The Main Enemy Is At Home
No Falkland Islanders died as a result of the Argentine invasion, and the islands were home to just a few dozen people. There are tens of thousands of people living in the DPR/LPR, and in the last 8 years, more than 14,000 of them have died as a result of shelling and other military attacks by the Ukrainian military, and its allies amongst the Nazis of the Azov Battalion. Britain caused the deaths of thousands of soldiers arising from its war in the Falklands, nearly all of them young workers. Russia in invading Ukraine risks the loss of life of thousands more, not to mention the chance of an accident leading to a global nuclear war, and the extinction of humanity.
In the Falklands, the WSL Majority argued that there was no basis to support Britain's war, because, whatever might be the rights or wrongs about the right of the islanders to self-determination, that right could not outweigh the interests of the working-class, and the struggle for Socialism. The interests of workers, and socialism are not served by a war between bourgeois states, in which it would be workers who would be asked to line up behind their own bourgeoisie, on both sides, and who would be pitted against each other to fight and die for a cause in which they had no interest, because their real interest is to oppose their own ruling class.
But, that same argument applied in respect of Argentina too. The WSL Minority pointed to an argument put by Trotsky, as part of an interview with Mateo Fossa in which he states that, in a war between Britain and Brazil, Brazil having a fascist dictator, he would still be on the side of Brazil, because the terms “democracy” and “fascism” are merely masks used by imperialism, each of which can be discarded when required, and that, if Britain defeated Brazil, it would simply impose a dictator to its liking, not democracy. The main purpose of this argument, however, by Trotsky, was to illustrate the duplicity of the arguments of the social-patriots, at the time, which tried to portray the coming world war as one between democracy and fascism.
Taking into consideration all of Trotsky's other writings, and the content of his response, here, and the position of Lenin and the Comintern on the national and colonial questions, it is clearly false to interpret Trotsky statement that “I will be on the side of “fascist” Brazil against “democratic” Great Britain”, simply at face value. If this had been an actual theoretical article by Trotsky, he would, undoubtedly have elaborated the points already discussed, and central to his theory of permanent revolution, that what he means by “on the side of”, is that he would support the resistance of the Brazilian workers and peasants, organised in their own independent revolutionary units, and it would be this, if successful, that would be the basis of “a mighty impulse to national and democratic consciousness of the country and will lead to the overthrow of the Vargas dictatorship.”
(In fact, illustrating Trotsky's point about it not being a war between democracy and fascism, in 1942, Vargas took Brazil into the war on the side of "democratic imperialism"!)
All of his writings in relation to the Popular Front in China, in Spain and elsewhere lead to no other interpretation, because otherwise he would be arguing for the Brazilian workers to abandon their own independent organisation, to form a Popular Front with Vargas, in which case he knew that the consequence of that would be their demobilisation, and ultimately their destruction at the hands of Vargas as had happened in China and Spain.
In other words, it would be the same as saying, I am opposed to Britain in this war, but that opposition in no way should be interpreted as meaning support for Vargas, just as revolutionaries would say, we are opposed to Japanese imperialism in China, but that does not mean that we support the Chinese bourgeoisie or the KMT; we oppose Hitler, but that does not mean supporting “democratic imperialism”; we oppose Franco, but that does not mean we support the Popular Front; we oppose Thatcher's war in the Falkland's, but that does not mean we support Galtieri; we oppose Putin's war against Ukraine, but that does not mean we support the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, its state or the Azov Battalion.
A version of the WSL Minority position is given, in relation to Ukraine, by Jim Denham, in the current "Solidarity", paper of the Alliance for Workers Liberty, yet Denham was part of the WSL Majority back in 1982. He puts the question in the typically two-campist terms of the lesser-evilist, and proponent of "My enemy's enemy is my friend", by responding to the social-pacifist position of the SWP and others, by asking "Oppose the invasion, but don't fight it?"
It is a particularly stupid way of framing the question, because it begs many more questions, not least, who is it addressed to? If addressed to British workers, then its quite easy to oppose Putin's War, without supporting Zelensky's War also. If its addressed to Ukrainian workers, then as in WWI, the position of Marxists, of revolutionary defeatism, based upon the principle of "The Main Enemy Is At Home", does not at all preclude the workers fighting any such invasion, but simply asserts that they do not stop fighting against their own ruling class and state in order to do so! But, Denham is not talking about Ukrainian workers being organised in their own revolutionary units engaging in such a struggle, but is talking about throwing support solely behind Zelensky, the Ukrainian oligarchs and state, and the Nazis of the Azov Battalion. Its them not revolutionary workers that he seeks to have NATO provide military backing for, as though it required any encouragement from social-imperialists of the like of the AWL to do in the first place.
To conclude opposition to one requires support for the other is the method of lesser-evilism, or “my enemy's enemy is my friend”. It is not the method of Marxism. We refuse to have to choose the lesser-evil of these contending bourgeois camps, because we always, instead, choose the independent, third camp of the proletariat. That is the point made by Trotsky in his Program For Peace.
“What is a program of peace? From the viewpoint of the ruling classes or of the parties subservient to them, it is the totality of those demands, the realisation of which must be ensured by the power of militarism. Hence, for the realisation of Miliukov’s “peace program” Constantinople must be conquered by force of arms. Vandervelde’s “peace program” requires the expulsion of the Germans from Belgium as an antecedent condition. From this standpoint the peace clauses merely draw the balance sheet of what has been achieved by force of arms. In other words, the peace program is the war program. But that is how matters stood prior to the intervention of the third power, the Socialist International. For the revolutionary proletariat, the peace program does not mean the demands which national militarism must fulfil, but those demands which the international proletariat intends to impose by its revolutionary struggle against militarism of all countries. The more the world revolutionary movement unfolds ’the less do the peace questions depend on the purely military position of the belligerents, the less becomes the danger that peace conditions may be understood by the masses as war aims.”
In the case of the Falklands War, the example of Trotsky's statement, in relation to Brazil, was even less relevant. There was no likelihood that Britain was going to actually invade Argentina, as was possible, in the 1930's, in relation to Brazil. Britain was only going to take back the Falklands, with any additional military action, such as the sinking of the Belgrano, possibility of air strikes against Argentinian airfields, being part of a military campaign to deny it the capacity to counter-strike. In fact, the same has been the case with Russia's occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where it did not go on to occupy Georgia; its occupation of Crimea; and now the DPR/LPR. So, even the question of Argentinian workers needing to organise, independently, to defend themselves against British occupation did not arise.
No comments:
Post a Comment