendant, campesino, labour, women's, environmental, cultural,
youth, and sports movements? All these multilateral interstate entities and
hemispheric social movements accept either the Abya Yala and/or la
Patria Grande as their own framework for fighting to advance their own
agendas and proposals for change.
What do you think would be a "Marxist" substitute
(antidote) to these "anti-Marxist, anti-working class" (at least, it
seems, in your book) aberrations?
I do acknowledge that you have left me and others
in suspense about the question of whether you think only the notion
"anti-imperialist camps" is an "anti-Marxist, anti-working class aberration" or whether the
formations constructed by liberation fighters inspired by this concept are also
on your bad list.
Perhaps you don’t consider CELAC, the Community of
Latin American and Caribbean States, to constitute an "anti-imperialist camp".
However, CELAC's founders and leaders not only think so, but acted on this
understanding when they consciously and deliberately excluded the only two
imperialist countries in the Americas -- the USA and Canada -- from the
hemispheric organisation.
That exclusion had nothing to do with antipathy to
the English language. Many CELAC member countries are Anglophone -- a number of
Caribbean Sea island nations (such as Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Bahamas,
Antigua and Barbuda and Trinidad) and two "mainland" countries:
Belize and Guyana.)
So, here are some questions I think you need to
ponder some more.
1. What were the Russian Bolshevik
leaders trying to form at their famous 1920 Baku conference, at which they
embraced anti-colonial Muslim activists and endorsed the call for a jihad against
British imperialism and its empire, on which the sun was indeed beginning
to set?
2. The broad leadership core of the
governing Cuban Communist Party, including Fidel Castro and Raul Castro,
strongly advance the notion of strengthening and amplifying the global
anti-imperialist camp (through successive initiatives such as the Non-Aligned
Movement, the CELAC in the Americas, pan-African initiatives and currently
the Group of 77+China (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Group_of_77). The G77+China
Summit is taking place this week in Bolivia, led by the
ALBA-country presidents.
Do you believe that this fact means that
Cuba’s communist leaders are at best very poor and woolly Marxists unable to
spot such anti-working class and anti-Marxist aberrations?
3. Nearly the whole world during the last century was impacted by anti-colonial
struggles and national liberation wars: such as in Ireland during and right
after WWI; Algeria after WWII; India-Pakistan-East Bengal during and after
WWII; China (1912-1949); Vietnam (WWII through 1972); the Portuguese colonies
of Africa and Asia, finally freed by the Portuguese Carnation Revolution 1974);
the Philippines, which had to fight three imperialist countries in succession
(Spain, the USA, and Japan) to finally win formal independence (however,
remaining a USA semi-colony until now); Iran; Cuba, which since liberation in
July 1959 has had to defend her people from US-sponsored invasion and terrorist
attacks, and a five-decade long financial and trade blockade that the US prefer
to call an embargo!
Palestine, still occupied by the Zionist white-settler,
apartheid state of Israel; Egypt, attacked by British and French imperialism in
1956 following Cairo’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal; Puerto Rico, still a
U.S. colony despite decades of anti-colonial struggle and ferocious US police
repression; the Polisario Front’s still ongoing struggle to win UN recognition
for the Sahrawi Democratic Republic and guarantee their liberation for Western
Sahara, a former Spanish colony; las Malvinas Islands of Argentina occupied and
held by imperialist Britain through military force and war; the long
anti-apartheid struggle of Black South Africans against the white-settler
Afrikaner state backed by London, Washington and Tel Aviv until the eve of its
collapse when these friends of apartheid and Jim Crowism could see the obvious:
that there was nothing more they could do to save Pretoria’ whites-only regime.
The list is too long to enter here and no mention
has yet been made of the first resisters and warriors against
colonial-settlerism and genocide – the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Today, 522 years later, this vast array of "first nations" (a Canadian
euphemism) continue to resist, from the Patagonia to the Arctic, from Chile,
Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, French
Guiana/Guyane française, Suriname, Guyana, Central America, Mexico,
the USA, Canada and Greenland (Denmark!).
Now perhaps you could explain
why this process then and now is not both subjectively and
objectively anti-imperialist,
if you really believe that.
Who would deny that during almost any year of the
last century anti-imperialists from region to region or country to country
reached out to form alliances, movements, confederations, blocks and/or
communities?
