Anti-imperialism, national liberation and Iraq - again

It was by Japan for some time during the early-mid part of the last century, a situation which still very much informs Korean/Japanese relations now.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FB04Dg01.html

Oliver Twister wrote:

Of course, anti-fascism is not a homogeneous phenomenon. Durruti, Orwell and Santiago Carrillo all qualify as antifascists. But the question remains: What is anti-fascism anti? And what is it 'pro' exactly?

I am against imperialism, be it French, British, US or Chinese. I am not an 'anti-imperialist', since that is a political position supporting national liberation movements opposed to imperialist powers.

I am (and so is the proletariat) against fascism, be it in the form of Hitler or Le Pen. I am not an 'anti-fascist', since this is a political position regarding fascist state or threat as a first and foremost enemy to be destroyed at all costs, i.e. siding with bourgeois democrats as a lesser evil, and postponing revolution until fascism is disposed of.

Lucien Van Der Walt wrote:

“The anarchist movement has paid in blood for its opposition to imperial domination.” He summarizes, “Anarchists...may fight alongside nationalists for limited reforms and victories against imperialism, but we fight against the statism and capitalism of the nationalists....This requires active participation in national liberation struggles but political independence from the nationalists. National liberation must be differentiated from nationalism, which is the class program of the bourgeoisie: we are against imperialism, but also, against nationalism.”

Are the two really all that different, other than semantically? I'll readily admit that I think there are some areas of thought in which criticism needs to take place to solidify the anarchist-communist movement, including the "closeness" with which we relate to nationalists... but no movement will be completely homogenous, especially one struggling to assert itself from decades of counter-revolution.

Lets take the above quote by Lucien van der Walt - what if we replaced [national liberation struggles] with [struggles against imperialism]. Is it the semantic or the meaning which is most important - and if it is not semantic then how does this differ greatly from Barrot's own thought?

Let me bring the example closer to my own experience - right now the US ruling class are attempting to impose extremely draconian immigration laws and there have been massive mobilizations against them - just two days ago in Atlanta there was one in which at least 50,000 people marched, one of the largest marches i've been in and likely the largest ever to take place in Atlanta. The next round of major demonstrations is set to take place May 1, a workday, and everything is indicating things will be even larger. What these are are limited, one-day general strikes, of a sort never seen in North America (in that they are not localized), and in particular these will be the first large-scale demonstrations for Mayday in north america in about 70 years. This is a huge opportunity, and one extremely relevant to this topic. With our limited abilities we are trying to intervene - in what way would you say the brief outline by Lucien is a wrong one: criticism of the statism and capitalism of nationalism as being the class program of the bougeoisie, but still participating in the struggle against imperial domination [with the goal of encouraging proletarian self-activity]?

Firstly Oliver, I think that your example about protests against immigration laws is not really connected to the issue. I don’t think that this is a national liberation struggle at all in anyway that we could define it.

Secondly, when you say I am arguing semantics, I think that the left communist position is very clear. We are against imperialist wars. I think that Lucien van der Walt position is not. What does he mean by:

Does he mean ‘active participation’? If I believed in active participation in the Kurdish national struggle, I would at least collect money for them and distribute their press if not go to the mountains, and join them. I don’t though, so I don’t do that.

If on the other hand it is just empty verbal posturing, why bother supporting them? Surely it would be better to argue for internationalism, and workers unity instead of supporting nationalist wars.

Wayne Price wrote:

This is support for nationalism. It is not internationalism. Internationalists don't recognise the 'right' of nations to decide on their own fate. It is guilt tripping liberalism.

Someone connected with London's No War But the Class War said something very astute on this subject.

"Revolutionaries don't take sides in capitalist wars, they make side in the class war"

A comrade from South Africa used to say on the aut-op-sy list that national liberation is a reform that capital makes to its states.

Just like mass strikes are sometimes ended by pay rises (eg Mai 68 ) so might ferment in the colonies be ended by national liberation. Now I don't know enough about how national liberation movements actually played themselves out to know if things ever actually happened that way.

I think it's not going too far out on a limb that if there was mass proletarian revolt in Iraq it would necessarily oppose the US occupation, if for no other reason than that all mass prole revolts oppose the state. A result of this might be that the US withdraws handing over the enforcement of capitalist social relations (ie the repression of the proletariat) to some faction(s) of the resistance.

While I'm no fan of that post-modern social democrat Negri I tend to be sceptical of theories of imperialism. The global proletariat confronts global capital that is organised through a global if fractured system of states. Many of the recent military adventures have been to re-impose the state form in areas where it has been weakened by class struggle and/or capital's own neo-liberal program.

cheers

Pete

Peter,

Your last paragraph is excellent, and is one of the richest themes in Negri's empire.

