Obama: Oil, Afghanistan and the American Way
Posted by Mike E on July 25, 2008
By Mike Ely
In Berlin on July 24, Barack Obama made a clear and unmistakable statement on his view of the world. There is much to say about its details, but the most central and specific feature of it was his demand that the U.S. (and the German government) escalate their military invasion of Afghanistan.
“This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.”
This is not an antiwar stand. It is a open call for new escalations in this aggressive war initiated by the Bush regime. And it offers Obama’s diplomacy and charisma as an opportunity to rally more support for that war from the countries of Europe.
At this moment, there is a sentiment in many places of the U.S. military and political establishment for a strategic shift — from Iraq to Afghanistan (where the U.S. occupation is rapidly falling apart). Obama is making a major appeal for those forces, speaking directly to the ruling class and putting forward his own distinctive aggressive strategy for defending and expanding the U.S. empire.
At the brink of each new American military outrage, the lying representatives of this system claim the coming aggression is about protecting the American homeland. That is what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld did to justify their invasion of Iraq. and that is what Obama is doing now to justify his escalation plan for Afghanistan.
To make clear what really lies behind U.S. interest in Afghanistan, i have been encourage to republish an article I wrote exposing what they seek in Afghanistan: oil, natural gas, and the severing of energy-rich Central Asia from Russian control.
I wrote this piece in 2001 to expose what George W. Bush was unleashing on Afghanistan. It applies just as well now, as Obama emerges as the pointman for a new and dangerous act of aggression.
One sister wrote to urge me to post this piece saying:
This is a very important article in understanding Obama’s strategy to move troops to Afghanistan. It is important not just to point out that he has an imperialist position but how does his strategy reflect the interests of the US imps
Larry Everest cited my analysis in his recent Revolution article “Obama’s foreign policy: Steering U.S. Imperialism Through Dangerous Water” and capsuled the argument like this:
“But what’s the nature of this war that Obama claims the U.S. must win? Is it a just war to liberate the people of Afghanistan? No. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was driven by reactionary imperialist interests and ideology from the beginning. This war was never about simply capturing Osama bin Laden in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Its focus was replacing the Taliban regime with one more suitable to U.S. interests, which included defeating Islamic fundamentalism and gaining strategic control of this crossroads of Central Asia, where an intense great power rivalry over the control of oil and natural gas resources and pipelines is taking place.”
Here is the full analysis:
* * * * *
Afghanistan: The Oil Behind the War
By Mike Ely
(originally published in Revolutionary Worker newspaper, November 4, 2001)
“U.S. policy was to promote the rapid development of Caspian energy… We did so specifically to promote the independence of these oil-rich countries, to in essence break Russia’s monopoly control over the transportation of oil from the region, and frankly, to promote Western energy security through diversification of supply.”
Sheila Heslin, energy expert, at the
White House National Security Council,
Senate Testimony 1997
“The U.S. strategy toward Russia is aimed at weakening its international position and ousting it from strategically important regions of the world, above all, the Caspian region: the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.”
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, 1999
“The circumstances in the world have shifted. In a year or two, or three, we’ll see considerably different arrangement in the globe than existed prior to September 11 because the event is of that magnitude.”
Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense,
Washington Times, Oct. 24
A decade ago, many republics of the former Soviet Union declared their independence across a sweeping arc of the Eurasian landmass–tearing the whole southern half of the Soviet Union from Russia. This region contains many of the world’s largest and most undeveloped sources of energy–vast oil and gas fields starting at the oil city of Baku on the Caspian Sea and stretching eastward through the five countries known as the Central Asian Republics (CARs)–Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Control of oil means control of those who need that oil. It is a lifeblood of modern empire.
The United States ruling class considers these countries from Turkey to China as key “prizes” to be snatched up after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For Russia–struggling, bankrupt and weakened through the 1990s–control of these energy-rich countries is essential for any hopes of re-emerging as a world-scale superpower.
Whoever controls the Caspian region has a counterweight to the Persian Gulf–a way to strengthen control over all oil-producing states by hooking up a new energy source to the world market.
The Caspian region’s energy fields are landlocked–far from the oceans. Exploiting the people and resources of the Caspian region takes huge pipelines traveling hundreds of miles over mountains and deserts. Whoever controls the pipelines controls the oil. And so there has been an intense fight over who will build these new pipelines and where they will go.
If the pipelines go north through Russia to Europe, Russia will reestablish control over the Caspian region and the European imperialists will have a source of energy that the U.S. does not control.
If a major pipe goes west, from Baku in Azerbaijan, across Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan–then the U.S. expects to have control over that oil and everyone who needs that oil.
If the pipes go south through Iran to its refineries and harbors, then the U.S. containment of Iran is broken. And, in that case, the Caucasus region becomes an inland extension of the Persian Gulf–not a separate competitive region.
And, if a U.S.-built pipeline goes south through Afghanistan to Pakistan, Russia loses control in the CARs, and the U.S. gains power over those who use it–especially Pakistan and India.
Throughout the 19th century, the expanding Russian and British empires fought over control of Afghanistan and Central Asia–in a colonial contest for power that the British called the “Great Game.” Today, oil has become the focus of the “New Great Game” for the Caspian region.
Western capitalists have poured billions of dollars into exploration, infrastructure, massive bribes, and military build-ups. And yet, after ten years, almost no Caspian oil or gas is reaching the world market. Oil pipelines are fragile, vulnerable and extremely expensive. No capitalist wants to build a multi-billion-dollar pipeline unless they are sure that local governments can protect it.
This brings us to Afghanistan–and to the intense new U.S. war on Afghanistan.
Oil was not the trigger that started this war. The events of September 11 were. But the U.S. imperialists have also seized on these events to pursue goals of dominating the oil wealth of this region.
The main Caspian oilfields are in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. And the main U.S. plan for the region has been the Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline. Afghanistan, which has no oil of its own, lies far away below the southern rim of Central Asia. But stability in Afghanistan is important to the U.S. pipeline plans, and, now, after September 11, Afghanistan has been thrust center stage in this struggle for Caspian oil.
In the “war infomercial” we all get on TV, the current U.S. attack on Afghanistan is described as a war to stamp out terrorism and protect the American people. Amidst the flag waving, there is no discussion of oil or of rivalry with Russia and other imperialists. But, in fact, oil politics and imperialist interests are woven into all the moves and alliances that the U.S. is now making.
Central Asia: From Days of Revolution to Al Haig‘s Pipeline Dreams
“We have no idea now who will buy our gas and how they will pay for it.”
Avde Kuliyev, foreign minister of
Turkmenistan, December 1991
The 1917 communist revolution, centered in the industrial cities of European Russia, stirred radical new hopes in the internal Asian colonies of the Tsar’s empire. In June 1921, women delegates from Central Asia dramatically threw off their veils at the 2nd Women’s Conference of the new Communist International. Then, on International Women’s Day in 1927, 100,000 women stood together in Bukhara in the newly founded Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. They tore off their veils, dipped them in wax, and burned them. Intense confrontations with feudal patriarchs followed, and hundreds of women were lynched for refusing to go back under cover. But by 1930, after years of underground organizing and complex struggle led by the Communist Party, there were no veiled women in Bukhara.