The latest large and highly visible example is
the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC,
Community of Latin American and Caribbean States). The CELAC website is at http://www.celac.gob.ve/
index.php?option=com_content& view=frontpage&Itemid=1&lang= en. There have
been and are initiatives like this on unequal trade concerns, regarding global
warming, agriculture and land-use issues, maritime, water and fishing issues,
work place health and safety, labour solidarity, women’s liberation, solidarity
with minority language groups, networks to defend political prisoners and their
families, networks to defend an open, free access internet, and to oppose
NSA-style destruction of individual privacy rights, and peace and anti-war
networks.
As a longstanding member and activist (we say militante)
of the Nicaraguan Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) I have often
taken flak from far-left visitors to Nicaragua – especially in the 1980s – who
complained about our slow pace in getting rid of capitalism. We hear similar
criticisms now about the performance of the Bolivarian comrades in Venezuela,
and even worse nonsense about how the ship is being steered in Nicaragua by the
current FSLN government.
My definite impression is that the bulk of such
criticism and childlike political impatience is rooted in the concept that the
socialist revolution consists of a non-stop, forced march to the
expropriation of the bourgeoisie. Such a notion, if applied today in Venezuela
or other ALBA countries undergoing revolutionary change and advances, would be
a plunge into disastrous civil war in which the capitalist classes and their
imperialist allies hold most of the cards.
The course towards anti-capitalist, socialist
revolution in our Patria Grande is
formatting, fortunately, a much different and more realistic and viable
pattern. This is largely a by-product of the anti-imperialist springs driving
the process forward. All the above-mentioned networks in the
Latin-America/Caribbean region, CELAC’s domain, operate in an anti-imperialist
framework. How could it be otherwise when our everyday reality habituates us to
reject US, Canadian and EU imperialism in the same way we turn away from foul
odours. Being anti-imperialist in Latin America and the Black Caribbean (of
whatever slave driver’s tongue is now the official national language) is like
breathing; we just are! We react involuntarily like the beating heart.
You can hear and feel this, for example in many of
the songs composed for the World Soccer Cup games this year in Brazil. The
lyrics often chant about the Patria Grande winning, not their
own "national" team. When one of our countries is eliminated we switch to being
fans of another Patria Grande team.
As CELAC becomes more of a day-to-day factor in the
lives of grassroots folks, the affinity of Latinos, Black Afrodescendants and indigenous
peoples will become stronger and a street thing. It’s already in our novels,
poems, music lyrics and rap. ALBA is beaming this message loud and clear over
its radio waves, on Telesur, and through the internet and our social networks.
This could become the cutting edge of the historic
struggle to overcome racism, but with a positive thrust because in the ALBA
countries and some others (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, El Salvador) the racist
right are on the defensive, unlike in the USA and Europe where they are
flourishing in their attack mode.
It may not sound just right to self-styled "old
school Marxists", especially if they missed out on Baku and its lessons,
but there exist anti-imperialist camps and alliances. More and stronger
examples are on the horizon.
Marxists can choose either to be part of them or
take the side roads.
Free will, at least in that realm, also exists.
On the concept of an 'anti-imperialist camp’:
Return anti-imperialism to its attachment to human liberation
By Michael
Karadjis
Thanks for your comments Filipe. That was quite a
substantial post, so here’s a substantial answer.
First, my view can be summarised:
1. I’m differentiating between anti-imperialism which of course I support, and the concept of an
"anti-imperialist camp" in the
way it is usually used, so I apologise if my brief line rejecting the
"camp" was unclear and caused confusion; and
2. I see the issue of class as much more
fundamental than "anti-imperialism" in an abstract sense – of course, we
always have, but I feel that in a great deal of left discussion, an abstract
and mechanical "anti-imperialism" has replaced class, especially since 1991.
When certain capitalist states are arbitrarily shoved into some ill-defined
"anti-imperialist camp," it is along these classless "anti-imperialist" lines.
Also, before going into specifics, I want to
summarise the different versions of "anti-imperialist camp" you use in your
post, because they are often entirely different things:
One You sometimes use it to mean alliances of
progressive social movements that come into conflict with imperialist
interests, rather than alliances of states. This is not my understanding of
"camps" at all.
Two Examples like ALBA and Baku, where blocs are
based around states undergoing a socialist revolutionary process, thus
connected to class
Three Blocs of states covering the entire
non-imperialist world such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), G77/133), or
regional variations of it (e.g. CELAC), including every capitalist country
there, no matter how regressive, repressive or even actively pro-imperialist
they are
Four The more restrictive version which has been
more in vogue since the collapse of the USSR, which is an entirely ill-defined
lump of left and progressive, and reactionary, repressive, fascist and even
arguably rising imperialist states, which have nothing in common other than
having one or another conjunctural issue at some time with imperialism.
