Anarcho-nationalism of the WSM
"The WSM believes that a natural resources campaign, if broad based, could be a positive step forward in the long-term project of building a radical social movement and indeed in the short-term as it will supplement Shell to Sea.
The WSM endorses the idea of a campaign if it incorporates the following points
a) The Natural Resources of Ireland (oil, gas, wind/wave power, water) should not be owned or controlled by business interests.
b) These resources should be used for the benefit of all of the people in Ireland.
c) These resources must be used in a sustainable way, so that future generations and the environment of Ireland are not put at risk.
d) The acceptance of direct action as a legitimate tactic.
e) The campaign is organised on a democratic and delegate basis.
f) The campaign is not set up as a rival or competitor to Shell to Sea.
g) Within its first year it is capable of being more than a small publicity campaign."
‘Perspectives of the WSM' updated November 2007: http://www.wsm.ie/story/454
There could hardly be a more evident expression of ‘anarcho-Trotskyism' - anarchism as a thin disguise for the politics of the capitalist left. Amos 5/7/8






Comments
Here's my Anarcho-Stalinist
Here's my Anarcho-Stalinist Platform:
1) A two stage revolution with both phases being capitalist.
2) Support of all united fronts with organizations larger and more powerful than ourselves, maybe they will let us play with them.
3) Support for unions, and of course the ruling political parties that control them.
4) Support for all nationalist movements particularly, the more violently fundamentalist and reactionary the better.
5) Support for the nationalization of industry and natural resources.
6) We demand a racially, sexually and ethnically diverse bourgeoisie! We will not be happy until everyone has a capitalist of their skin color, national origins, sex and sexuality ruling over us.
7) Compulsory historical revisionism to combat the pernicious lies that Stalinism represented and still represents a genocidal counterrevolutionary leviathan.
8) We support a united front of progressive forces with Anarcho-Trotskyists and others so we can exterminate them.
9) All Marxists are counterrevolutionaries, especially when they attempt to talk to us and especially if they start talking about this "Communist-Left", whatever that is.
Please tell me this is a
Please tell me this is a joke.
Marxist a Counter Revolutionaries?
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How can you say that Marxist ideology is a counter revolutionary? Have you understood what you are posting on this page? Have you any idea of the history and ideology of the people you are mentioning and the grounds that you have presented here? Please make sure your facts are realistic so that it would not make any mockery and become a laughing topic in this site.
Not very funny....
If it is a joke, it's not a very funny one. Tragic case of lamentably poor sense of humour.
Yes it was a joke...
I was trying to illustrate a point about how Anarchism attacks left-communists for "Leninism" while providing an element of political cover for ex-Stalinists/Maoists/Trots to continue their traditional objectively counterrevolutionary activities.
Difficulty of humour...
I sympathise with the objective but it seems that the humour missed its mark since at least some of us thought that this was anarchists mocking left communists. Difficulty with jokes not being very cross-cultural sometimes!
Ah well...
national liberation...from reality
If what I wrote sounded like an Anarchist slagging you off it is because I have heard so many "Anarchists" tarring me with this "Leninist"/authoritarian brush that I can repeat the sorts of things I've heard them say. The Irish bourgeoisie can do two things, they can choose to follow the US capital or European capital. No national "independence" is possible and even if it were, workers would be exploited more ferociously in order to build up "their" newly founded nation. As an example of this one need but point to...every national liberation movement of the twentieth century!
Surely the point of having
Surely the point of having principles and some core positions is that people at least share the same foundations and as such their political position should follow from that.
marire sani
Politics is all about
Politics is all about exploring and overcoming such contradictions - the real world is not a simple place, while we can prepare to deal with difficult questions we can't draw up a blueprint in advance and expect to simply implement it.
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Core positions
Marire,
yes that is very important.Core positions.So you should know about some cultural foundations where some aims are possible other aims(or developements) aren't.
