This short pamphlet, now available on the IBRP's website, aims to debunk the myths peddled by today's Trotskyists about the 'revolutionary' nature of their movement.
Trotskyism is in a state of disarray but retains influence, due in no small part to the status of Trotsky himself as the most important of the Bolshevik leaders of the Russian revolution to oppose Stalin. The CWO's pamphlet includes a lengthy section examining the positions defended by Trotsky and Trotskyism in the 1920s and 30s, contrasting their weaknesses and confusions to the much clearer contemporary struggle of the international communist left. It should therefore be welcomed as a useful propaganda weapon for groups of the communist left today.
Significantly, the pamphlet has attracted the attention of the Trotskyist journal Revolutionary History (Vol. 8, no 1). This 'serious', supposedly non-sectarian publication usually prefers to observe a studious silence on the communist left's historical role and contribution, but it does its best in a vitriolic review to rubbish the CWO's critique. But this serves only to highlight the irreversible distance Trotskyism has travelled from proletarian political positions: the Italian communist left, for example, is ridiculed for its denunciation of the social democratic parties as bourgeois, even though this is precisely the original position defended by the Third International, as expressed by one Leon Trotsky in its 1919 Manifesto�
Needless to say, my own criticisms have nothing to do with this reactionary attack. Along with the ICC I share the same basic position as the CWO on the bourgeois nature of Trotskyism due to its definitive betrayal by supporting the second world war. The problem is that the approach taken by the CWO's pamphlet gives the strong impression that there was nothing proletarian about Trotsky or the Trotskyist movement even in the 1920s, and throws into question all the oppositions that emerged from the Bolshevik Party up to the end of the 1920s.
The tone is set right at the start with the statement that, until he was forced out of power in the mid-20s, Trotsky's role was that of a "faction leader within the Russian party and state'" Even though he was admittedly never a "conscious agent of imperialism", the CWO calls him one of the "principal architects of the degeneration of the Russian revolution", whose rejection of the Stalinist policy of 'socialism in one country' was based not on internationalism but the "capitalist interests of the Russian state", etc., etc.
This attitude is strongly reminiscent of the libertarian and councilist milieu of the 1970s, which was marked by a strong reluctance to admit that Trotsky belonged to the revolutionary movement. We should recall the arguments that the Bolshevik Party could not be considered proletarian after 1921 - in its early days the CWO pronounced this to be a 'class line' (see IR 101). The ICC rightly challenged this at the time as sectarian, but it was symptomatic of the immaturity of the whole milieu; the ICC's earliest studies of the communist left in Russia (IR 7 & 8), although basically correct, reveal in their reluctant acceptance of the proletarian nature of the Bolshevik Party after 1921 and of the political current around Trotsky, the lingering influence of councilism which dogged the re-emergence of revolutionary minorities.
To be absolutely clear: the movement around Trotsky passed irrevocably into the enemy camp through its support for Stalinism and democracy in the second imperialist world war, but for all his opportunist slidings, Trotsky himself died a proletarian revolutionary. The ICC has explicitly recognised this in the article in IR 104 entitled 'Trotsky died as a symbol for the working class', and in a recent series of articles which addresses in a more profound way the strengths and weaknesses of his contribution to the struggle against the Stalinist counter-revolution (see IRs 101, 102 and 105).
The issue here is not just Trotsky or Trotskyism but how we understand the struggle of the proletarian currents within the Bolshevik Party against the attempts of the counter-revolution to capture it completely. Rather surprisingly, the CWO dismisses all of what it calls the 'Communist Party Oppositions' which, because they "had their roots in the bureaucracy", could "never challenge its social basis". Thus, it writes off the Left Opposition of 1923 and the United Opposition of 1927, both of which were allegedly products of the bureaucracy and defended anti-working class positions - even though they included elements of the non-Trotskyist Russian communist left.
We refer readers to IRs 101 and 102 for a more in-depth treatment of the weaknesses of these oppositions, but we argue that they can only be understood as a basic proletarian reaction to the degeneration of the Russian revolution. To take just one example: the signatories of the 'Platform of the 46', which formed the political basis of the Left Opposition, included elements of the left communist Democratic Centralist group like Sapranov, V Smirnov and Ossinski. The United Opposition similarly included (at least for a time) the 'Decists' - indeed according to Trotsky himself, it was formed at their initiative, Sapranov chairing its first conference (see IR 102, p18).