Thirty years later, in the mid-1950s, Nikita Khrushchev’s capitalist counter-revolution within the Soviet government and party overthrew the socialist revolution. The Central Asian Republics were treated as internal colonies. The rulers of these CARs remained officially “communists,” but in reality they served as the local representatives of the new Soviet state capitalism–charged with carrying out the exploitation of labor and mineral wealth.
The collapse of the Soviet Union by 1991 was not a big change in these societies. Almost everywhere, the same Soviet-era state capitalists ruled the newly independent CARs and Caucasus republics, using the same means, the same state structures, the same police. The main difference was that they were looking for new masters. They took Turkey as their new “model”–a secular, repressive Third World state with close military ties to NATO and an open door to Western exploitation.
Turkmenistan is a good example. This land of deserts and mountains, the size of California, borders the Caspian Sea (to the west), with Iran and Afghanistan to the south. It is very sparsely populated–by 4 million Turkic peoples who historically lived as nomads. Its government was headed by President Saparmurad Niyazov, who had been the General Secretary of the Communist Party there before independence.
Turkmenistan is believed to have 159 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under its soil (the fourth largest reserves in the world). It has 1.5 billion barrels of proven oil–but may have as much as 32 billion barrels. All its old pipelines run north, to Russia and other former Soviet countries. But after 1991 there was no profit to be made there. These countries were all bankrupted after the Cold War and could not pay their gas bills. Russia is itself one of the world’s greatest natural gas producers, and its gas corporation had no interest in shipping Turkmeni gas to the world market.
The Turkmenistan President Niyazov hooked up with the U.S. and openly proclaimed neocolonialist dreams of setting up the world’s “new Kuwait.” By 1993, Niyazov was being escorted to ruling class conferences in Washington, DC by Gen. Alexander Haig, former head of Reagan’s National Security Council.
The plan that emerged involved oil and gas pipelines running south from Turkmenistan to the sea. The U.S. vetoed any Iranian route and insisted the pipes run over Afghanistan–to Pakistan.
But after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, no force had been able to form a national government and Afghanistan remained gripped by civil war between various reactionary forces.
In 1994, the fundamentalist Islamist movement called Taliban emerged among the Pashtun people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. With the backing of the Pakistani secret police, ISI, Taliban made a bid to take over Afghanistan.
By November, as the Taliban was taking its first city, Kandahar, the Argentinean oil company Bridas set up a “working group” with the Turkmeni government to plan a gas pipeline–over 800 miles through the Afghan oasis at Herat. Bridas opened secret negotiations with the Taliban and a wide array of local feudal warlords. The Pakistani government officially joined the project four months later.
A year later, a major U.S. oil company Unocal came onboard to provide capital and expertise. Unocal quickly shoved Bridas out of the way and made their own deal directly with Turkmenistan and Pakistan. Unocal met with Turkmeni officials in Houston in April 1995. The Clinton administration gave its support.
Asif Zardari, the husband of Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto, told the journalist Ahmed Rashid at the time, “This pipeline will be Pakistan’s gateway to Central Asia.” Pakistan’s ruling class hoped to be the point-of-entry for large amounts of gas and oil–including for Japan and South Korea, who are eager to diversify their source of oil. The gas pipe was expected to pass through to India. This would give Pakistan major leverage over India, its longtime South Asian enemy, and draw both of those countries much farther into U.S.-dominated economic networks.
It is often said these days that “the problem in Afghanistan is that the U.S. just left after 1989.” But the U.S. never left Afghanistan alone. The U.S. remained officially neutral in the Afghan civil war of the 1990s–but it continued to operate (as it had all during the 1980s) through its allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and through U.S. oil companies. And they, in turn, were supporting the Taliban.
In October 1995, Niyazov signed an agreement with Unocal and its partner, the Saudi-owned Delta Oil Company, to build the gas pipeline though Afghanistan. Henry Kissinger, the guru of imperialist geo-politics, attended the signing. He was officially working as a “consultant” for Unocal–but everyone saw his presence as the blessing of the U.S. ruling class. Kissinger quipped that this Afghan pipeline deal was a “triumph of hope over experience.”
The Tactic of “Permanent Smoldering“
“Certainly the Taliban appear to serve the U.S. policy of isolating Iran by creating a firmly Sunni buffer on Iran’s border and potentially providing security for trade routes and pipelines that would break Iran’s monopoly on Central Asia’s southern trade routes.”
Reuters new agency, Oct. 1, 1996
“The outside interference in Afghanistan is now all related to the battle for oil and gas pipelines. The fear is that these companies and regional powers are just renting the Taliban for their own purposes.”
Yasushi Akashi,
UN Under Secretary General,
Jan. 22, 1997
“It’s uncertain when this project will start. It depends on peace in Afghanistan and a government we can work with. That may be the end of this year, next year, or three years from now, or this may be a dry hole if the fighting continues.”
Unocal Vice President Marty Miller,
June 5, 1997
It is now 2001, and there is no pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
There are several reasons, including a drop in world oil prices. But the Unocal plan fell apart mainly because the Taliban did not win the Afghan civil war. The World Bank, for example, pulled out, saying it would not finance the Unocal pipeline until there was a unified government in Afghanistan.
The Taliban is rooted in Afghanistan’s southern nationality, the Pashtuns, and promoted a brutal, intolerant fusion of Islam and Pashtun feudal traditions. Many people in southern Afghanistan hoped the Taliban would end the murder, rape and theft by competing warlords. But meanwhile, the Taliban faced armed opposition among the non-Pashtun peoples, led by the Northern Alliance. This Northern Alliance had support outside Afghanistan–from Russia and Iran. And this support was no accident: both Iran and Russia would gain if continuing war sabotaged plans for the southern pipeline.
In the struggle over Caspian oil, various powers disrupt rival pipelines by supporting what the Russian defense minister called “the permanent smoldering of manageable armed conflict.” No monopoly capitalist is about to spend billions building a vulnerable overland pipeline through an area that is “permanently smoldering”–where it would be a constant target of sabotage.
There are several of these “permanent smolderings” in the Caspian region. At the far northwest edge of this region, the rebellion in Chechnya has prevented the Russian imperialists from building the pipeline they want connecting Baku with Russia through Groznyy. The Russian ruling class responded with a brutal war of counterinsurgency, killing thousands–while accusing the U.S., Pakistan and the Saudis of secretly supporting the rebellion.
The Search for “Strategic Anchors“
Both the U.S. and the Russians have made major, direct strategic and military moves in the Caspian region, including the CARs, to influence what pipelines get built.
When a pro-Russian government in energy-poor Tajikistan faced an Islamic fundamentalist uprising, the Russian government moved 25,000 Russian troops in and re-annexed the country. In 1993, Boris Yeltsin, then President of Russia announced that the Tajik-Afghan border was now “in effect Russia’s border.”
But Russia has been in economic crisis, with little capital or market to offer the newly independent Central Asian ruling classes. While Russia has the historic ties there, it is the U.S. which has the initiative.
The U.S. has operated in Central Asia by developing allied states as “strategic anchors.” Its main anchor has been Turkey, the Muslim NATO member at the far western edge of the region. The people of oil-rich Azerbaijan and much of Central Asia are Turkic people–who share language and culture with Turkey. Since 1991, Turkey has gone on a puffed-up “pan-Turkic” campaign–dreaming of its own new empire, but really serving an expanding U.S. empire. Turkish culture and businessmen have flooded the region. In Azerbaijan, schools have officially switched away from the Russian alphabet to the one used in Turkey–so a whole generation is emerging that can’t read any of the books published over five years ago.
