National resistance

But aren't communists distinguished, among other things, by

Where is the internationalism in the Egyptian strike, though?

Nope. I was the one who wanted serious discussion and dispaired when the NEFAC thread was killed in its tracks!

sticks and stones. I know I'm not the subtlest at saying what i'm on about but I try very hard to be polite. So hard it makes me wanna throw-up sometimes. i just made a few points and shared a few observations. I'm not interested in going further with this discussion online.

Please don't reply to this, i don't wanna derail. Keep on seriously discussing. The point I think I made about a defending your home vs defending your country might enrich the discussion however. Avoi or whatever the frog-legs say :nationalist:

I assume you mean a particular imperialism and not imperialism in general.
How about various European resistance movements in WW2? (Which were, naturally, backed by other imperialist powers, as you say.)
The working class's conditions were improved at least to the extent that organising a strike wouldnt get u sent to a labour camp. (Although I suppose this too depended on whether you got "liberated" by imperialists from the west or the east.)
This, of course, does not entail that volunteering for the French resistance, or one of the Allied armies, would have been a good move.
It just means that if you were a working class French person, you probably wanted the allies to defeat Germany, and that this does not imply a failure to understand your class interests, but somewhat the contrary.

how in the name of christ are issues about 'third worldism' and Joe Black's 'big nation nationalism' not relevant? As far as I could see Daniel wasn't involved in shit slinging on the other thread and he's a ten times more interesting in his posts than you, a dullard who has the lack of self awareness to post 'A bunch of people on this thread, notably Devrim, MJ and myself, are trying to have an actual discussion about national liberation, and the prennial question of what is to be done.' without vomitting into his own mouth, then again you are the same tosser who has brought to our attention your personal emotional torment about plaestinian olive harvests and the unforgettable angst of middle class activist career choice, as if you are adding anything of interest to the discussion, I mean for fucksake i wouldn't mind so much if you used such a narrative form to inject so wit, charm or idiosyncratic insight but instead all we get is self indulgent wank.

The fact that you've just quoted the Communist Manifesto about principles and not been able to already spot the answer to your banal question within it illustrates perfectly why you're the last person to get on your high horse about raising the standard of discussion.

Cardinal T wrote:

The “various European resistance movements in WW2” are not best described, IMO, as “national liberation movements”. The resistance movements, by and large, should be regarded as elements fostered, funded, sustained and often maintained by the imperialisms of the Allied camp, as the Cardinal says. I’m not saying these resistance movements were necessarily created by allied imperialism. But they were always part of “the war effort’. Partisans of ‘their country’.

If they are to be described (which ones?) as “national liberation movements” we should agree with the Cardinal that these movements could only fight (against one imperialism) as they did with the active support of another imperialism whose interests at that moment they shared (London hosted De Gaulle after all). These were essentially inter-imperialist alliances. After the war, these alliances could and did change very rapidly in the evolving international situation. Outside of Europe, it wasn’t just the Allied powers which made alliances with national liberation or partisan movements, of course.

As for the workers enjoying the freedom to strike without being sent to Labour camps – the Cardinal seems here to be talking of France, but we could include Belgium, Holland, Denmark and other places – I could agree that war, and the end of this particular war, doesn’t provide the optimum conditions for proletarian solidarity for a number of reasons, including the fact that it divides the workers according to the victors and the vanquished with different material conditions for each.

The Cardinal mentions the plight of workers in what became the Eastern bloc. Workers in Italy didn't have to wait so long for the benefits of the ‘democratic’ allies’ victory. The ‘liberation’ of Italy from fascism did not occur before Churchill had sat back and allowed Italian workers in struggle to be crushed by Nazis who were given the time to complete their task. The Russians did the Nazis the same courtesy in Warsaw. In the Far East, the British General Montgomery used Japanese officers to keep control of the population (someone remind where this was, please). Such were the ‘benefits' of the defeat of Third Reich and the Japanese Empire for ‘the people’. And the German proletariat? The millions forcibly repatriated after living for generations in Poland or The Ukraine? The occupation of Germany itself? I’m not sure German workers were juridically permitted to strike in the aftermath of the war.

And let’s not forget that French workers in uniform were soon off to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia as new wars and inter-imperialist conflicts unfolded in The Middle East, in Korea... Or that 'Democracy' is Sweden was to turn its guns on striking workers.

No, it’s not coherent, IMO, to look at the immediate post-WW2 years – years of incredible exploitation and austerity, of rationing, of homelessness, a vast labour camp indeed for the proletariat almost everywhere, particularly in Europe - and to imply that (democratic?) gains were made because of a ‘national liberation movement’ in France.

The global balance sheet in this period is still is one of defeat for the workers, no matter which ‘side’ won.