The strength of the Russian left communist oppositions like the Sapranov group was precisely that they emerged from within the Communist Party itself; they were expressions of the proletarian life still left in the party, and up until their final suppression at the end of the 20s refused to abandon it to the Stalinist bureaucracy. We don't seriously think the CWO means to dismiss the Russian left communists who, as it affirms, took up the struggle against the degenerating Soviet state far earlier and more thoroughly than Trotsky or the political current he animated. In fact the CWO commits itself to redressing the "airbrushing from history" of their valiant struggle by both Stalinists and Trotskyists.
But clearly this is not just a matter of the need for historical research; it's about the basic framework communists use to determine the precise class nature of political organisations. The approach of the Italian Left - with whom both the CWO and the ICC claim political continuity - was always one of patience and rigour, avoiding hasty judgements on such questions. The reader of the CWO's denunciation of Trotsky is left wondering why, if he was merely a "faction leader of the Russian party and state", the Italian Left ever put so much political effort into trying to collaborate with him in the first place; even after their definitive political break with Trotsky in 1934, when he and his supporters "crossed the Rubicon and rejoined social democracy" (Bilan no. 11, September 1934), the Italian Left did not, as the pamphlet suggests, simply denounce his movement as bourgeois, and continued to expose its opportunist betrayals through support for one side against the other in the lead up to the second imperialist world war.
We have to ask: does this pamphlet - which first appeared over two years ago - reflect the position of the CWO (and by extension the IBRP to which it is formally affiliated) on the class nature of Trotsky, Trotskyism and all the "Communist Party Oppositions" of the 1920s and 30s, or is this a case of polemical excess getting the better of clarity, reflecting the residual influence of councilism on today's revolutionary movement?
MH, May 2003.
IBRP website: www.ibrp.org [1]
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This article is by a close sympathiser of the ICC. We encourage all our readers to make political contributions to our press, whether in the form of articles, letters or items of information.
May, 2003.
On 28 August last year, as America tried to build international support for its impending war against Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared President Bush's international isolation over plans to attack Iraq with the lonely stand taken by Winston Churchill before the Second World War. In the face of appeasers and doubters at home and abroad, he told 3,000 assembled US marines, Winston Churchill realised what a threat Hitler posed to Europe. Similarly, he added, President Bush knew that "leadership in the right direction finds followers and supporters."
The comparison tells us more than Rumsfeld intends. Leaving aside the fact that support for World War II is totally reactionary, Rumsfeld's comparison is not completely inaccurate. For, under the administration of Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill, Britain invented the technique of terror bombing of defenceless civilians that has been a feature of most wars ever since. In 1920s Iraq Britain bombed Kurds and Arabs when they rebelled against Britain's attempts to assert control over them. So, it is indeed accurate to compare G. W. Bush and Winston Churchill - but also Adolf Hitler - to each other.
Britain occupied the vilayets (districts) of Baghdad and Basra during World War I. Following the Armistice, Britain occupied Iraqi Kurdistan, beginning with the city and vilayet of Mosul, during November-December 1918. This latter occupation violated an agreement with the Ottomans, the Mudros Treaty, but Britain knew that "the defeated Turks had no option" (Nader Entessar, Kurdish Ethnonationalism, p. 50). British forces also occupied the Kurdish cities of Kirkuk and Suleymaniya. On 1 May 1920 Britain assumed the League of Nations Mandate (protectorate) of Iraq under the Treaty of San Remo and immediately established a Provisional Government in Baghdad. In August 1921 Britain installed a leading member of Arabia's Hashemite dynasty as the King of Iraq. As an outsider, King Faisal I would always be ultimately dependent upon his 'sponsor' for support. Of course, the Hashemites had already proven their pro-British credentials by providing fighters for T. E. Lawrence's Arab revolt against the Ottomans in Arabia.
Basing itself on lessons learnt in its Indian colonial possession as well as its wartime experience in Iranian Kurdistan, Britain cast around for pliable Kurdish figures whom it could appoint to positions of authority, focusing especially on tribal leaders - even going to the extent of 're-tribalising':
"Every man who could be labeled a tribesman was placed under a tribal leader. The idea was to divide South Kurdistan [Iraqi Kurdistan] into tribal areas under a tribal leader. Petty village headmen were unearthed and discovered as leaders of long dead tribes" (Major E. B. Soane, British Political Officer, 1919, cited in David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, p. 120-21).