In the final analysis it takes guns to pry the Caspian oil from rivals.
The U.S. and Turkey developed an anti-Russian military alliance in the Caspian–drawing Azerbaijan and Georgia into close cooperation with NATO. Azeri military officers are now trained in Turkey and Azeri soldiers served within a Turkish battalion during the Balkan war.
Then on October 12, the whole world learned that the U.S. had taken over the major Uzbekistan military base at Khanabad–100 miles from the Afghan border, and moved in at least a thousand U.S. mountain troops. The U.S. and Uzbek governments announced their alliance included U.S. guarantees of protecting the government of President Islam Karimov.
The arrival of U.S. troops directly in the heart of Central Asia is a quantum leap in its global moves. It is presented as a sudden result of the new “U.S. war on terrorism.” What remains largely unknown is that the U.S. had been developing this Uzbek military alliance long before September 11–not to “fight terrorism” but to take over Central Asian oil and gas.
Green Beret Treks to the Uzbeks
“There were the makings of two coalitions emerging in the region. The U.S. lining up alongside Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan and encouraging its allies–Israel, Turkey and Pakistan–to invest there, while Russia retained its grip on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.”
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam,
Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia
Uzbekistan is at the very center of Central Asia. It has some oil and natural gas reserves, but to the U.S. power structure its main importance comes from its size and location. With 22 million people, fully half of the region’s population, and the area’s richest agricultural region in the Ferghana valley, Uzbekistan sits strategically on the northern Afghan border between energy-rich Turkmenistan and the Soviet troops of Tajikistan.
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. imperialists picked Uzbekistan to be their eastern “anchor.” In the words of Foreign Affairs magazine (Jan/Feb 1996), Uzbekistan was supposed to be the “Central Asian stabilizer” to “create a healthy balance [against Russian moves] that would best serve the interests of regional security, Europe and NATO.”
Recently, the New York Times revealed (Oct. 25): “In 1999, teams of Green Berets arrived at former Soviet garrisons outside the capital here. The mission was straightforward: to train the army of a former foe, in part to prepare its inexperienced conscripts for skirmishes with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan… The long-term goal was more ambitious. The Green Berets were one element of an accelerating security arrangement in which the two nations were laying the groundwork for more extensive military cooperation…. As Green Berets were familiarizing themselves with their new Central Asian partners, officials from the United States Central Command in Florida and the American Embassy in Tashkent were meeting with Uzbek defense officials, coordinating military programs. Soon, under a military education program that began here in 1995, more Uzbek officers were admitted to military schools in the United States…. Some American troops were involved in exercises in Uzbekistan as long ago as August 1996, according to the Department of Defense, although Uzbek officials say those exercises did not involve Special Forces. Rather, military officials said that under Gen. Anthony C. Zinni of the Marine Corps, the regional commander who supervised the military presence in the region until retiring last year, engagement efforts and Special Forces missions took much of their current shape in 1999. They have continued under the current commander, Gen. Tommy R. Franks of the Army. Several Green Beret teams have passed through the nation this year, for instance, and during the summer a Navy SEAL team also trained here.”
During the 50th anniversary conference of NATO, in April 1999, an anti-Russian alliance, GUUAM, was formed out of former southern Soviet republics–Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
Ahmed Rashid describes an angry Russian diplomat saying in 1997, “We don’t accept NATO in our backyard. The U.S. must recognize that Central Asia will remain within the ‘near abroad’–Russia’s sphere of influence.”
There is much speculation now about why Russian President Putin seems to have agreed to U.S. occupation of southern Uzbekistan. Gleb Pavlovsky, an advisor to President Vladimir Putin, said that Russia’s government decided it “would rather have the U.S. in Uzbekistan than the Taliban in Tatarstan.” (Tatarstan is a Russian region a few hundred miles from Moscow.) It is widely reported that the U.S. secretly agreed to allow the Russian army to stomp out the “permanent smoldering” in Chechnya–while the U.S. stomps out the “smoldering” Islamist forces operating from Afghanistan.
In any case, this U.S.-Uzbek military alliance was in the works for years before September 11–and there has been little the Russian government could do about it.
Tipping the Balance Against the Taliban
The U.S. ties to Uzbekistan are a direct sign of their deepening hostility to the Taliban–and to the forces of fundamentalist Islamism generally in central Asia.
Starting with President Carter in the late ’70s, and expanding greatly under President Reagan in the 1980s, the CIA sought out, funded, trained and armed fundamentalist Islamic forces in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Their goal was to unleash an anti-Russian “jihad” and spread it from Afghanistan to Central Asia.
But when the Soviet Union fell apart, the governments that emerged in the Caspian region were not Islamic fundamentalists. They were basically the same governments which had been in power when they were part of the Soviet Union. The revisionists of several key former-Soviet republics went from pro-Russian state capitalists to pro-Western state capitalists. And the U.S. oil companies and military operatives were deepening ties to these existing governments.
Meanwhile, the Taliban sponsored Islamist movements in Central Asia, helping armed forces that were threatening new U.S. allies like Uzbekistan’s secular President Islam Karimov. Karimov’s army has been fighting his internal Islamist opposition, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)–whose forces reportedly find refuge under the protection of the Taliban and training from al-Qaida.
In many ways, 1996 marked a turning point for the U.S. imperialists. It became clear that the Taliban might not win the war and stabilize Afghanistan for larger U.S. imperialist plans. By 1996, the U.S. was developing stable new military and political ties with several formerly revisionist states in Central Asia–who were often facing internal Islamist challenges. And the U.S. was coming to see the fundamentalist Taliban and the permanent civil war in Afghanistan as destabilizing to its interests throughout much of Central and Southern Asia. And at the same time, the Taliban took its stand by welcoming the increasingly anti-American Saudi fundamentalist Osama bin Laden back into Afghanistan–and protecting him after he declared “jihad” on the U.S.
Also, after 1996, it became increasingly clear that Caspian oil was being bottled up by continuing instability of the post-Soviet governments. In 1996 only 140,000 barrels-a-day of Caspian oil were being exported outside the former Soviet republics, and Caspian oil was still less than 4 percent of total world oil production. The only pipeline that was successfully completed in the 1990s was the one over Russian soil, from the Tenghiz oilfields in Kazakhstan to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
Only a small part of the U.S.-backed Baku-Ceyhan pipe has been built–opening a stretch from Baku to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa in 1998. An ongoing civil war in Georgia has put even those operations in danger. With no outlet to the world market, Turkmenistan’s natural gas production dropped from 2,000 billion cubic feet in 1992 to 466 billion in 1998.
The U.S. decided that the Taliban (and its al-Qaida allies) were inflaming “permanent smolderings” in parts of the world that the U.S. wants to pacify–and that made them U.S. targets, even before the events of September 11.
Maoists have a saying, “It’s not easy being a running dog.” And that applies well to the experience of the reactionary, backward-looking Islamist movement. It was nurtured as “freedom fighters” by the U.S. all through the 1980s, and now finds its most prominent leaders on the empire’s “Most Wanted” lists.
Meanwhile, the former Soviet governments headed by Karimov and Niyazov are welcomed into the U.S. imperialist networks–with military aid and promises of investment capital.
Ten years ago, the U.S. started planning to run oil and gas pipelines through the Afghan town of Herat. This month, the U.S. bombers attacked that same desert town from the air–reportedly killing a hundred people in a hospital there.