I don't think he could be described as a social democrat though, more like a communist chancer, whose got a fine line in flowering prose and intellectual asset stripping.

Considering you have alot to say on this subject revol, would you fancy writing an article on the current situation in Iraq and the workers movement for the next WCR?

i could just use the posts on here you copied for your "disgustingly homophobic" speech at Queens.

Actually i might do that article.

' islamaphobic' you knob, no something different that talks about Iran and that can reach a wider audience other than the 'activist ghetto' you surround yrself in!

Revol,

If you write that article this might be a useful link:

http://www.wpiraq.net/english/index.htm

It is the Worker Communist party of Iraq. They are the franchise of an Iranian group cunningly called the Worker Communist party of Iran:

http://www.wpiran.org/English/english.htm

They are leftists, but it might be useful for news. The Iranian group is the main one, and you may find more on their website.

Dev

yeah i've pilfered those dirty leninist gits for loads before, lol.

despite their archaic language and panache for bombastic metaphor they have a decent position on the occupation and resistance.

Yes, I know. A couple of our younger comrades go to university with one of them. I have never met them here. I did meet some of the in the 80's in London though when they were trading under the names KOMALA, and SUCM (Yes, I did get those letters the right way round ). This was before they formed the party. I believe there is a left split, the Left Worker Communist Party of Iran. I can't find there website, but I have sen it, and I will find the address for you at the weekned if you want it. I have no idea what they are like. There is a right split too, The worker Communist Party of Iran-Hekmatist: http://www.hekmatist.com/english-index.htm

Just as a bit of historical gossip, did you know that they were once considered by both the ICC, and the IBRP to be part of the "proletarian political milieu"?

Devrim The latest WR has an article on the WCPI and the need to be clear about its nature -we agree with you that they are leftists and it was certainly an error ever to have seen them as a proletarian current. This is dealt with in the article (http//en.internationalism.org/wr/293_wpiran.html). This isn't a matter of gossip but of understanding what leftism is. Especially because there is still an enormous amount of confusion about what they are today, not least on these boards.

On imperialism and colonialism after the second world war, I would say that the 'old' colonial empires like Britain and France were booted out by the real beneficiaries of the post war carve-up, the new super-powers, who espoused the cause of decolonisation for that very reason. America in particular was economically powerful enough to dispense with the colonial model (even if not entirely), and could now dominate mainly through this economic strength. At the same time Russia, which because of its economic inferiority had to impose a new kind of 'direct rule' to hang onto its conquests in eastern Europe, used 'national liberation' struggles in China, Vietnam, Africa and elsewhere to impose its presence.

Which means that "national liberation" did not result in national independence but in swapping one form of imperialist domination for another.

are you suggesting that africans living conditions have improved since decolonisation? obviously they don't want a return to colonisation but materially africa has never been in a worst state than it is today

during the early days of 'independence' some things might have improved but my point about the state of africa is still valid, things like aids, disease in general, famine and war have never been so widespraed as they are today.

If I have understood it right, the Worker Communist Party of Iraq (www.wpiraq.net) is allied with the Worker Communist Party of Iran-Hekmatist (www.hekmatist.com), while the Left Worker Communist Party of Iraq (www.socialismnow.org) is allied with the Worker Communist Party of Iran (www.wpiran.org). So there is just one split, but in both Iran and Iraq.

I also think that there is a 'Left Worker Communist Party of Iran'. I am not 100% sure. I will find out at the weekend.

Pete,

Good point, but Negri is not the only one who says this, as you know. In fact, Negri thinks that this global character of the caitalist state is new. Holloway (in an article in the Libcom website, BTW!!!!) takes up the discussion that developed in Germany in the 1970's re: the particularizaion of the state and the relation of global to national. Unlike Negri who sees this as new, to the open marxism folks, this has always been the case with the capitalist state.

Esp important is the fact that the capitalist state has always been global, or at least international, even as it was particularized in national states, because capital as a social relation accepts no boundaries.

Early imperialism and colonialism (less today) sought primarily to integrate pre-capitalist social relations into the world market, to exploit them without having to make competitors of them. This is part of the concept of 'formal subsumption', that non-capitalist producers become integrated into the world market by selling their products and increasingly producing in order to sell, but in the abscence of or minor presence of wage-labor.

Whether it wanted to or not, capital eventually imposed wage-labor in those countries in some limited form (usually agriculture and raw material extraction.) Also, some local exploiters, without whose collaboration colonial and imperial regimes would have been nearly impossible, became themselves the basis of limited capitalism.

There was later a split between national development wholly orchestrated through the state in the case of the anti-colonial movements being dominated by nationalists (often through their violence against the indigenous working class, whether Mao in China or the various grouping in Angola and Mozambique, or Ho Chi Minh's forces in Vietnam or Castro in Cuba, etc.) The Left often served as either apologist for the nationalists or as de facto defenders of the imperial/colonial power by opposing the anti-colonial movements as 'nationalist'. In both cases, they accepted that the struggle against colonialism and imperialism was inherently nationalist, a totally false position.