For example: you can't enforce socialism in a society ruled by islam.Sharia/Koran and so on.
So it is clear that such blind alleys have to be erased.
The same with Nazi-Germany...WorldWar two clear for the Allies and Sovietunion!!!
Or the plutocracy.
A living praxis needs a clear cultural conception of living together.Norms,values and TRADITIONS.Which tradition is right or wrong?And what of a tradition is good what not.What should be developed further what not?
Secularism is based on a
Secularism is based on a developement inside of jewish-christian tradition. There it is possible. The same with the communism: Community of Goods only possible in this tradition. The understanding of God as a God of the oppressed people typical for jewish-christian tradition.
Sharia is today in western world a real danger. When you are beginning to give them the little fingers... No appeasement.
Religion
Anonymous (16/10/09). You appear to be saying communism is a Jewish conspiracy and are in favour or sharia law. Right? For Marxists, "The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Re: "God as a God of the oppressed people". Are you saying you have a god who is more democratic and loves everyone, rich and poor? Haven't heard that one before...
sharia
I read this comment a bit differently.
The first paragraph seems to be saying that both modern secularism and communism are connected to the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In so far as this tradition does contain a strong element of revolt against oppression (cf Luxemburg, Kautsky and Engels writing on the prophets and the early Christians)there is a continuity between the old prophetic tradition and later communist movements. This makes sense as long as it it is seen in it's historical context as an attemp to understand reality limited by the conditions of the day (including the idea of God as the God of the oppressed)
What i don't understand is the sudden leap to 'Sharia is a real danger in the west'. This sounds like a typically right wing rant about the 'Islamicisation' of Europe.
Two points: when we look at islam historically, then we can also find elements within it of revolt against repression. And there were a number of communist heretical movements inside Islam.
Secondly, since in today's historical conditions all religions are reactionary, why is Islam or Sharia a greater danger than say Christian fundamentalism in the USA or Jewish fundamentalism in Israel?
Love of Islam and Sharia
You know, even those who group the US government with Islamic fundamentalists as a twin pole of terrorism, know that Western law codes are superior to Sharia. At least, at some level, given that attempts to introduce Sharia for personal law for Middle Eastern immigrants are condemned by "Third Camp" Communists in exile from the Middle East.
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And yet in spite of the inferiority of Sharia to secular law, it is under the banner of Sharia that the US is opposed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for what? After all, if the Iraqis and Afghanis surrendered to the USA, the Americans would not dominate their nation but on the contrary give them the opportunity to write a law code free from Sharia as well as a government that would not commit genocide against its own people.
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Which goes to show that: EVEN IF you could show that Stalinism is a form of capitalism and as such the opposite of your strain of Communism and EVEN IF you could show that it is superior to capitalism...and those are big ifs; EVEN THEN the Muslim people regardless of class have shown themselves willing to shun BENEFICIAL change out of love from Islam and the Sharia!
"After all, if the Iraqis
"After all, if the Iraqis and Afghanis surrendered to the USA, the Americans would not dominate their nation but on the contrary give them the opportunity to write a law code free from Sharia as well as a government that would not commit genocide against its own people."
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That's a pretty big assumption, is it not? Granted that the "war for oil" in Iraq is an oversimplification if not absolute malarky (the USA's primary objective in both Iraq and Afghanistan was political: to reinforce its self-claimed role as world sheriff and to take roll of its posse), it is simply inconcievable that American imperialism expected no economic advantages out of its adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Social Democrats in the 1900s and 1910s, and I'm including Kautsky, were examining the impossibility of national independence in the framework of world capitalism. The weak nations are dependent on the strong for protection against military predation by other strong powers (though they usually have to suffer at least one predation before being integrated into a power's posse, and even that status isn't entirely secure). The strong are dependent on the weak as an economic outlet, as an additional slice of the ever-redivided world pie. The assumption that American imperialism would swoop in, liberate the Iraqis and Afghanis from Sharia law (such law wasn't included in the Iraqi code, btw; Saddam's brutality was almost entirely secular), and then pack up and go home is, frankly, ludicrous.