There is a connection between these two events.
patrickm said
Mike Ely in reproducing his 3,860 words from Oct 2001 stands by them and he is obviously proud of his analysis developed in the month after the attacks of 9/11. His conclusion,
‘Ten years ago, the U.S. started planning to run oil and gas pipelines through the Afghan town of Herat. This month, the U.S. bombers attacked that same desert town from the air–reportedly killing a hundred people in a hospital there.
There is a connection between these two events.’
is supposed to be supported by the essay, but it’s not, so from my reading Mike gets a fail (and for reproducing it now Mike deserves expulsion from the academy;-)
Mike has spent almost seven years learning almost nothing about how revolution unfolds in the 21C. He knows nothing about what capitalism could do; can do; will do; or even did do; in a period where imperialism had cracked up and a superpower from WW2 failed and disintegrated.
He knows nothing about puppets and the need of imperial powers to actually have them installed in colonies and semi colonies. He has no grasp of what kind of world the last seventy years of struggle has produced.
A decade ago, many republics of the former Soviet Union declared their independence…
The starting point for analysis of this region, that he has attempted, ought to be the crackup of the USSR but Mike does not actually start there and develop an understanding that is internal to the countries being analysed. All these new countries knew who their principle enemy was. These countries had had their borders reasonably accurately established by Stalin. Stalin is renowned as the leading 20C Marxist theoretician on the National question. When the revisionist USSR fell all these Nationalities rushed forward in solving two of the big three issues of our era. “Nations want liberation, countries want independence”.
The collapse of the Soviet Union by 1991 was not a big change in these societies. Almost everywhere, the same Soviet-era state capitalists ruled the newly independent CARs and Caucasus republics, using the same means, the same state structures, the same police. The main difference was that they were looking for new masters. They took Turkey as their new “model”–a secular, repressive Third World state with close military ties to NATO and an open door to Western exploitation.
They were never looking for new masters! Nor did the descendants of the Ottoman Empire in modern Turkey. The ruling elites in Turkey sort close military ties with NATO for their own good reasons. Indeed the Turk ruling elite because of the Kurdish national struggle, would not even let the US forces attack the Baathists using Turkey as a launching point for the north. The Turks are not a colony or a semi colony and neither are any of the new countries peopled by the newly liberated nations.
Russia’s gangster class of the KGB types like Putin were well understood to be the real enemy. But that gangster class could no longer function in the old way. It was having enough trouble holding things together at home let alone impose old style treatments from the revisionist era onto the new countries. These countries ruling elites had one principle item on ‘their policy agenda’. Their ruling class freedoms. The tiny ruling elites that actually then owned these countries as tyrannies had independent policies.
These countries have not undergone bourgeois democratic revolutions and thus are still tyrannies and we must always remember that the peoples ‘just work here’ when and as the ruling class requires them to. Workers are required; after all, no workers, no exploitation, past the low level exploitation of feudalism; but no capital for investment then no industrial plant to put workers to work in, so the local owning class sought outside investment and expertise and reliable markets. They never sought new masters!!
It mattered not where the leaders of these ex Soviet countries had emerged from. The fact that they were all ex ‘communists’ was hardly relevant when the communist parties were the parties of the powerful ruling gangster classes. The point is they all emerged with interests that were national and country specific in the context of all being nasty right wing governments holding down the people and holding back their desires for the third great task of our era “the people want revolution”.
So if the country under analysis has oil or gas the ruling class that had had a more limited ‘control’ under the diktat of Russian masters in the former USSR now has more opportunities. Wealth does not consist of stuff in the ground. Wealth comes from developing whatever stuff you are lucky enough to be able to dig up or grow etc.
Mike ought to replace the word oil with the word stuff. So if the newly liberated capitalist class in these nationally distinct countries have gas, lumber, iron ore or crops or anything of perceived use value we won’t have to distinguish. Thus we wont get taken in by the magic word oil and get misled by already knowing that it’s all about the control of oil!
All the capitalists want to develop the resources that they have control of. It can’t do them any good in the ground!
None can develop their countries in the revolutionary manner that saw Stalin rapidly drag the USSR through the 1930’s (when the capitalist world went through the Great Depression) and emerge as a rapidly industrialising giant able to go over to a war footing and defeat the Nazis by relying on the five constants of war!)
Of course the US would develop policies towards these new countries and they would not want to see the Russian’s regroup and bit by bit reincorporate these countries. On the contrary they would like to see trade develop away from Russia towards the west. These new countries had things they wanted to buy so of course US capitalists would hope to compete for the work with the enthusiastic support of their government; if they had something to sell then US capitalists along with every other capitalist in the world would look at the opportunities on offer. Competition came to a region that was formerly just dictated to by the Russians.
One bright new day emerged for the world and the Russians could no longer run their old empire. Two of the major three issues were on the agenda. None of these issues would change because the US would offer military schooling and Green Berets to do some military tasks. The Palestinians are getting ‘Green Beret’ assistance from the Great Satan as we speak and that is not going to turn that soon to emerge country into a puppet regime controlled by the US! To think otherwise is daft.
Naturally;
“U.S. policy was to promote the rapid development of Caspian energy… We did so specifically to promote the independence of these oil-rich countries, to in essence break Russia’s monopoly control over the transportation of oil from the region, and frankly, to promote Western energy security through diversification of supply.” Sheila Heslin, energy expert, at the White House National Security Council, Senate Testimony 1997
so this quote does not help Mike. What else could be expected??
Who could possibly require a Russian ruler to tell them that the;
“The U.S. strategy toward Russia is aimed at weakening its international position and ousting it from strategically important regions of the world, above all, the Caspian region: the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.”
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, 1999
Yet Mike thinks this information tells us something foundational for his essay!
Enter business as usual theory in the face of the 9/11 attacks.
Mike cannot come to grips with the truth of the following quote that he used in 2001 to indicate something other than the emergence of a democratic Iraq and the ending of US support for the war for greater Israel. He did not see this statement as drawing a big picture statement on US policy towards former ‘ally countries’ that had actually produced the bombers; Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
“The circumstances in the world have shifted. In a year or two, or three, we’ll see considerably different arrangement in the globe than existed prior to September 11 because the event is of that magnitude.”
Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense,
Washington Times, Oct. 24
Rumsfeld was at that stage an inexperienced bourgeois revolutionary (having been a counter revolutionary all his life till the events of 9/11 forced a change in direction) so he showed all the signs of that inexperience in expecting faster results, but seven years on are we not living through those changes? What do people expect to happen to Egypt when the Palestinians live in their own state run through free and fair elections? I note that not many are dismissing this assertion that Palestine is coming these days! Anyone heard of Marwan Barghouti? Guess who will be contesting the next Presidential elections in Palestine? Do people really think he will be doing so from a prison cell?
Mike did not metaphorically sit down in the same war cabinet that Rumsfeld had. He did not deal with the arguments put by Wolfowitz and was not contemplating what was to be done about Pakistan over what the Pakistanis were involved with in Afghanistan.
So Mike failed to grasp what was being said then because he already knows that nothing has changed. No policy reversals after 9/11. Just opportunities to build pipelines and seize countries as prises. What utter rubbish. The US could no more seize the prises as they could seize Iraq. For crying out loud the US is a Naval power with an Army and that smallish army is stretched just dealing with liberating Iraq and coping with the Afghanistan swamp.