For all its talk of its 'civilising mission' to non-Christian and non-white peoples, therefore, Britain was deliberately attempting to turn back the clock of social development, in the naked pursuit of its own capitalist interests. Arnold Wilson, the British Acting Civil Commissioner in Baghdad at the time, explains:
"The whole basis of our action as regards Kurds should be in my opinion the assurance of a satisfactory boundary to Mesopotamia. Such a boundary cannot possibly be secured, I imagine, in the plains, but must be found in the Kurdish mountains � [and that] entails a tribal policy" (cited in McDowall, op. cit., pp. 120-21).
Britain appointed Kurdish chieftains to all manner of positions, including one Sheikh Mahmud Barzinji as the Governor of Suleymaniya division - the only area to have a Kurdish administrator. But when its Kurdish appointees proved incapable of following imperial orders, the policy of Kurdish autonomy was simply dropped by Britain. C. J. Edmonds, a British political officer in the region, states that Britain soon became convinced that Iraq would never be viable without its Kurdish component:
"We were now engaged upon what was for Iraq a life and death struggle of which none of us had any doubt, for we were convinced that Basra and Baghdad without Mosul could, for economic and strategic reasons, never be built up into a viable state" (C. J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks and Arabs, p. 398). Britain's strategic interests
Britain was committed above all to a stable Iraq, as a bulwark against Turkish, Russian and other interests in the region. Financially stretched by the recent World War, Britain was in no shape to pursue new complicated - and expensive - adventures in the fastnesses of Kurdistan. Consequently, it now dropped its policy of support for Kurdish self-rule. When Britain's strategic interests demanded it, therefore, the Kurds were portrayed as almost inherently incapable of ruling themselves. A British Memorandum to the League of Nations asserted:
"The Kurds of Iraq are entirely lacking in those characteristics of political cohesion which are essential to self-government. Their organisation and outlook are essentially tribal. They are without traditions of self-government or self-governing institutions. Their mode of life is primitive, and for the most part they are illiterate and untutored, resentful of authority and lacking in a sense of discipline or responsibility".
Iraq was a viper's nest of mutually hostile warlords and competing ethnic (Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, Arabs) and sectarian (Sunnis, Shi'ite and others) factions. When Kurds in the region bordering on Anatolia murdered a British Political Officer in April 1919, British imperialism retaliated massively. "The British despatched a full division" to Sulaymaniya (Entessar, op. cit., p. 50), then:
"resorted to aerial bombardment, a technique it began to use as a standard tactic to economise on troop deployment. It had the advantage of instant effect and economy of cost" (McDowall, op. cit., pp. 154-55).
As revolts against the British occupiers multiplied, so too did British retaliation. The most serious opposition came from Sheikh Mahmud, who declared the formation of a Kurdish state and engaged in fierce fighting with British forces in the region from 3 May 1919, then declared himself Ruler of all Kurdistan, before being captured and exiled in mid-June. The Political Officer in Amadia and his assistants were killed in November 1919. Soane now "returned to administer Suleymaniya with a rod of iron" (McDowall, op. cit., p. 158).
In 1920 the whole of Iraq was engulfed in a variety of anti-British uprisings. The year began with a new Kurdish uprising by the Surchi clan. The British now found a new use for Sheikh Mahmud. By August 1920, they were confronted with an increasingly alarming situation, as not just one Kurdish region after another rose in revolt, but soon also large swathes of southern (Shi'ite Arab) Iraq. Meanwhile, Britain, fearful that Kurdistan, especially Mosul, might fall to the Turks, was compelled to return Sheikh Mahmud from exile in October 1922 and to re-appoint him the Governor of Suleymaniya.
When Sheikh Mahmud was re-installed in Suleymaniya, the British declared that they would "recognise the rights of the Kurds living within the boundaries of Iraq to set up a Kurdish Government" (cited in Sa'ad Jawad, Iraq & the Kurdish Question: 1958-1970, p. 8). Sheikh Mahmud seized this opportunity with both hands, declaring the formation of a Kurdish state with Suleymaniya as its capital. On 18 November 1922, he announced himself to be the 'King of Kurdistan'. Entessar (op. cit., p. 53) notes:
"Kurdish disenchantment with Iraqi rule led to renewed uprisings in Sulaymanieh [Suleymaniya] under Sheikh Mahmoud's leadership. In the winter of 1927, an Iraqi expeditionary force supported by British firepower was sent to Sulaymanieh�" The RAF takes over
Overall responsibility for the problem was progressively handed over to the RAF from August 1921. By October 1922 the RAF had principal responsibility for the war, with British ground forces being reduced. In a single aerial sortie, Suleymaniya was bombarded in mid-May 1922, causing the town's 7,000 residents to evacuate the town for the remainder of the conflict. In fact, armed confrontations between Kurdish and Arab nationalists and British imperialism continued until the early 1930s.