If you were a working class person in France at the time, says the Cardinal, you probably wanted the allies to defeat the Germans.

Maybe, maybe not - workers also suffered in the ‘collaboration’ witch-hunts for not wanting to or being unable to kill German troops or for ‘failing’ to actively resist them.

But to the extent to which this was the case, was what this French worker or that French worker or even tens of thousands of French workers wanted, then I disagree with the Cardinal. It’s didn’t represent a consciousness of their class interests. It was part of the continuing defeat of proletarian class consciousness, IMO.

*****************

Much too long. So very rapidly: I agree with Devrim’s points in this discussion and with those supporting an internationalist outlook. I think suggestions that he, or anyone else defending an internationalist position is defending “big nations against small nations” has not grasped what is being argued about: the working class’s interests, not that of nations big or small. Many posters have made this point.

As Devrim’s concrete example of the situation in Turkey shows, events are moving rapidly in the Middle East: Lebanon; Israel-Palestine; air-strikes and rocket launches; Fatah and Hamas; thousands of refugees; the slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan; the imperialist machinations of China, Iran, the US, Syria, GB: the instability in Pakistan; the ethnic and religious ‘cleansings’, with or without ‘national liberation’ attached... these continue to unfold daily. “Communists oppose the nationalist movements, and argue for class politics,” Devrim and others say. They're right on all fronts.

PS: Someone please answer ToJ who asked, amid all this carnage, where was the internationalism in the Egyptian strike and solidarity movement.

Re the above: please ignore the line about the Swedish state killing striking workers after WW2: it happened in 1931.

I'm not a 'would be universal reformer'! Principles learnt as a result of over a century of experience of imperialist wars, where tens of millions of workers in uniform and innocent civilans have been killed and injured, are on pretty firm ground. The theoretical conclusions of communists are based on principles. Which leads nicely into...

Another class principle is that of solidarity, which is an increasingly clearer aspect in many of the class struggles of the past five years or so, the strikes in Egypt being a particulary fine and present example. This search for solidarity within a nation is the foundation of its extension across boundaries. It is precisely the perspective of the mass strike which concretises internationalism. One might as well ask where was the internationalism of the mass strikes and mutinies in Russia in 1917? Where was the internationalism in the strikes and mutinies in German in 1918? And the other expressions of the revolutionary wave that spread around the world after the first world war? Don't you think these contributed to the ending of a global imperialist conflict?

And as for those workers who are promised the benefits of 'national liberation' and 'democracy' here is a message from a group of internationalists in the Philippines, who in their May Day leaflet clearly said that,

When leftist mystifications are losing their grip on workers, when the contradictions within these illusions are being increasingly laid bare by the reality of a society sinking into greater barbarity - just look at Iraq! - it's an absolute travesty to then go round reinforcing them.

B.

I refuse to ignore this post. Instead, I will apologize for misdirecting my ire at you. I'm sorry, I really am letting my anger lead my thinking lately, rather than the other way around. Mea culpa.

OK, a lot to respond to . . .

1. am not a platformist. I am pro-organization, class struggle, revolutionary, etc. Lots of respect & admiration for NEFAC & WSM (& of course for Makhno!) As for the document, i would share Malatesta's concerns. am part of an effort with blackstarbhoy and a couple others to set-up a new rev. anarchist group in, midwest/great lakes region of n. america.

2. the context of questioning a Turkish comrade using the term "South-Eastern Turkey" in the course of attacking national liberation movements is the history of the Turkish state denying a Kurdish identity, culture, banning the language etc.

3. Devrim uses an analogy that supporting national liberation is like voting against Bush. this is a bad analogy. A better one would be demonstrating against Bush. There is the risk that your efforts will be swallowed up under the reformist capitalist leadership, that anarchist voices and autonomous action will be repressed. There is a danger that the demo is designed to strengthen the Dems. I agree that these are dangers. I would still be for, in most instances, attending as an autonomous bloc, anti-Bush demos and attempting to articulate thru words and deeds the revolutionary anarchist alternative.

4. Devrim makes much a do about rejecting the "Binary" option, i.e. having to support either Turkey or the PKK. But this is accepting not rejecting the binary option. Devrim goes as far as stating that it is unimaginable that an autonomous alternative could have emerged. whether it was/is possible is partly determined by an organized effort of those with alternative politics. Devrim's alternative, "however difficult" actually comes across as quite conveniant.

5. Devrim deals with whats been called big-nation nationalism (but could just as easily be called racism or chauvanism) as if all you have to do is sorta check you membership and program and conclude "Nope, no chauvanism there." and be done with it. This misses the ways in which divisions among the working-classes are constantly being reproduced and reinforced, etc.

