Acknowledging their collapse into bourgeois-liberalism and nationalism, the AWL state,
“Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Since when has any Marxist acknowledged such a right by the capitalist state? It was precisely upon that basis that the socialist movement split in 1914, with the Marxists rejecting the idea that capitalist states have a right to defend themselves, i.e. “defence of the fatherland”, or “bourgeois-defencism”. Except in the meaningless sense that the capitalist class is the ruling-class, and the state is its state, and will be used to defend its class interests, both against its own working-class, and against other states, there is no such right, and certainly, even to the extent that it exists in the former sense, it is no part of Marxism to uphold that right, let alone advocate it!
Of course, so long as capitalism exists, the ruling class will utilise its state to defend its class interests, and, in wars with other states, it will undoubtedly dragoon the working-class into its armies to fight and die in those wars. Its right to do so stems only from its power to do so. But the position of Marxists has always been to oppose the idea of such national defence (bourgeois-defencism), and instead to propose the principle of revolutionary defeatism.
Where the AWL seeks to arm the Ukrainian capitalist state to the teeth, with the latest NATO hardware, the position of Marxists has always been to oppose such armament, or funding of such wars. Even where it was a question of a bourgeois government fighting a national war against a colonial oppressor, as with the KMT, in China, in the 1920's, Trotsky opposed the arming of that bourgeois government, arguing, instead, for the arming of the industrial workers and poor peasants, organised within the Chinese Communist Party, and soviets of workers and peasants.
We recognise and support only the right of the proletariat to defend itself, and to do so, organisationally and politically independent from the bourgeoisie and its state. It is also why the AWL's attempt to utilise the example of the Algerian FLN falls flat, and exposes how far they, and most of the “Left” is removed from Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism.
But, the AWL has been led to abandon Marxism and the principles of revolutionary defeatism, of the main enemy is at home, precisely because of its overnight conversion, some thirty years ago, to Zionism, and to the Burnhamite/Shachtmanite support for the Zionist project of the creation of Israel, having previously been ardently in the camp of the Cannonites. If you justify the creation of Israel – as against simply rejecting, as reactionary, calls for its destruction – then, the next logical step is to, likewise, acknowledge its right to defend itself. If you support the right of one capitalist state – Israel – to defend itself, you must logically support that right for every other capitalist state, which is the position of social-patriotism! That leads to all kinds of contradictions in which the AWL have become enmeshed, ever since.
What does right to defend itself mean? For example, does it include the right to impose immigration controls? In making their sudden conversion to support for Zionism and the politics of the petty-bourgeois Third Camp, the AWL quoted Al Glotzer, and his argument against Trotsky and Ernest Mandel. Glotzer wrote,
“Some of our readers may be aware that one of the main differences between us and the official Fourth International and the SWP is on the question of the right of the Jews to free immigration to Palestine. In advocating the right of free immigration to all countries, and in the first place to the United States, we advocate, at the same time, that democratic right for Palestine. The Fourth International and its adherents, however, are in favour of free immigration of Jews to all countries, the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia, etc., but ... not to Palestine — the one country to which they want to go! Mandel’s article seeks to give the theoretical and historical justification for this obviously contradictory position.”
Yet, today, the inheritors of Glotzer's position, in the AWL, argue, adamantly, against the right of Palestinians to migrate to Israel, whilst defending the racist laws of the Zionist state of giving a right to any Jew to move to Israel, from where, of course, the Zionist state facilitates them in a further annexation of Palestinian land and property. If we were to paraphrase Glotzer, we would say that the AWL supports the right of Palestinians to migrate to anywhere in the world, except the one place they want to move to – Israel. And, of course, Glotzer's argument was itself ridiculously duplicitous, because it was not about a simple migration of individuals into Palestine, but an organised colonisation of the territory, backed by Zionism, and later US imperialism! You might as well have characterised British colonisation of Ireland or Australia, or parts of Africa, as simply a question of individual migration!
If we take the point of contention between Trotsky, and the AWL's mentors – Burnham and Schachtman, in the 1930's, the question of defence of the USSR, what was it that Trotsky actually said. He was in favour of defence of the USSR, by which he meant defence of the revolutionary transformation of the society that the revolution had brought about. It most certainly did not mean defence of the Stalinist bureaucratic state apparatus, and a subordination of the working-class to it, for the purpose of simply fighting the war. On the contrary, Trotsky believed that, in order to have an actual defence of the USSR, it would be necessary for the workers of the USSR to organise independently, both politically and militarily, in fact, on the same basis that the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions proposed for bourgeois-national revolutions, on the basis of Permanent Revolution.
In the same way, Marxists oppose attacks on more mature forms of capital (socialised capital) by petty-bourgeois reactionaries. We oppose attacks on, say, the NHS, and attempts to turn the clock back to the days of private healthcare, but that does not at all require us to defend the state-capitalist NHS, with its byzantine and overwhelming bureaucracy, its hierarchical structure, its personal empire building, inefficiency and focus on the needs of capital, rather than workers! We oppose petty-bourgeois, liberal attacks on monopolies, via anti-monopoly legislation, and so on, but that does not require us to support capitalist monopolies, either. On the contrary, we argue that the best means of defeating the reactionary attacks on these more mature forms is to go beyond them, to democratise them, and place them, directly under workers' control, an aim that can only be achieved as part of a wholesale transformation of society itself, of the creation of a workers' state.
It was quite possible for Trotsky to argue for defence of the USSR without arguing for defence of the existing Stalinist regime, just as it was possible for the early Comintern to argue for support for bourgeois national revolutions, without giving any support to bourgeois nationalist parties, like the Russian Kadets, or the Chinese KMT, which they emphasised remained the immediate class enemy, on the basis of Permanent Revolution. Marxists have a responsibility to warn against giving support to those bourgeois nationalist parties, who remain “The Main Enemy At Home”, even in the course of national revolutions. As The Theses put it, Marxists support only the truly revolutionary forces in any such war/struggle. As Trotsky noted, in relation to China,
“Lenin, it is understood, recognized the necessity of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois-democratic movement, but he understood by this, of course, not an alliance with the bourgeois parties, duping and betraying the petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy (the peasants and the small city folk), but an alliance with the organizations and groupings of the masses themselves – against the national bourgeoisie.”
(Trotsky – Stalin and The Chinese Revolution)
And, he set out examples of what that looked like, such as joining with petty-bourgeois students in demonstrating against fascists, or calling on small shopkeepers to support and provide goods and services to striking workers. It most certainly did not involve formal alliances with bourgeois parties, let alone bourgeois governments. What would Trotsky have thought of the AWL, which not only justifies an alliance with the bourgeois-nationalist parties, like the reactionary FLN in Algeria, but even with an imperialist bourgeois state itself, such as that in Ukraine, as a consequence of its total collapse into bourgeois liberalism and nationalism, on the basis of a bourgeois nation's right to self-determination, and defence of the fatherland!
No comments:
Post a Comment