Thus a monstrous "camp" of Cuba, Venezuela, Putin’s
Russia, China, Assad’s Syria (some days, not others, I guess), Iran’s theocracy
(though I guess not when it was hailing NATO’s war on Gaddafi) , the hereditary
monarchy in North Korea, Gaddafi’s Libya (some days, not others, I guess), the
Sinhala-chauvinist regime in Sri Lanka (not usually, just when it gets
criticised for massive crimes against humanity), Belarus, probably the Islamic
dictatorship in Sudan (though I guess not when it was hailing NATO’s war on
Gaddafi), Maliki’s sectarian regime in Iraq (oops – wasn’t this Assad- and
Iran-aligned regime installed by a US imperialist invasion?).
So briefly, I’m all in favour of the first two, the
third confuses non-imperialist with anti-imperialist but has some, very
limited, uses, and the fourth is such anti-Marxist and anti-working-class
garbage that the entire European and American ultra-right can spout identical
discourse.
ALBA, Baku and
class
You begin with ALBA. First, you note that ALBA
isn’t simply about states (my understanding of the "camp" concept), but about
"a whole gamut of mostly new continental scope Indigenous,
Black-Afro-descendant, campesino, labour, women's, environmental, cultural,
youth, and sports movements." So in my understanding, alliances of progressive
social movements which come into conflict with imperialist interests (and
inevitably also with local capitalist interests) are not the same thing as
alliances of states that consider
themselves some kind of anti-imperialist "camp." So perhaps we mean different
things.
Second, however, ALBA is of course also an alliance
of states. But these are not any old states. Would ALBA exist without the
ongoing Venezuelan revolution? Would it exist without Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and
Ecuador being the heart of it? Seems to me the obvious answer is no. But
fundamentally what we support about these states is not some "anti-imperialism"
in abstract terms, but, returning to class,
the fact that these countries have been moving towards socialist revolution,
regardless of the speed, the stage they are at etc. Their very concrete
anti-imperialism flows from that.
(As an aside, I apologise for not knowing a great
deal about Sandinista Nicaragua Mark II, and whether to include it in my list
above of those moving towards socialism, or merely as one of the ring-ins that
is only in ALBA because the others make it possible. Sandinista Mark I was very
formative. My impression has been that Mark II is not much to write home about.
If that’s wrong, it’s wrong. But regarding what you say about criticism of
slowness of the anti-capitalist process, if such a process is indeed happening,
then I have no sectarian criticism of any slowness involved, in fact I strongly
agree with your points about that issue).
Similarly, as with ALBA, I find the idea of the
1920 Baku conference difficult to envisage without the rather obvious fact that
the new Soviet workers’ state was bang in the middle of it! Class in the lead, again.
You note that at Baku "they embraced anti-colonial Muslim activists
and endorsed the call for a jihad against
British imperialism." Yes, and? Who is arguing against struggle against
imperialism? As I said, that is a distinct issue from that of "camp."
Anti-colonial
struggles, NAM and G77
You also go into a lot of detail about the
anti-colonial struggles of the mid to late 20th century, quite unnecessary
detail. I am well aware of all this history, and can’t see how my reference to the
"campist" concept would make you think I was opposed to all these anti-colonial,
anti-racist, anti-imperialist struggles.
Did states freed from colonial rule in the 1950s
and 1960s go on to "form alliances,
movements, confederations, blocks, and/or communities" as you note? Of course they did. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) might
be an example. Specifically, at the time it reflected the fact that countries
just recently freed from colonialism had their own interests which often
clashed with those of their former colonial masters. Nothing wrong with that as
far as it goes.
But what did NAM mean in practice beyond that?
Often very little. Was Saudi Arabia, for example, really a "non-aligned" state
when it was in NAM? And even if it had been, I just wonder what that would have
meant for the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers with zero rights toiling
in their oilfields, and in the rest of the Gulf? Did they
benefit from the NAM label? Did the label mitigate the tyranny? Did Saudi
women benefit? I just mention groups like workers, immigrants, women etc.,
because it seems to contradict your talk about "anti-imperialist" blocs of
"indigenous, labour, women’s" and other social movements.
Indonesia’s Sukarno was one of the founders of NAM.