Western capitalists have poured billions of dollars into exploration, infrastructure, massive bribes, and military build-ups. And yet, after ten years, almost no Caspian oil or gas is reaching the world market. Oil pipelines are fragile, vulnerable and extremely expensive. No capitalist wants to build a multi-billion-dollar pipeline unless they are sure that local governments can protect it.
This begs the question how can they ever be sure enough to make development investments if the region remains a swamp?
‘This brings us to Afghanistan–and to the intense new U.S. war on Afghanistan.
Oil was not the trigger that started this war. The events of September 11 were. But the U.S. imperialists have also seized on these events to pursue goals of dominating the oil wealth of this region.’
A month after 9/11 and Mike is bullshitting about how the imperialists have ‘seized on these events to pursue goals of dominating the oil wealth of this region.’ No wonder nothing sinks in. It is all ‘well know’ before any real research. The whole anti war scene was even blathering about oil immediately after 9/11 and Mike is still proud of this!!
‘It is now 2001, and there is no pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
There are several reasons, including a drop in world oil prices. But the Unocal plan fell apart mainly because the Taliban did not win the Afghan civil war. The World Bank, for example, pulled out, saying it would not finance the Unocal pipeline until there was a unified government in Afghanistan.
The Taliban is rooted in Afghanistan’s southern nationality, the Pashtuns, and promoted a brutal, intolerant fusion of Islam and Pashtun feudal traditions. Many people in southern Afghanistan hoped the Taliban would end the murder, rape and theft by competing warlords. But meanwhile, the Taliban faced armed opposition among the non-Pashtun peoples, led by the Northern Alliance. This Northern Alliance had support outside Afghanistan–from Russia and Iran. And this support was no accident: both Iran and Russia would gain if continuing war sabotaged plans for the southern pipeline.’
It is now 2008 and no pipeline even remotely in the pipeline! Anyone know the price of oil? Anyone know who the Norther Alliance works with?
Development and trade is a good thing not a bad thing and when oil and gas do flow through pipes across this region to fuel Pakistan and India and all the other customers that will not mean that the US has ‘got control’ and is able to run the region etc. That era has gone with the wind as has Russian diktat in the CAR’s. Rather it will when it happens mean that the swamp in that region is drained enough to enable the development, like the draining work in Iraq and Kuwait etc is now increasing output to the world market from those countries. ‘Cast away more illusions, prepare for more struggle’ and look to WW2 for a lesson on how to go back to the future. Oil is just more stuff!
Quorri said
Hey PatrickM, is there a way to summarize the essential points of your above criticism? :)
patrickm said
Mike Ely developed his analysis in the month after the attacks of 9/11. He said of ‘the newly independent CARs and Caucasus republics, …[that] The main difference was that they were looking for new masters.’ He is wrong and if he were facing up to errors as all communists ought he would accept that and then deal with the fallout from being exposed as wrong. However, like Chomsky he dare not face his mistake.
To recognize our time as the era when ‘nations want liberation, countries want independence…’ is to begin to grasp the limits of U.S. capitalism. His entire article (with some patient effort) would fall to the ground as soon as Mike understands that the ruling elite of the U.S. were not capable of doing what he thought they were trying to do, and what’s more they knew they were not. The U.S. ruling-class had the shit kicked out of them 35 years ago when they tried to impose puppets in Vietnam; the in power ruling-elite all these years later suffered almost none of the grand delusions about their power that is believed by Mike.
His dismissive refusal to properly debate the ‘draining the swamp thesis’ while even getting it wrong in his brief address, with the notion that “it’s all so well known that people would not be bothered” does not stand up because he knows that if he were to write his article today he would never say ‘they were looking for new masters.’ Everybody worth debating ought to know that they were not looking for new masters!
BUT to face this issue is to push Humpty off the wall(the cherished U.S. Empire as described in such splendid detail in this article as built on air foundations)and also the wall over and Mike ought to know that he would not be able to put the article together again.
The other part that is missing from his reactionary response is the reality that we live in the era when ‘the people want revolution’. Old style imperialism is just not a going concern this century. This article does not reflect the realities of this era and reads as if written before WW1. WW2 started the profound changes in the colonies and semi-colonies and these were led by communists. The U.S. emerged as one of two superpowers and all the old post WW2 policies that it advanced in the Middle East were rotten to the core and curiously Mike does not deny this.
These policies failed dramatically on 9/11 but Mike did not see it that way at all so he wrote this aricle as if it were business as usual. But the U.S. ruling-elite did see the policy failure at war-cabinet level.
Until one places oneself at that level you will never be able to ‘get it’. To get what had to be done from their point of view is to discuss their real options. Repeating fantasies about the U.S. Empire and it’s imperialist ruling-elite controlling the world and its trade (as the actual share of that trade continues to shrink year by year) is ridiculous. The general view accepted at Kasama is actually a dogma.
Just as it was all up for the British and the French fifty years ago it is all up with the Great Satan now. Indeed it is only injections of faith from the pseudo-left that keeps this paper- tiger puffed up and frightening the masses as it actually goes out the back door in the manner of the other superpower.
Time to face the issues that Mike dare not face. Why have people abandoned united-front politics as they applied in WW2? Why are people being utterly liberal with themselves and their mates while they are talking patent nonsense about Iraq and Afghanistan, and all these other Middle Eastern countries and pinning this nonsense on the religion of oil?
Obama is IMV to the right of McCain but he has one devastating blow after another that he is about to deliver to the anti-war movement from a supposedly left position. The movement is splitting yet again. He is very lucky to possibly be coming to power when the Iraqi masses are demonstrably rising to their full bourgeois democratic potentials and are getting ready to wave the COW forces good bye and thanks. So he can’t harm the revolution in Iraq.
There is nothing he can do about Palestine either! That train has left the station even if Kasama people are still looking the wrong way.
Obama can’t even reverse policies as they aply to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. However he is building mass support for the war in Afghanistan world wide! (and doing it while he has no clue how to strategically fight the war). Thus if he becomes President he will have to develop a strategy. He already knows that the war has to spread into Pakistan and that effort to build support is going to split the anti-war position yet again, such as we have seen in the recent exchanges at Kasama.
As for Quorri; I think some effort from you would be better at this stage then I could help you to re-focus and you could then deal with the longer Chomsky thread. I just don’t think you are serious in genuinely trying to seek truth from facts but I hope I am wrong. At any rate reality in the form of Palestine and Obama are going to drag you into dealing with the issues soon enough.
Quorri said
Actually PatrickM I am constantly trying to better understand absolutely everything around me, all the time. But thanks for the assumptions.
Anyway, I think your elitist tone is helpful to no one. Sifting through incredibly long posts filled with slogans and references and allusions to things unspecified is hardly helpful. There are many people reading these posts beside me who feel lost sometimes and, if someone such as yourself comes along, who seems to have a thorough (if possibly correct or incorrect, I can’t say yet) grasp on the situation, it’s helpful to have things stated clearly.
You help no one by adding millions of descriptive words and fluff to make your argument sound more snappy. I find clarity and concise meaning to be way more helpful than sarcastic remarks. You are right in that I could spend a lot of time re-reading through a lot of posts and replies and probably learn some more, and I would love to try.