6. Tellingly, Devrim is unwilling to say that his group would not have taken a side against the 1980 coup in Turkey:

Apparently the level of repression cited by Amnesty International becomes the key question, or perhaps it is because EKS can imagine its self as victims of such a coup, unlike the Kurdish villages that they haven't "thought enough about".

7. Finally, Devrim refuses to answer, what for me is the key question, the one about defending Black nationalist armed resistance to white terror in the U.S. I am sorry if this particular history is too obscure or specific for you more worldly types. But for me it is the bottom line of this debate. Because, to be blunt, if you are incapable of answering this affirmatively than you are not fucking worth talking to.

as for someone called Beltov, it is not enough to assert that I "don't get the idea of principles", you should try and show it. Luxembourg quotes do not replace logic. 101 stuff, eh?

solidarity,

K.

I'll come back to Terry on the Irish stuff later . . .

Here's my point:

EKS is willing to stand against the 1980 coup (by definition a struggle between bourgeois forces) because of the massive repression of "exactly the same strata" they come from, "the left, workers, and intelectuals. . .".

But EKS condemns those who stand against the mass repression of (and war on) the left, workers, peasants and intelectuals of Lebanon, Palestine, the Kurds, etc.

To sum up, the Left Communist position is not more internationalist just because they assert that it is. We agree that there is a danger that participation in national liberation struggles could lead to capitulation to nationalism and collaboration with the bosses. For the Left Communists this is automatic, yet in many many pages of different threads have failed to show why. I have asserted that the anti-national liberation position has a danger of embracing (conciously or not) chauvanistic approaches, and I have provided several examples from this thread alone.

Once again Devrim fails to confront the example of Black Nationalist armed resistance to white terror in the U.S. If "Left Communists" are unable to grapple with this history at all, are they really very serious?

solidarity,

K.

Black resistance to white racism? It sure as hell wasn't national liberation struggle. I'd support it to the hilt. Rob Williams and all them - great lot of people. Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam - bunch of scumbags. see, there's the difference. most blacks wanted to defend themselves and their communities - we all should. but that's different then saying "we're an oppressed people who need a nation of our own." That's what the PKK says, thats what Hamas says, thats what the IRA says, thats what the Nation of Islam said, thats what the BNP and the NF say - England for the English! there's a reason the NF supported the Nation of Islam back in the day!

Look, one side of my family are a bunch of Zionists. They think the Stern Gang were heroes. They think the Palestinians had it coming. now those are people who were oppressed and decided they needed some "national liberation." In their eyes they took back the land that had been stole from them by the Romans! The children of Abraham were gonna come back to the land of Israel, the land of milk and honey. No more getting killed by Nazis or pogromist fuckers. That's concrete for you.

I'm not a Left Communist ( ) but my view is that there's a world of difference between defending yourself and your community and family and home and fighting a "national liberation struggle." A world of difference. Petliura and his lot were fighting for national liberation in the Ukraine, Makhno and the anarchist peasants weren't - they were fighting a working class liberation struggle.

Put that in ya pipe and smoke it.

To give my take on K-dog's question in regard to defence of the black community in Monroe. I read one pamphlet on that a few months ago, written during the civil rights era (it was on a anti-gun control site).
I think what the NAACP/NRA chapter in Monroe was doing was grand. I'm fairly well versed on the civil rights movement, black power and all that, but I'm not that au fait with the theoretical writings on race and class in the U.S.
Williams' politics though were fucking shite - there is a 40 minute film of an interview with him on You Tube for anyone interested, it is from 68 or 69 (daniel he was saying "we are an oppressed people we need a nation of our own")
Where do I draw the line? Well if black nationalists in the U.S. had ever really got it together and launched a guerrilla campaign to liberate parts of the South into a 'New Africa', were busy managing money making in the 'liberated zones', and were killing/expelling the white populace, then they would have crossed well over that line!
It is simple what was going on in Monroe, and the general black struggle of that period, was a popular struggle, mostly of poor working class people, which had liberatory aspects/potential and could produce, and I believe did produce, some practical benefits.
A military campaign for an independent state on the other hand would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Who exactly? Who is “those who stand against” the Hezbollah were doing plenty of repression in the Lebanon in times past. I would imagine likewise in regard to the PKK.
The history of the Lebanon in particular doesn’t lend itself to critical support of, or influencing from within, this or that ‘national liberation’ struggle. All factions seemed to happily join in in making shit of the place in happy alliance with various global and regional imperialist states.