Geoff Simons (Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, London, St. Martins Press, 1994, pp. 179-81) tells the story of British imperialism's capitalist barbarism against the Kurds and Iraqi Arabs:
"Winston Churchill, as colonial secretary, was sensitive to the cost of policing the Empire; and was in consequence keen to exploit the potential of modern technology. This strategy had particular relevance to operations in Iraq. On 19 February, 1920, before the start of the Arab uprising, Churchill (then Secretary for War and Air) wrote to Sir Hugh Trenchard, the pioneer of air warfare. Would it be possible for Trenchard to take control of Iraq? This would entail 'the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death � for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes.'
Churchill was in no doubt that gas could be profitably employed against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples in the Empire): 'I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.' Henry Wilson shared Churchill's enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the British cabinet was reluctant to sanction the use of a weapon that had caused such misery and revulsion in the First World War. Churchill himself was keen to argue that gas, fired from ground-based guns or dropped from aircraft, would cause 'only discomfort or illness, but not death' to dissident tribespeople; but his optimistic view of the effects of gas were mistaken. It was likely that the suggested gas would permanently damage eyesight and 'kill children and sickly persons, more especially as the people against whom we intend to use it have no medical knowledge with which to supply antidotes.'
Churchill remained unimpressed by such considerations, arguing that the use of gas, a 'scientific expedient,' should not be prevented 'by the prejudices of those who do not think clearly'. In the event, gas was used against the Iraqi rebels with 'excellent moral effect' though gas shells were not dropped from aircraft because of practical difficulties�
Today in 1993 there are still Iraqis and Kurds who remember being bombed and machine-gunned by the RAF in the 1920s. A Kurd from the Korak mountains commented, seventy years after the event: 'They were bombing here in the Kaniya Khoran � Sometimes they raided three times a day.' Wing Commander Lewis, then of 30 Squadron (RAF), Iraq, recalls how quite often 'one would get a signal that a certain Kurdish village would have to be bombed�', the RAF pilots being ordered to bomb any Kurd who looked hostile. In the same vein, Squadron-Leader Kendal of 30 Squadron recalls that 'if the tribespeople were doing something they ought not be doing then you shot them.'
Similarly, Wing-Commander Gale, also of 30 Squadron: 'If the Kurds hadn't learned by our example to behave themselves in a civilised way then we had to spank their bottoms. This was done by bombs and guns'.
Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris (later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command) was happy to emphasise that 'The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage. Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.' It was an easy matter to bomb and machine-gun the tribespeople, because they had no means of defence or retaliation. Iraq and Kurdistan were also useful laboratories for new weapons; devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry for use against tribal villages. The ministry drew up a list of possible weapons, some of them the forerunners of napalm and air-to-ground missiles:
Phosphorus bombs, war rockets, metal crowsfeet [to maim livestock] man-killing shrapnel, liquid fire, delayed-action bombs. Many of these weapons were first used in Kurdistan".
Hugh Trenchard, the RAF's chief of staff between 1919 and 1927 mentioned earlier, submitted a report to the Cabinet shortly after the RAF had temporarily quelled anti-British unrest in Iraqi Kurdistan.1 Trenchard reported that Churchill had first employed aerial bombardment against Iraq's Kurds as a means of finding "some cheaper form of control". Trenchard enthusiastically endorsed the verdict of the British High Commissioner for Iraq that "a free and vigorous use of � aerial resources" had proven to both highly potent and cost-effective. The RAF chief of staff concluded prophetically:
"Air power is of vital concern to the Empire and in Iraq, under the control of an air officer, further evidence is accumulating of its great potentialities. A continued demonstration, until its effectiveness is beyond dispute, may have far-reaching results, in that it may lead to still further economies in defence expenditure, not only in Iraq, but also in other Eastern territories where armed forces are required to give effect to British policy and uphold British prestige".
Aerial bombardment had proven to be a satisfactory method of mass killing. Jonathan Glancey (The Guardian, 19 April 2003) recalls:
"Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF, somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the airforce promised to cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000. Churchill's confidence was soon repaid".