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Hidden in that assumption is another: that American imperialism is liberating at all. The Iraqis have a shiny new constitution. So what? Doesn't mean their country wasn't made a brutal example of by a United States that needed to, and, by the way, couldn't, reinforce its leadership of its old imperialist bloc. Doesn't mean that even the most ambitious "drawdowns" don't leave American soldiers in country. It doesn't mean jack. It also doesn't mean that Iraq is now a multinational paradise. The Kurdish militias, who are linked to an Israeli imperialism which proposes to mobilize them against Iran, providing another example of the impossibility of national self-determination, are still active. Turkey has sent troops over the Iraqi frontier several times in the past six years, specifically to root out the Kurdish militias. Paramilitaries exist and are powerful in the Arab sectors as well.
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"EVEN THEN the Muslim people regardless of class have shown themselves willing to shun BENEFICIAL change out of love from Islam and the Sharia!"
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Please see this thread: http://en.internationalism.org/2009/wr/328
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It gives a concise explanation for why the proletariat is objectively a revolutionary class despite the momentary historical conditions dictating its ideological backwardness at the present time. Also, I'm not up on the news from the region, but I'd be willing to bet money that someone from the Turkish, Indian, or Filipino sections would be happy to provide you with examples of Muslim workers struggling on a class basis. The pot doubles if they can provide examples of cross-religion struggles.
And?
So the United States of America after spending billions of dollars to clear Iraq and Afghanistan of Ba'athists and Islamic fundamentalists demands some of its money back? If the cost of freeing those societies of a "choice" between a genocidal maniac (Saddam Hussein) and the enforcers of Sharia is a cut of the oil profits, then isn't that worth it for those who love freedom?
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Of course, if life in Iraq and Afghanistan falls short of a life of freedom, then the responsibility falls on the heads of the people living there! Many Iraqis and Afghanis joined Islamic militias and few if any joined a liberal-democratic or socialist militia. Since the USA had adapt to local conditions, the inevitable result was a tendency toward Islamism.
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Now what does the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan are Islamist due to the choice of militia affiliation of its citizens, what does this fact tell us? It tells us that the integration of people from those and similar nations as anything other than a tiny minority in freer societies is fraught with peril. Certainly any attempt to replace Islamism with an utopian project--whether liberal democracy or Communism--will meet the same fate as the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Americans in Iraq--and probably the Americans in Afghanistan, too!
If Saddam was a "genocidal
If Saddam was a "genocidal maniac", he was certainly well-tolerated by the "freedom loving" US throughout the 80s! Ironically, of course, Iraq had one of the most religiously liberal states in the Middle East, certainly compared with that other loyal US ally Saudi Arabia.
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As far as "replacing" Islamicism with a utopian project, you imply some kind of imposition from the outside. For us, communism is only possible when the working class itself consciously decides to build socialism for itself.
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The fact that Islam has a grip on workers in that part of the world is beyond dispute. We could make the same point about the backward Christian fundamentalism present in many parts of the West, especially the US..
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How can that be overcome? Not by "imposing" religious restrictions, not by preaching "atheism" or even "Marxism", but by the working class developing its own struggle against its exploiters ... and the working class in the Middle East has a rich history of struggle which contines to this day with the mass movements in Egypt and Dubai.
Two points
Again in Iraq both in the 80s and the 21st century, America had to adapt to the locals as opposed to magically creating democratic and humane governments from stratch.
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OK, what happens if the European and American working class are ready to accept your revolution but the Muslim working class is still Islamist in allegiance?
An answer re Two points
Hidden Author asked what happens if the European and American working class are ready to accept your revolution but the Muslim working class is still Islamist in allegiance.
Maybe by that time many more workers world-wide will have come to realise that atheism is the truth.