And it certainly isn’t analogous with what was going on in Monroe. What is the similarity ’defence’?, sure in my opinion one of the motor engines of ethnic conflict is ’defence’, when you are in the middle of one it makes sense to defend or retaliate against the other lot, or maybe launch some pre-emptive strikes so the ’enemy’ doesn’t get a chance and so on. It is why I think societies where different ethnic groups that live together side by side can suddenly switch around so murderously. You don’t even have to be particularly bigoted - the situation itself has a dynamic where it makes sense, the Provisionals for instance slaughtered Protestants, but to my knowledge at least never had much in the way of overtly sectarian anti-Prod politics.
In the Irish context would you support the Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters? - as far as they were concerned they were defending ‘Ulster’ and their community from attack by the I.R.A.

Devrim what the wikipedia article about Robert F. Williams doesn't say is that at the time the couple in question were "kidnapped" the black community in Monroe was undersiege by the Klan and the White Citizens Council, literally right at that moment, that is what the crowd were doing in the street, there was a large mobilisation, even from other states, of Klansmen and their ilk, the white people in the car were either a part of that or spectators of it.
What led to this escalation was the presence in Monroe of "freedom riders" northern civil rights activists who would have been white. The civil rights movement was integrated and even the later more 'black power' type groups like the Panthers worked with whites and were very much against what they saw as black racists. I'm aware of only one episode of anti-white black political violence in this period (a string of murders in California) which had little if any connection with the struggle really. Where as in other situations we might see the problem as the conflict, in the United States in this period what you have is a section of the working class suffering a specific ethnic oppression, and their resistance to it. The working class in the US was never some homogenous entity but was divided along ethnic lines, quite considerably when it comes to black and white, e.g. for a long time only the most radical unions accepted blacks as members. Some Americans would argue that this racial stratification was essential in wining the loyalty of white workers to the state.
Some Americans would also argue that a 'colour blind' approach is effectivly racist as it means accepting the racial disadvantage suffered by black, latino or whatever workers, and that disadvantage is real, it is not just y'know most Congressmen are white or whatever, blacks are way more likely to be imprisoned or unemployed etc... today, and up to the 1950s in the South could be murdered with impunity.

To continue on from what I was saying there, Devrim as I understand it from your posts here, and forgive me if I'm wrong, you see the struggles that have progressive potential as occuring at the 'point of production' exclusivly, no?
Well look at it this way is a black man who has to crawl before white supremacy on the street likely to be a 'heroic class fighter' at the point of production. Not likely in my opinion. Indeed if you look at American labor history scabs were often black, desperate for any employment and not likely to have much loyalty towards white workers, many of who were deeply prejudiced towards them. While, as I understand it, one of the highpoints of black worker militancy occured in the wake of the civil rights/black power era, ie in the auto industry in the late 60s, early 70s.
As far as I know also racist unions and mangement kept white workers on side by ensuring they were treated a bit better than the blacks. Some people would argue that the racist oppression of blacks was integral to dividing the American working class and to keeping the blacks as a sort of super exploited section.

For the most part the political leadership of the black struggle in the U.S., in so far as it had one, wasn't that bad, either envisaging 'equal rights for American citizens', or seeing themselves as the autonomous black pole of a multi-ethnic American revolutionary movement. 'Not that bad' as opposed to say the racist mythologies of the Nation of Islam.

The more 'black power' types like Williams, the later SNCC, or the Black Panthers, were heavily influenced by the rhethoric of the "anti-imperialist struggles" of the time, e.g. Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam.

It was invariably the poorer blacks who were more militant.

This is where I think k-dog and some of the other American posters are coming from. I think this was a specific situation and I don't think a general rule can be extrapolated from it. In fact I don't think you can have a general rule on "national liberation struggles" period. The two in C20th Irish history were quite different from each other.

Good points Terry. I was aware that Mr Williams held some strange beliefs, but I'm saddened that you tell me he believed in black nationalism. Ah, well, but what really matters is what he did (including protecting that white couple mentioned earlier from possible harm as tensions ran high). A good man.

Devrim earlier:

Don't know that this really is a principle at all Devrim, shocking though this opinon may be to some. Its a pragmatic position, and like all pragmatic positions there may be exceptions and qualifications...."nuances" if you like. (And I do, its a great word. "Nuance" )

In fact I thinbk we should be suspicious wherever we hear the word "principle". Too often it is invoked whenever a position is too patently absurd to be rationally argued for (or when the invoker is his heart thinks the position is such even when it may not be, or when the invoker is mentally lazy). Such invocations are unlikely to convince anyone.

Bernard Shaw, that witty old illuminatus, remarked that when stupid people are doing something they are ashamed of, they always say they are doing their duty. One could develop a similar epigram about principle; something like when smart people are behaving stupidly they always say they are acting on principle.

Which is not to say there is no such thing as principle, nor for that matter that there is no such thing as duty.

I know this is a bit off the overt subject of the thread but it touches on relevant foundational issues.

it is a fucking principle you cunt!