Glancey reports that the RAF "flew missions totaling 4,008 hours, dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds for the loss of nine men killed, seven wounded and 11 aircraft destroyed behind rebel lines". Aerial bombardment is generalised
British capitalism's pioneering aerial terror against Iraqis paved the way for the wholesale use of terror bombing of all varieties. The British bombing of Kurdistan was the first use of aerial bombardment - and the first use of such bombardment in the peripheries of capitalism. British forces engaged in their third Afghan War soon after this also used this tactic. The monster 'Bomber Harris' became notorious "for his ruthless championing of saturation bombing against German civilian and military targets" (Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan, p. 5).
T. E. Lawrence wrote to the London Observer to complain: "It is odd that we do not use poison gas on these occasions". The British military certainly took to aerial bombardment with gusto as a means of spreading mass terror. In 1921, Wing Commander J. A. Chamier suggested that the best way to demoralise local people was to concentrate bombing on the "most inaccessible village of the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be collected, the attack with bombs and machine guns must be relentless and unremitting and carried on continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops and cattle"(cited in Glancey, op. cit.).
After proving it in the colonies, this tactic was then deployed during World War II to a massive extent - first of all in the British and German blanket bombing campaigns against each other's populations, which included the massacre of the workers of Dresden in 1945. In Dresden, preliminary sorties were flown using high explosives to remove the roofs from buildings. This was followed by targeted bombing of phosphorous devices into houses, factories, offices, schools and hospitals, with the objective of spreading a devastating firestorm as rapidly as possible. An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people - many of these war refugees - were killed over three weeks. This was a casualty rate far in excess of the death toll exacted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were also just another example of a massive terror bombing campaign.
Churchill, Harris, Lawrence, Chamier, Trenchard and Hitler were certainly all terrorists of the first order, but they were all merely doing their jobs exceptionally well as enforcers for decadent capitalism. Ali
Note 1: An original copy of Trenchard's report, 'The Development of Air Control in Iraq' is held by Britain's Public Records Office. This chilling document (reference PRO AIR19/109 of October 1922) can be viewed online at the Public Records Office Web site, at the following address: www.pro.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/aftermath/p-iraq.htm [4]
A war against weapons of mass destruction? It's becoming increasingly clear that they are not going to find any. Rumsfeld has admitted that Saddam's regime may have destroyed them before the war. Deputy US defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz has gone one step further. According to the Guardian (30.5.03) "Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair magazine that the decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for invading Iraq was taken for 'bureaucratic' reasons, indicating that Washington did not take the threat seriously". Thus speaks the supreme arrogance of supreme power. Tony Blair however has had to present the whole story with his hand on his heart, and faces a good deal more political opposition from within his own class. This is why he has to brave it out and "remain confident" that these elusive weapons will be found. The basic point has not changed: Bush and Blair justified the war by arguing that Iraq's weapons constituted a clear and present danger to the people of American and Europe. Blair even claimed in the House of Commons that Iraq was primed and ready to strike within 45 minutes. The war proved once and for all that Iraq's military capabilities were virtually zero.
So all that was a huge lie.
A war against terrorism then? But even if the Saddam regime (like countless regimes around the world, not least Britain, as the Stevens inquiry has shown) had links with terrorist groups, the last way that terrorism can be stopped is by mass bombing and military occupation. No sooner was the war in Iraq over than suicide bombers struck in Riyadh, Casablanca and in several towns in Israel. Even in Iraq, shadowy anti-American forces have gunned down US troops. Major cities in the US and Britain have been put on terrorist alert. The war has increased the threat of terrorist revenge attacks.
So that was another lie.
But surely the Iraqi people will be better off without Saddam? Look at the mass graves they found, dating back to the 1991 uprising. He killed thousands and thousands of his own people�
That's true. But let's not forget the responsibility of the 'liberating' countries in all of Saddam's murders. Not only because Saddam was to all intents and purposes put in power by the USA, and armed by them (as well as today's 'peace-camp' countries like France, Germany and Russia) to counter the power of Iran in the region. But also because in 1991 the 'Coalition' of the day called on the Kurds and Shias to rise against the Baathist regime, and then quite deliberately allowed Saddam the weapons he needed to crush them. This was because at that time the US privately accepted that the Butcher of Baghdad was the only force that could prevent the break-up of Iraq.