At the time, while a capitalist state, we can say there were certain
progressive features of a number of ex-colonial states such as Sukarno’s
Indonesia and Nasser’s Egypt which were supportable. In Nasser’s case, the
nationalisation of the Suez Canal was a very specific, concrete
anti-imperialist action (in contrast
to a lot of the purely rhetorical "anti-imperialism" we hear of these days).
A couple of points. First, would the degree of
actual anti-imperialism of such regimes have been even possible without the
existence of the Soviet Union, horribly deformed though it was, as a partial
alternative powerhouse to imperialism, one having its origins in a class-based social overturn? My answer
is no.
Second, when Sukarno was overthrown by Suharto, did
Indonesia leave the NAM, or was it thrown out? No, in fact Suharto went on to
host NAM in 1992 (just like that other great anti-imperialist leader, Hosni Mubarak
(!), hosted it in Egypt in 2009. Yet when Suharto took power, surely Indonesia
stopped being non-aligned or in any way in conflict with imperialism. And more
importantly from my perspective, when Suharto took power the regime also killed
a million people and began 35 years of anti-working class tyranny. Thus was NAM
an "anti-imperialist camp"?
Maybe you weren’t referring to NAM as one of these
"alliances, blocs" etc., but since you refer to the G77+China bloc, we are
talking about the same countries, by and large. Both NAM and G77 (now in fact a
G133) encompass virtually every country in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and
Latin America, the entire "Third World", or non-imperialist world. I certainly
have nothing against the entire non-imperialist world aligning on specific
issues of concern.
But I don’t understand bodies incorporating the
entire non-imperialist world to be the same thing as the "anti-imperialist
camp." It is certainly a very different thing to the actual anti-imperialist,
partially anti-capitalist ALBA bloc you referred to above. And it is also a
very different thing to today’s conception of "anti-imperialist camp", which is
often a hotch-potch of progressive and reactionary regimes that might just
happen to have some conjunctural issue with some imperialist power. But you
raised G77.
CELAC and regional
blocs
You also raised CELAC, which unlike ALBA
incorporates every capitalist state of Latin America, i.e., a regional version
of NAM/G77. I will take your word for it that CELAC is becoming "more of a
day-to-day factor in the lives of grassroots folks" and that
therefore "the affinity of Latinos, Black Afro-descendants, and indigenous
peoples will become stronger and a street thing". I’m certain you would know
more about Latin American realities than I would. But why would this be happening?
Is it merely because of a bloc of every country in Latin America, even Mexico
and Colombia? Does that automatically form this kind of popular, grassroots,
progressive process you refer to?
Don’t get me wrong – I hope CELAC replaces the
Organization of American States (OAS) and of course I support the right of the
Latin American countries to exclude imperialist North America. In the same way
as African countries might attempt to represent their common interests through
the Organisation of African States, Arab states through the Arab League, Southeast
Asian countries through ASEAN, AFTA etc. But I don’t see any of this kind of
popular/progressive processes you claim for CELAC occurring anywhere else in
the world, in these other blocs.
Could it be, once again, something about active
socialist revolutions being a core strength of the CELAC bloc, i.e., does it
again come down to the question of class?
Or since you define CELAC as an anti-imperialist
camp (at least I assume you do, since that is the argument and that is your
example), then are these other regional blocs of non-imperialist states also
"anti-imperialist camps"? And all the states in all these blocs are therefore
part of this "camp"? I’m genuinely not trying to be difficult. I just want to
know where you draw the line, since a multi-state bloc of capitalist,
non-imperialist, countries, seems to be one of your key examples.
OK, there may be some issues where most
non-imperialist states have different interests to those of imperialist states,
even though they are run by capitalist governments whose own interests often
intersect with those of the imperialists, and are in conflict with those of
their working peoples. You mention for example the question of unequal trade,
and you also note the G77 (G133) which plays a certain role in pushing the
economic interests of developing capitalist countries against those of the
OECD-imperialist bloc.
Yes, when countries bloc together on a concrete
issue such as this we should of course support them. Whether such temporary
blocs on particular issues lead to long-term "camps" is another thing. And of
course, in reality, we understand how little they are likely to achieve, and
how minimal are their goals, given the capitalist nature of most states in the
world and therefore their ties to imperialism. But that doesn’t stop the issue
from being one of minimal economic justice that we can fight around, and
support such demands from the G77, the various regional trade blocs noted above
etc.
