“The
Social Democrats of Austria denounce every step taken by their
government toward intervention in the affairs of the Balkan
Peninsula, expose the antipopular character of Austro-Hungarian
imperialism, and demand the complete countermanding of mobilisation,
which is ruinous to the people and fraught with bloody consequences.
Not in
the thundering of guns and not in patriotic howling, but in this
enlightening work carried on by the international proletariat do we
find the best outcome of all mankind's previous efforts to emerge
from darkness and savagery on to the road of free development.” (p
317)
Setting out the real interests of Russia and Austria in intervening
in the Balkans, Trotsky writes to the Austrian Social Democrats,
“Even
less can support be given to imperialist adventures by the Russian
proletariat, the class that suffers most severely under the present
regime of political injustice, police outrages, and nationalist
intoxication. The working class of Russia has not known and does not
know the influence of any party but the Social Democrats, and from
its very beginnings has lived and breathed in an atmosphere of peace
and fraternity between people.
Just as
you – in public meetings, in Parliament, and in delegations –
reject decisively the right of Austro-Hungarian diplomacy to shape
and reshape the destiny of the Balkan peoples in the interests of
feudal and capitalist cliques, so we too declare.
Petersburg's
diplomacy has no business in the Balkans, and the Balkan peoples can
expect nothing to their advantage from the diplomatic chancelleries
of Petersburg. The peoples of the Near East must organise a
democratic federation on their territory, on principles of
independence from both Russia and Austria-Hungary.
This
standpoint unites us closely both with you and with the fraternal
parties in the Balkans, whose fight against local dynastic and
militarist reaction will be the more rewarding and successful the
more vigorously and uncompromisingly we wage our struggle against any
and every interference by the Great powers in Balkan affairs.” (p
319-20)
Trotsky's position in opposition to that of the liberal
interventionists is probably most clearly set out in his discussion
with right-wing Cadet, Ivan Kirillovich. Kirillovich was arguing for
Russian intervention in the Balkans, and being opposed by Trotsky.
Trotsky quotes the following statement in response by Kirillovich.
“But,
allow me, that was a question of support for a war which, as cannot
be disputed, bore a liberating
character. For you, all this is simple: you reject war altogether,
at any time and under any circumstances. A war in the Balkans or a
war in Patagonia, aggressive or defensive, for liberation or for
conquest – you make no distinctions. But we
consider it necessary to investigate the real historical content of
the war, the given war, the war in the Balkans, and we can't shut our
eyes to the fact that what is involved here is the liberation of Slav
people from Turkish rule. Not to sympathise with such a war, not to
support it, would simply mean to support, indirectly if not directly,
Turkish rule over Slavs. Your doctrinairism has more than once led
you to that position.” (p 325)
This statement by the conservative
Kirillovich, has been echoed in recent times by any number of
Liberals, and supposed Leftists, to justify their support for
Imperialist intervention. The AWL, for example, have argued that those who oppose Imperialist intervention in Libya, or Syria, are effectively supporting Gaddafi, or Assad. Similarly, they argued that calling for Troops Out of Iraq, was essentially to support the Iraqi clerical-fascists. Each time, of course, it has been based
upon the specific event, which distinguishes it from all previous
such events, and allows them to hope that this time, the consequences
of such intervention will not be so disastrous as every other such
instance.
It is a statement that today could come from Liberal Interventionists
in relation to Iraq, Libya or Syria. But, more coincidental is the
discussion that follows. Inevitably, Russia's former allies in the
Balkans, far from liberating anyone, pursued their own political
objectives, by their own brutal means. A second war broke out
between Bulgaria and its former allies. The same inevitability could
have been foreseen about the actions of the US and its allies in
Iraq, or about the Islamist “rebels” in Libya and Syria. The
Liberal Interventionists and their co-thinkers on the Left, of
course, abhor such atrocities, and the turn of events, as though this
can be separated from their support, or lack of opposition to the
actions that led up to them.
In the same way, Trotsky asks,
“Well, but who are the allies of yesterday liberating now?...