The another side were those regimes which either were not colonized (most of South America after the early 1800s) and which were able, in the gap created in world production by WWII, to develop some national industry and provide a place for some capital investment, even though capital investment between the 'imperialist' countries was always much higher than from the imperialists to the 'colonized' nations.

Finally there were the former colonies that benefited from the movements against colonialism without themselves having full recourse to nationalist uprisings and the pushing of all capital into the state. India comes to mind here.

In al of these instances, the state played an important role as a way to centralize enough capital to engage in development. Egypt, for example, nationalized more agriculture than East Germany. In those states that broke with imperialism via armed uprising, their hostile relations with the global market and tendency towards autarkic develpment involved the state to a much greater degree and also the expulsion of the old compradore bourgeoisie, replaced by the state, i.e. actually existing socialism.

The "non-communist" regimes and capitalists eventually benefitted from their connection to the world market because they could engage to some small degree in world trade and receive capital from abroad, even though the top 20 countries still amount to around 85 or 90% of world wealth and investment (in 1955, the US alone was about 50% of world wealth, with Japan and 'Western' Europe accounting for another 35% or so.)

This is why, except in a few instances, most notably China, 'national liberation' secured a relatively impoverished development compared to places like South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, South Korea, etc. This is not to make exagerated claims for thses areas, but to recognize that relative to their compatriots from the Stalinist and Stalin-esque states, they have developed more wealth in terms of capital and integrate more easily in the world market.

But today, there are almost no states where the majority of production comes from non-wage labor, where formal subsumption is dominant. Real subsumption is most definitely the order of the day in most of the world (although places like Chiapas are a reminder that this is not entirely so and that the revolts of such populations, against being 'really subsumed' have a powerful radical potential.) There are no meaningfully non-capitalist regimes, as there most certainly were in the 1890's and even the 1930's.

In fact, there is no need to enforce formal adherence ot the world market because real subsumption to capital means that there is no space for exploitation outside of the world market and capital. The dominant global relations is that of capital to labor and everything else is utterly marginalized.

To talk of imperialism in the same way is a mistake, but then again to talk of imperialism as Lenin did was always a mistake, because it assumed that capital operated at the level of competition beteen states. Labor and exploitation, the class struggle between labor and capital, does not exist in Lenin's Imperialism. Imperialism in this view is competition between national capital, as if capital had a nation.

In rejecting that view, we reject that imperialism is a national phenomenon and relocate it in the development of capital and labor globally. The competition between states is actually a struggle over the exploitation of labor, over who has 'primary rights' to labor.

There is no 'sympathy' with nationalist struggles. There is sympathy with struggles against colonialism and occupation because colonialism and occupation are very specific tactics of one layer of capitalists against another to gain a superior control over labor markets, resources, etc. Rarely is it a struggle to get access to consumers, though today this is more possible than ever before.

Does this mean that national competition is gone? Hardly, only that in the abscence of a severe enough crisis, global regulation and interpenetration make war less easy to pull off between the major powers, but also more common and brutal between weaker states and between 'failed states' and the US and its peers. As much as I think Negri is a potser, he is right that the policing war is currently the dominant form of war.

So what does this mean?

Well, I can't imagine confusing opposing occupation and militarism with any kind of support of or working within the nationalist 'movements' (there is no such thing as 'national liberation'), nor can I see any reason to condemn class struggles against occupation, which can take more or less explicit, more or less populist, forms. I can imagine being utterly hostile to the nationalists on both sides, to the various factions of the moment in global capital.

But short of going to demos, talking to people, speaking out against the war and occupation, of demanding that we take the struggle to our real enemy, to capital, what should I be doing? Where possible, form links with forces in those places, if possible, but after that, what?

Anyway, that's my view of the matter.

You are right that I do know. I mentioned Negri because I imagined he is who most people think of when you say you are sceptical of imperialism. Holloway's article is excellent and there's also a chapter of 'Change the World Without Taking Power' critiquing Negri and discussing the 'capital was always global' thesis.

cheers

Pete

nah, I'd say that most people on these boards who are sceptical of "imperialism" took much of their thought from earlier ultra leftists, left communists, and anarchist thought. Infact in the 70's many of the groups loosely connected to Negri where publishing covers with "Victory to ETA, Victory to the IRA".

Revol, the 'classical' ultra-left, for eg the ICC, think that imperialism exists, but are opposed to anti-imperialism.

I'm not sure what sure what sort of difference that amounts to in practice though.

Pete

Most of us also think that fascism and racism 'exist' but are opposed to anti-fascism and anti-racism as ideologies.