However, even here there are problems. Many of the
largest developing capitalist countries, including BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa) along with Argentina and others, are allied to countries like Australia
as part of the "genuine free-trade" group – they want to end the double
standards of the US and European Union who talk free trade but provide massive
subsidies to their farmers to dump on the Third World. So that these bigger
countries, which are big exporters, can export more. Fair enough. But this
playing into the capitalist, free-trade, export-oriented game is potentially
detrimental to the mass of poorer countries who are more import-dependent. With
"anti-imperialist campers" often looking to the BRICS as some kind of vanguard,
they ought to be looking at some of the literature produced by organisations
like Focus on the Global South, Food First etc. to get an idea of how
contradictory to the interests of the world’s poor some of this BRICS’ push for
fairer free trade really is.
'Anti-imperialist camp’ and human liberation
And so these are many of the contradictions of this
definition of anti-imperialist camp. But what you write just after you note the
issue of "unequal trade concerns" only further highlights how meaningless both
this and the narrower meaning really are. Because you then lead off on a long
list of other concerns including "regarding global warming, agriculture and
land-use issues, maritime, water and fishing issues, work place health and
safety, labour solidarity, women’s liberation, solidarity with minority
language groups, networks to defend political prisoners and their families,
networks to defend an open, free access internet" and others. This sounds like
a good list of issues concerning human liberation as a whole. Yes, I agree that
genuine anti-imperialism should be connected to human liberation.
But I’m sorry, I find this utterly confusing in
relation to your argument. If you are being specific about ALBA, well and good.
But I’m afraid I struggle to see any "anti-imperialist camp" (of states)
anywhere in the world that fights around these issues against imperialist
states.
I would suggest that the overwhelming majority of
capitalist states in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America would be
absolutely rotten on peasant land-use issues, labour solidarity, women’s
liberation, political prisoners, workplace health and safety(!) etc. And so
particularly are the majority within the more restrictive definition, if not often
worse.
If anything, on many of these issues it is
precisely First World-based liberal NGOs and humanitarian interventionists who
at times promote an imperialist agenda by exploiting these issues against some
capitalist regime that the West has some problem with. I oppose such
imperialist interference; however, I also reject "anti-imperialist camp" type
arguments of solidarity with capitalist dictatorships, fascist tyrannies etc.
when they assert their "right" to carry out "sovereign" massacres of workers,
torture of political prisoners, misogynist policies and practices against women,
evicting peasants from their land for "development", violent suppression of
national minorities etc.
So that paragraph to me does not make sense; it is
precisely "anti-imperialist camp" discourse that regularly justifies the open
and massive violation of all these principles you list, whereas because I see class as more important than abstract,
rhetorical, BS "anti-imperialism," I reject the "rights" of "anti-imperialist"
(including the overnight version) capitalist rulers to carry out these
anti-working-class actions.
Tell me, where does the "anti-imperialist camp" (whether
you mean the whole G77+China, or the more restrictive "camp") stand on the
question you raised of "open, free access internet"? I just ask because members
(of both kinds of camp) China and North Korea have the most repressed internet
in the world. I think it is unlikely that the "camp" campaigns for China and
North Korea to open up internet access. More likely imperialist states do. I
oppose imperialist interference, as well as these states’ suppression of the internet,
but once again your points leave me confused.
Where do "anti-imperialist camps" stand on "work
place health and safety" in China, where the most miners in the world die in
industrial "accidents"? Where do such "camps" stand on the question of
political prisoners in the absolute, hereditary monarchy of North Korea, a
state presiding over starvation and gulag-style murder in vast prison camps?
My understanding of "anti-imperialist camp"
politics is precisely that such politics does NOT promote justice around any of
the issues you listed, but just the contrary, that it uses BS
"anti-imperialist" arguments to defend reactionary and repressive regimes that
actively violate every one of them.
The question today of Syria is only the most
obvious. While Pinochet, Videla, Suharto, Marcos etc. massacred their peoples
like Assad does, I’m not aware that any of them turned every city in their
countries to rubble using every conceivable means of "conventional" WMD to do
so, just in order to keep a narrow mega-capitalist clique in power (I guess Somoza
comes closest, but in those days anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists
actually thought it was a bad thing when he bombed Managua with his air force,
and didn’t blame the Sandinista rebels for Somoza’s reaction).