As for being better off, what is the situation in Iraq today? The 'freedom' brought by US and British tanks is proving to be the 'freedom' of armed gangs of all kinds to impose their will on a desperate population. The list of those - civilians and unwilling conscripts - slaughtered by US and British bombs certainly runs into thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. This death toll will be increased considerably by the break-down in electricity and water supplies, by the collapse of medical services and shortages of food. Attempts to form a new civil administration have come to nothing: in Basra the British set up a municipal authority and dissolved it again almost immediately.
In the absence of any real alternative, many Iraqis are turning to the religious authorities and calling for an Islamic state. Would that be an improvement over Saddam?
The situation in Afghanistan gives us a clue about the real concerns of the US and British 'liberators'. Bush promised that the US would not walk away from Afghanistan. And it's true that US troops are still fighting Taliban forces there. But there has been very little reconstruction and the writ of the Barzai regime hardly even extends to the whole of Kabul, let alone to the rest of the country where the war lords have slotted right back into their old ways. More wars loom
But the Middle East 'road map to peace' - isn't that a benefit of the US victory in Iraq? There's no doubt that the US efforts to stabilise its domination of the Middle East demands a settlement of the Palestinian problem. That is why there has been a huge increase in US pressure not only on the Palestinian leadership but also on Sharon. The new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, was put in place precisely to strengthen the 'moderate' forces in the Palestinian leadership. The US has warned both Syria and Iran that they must stop supporting Hizbollah's terrorist campaign against Israel; Abbas himself says he can persuade Hamas and Islamic Jihad to call a halt to the suicide bombings. And Sharon, despite opposition from the right wing in his own government, has, after exacting a few verbal concessions from the Americans, signed up to the road map, accepting the idea of a Palestinian state and recognising that a perpetuation of the Israeli occupation was "bad for Israel and bad for the Palestinians". A meeting between Sharon and Abbas is scheduled for the first week in June.
But even if all the tremendous obstacles to a political settlement of the Palestinian problem were removed, let's recall the real reasons for the USA's policy in the Middle East, whether in Palestine or Iraq. It is dictated not by any humanitarian concerns but by its innate imperialist needs. In the Middle East, this is not simply a question of making profits from oil, as so many in the 'peace camp' claim. Controlling Middle East oil is first and foremost a strategic goal for the USA, a potential weapon aimed at its main imperialist rivals, and part of a planet-wide strategy to maintain its world 'leadership' and prevent the rise of any power able to challenge it. And the same basic imperialist drives also oblige other powers, greater ones like France, Germany and Russia, Japan and China, or lesser ones like Iran, Syria, or North Korea, to counter US advances however and whenever they can, even if the US victory in Iraq has forced them to adopt a low profile for the moment (see the article on France and Germany on page 5).
'Peace' between the Israelis and Palestinians would merely remove a thorn in the US flesh that would allow it to concentrate its attention elsewhere. Already it is making highly bellicose noises in the direction of Iran, accusing it of harbouring senior al Qaida operatives and of building up a nuclear weapons programme. The ominous term 'regime change' is already being bandied about. It seems that there are differences between the Pentagon and the State department on this issue, with the latter favouring a more diplomatic approach aimed at winning over the 'reformist' elements around Khatemi, but the increasingly aggressive rhetoric coming from the Pentagon can only strengthen the hand of the religious conservatives in Tehran and so heighten the danger of a new conflict in the region.
The war in Iraq was fought not to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, not to rid the world of terrorism, and not for the benefit of the Iraqi people. It was an imperialist war fought for the sordid interests of capitalism. And like all the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, it will generate new wars and an ever-mounting spiral of destruction.
That is the future that capitalism offers humanity, unless its headlong flight towards the abyss is turned aside by the proletarian revolution. Given the low levels of class struggle over the past decade, this may seem like a forlorn hope to many; but the working class is far from the spent force that the bourgeoisie would have us believe. Capitalism's economic crisis, which pushes the system towards war, also obliges the working class to fight in defence of its living standards; and in the main centres of the system the proletariat has not been subjected to a crushing and final defeat, nor yet ground into the dust by the remorseless decomposition of capitalist society. The future belongs to the class struggle!
WR, 30/5/03.
Links
[1] http://www.ibrp.org
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/communist-workers-organisation
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/left-opposition
[4] http://www.pro.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/aftermath/p-iraq.htm
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/terrorism
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-iraq