And
do you think that by that vigorous outburst you exhaust the question?
Don't you agree that between this 'disgraceful' war and the war you
called a 'liberating' war there is an indissoluble connection? You
don't agree? Let's look at the question more closely. The
emancipation of the Macedonian peasantry from feudal landlord bondage
was undoubtedly something necessary and historically progressive.
But this task was undertaken by forces that had in view not the
interests of the Macedonian peasantry but their own covetous
interests as dynastic conquerors and bourgeois predators. A
usurpation of historical tasks such as this is not at all an
exceptional happening. The emancipation of the Russian peasant from
the fetters of the village community of the epoch of police rule and
serfdom is a progressive task. But, it is not at all a matter of
indifference who
undertakes this task and how. Stolypin's agrarian reform does not
solve the problems set by history, it merely exploits these problems
in the interests of the gentry and the kulaks. No, there is
consequently no need to idealise the Turkish regime or the regime of
Russia's village community in order to express at the same time one's
uncompromising distrust of the uninvited 'liberators' and to refuse
any solidarity with them.” (p 325)
Kirillovich replies again in words that could have been issued today
by the AWL.
“I
admit that it would have been better if the liberation of Macedonia
had taken place by other means, and not by the cruel means of war.
However, that has this advantage that it is real and not imaginary.
Whatever aims were pursued by the Balkan kings and ruling parties, as
a result of the war Macedonia has been freed from the yoke of the
Turkish beys, the Turkish taxation system, and Turkish tyranny. We
Liberals consider it our duty to define our attitude to the war not
in accordance with who
was conducting the war but with the principle cui prodest,
who will gain by it. As
politicians living not in some indefinite future but today, and
tomorrow, we were resolutely for
a war that brought freedom to Macedonia and Old Serbia.” (p 326 -7)
Trotsky's response is also an adequate response to those like the AWL
who operate with a syllogistic concept of history, whereby events
occur within discrete blocks of time, separated from everything else.
Trotsky says,
“If you don't see the link between today's disgrace and
yesterday's 'glory', that's because you imagine that in the Balkans
somebody is conducting a policy and answering for its reasonableness.
In actual fact, policy is making itself down there, just like an
earthquake. It was precisely the first war, the 'war of liberation'
that reduced to insignificance, to a negligible quantity, all the
factors of calculation and political discretion. Blind, unthinking
spontaneity came into its own – not the benign spontaneity of
awakened mass solidarity, which already has so many good deeds to its
credit in history, but malign spontaneity, the resoluteness of which
is only the other side of blind despair.” (p 327)
In 1870, Marx warned the Parisian workers against launching an uprising. |
In other words, of course, in any historical event, there will be
unforeseen consequences, but that is precisely why before or rather
instead of recklessly engaging in or encouraging some adventure,
Marxists should do all they can to ensure that the revolutionary
forces are mobilised in such a way as to ensure the greatest possible
chance of victory. Without that, events will simply overwhelm the
forces of the Marxists, and of the progressive sections of the
working-class. The despair, which often leads to such outbursts,
will instead lead to the kind of malign spontaneity that Trotsky
describes here. We may not be able to prevent it. Marx argued
against the Parisian workers rising in revolt in 1870. Lenin opposed
the July Days in 1917, and as in both those cases, Marxists may have
to still provide their support for workers once they have begun, but
we should do all in our power to warn against them.
There are other similarities with
today. A Marxist solution to many of these problems revolves around
the mobilisation of workers across borders. For example, for a
Balkan Federation, for a Federation across the Middle East and North
Africa, for a United States of Europe and so on. But, organisations
like the AWL, even if they raise such demands do so only as some kind
of vague hope rather than as central to their programmatic solution.
That goes back to the approach adopted by Al Glotzer in relation to
the establishment of Israel. (See:
Glotzer and Jews As Special,
Glotzer and Immigration,
Glotzer, Anti-Semitism and the Degenerated Workers State) Basically, that approach lost faith in the working class to provide
a solution, and said, “Yes,
it would be nice, but we can't wait, we don't believe it will happen
something must be done.” That,
of course, is precisely the approach taken by the right-wing Liberal
Kirillovich above. It is the approach the AWL and other Third
Campists adopt today.