Yet many "anti-imperialists" have decided (wrongly,
as well) that this regime, which collaborated with imperialism so many times,
is part of an ill-defined "anti-imperialist camp"; unlike in the case of
Somoza, therefore they blame the Syrian rebels for Assad’s Somoza-100-times-over
reaction. To those holding such backward and reactionary views, I say, suit
yourself, enjoy your alliance with Le Pen and ilk, for me it’s about class -- I’ll support the struggle of
the Syrian working class while you support its class enemy using bogus labels.
Perhaps the Cuban and Venezuelan leaders feel some
kind of diplomatic necessity to adopt the position they have adopted of
supporting bloody counterrevolution in Syria, possibly related to the economic
and diplomatic importance to them of Russia; if so, I generally say little
about this. They have their own problems to deal with the US breathing down
their backs. This doesn’t alter the fact that they are wrong and have done
momentous damage to their standing in the Middle East.
We could go on. When China and Vietnam are in
conflict in the South China Sea (also known as the East Sea), where does the
"anti-imperialist camp" stand? Campists would generally like to have both
states in that "camp." So that is a concrete question. Does there ever come a
point when "anti-imperialist campers" criticise Beijing’s blatant gunboat
diplomacy, its Monroe Doctrine for the entire South China Sea, its brutal
kidnapping for massive ransoms of thousands of Vietnamese fisherfolk? Not to
mention the actual imperialist and highly exploitative nature of its
investments in the Third World? Or does inclusion of China in the "camp" mean
that the camp has nothing to say?
My view is that such "campism" has no answers for
questions such as this, or such as Syria, or for any other – because a view
that stresses a very abstract, rhetorical "anti-imperialism" consisting of a
certain bloc of capitalist states without reference to class is an
anti-Marxist, anti-working class aberration.
In the late 1970s, the Argentine junta was one of
the most vicious dictatorships on Earth. And its monstrous repression of
Argentine workers was of course backed by imperialism. So I don’t think anyone
viewed it as part of the "anti-imperialist camp" (at least by this more narrow
definition –your other definition, it was a member of NAM and G77). But in 1982
it entered into a very concrete conflict with British imperialism, over the
Malvinas. I think our view was correct, to support Argentina in this specific,
concrete, anti-imperialist action. But did this mean Argentina "swapped camps"?
Because if it did, it shows how meaningless the concept is; but if it didn’t,
then I see no concrete meaning for this alleged "camp" either. In most cases it
is simply used to defend indefensible actions by regimes that are not carrying
out any real, concrete actions
against imperialist interests at all.
Another instance of bad "anti-imperialist camp"
politics was the diplomatic support provided to the criminal Sri Lankan Sinhala-chauvinist
regime, which has waged genocidal wars for decades against its oppressed Tamil
minority, by Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia etc. The Sri Lanka regime, in any case,
has no anti-imperialist history at all, not even rhetorical (unlike, for
example, what one might have said about Gaddafi’s vicious anti-working-class
dictatorship in Libya). So why would these leftist governments even want to
support it (not that such support would be better if the regime did have some
anti-imperialist history in my view, just it would be easier to see where they
were coming from)? Simple – Western governments offered some mild criticism of
the breathtaking level of violent repression in UN forums. "Anti-imperialist
camp" politics therefore meant doing the opposite.
I could go on. Obviously the 1990s Balkan wars,
when many "anti-imperialist campers" lined up with the Serbian chauvinist
regime committing genocide against Bosnia’s Muslims. At least this divided the
"anti-imperialist" capitalist regimes in the Third World – so Iran, a key
backer of Assad today, at least had a good position then, for its own reasons,
of supporting Bosnia, along with the rest of the Muslim world. It was one case
where "anti-imperialist", capitalist Iran had a much better position than Cuba.
Where it leaves whatever "camp" I have no idea.
Does "anti-imperialist camp" help us understand
what is happening in Iraq now – when basically exactly the same bloc of Sunni
organisations – nationalist, Islamist, Baathist and jihadist – which were the
Iraqi resistance to US occupation several years ago are now once again fighting
the regime US imperialism left in place, except that now this regime is a
geopolitical/sectarian ally of Assad’s fascist tyranny and Iran’s theocratic
tyranny, which "anti-imperialist campists" have adopted as their own?
Anyway, the point is: whichever version of "camp"
theory you mean (except that of an alliance of social movements or of leftist,
pro-socialist governments a la ALBA), I believe it should be junked, and the
concept of anti-imperialism returned to its connection to class, human
liberation and anti-capitalism.
[Part 2 is be posted at http://links.org.au/node/3982.]
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