US

War or no war, one thing is certain, and that is the bourgeoisie — Chavista or oppositionist — cannot take society anywhere. There is no viable solution based on the nation and certainly not a capitalist one.

The publicity surrounding John McCain’s recent funeral was excessive to say the least, with wall-to-wall coverage in the United States and Britain, as well as other countries around the world. We were relentlessly informed in a slew of whitewashed obituaries, cringe-worthy plaudits and declarations of love from the bourgeoisie on both sides of the Atlantic for more than a week, in newspapers, online and on television, what a heroic champion of freedom, democracy, civil rights and free speech this man was; as well as being above all a great patriot.

The casual observer might think that Trotskyism has been quite consistent in its views on the Syrian war but in fact there are almost as many positions on the war as there are Trotskyist groups. And this is no accident. Before we look at the stance that various Trotskyist groups have taken on the Syrian war it is useful to provide a brief overview of Trotsky and Trotskyism.

In the late 19th century, the Congo was ripped open for its large rubber resources to satisfy capitalism’s new found demand for tires, leading to the death of millions of Africans. The horrors of the Congo are well known. Pictures of mutilation and death appear frequently in the lectures of academics who demand the need to create a more humanitarian capitalism. Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ appears on many school syllabuses. But despite literary suggestions of a problem found within the human heart, the truth is the problem was to be found in a new epoch of history that continues to this day: the epoch of imperialist capitalism.