Was just asking for a little help. Who do you think you’re helping by accusing me of not wanting to do the work to find out? Certainly not me…
patrickm said
Having read comments from Quorri (the evidence), and also material not addressed by Quorri in comments that he was responding to (another form of evidence), I have drawn conclusions and am entitled within the scope of that evidence to draw reasonable inferences also. So Quorri I am not engaged in making assumptions.
However, I’m prepared to take Quorri at his stated face value right now.
Do you Quorri believe that Mike Ely has it right when he said ‘…they were looking for new masters.’ If you don’t then say so!
I believe that Mike Ely does not even believe such a naïve statement in 2008 yet he anchored his 2001 article, (that he is still promoting without any attempt at correction) on this crucial, unreasonable and unfounded assertion.
This mistake is far from just a blemish on an otherwise pristine article.
The thinking that let it slip through a first draft is a problem. The practice, from Mike’s comrades and audience, where having been published nobody directed the Author’s attention to it, indicates more problems (particularly the problem of like talking to like); and the practice that has it re-posted seven years later, as a significant contribution, premised on the unstated notion that the article was arrived at through the application of ‘Marxist’ thinking is yet another problem.
But finally having had the error pointed out, the silence from Mike and his mates at Kasama is as loud a statement as LindaD reiterating the post 1941 crimes of the Great Satan, as her method of refusing to engage with what is actually being said to her.
Irrespective of subjective intent, objectively the article has become at this time no more than a religious offering to like- minded readers. The fact that it did not draw instant critical comment is worthy of note but not surprising.
This collaborator/slave/puppet position is the weak link where the chain brakes, (and using the words comprador capitalist won’t help either). I believe that most readers if they think long and hard enough about this will come to this conclusion.
These words are the required thinking (the link) that holds Mike’s whole article together. Remove this thinking and his argument unravels completely. This is exactly the same with calling the Iraqi politicians collaborators in the quisling sense(as Chomsky etc has had to) despite the now obvious reality that they are not.
This essential link must be in the argument and people have gone to incredible lengths to keep holding onto this patently wrong position.
Yet Maoist style thinkers can’t hold to it because we believe that humanity has moved into an era where nations DO want liberation and those that stand in the way will in the course of protracted struggle, lose. Thus we are opposed to racism and we can see our internationalist position winning!
Thus we can recognize the looming victory of the Palestinian people as the war for greater Israel is brought to an end in defeat.
We believe that countries Do want independence and thus imperialism can’t function in the old way. Mike Ely has not held to any Maoist position at all; rather he is blathering left sounding positions while he ought to know by now that his actual position is one of liberalism.
It is vital for ‘true believers’ to continue to hold to that one link. As soon as it fails the whole world view collapses. That is why people that function as liberals have to abandon the Marxist method of criticism-self-criticism. That is why readers are observing such blatant liberalism from those that think of themselves as Marxists.
I want revolution to be made! I want people to face up to being wrong when they are. I want proper attention paid to Marxist method. The silence that people engage in here when they are wrong speaks loudly as to how serious they are about changing this world.
The following is what is happening in Nigeria today. Our theories of how the world works have to cope with the ‘ease’ of blowing up pipes; and the fact that such blasts could be the work of gangsters or even possibly freedom fighters. We will never know what is the situation in any particular country if we try to ‘know what is happening’ from a rigid application of a hundred year old theory of imperialism.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Nigerian_MEND_rebels_attack_three_o_05082007.html
Bourgeois democracies and the revolutionary struggle for them where they don’t exist will not disappear as an unfolding issue just by wishing that the world was further developed than it is.
Policy change on the part of the U.S. ruling-elite can’t be hidden from when the old school foreign policy establishment is screaming that their whole life’s work is being undone.
I am delighted that the old policies of standing in the way of the masses overthrowing tyranny have been dumped and I believe that anyone interested in furthering proletarian interests has an obligation to re-think their stance when it has turned to crap over these last seven years.
So let’s now debate the real draining the swamp thesis because there is a lot of swamp out there and proletarian revolutionaries with our world to win can only contribute if we are fearless and correct our mistakes.
Quorri said
Patrick, I’m female- not that it matters, but I guess I wanted to point out the male-centric thinking of your response to me.
Also, I simply asked for a summary. You continue to fail to give me one.
I believe part of the problem is that much of what you type is detached and unspecific imagery, obscurely worded references such as “great satan” which I personally have no frame of reference for and there are numerous examples of in your response, and general lack of ever saying concretely, with precision, brevity, and clarity what it is you mean.
I have an awful time trying to comprehend your posts. That’s all.
P.S. The criticism lies in the fact that I’m a relatively well educated person who is sympathetic to and supportive of revolutionary theories and the liberation of oppressed peoples; If I can’t comprehend you, many many more also can not.
zerohour said
Patrickm -
“I have drawn conclusions and am entitled within the scope of that evidence to draw reasonable inferences also”
You could also ask people to clarify or expand on their positions so that inference is not necessary, but you don’t, which is why you ARE making assumptions.
If you want an honest exchange of views, stop baiting people with nonsense like this: “The silence that people engage in here when they are wrong speaks loudly as to how serious they are about changing this world.” This dare/double-dare style of debate is grating, pointless and conveys an unwillingness to listen. Who wants to talk to someone who dares them to speak?
I would argue that the stubborn repetition of claims that are wrong is worse than silence.
patrickm said
Do you Zerohour believe that Mike Ely has it right when he said ‘…they were looking for new masters.’ If you don’t then say so!
patrickm said
Quorri; it’s true that I often write in a manner that is only plain (if uncomfortable) for people like Mike, Carl, and Linda etc., who are probably twice your age and carry a larger knowledge base, so that I may sometimes refer to issues before you came of age etc., but to some extent that’s just life.
It’s reasonable for you to seek summaries and it may also be reasonable for others to sometimes say it’s far better that you work at the detailed argument.
Sometimes it can’t be helped. Communists must read the classics like Stalin’s “On the National Question”, or Mao “On New Democracy” and “Combat Liberalism” etc., because here summaries would hinder everyone. Failure to deeply understand issues like democracy, nationalism and what stand to take towards liberalism can leave people thinking themselves terribly progressive while complaining about the illegal war of GWB against the lawful tyranny of the Baathists!
Obviously the Great Satan is the U.S. (the Little Satan is Israel) and this is well understood by most older political activists and though we can forget that others who were perhaps still in high school at the time of 9/11 (when Mike wrote his article that this thread revolves around) may not know what we are talking about. I think that if you read expressions like that and don’t get it from the context then try Google it, it works a treat.
I advise you to ‘run to catch up’. I for example have a four year old, a seven year old and a ten year old so I feel like I run all the time just to stand still! I spend a lot of time reading and never have enough time to do as much writing or crafting of pieces as I would like. (It is harder to write a good short piece than a longer piece – especially when it’s all being fitted in or written largely in response to comments in a thread).
When I first got involved with Marxists a very elderly female comrade (now long dead) advised me not to get concerned with the way or the form that working people would express their views but to make allowances for their rough and ready ways, and rather try my best to work out what people were really saying in essence and answer them truthfully.
She said she could not stress this point more strongly ‘do not get caught up in the form but deal with the essence’. She knew that at the time I didn’t have much formal education and told me that I would need workers to educate me before I could contribute much back to them and that’s just what happened. She called this running on two tracks. I would have to educate myself by reading as widely as possible as one track, and workers would keep me focussed if I kept being concerned with the well being of the masses as the other track.