Its precisely that approach that Trotsky opposes. He writes,
“And tangled knots exist in plenty in the Balkans...A customs
union, federation, democracy, a united parliament for the whole
peninsula – what were all these pitiful words beside the
unanswerable argument of the bayonet. They had fought the Turks in
order to 'liberate' the Christians, they had massacred peaceful Turks
and Albanians in order to correct the ethnographical statistics of
population, now they began to slaughter each other in order to
'finish the job'.” (p 329)
The same statement could apply to the Middle East in the period after
WWII, when the British and other Colonial Powers were removed. The
consequence of Glotzer approach based on the idea that “something
must be done” to resolve the position of the Jews, a position
that is supported by the AWL, in that case and others like it today, has been
the perpetual conflict seen in the region ever since, that divides
the workers across borders, and facilitates the work of Imperialism.
Trotsky's further comments are even more damning for those today
whose justification for such intervention is 'liberation'. He
writes,
The atrocities of the Balkan Wars of 1912-3, were repeated in the 1990's, with atrocities committed both by and against Serbs, such as those in the Krajina. |
“'Free'! And to whom, pray, are the Macedonians topay the costs
of their 'liberation'? And exactly how much do these costs amount
to? How easily people operate with words, and now with living
concepts, when they are not involved themselves! You, Ivan
Kirillovich, say that peace is not an end in itself and so on, but
you are letting your vision of reality be obscured. 'Free'! Have
you any idea what the areas that were recently the theatre of war
have been turned into? All through those places a terrible tornado
has raged, which has torn up, broken, mangled, reduced to ashes
everything that man's labour had created, has maimed and crushed man
himself, and mortally laid low the young generation, down to the baby
at the breast and even further to the foetus in the mother's womb.
The Turks burned and massacre as they fled. The local Christians,
where they had the advantage, burned and slaughtered as the allied
armies drew near. The soldiers finished off the wounded, and ate up
or carried off everything they could lay their hands on. The
partisans, following at their heels, plundered, violated, burned.
And, finally, along with the armies, epidemics of typhus and cholera
advanced across the 'liberated' land.” (p 330)
And yet, today, the AWL and others see in these eloquent passages by
Trotsky on the Balkan Wars, where he opposes intervention and
adventures under cover of 'liberation', the exact opposite. They
quote Trotsky in their usual bowdlerised manner to justify their own
position in not opposing such intervention, and adventures under
cover of the flag of 'liberation'.
Trotsky compares the devastation with that of the Thirty Years War,
but with the appropriate adjustment for the methods of modern machine
production compared to handicraft industry. Today, by comparison the
devastation wreaked by Imperialism, and the forces it stands behind
in Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. are those appropriate to Post-Fordist
production, with the application of the microchip,and advanced
chemical production. It is that, which makes possible the remote
killing of civilians by drones, that leads to the land and water
being devastated by chemicals and depleted
Uranium, blighting the
lives of the people for decades to come.
Trotsky describes these costs born by the people of the liberated
areas in a way that applies equally today.
“To speak of the 'liberation' of Macedonia, laid waste, ravaged,
infected with disease from end to end, means either to mock reality
or to mock oneself. Before our eyes a splendid peninsula, richly
endowed by nature, which in the last few decades has made great
cultural progress, is being hurled back with blood and iron into the
dark age of famine and cruel barbarism. All the accumulations of
culture are perishing, the work of fathers, grandfathers and great
grandfathers is being reduced to dust, cities are being laid waste,
villages are going up in flames, and no end can yet be seen to this
frenzy of destruction...Face to face with such reversions to
barbarism it is hard to believe that 'man' is a proud sounding word.
But at least the 'doctrinaires' have one consolation, and it is not
small: they can with a clear conscience say, 'Neither by deed
nor word nor thought are we guilty of this blood'” (p 332)
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