This was the best advice I ever got. It kept me well out in front of the green mush that sucked in leftists all around me. (As the radical left tide receded after the victories of the Vietnam period when I was a mere boy) However, I quickly realized that red and green don’t mix.
Those that got sucked in by issues that arose from the right became directionless, and as the radical left collapsed the pseudo-left emerged. Have you read the ‘Ultimate Resource’ by the progressive right-winger Julian Simon? Or ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ by Bjorn Lomborg? If not you ought to because the ideas in these books are IMV vital to the re-emergence of radical left politics. The current organized left is actually right-wing to their boot straps.
‘…revolutionary communists need to undertake a “very presumptuous work.” It requires working through problems not treating them as dark secrets. … we need to deal with difficult truths about our movement, experiences and beliefs.’
Leftists that I mixed with in the seventies did not tend to read widely enough, so when all this right-wing mush was served up again as something from the left they bought it in droves. Look at the clap-trap on Climate change being pushed now. IMV GWB is to the left of anyone that wants to impose a price on carbon dioxide! This carbon taxing is an attack on the living standards of the people. Be concerned with the well being of the masses and the masses will ‘look after the planet’.
Almost all the formally educated local comrades that I knew went with the party when the Maoists in China were arrested. I spotted the coup immediately, but many union comrades went along with the bullshit and kept their jobs and friendship networks etc. I was frozen out quite quickly and so was my elderly comrade. But for her this was a heavy burden because she was then confined to a wheel chair and lost comrades of sixty years standing overnight! She said she didn’t care what happened because she was not about to hide from the truth and she never did.
It was usually the workers that called bullshit first and dumped the “Party”. Eventually in only a couple of years the whole thing became unsustainable and collapsed completely. But you know, not one of those educated and experienced comrades ever admitted that those of us who were frozen out had got it right all along. Sadly we are not the only example of this kind of thing.
Anyway why not try to deal with the following challenge. Advise the U.S. President the day after 12/7/1941 and 9/11/2001. Advise the America first movement 12/6/1941 before the reality of the very next day belted that huge organization out of existence.
To do this well you will have to research the draining the swamp theory developed by maoists at http://www.lastsuperpower.net/
You will have never read any article at Kasama that has dealt with my communist argument in favor of liberating the peoples’ of Iraq. If there were such articles on the record regulars would have pointed to them by now. They have all been so busy with their anti-war work that they never even knew that there was an argument that they had completely missed.
Now like the educated comrades 6 years after 1976 they go quiet rather than admit that the line ‘…they were looking for new masters.’ is utter bullshit!
Quorri said
I appreciate that you post was all a lot more clearly put. Thanks.
I try to read as much as I can and “catch up” as much as I can and it is important to deeply grasp the history of politics today. No argument there.
A friend and I often talk, though, of this whole “not getting caught up in form but dealing with the essence” idea. We don’t call it that, but we criticize many on the left who write extensive articles about something awesome, I’m sure, but write it in a way that only long-term, uber left activists can understand. That’s a pretty slim crowd to be targeting. Both of us decided, tentatively, that it is far better to use plain language and just say what you mean concretely. The pedantics and specific meanings and histories are all so important, and people need to grasp these things, but you can’t expect a large movement to rise up well steeped in political jargon and dates and names….. so much time it would take….
There is always space to criticize the “essences” whether they use the established jargon or not.
Just a question, why do you want me to pretend to advise a president I don’t support, in charge of a political structure I want destroyed, about an act I think he either allowed to happen or specifically helped devise and enact??? Can we say Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin??
patrickm said
Once more liberalism from Kasama regulars in remaining silent while patent foolishness is spoken by Quorri! ‘…about an act I think he either allowed to happen or specifically helped devise and enact??? Can we say Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin??’
Quorri; Conspiracies must have ‘something’ that seems at least plausible to hold them up so that they catch on among the ignorant. So, they can be very interesting diversions to investigate especially as they unravel and are forced to become less and less plausible.
But to believe that any U.S. administration could ‘specifically helped devise and enact’ or be involved to the extent of ‘allowing to happen’ such as massive attacks like Pearl Harbour and 9/11 is to have as profoundly a mistaken view of the world as Mike Ely, and his theory of newly emerged ruling-elites looking for new masters.
People who believe that U.S. Administration’s were responsible, or co-operated in any way with 9/11 or Pearl Harbour, in the same way as the Democrat administration under Johnson created and embellished the incidents of the Gulf of Tonkin, (in order to escalate their war against democracy because democracy was leading to communist governments in Indo China) are simply wrong: this is not the way the world works, it is the way that nutters carry on in their sects.
Go and have a cold shower so you can be cured from such delusions, and even Kasama regulars would tell you that when they wake from their liberal sleep.
The ruling-elite tell lies all the time so it’s never a question of taking what they say at face value but of working out what’s in their interests from within the range of real possibilities open to them. (and that range of possibilities has been reducing fairly dramatically over the last hundred years)
So when the ruling-elite talked about ‘saving’ democracy, while preventing democratic elections in Vietnam, their lies were easily exposed; they were then the enemy of democracy to be defeated. The masses in the west were initially for the war in Vietnam they wanted people to have such things as free and fair elections. In Australia the masses wanted the peoples’ of Indo China to have the right to vote. The masses swung against the war when they realised that their ruling-elites were trying to smash democracy and oppress the Vietnamese. In both cases the masses were right. It was the job of communists to go ‘from the masses to the masses’ and expose the ruling-class lies.
Communists are in favour of democracy indeed we are first and foremost revolutionary democrats and one can’t be a communist without being a revolutionary democrat. Communists do not build sects, we conduct ourselves in an honest, open, and forthright manner.
In serving the people we seek to expose conspiracy theories and those that promote them. Revolutionaries need to develop political responses to issues that arise that can be embraced by the masses. Indeed developing the mass-line is the key link in communist politics.
Mike E said
Moderator note:
Please stop the personal edge in this thread. example: “Once more liberalism from Kasama regulars in remaining silent while patent foolishness is spoken by Quorri!”
Deal with ideas, dissect arguments. But (please) stop this kind of hostile labeling of others.
As a result Quorri feels required to make posts just to defend herself. We don’t want that tone or distraction.
Libertarian Lurker said
Yes, the tone here is getting nasty and personal. Not cool. I am not a 9/11 truther (mostly because I lived in DC at the time and personally know people who live within walking distance of the Pentagon and who saw the plane heading for it — a key thing that the truthers say didn’t happen) but I am open-minded enough to admit that I might be wrong and be open to being convinced otherwise (which is also why, while an evil reactionary, I read and sometimes post on this site) without dissing someone over their age or whatever. As far as Pearl Harbor goes — there is plenty of strong evidence of foreknowledge by the U.S. government, but I’d be getting way off topic to go into it. The Roosevelt regime’s involvement in World War 2 wasn’t some noble crusade for “democracy.”
Speaking of “off topic” though — one item in Mike’s article brings up something I’ve wondered about Maoist ideology for a long time. Mike wrote: “Thirty years later, in the mid-1950s, Nikita Khrushchev’s capitalist counter-revolution within the Soviet government and party overthrew the socialist revolution. The Central Asian Republics were treated as internal colonies. The rulers of these CARs remained officially “communists,” but in reality they served as the local representatives of the new Soviet state capitalism–charged with carrying out the exploitation of labor and mineral wealth.”
I consider myself to be well-read in Russian and Chinese history, as well as the polemics between the CCP and the CPSU. But this has always confused me — do Maoists consider the USSR to have ceased being socialist the moment Khruschev delivered his famous secret speech dissing Stalin’s purges? Or was it a process? I can see why, from an economic standpoint, a Maoist would consider the USSR to have become “state-capitalist” after the Kosygin reforms of the early ’60s and other changes that occurred by the time Brezhnev gained power. And I’m aware of the line differences — I’ve read the 1961 CPSU platform and its references to a “state of the whole people” rather than a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” So is what “line” is in control the key to the Maoist view of socialism vs. capitalism? Did the USSR instantly become capitalist when Khruschev made his speech and did China instantly become capitalist the second the Gang of Four were arrested? Or was it a process? Most of the communists I know offline are ISO Trots who argue that state-capitalism in Russia emerged as a gradual process in the 1920s, not at one specific instant. That seems different than the Maoist view, and in a broader way than the “did the revolutionary era end in the 20s or 50s” issue.
Just curious. Sorry to drag things off topic!
Mike E said
LL:
You have raised an important question (obviously) about HOW capitalist restoration happens.
I will reply quickly on just the question of Maoism and capitalist restoration….. a few points:
1) Mao (and Maoists) believe that powerful capitalist forces develop within socialism — highly placed within the state and the party. These capitalist roaders contend over policy, power and the direction of society.
2) There have, historically, been important transitional moments when these capitalist roaders seized power. it meant that they had (going forward) the ability to implement their plans and policies overall throughout society.
3) such a seizure of power meant that the state (overall, at its heights) had “changed color” — and the basis for socialist advance had been overthrown.
4) There follows a process by which the institutions and processes of society are transformed. for example, in the USSR, the Kosigin reforms (of the early 60s) implemented profit as the key criterion for investment down to the corporation or sometimes factory level. This was obviously an important leap in transforming the economics of society, and took place several years after the Krushchevite seizure of power. Similarly, in china, 1978 was an important year for implementing many sweeping changes as part of the program of capitalist restoration — including the break up of the people’s communes in agriculture.
In short, the seizure of power often happens in a compressed way (after decades of sharp struggle). The process of transformation of society is (of course) not instantaneous — but involves policies, institutional changes, purges and imprisonment of personnel, isolation of resistance, and so on.
patrickm said
LL;
I think the following quote gives a far better insight into how class struggle unfolds in societies ‘based on commodity production and wage labour’. It’s from a paper delivered in April 1979 and republished at http://www.lastsuperpower.net/
Why the cultural revolution was defeated
‘…To understand the Cultural Revolution and its defeat in China, you have to understand the class struggle in a developing third world country. To understand Mao Tsetung Thought in China, you have to understand Marxism. I think the best background for that is an understanding of the class struggle and an application of Marxism in Australia.
My understanding is that since liberation, China has developed as a class society based on commodity production and wage labour. That means goods are produced to be sold on the market for money and people work in order to receive wages so they can buy goods. These very fundamental features of the Chinese society are quite similar to the corresponding situation in Australia and other capitalist societies. They give rise to a class struggle between different sections of society, which is the main motive force pushing society forward.
Both China and Australia are class societies in transition from capitalism to communism. When China was socialist this did not mean it had some new kind of “socialist mode of production” different from both the “capitalist mode” involving commodities and wage labour and the “communist mode” based on associated production organised by the associated producers. It simply meant that there was a “socialist system” in China, in which the power of Government, the power to make and enforce laws, to manage enterprises, to dominate culture etc. was in the hands of the proletariat and not the bourgeoisie. The radicals held power and used it to radicalise society and speed up the transition. As opposed to the conservatives holding power and using it to hold society back, as in Australia and China today.
Both in socialist China then, and in capitalist China now, and in capitalist Australia, revolutionaries are in a small minority in society and so are counter-revolutionaries. In China now, as in Australia, the small minority of reactionary bourgeois elements hold political power, and are accepted by the mass of the population. In socialist China the minority of revolutionaries held power, with support from the masses. The kinds of political and social struggles that went on in a socialist society like China was were not all that fundamentally different from those that go on in a capitalist society like Australia or in China today. This is because the two forces in opposition are similar, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, radicals and conservatives. The basic issue is similar, whether to move forward to communism or backward to capitalism. The basic mode of production is similar too, commodities and wage labour. The big difference is which side is on top.
It is perfectly obvious that the political and social struggles going on in China today since the coup d’etat are basically the same as those going on before it. Theoretical articles in Peking Review have exactly the same themes as before, only the stand is reversed. I would argue that there are close similarities to related struggles in Australia.
To understand Chinese politics try to think about the kind of politics that would exist in Australia after a revolution. Try to envisage the kind of society in which radicals were on top and the businessmen on the bottom. Reading Peking Review today with its talk about the “four modernisations” one gets a clear picture of a society dominated by its businessmen. The appeals to produce more and the appeals for stability and unity reflect the same ideology as Malcom Fraser and Bob Hawke – the ideology of the bourgeoisie. Of course they don’t call themselves the bourgeoisie anymore than Malcom Fraser or Bob Hawke does.
In Australia the dominant bourgeois ideology puts struggle in terms of whether to make more cake or to squabble over the distribution of the cake. Communists raise a separate problem. Unlike reformists who argue about the distribution of the cake, communists raise the question of who is to run the kitchen. We call for “all power to the cooks”. There are important and fundamental differences, but quite similar issues were being raised by Communists in China – from the much stronger position of being a ruling party – and having nearly 4% of the population as members. …’
IMV the paper has held up very well in the 29years since it was published. The left that was so apparent then has not held up at all well!
I recommend a full read as it also addresses some other very important issues debated among Maoists at the time (and presents a position that is being distorted to this very day) and these point to the gulf that now exists between revolutionaries and trends, that when fully developed, we at lastsuperpower came to define as the pseudo left (itself a topic well worth searching at lastsuperpower).
Mike E said
There are important issues of line and analysis displayed here.
Just to mention a few places where I think Patrick has it wrong:
1) on the contrary: there is a socialist mode of production that is sharply different from the capitalist mode of production.
2) It is wrong to imagine socialism as “Try to envisage the kind of society in which radicals were on top and the businessmen on the bottom. ” That is what was believed in the Stalin period, while Mao’s analysis of the Soviet Union showed that there were capitalist forces high in in the state and economy — i.e. that “business men” (i.e. a class with political representatives known as “capitalist roaders).
3) It is a muddle to say “My understanding is that since liberation, China has developed as a class society based on commodity production and wage labour. That means goods are produced to be sold on the market for money and people work in order to receive wages so they can buy goods. These very fundamental features of the Chinese society are quite similar to the corresponding situation in Australia and other capitalist societies. They give rise to a class struggle between different sections of society, which is the main motive force pushing society forward.”
The difference between socialism and capitalism is whether the law of value dominates the decisions and development of society. In other words, there are wages and commodity exchange in socialist society — but labor power of the working people is not (itself) overall a commodity, and the fundamental relationship defining society is not capital (i.e. the self expansion of capital). Something new has emerged, and that something dominates the direction and development of society: the overthrow of the dictatorship of the capitalist class and its replacement by a planned socialist society (within which commodity exchange and production is increasingly subordinate to the interests, needs and political decisions of the formerly oppressed and their revolution.)