Syria: No to Assad! No to foreign intervention!
Posted by Mike E on February 24, 2012
Syrian government tanks shelling a neighborhood in Homs
The following was sent to Kasama by A World to Win News Service. (February 13, 2012)
The U.S. military has “begun to review potential military options” in Syria, according to the New York Times. (February 11, 2012) An unnamed American military official told this authoritative newspaper, “We’re looking at a whole range of options, but as far as going to one course of action, I haven’t seen anything.” The report says the “possible options” that would be considered include “everything, including humanitarian assistance, army rebels, covert actions, airstrikes, deploying ground troops or doing nothing.”
This admission comes as the U.S. is already backing various forms of intervention in Syria, including Turkey’s efforts to use Syrian military opposition elements to form an army under its control, and the money and arms allegedly pouring into the country from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are almost undoubtedly backing fellow Sunni Islamic fundamentalists, as they have everywhere else.
The U.S. followed an often ambiguous policy toward Syria for many years, working to isolate and weaken the regime while also recognizing its importance in preserving the status quo in the region at times when that has been a prime American goal. Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, crushed the revolutionary Palestinian movement then centered in Lebanon in the 1970s, enforced peace with Israel despite the Zionist occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights since 1967, and supported the U.S. during the 1991 invasion of Iraq.
When the Syrian revolt broke out last March, inspired by similar spontaneous revolts that toppled Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali, the U.S. did not support its main demand, the fall of the regime. Instead, Washington called on Assad to implement economic and political reforms meant to appease the movement while making it easier to pull Syria into the U.S. orbit.
That revolt, Salameh Kaileh, a prominent Arab Marxist from Palestine living in Syria, told AWTWNS in an interview last August, was unleashed by the middle strata in the countryside. In smaller provincial cities, it now involves all social classes, including the merchants and local capitalists, Kaileh said.
It was not until August 18 that Washington called for Assad to go. This was not because the Obama government had suddenly found out how bloodthirsty the Syrian regime is. There had already been five months of massacres of unarmed civilian demonstrators, and for years the U.S. had turned over prisoners to Syria precisely in order that they be tortured. But the U.S. saw both necessity and opportunity in the current situation.
As Kaileh said, the U.S. was now seeking regime change, but a controlled regime change, hoping to avoid unleashing uncontrollable forces, including the masses of Syrian people themselves, that might lead to an outcome that would destabilize the whole U.S.-dominated structure of the region, including the regimes in neighboring Turkey and Jordan.
“Following the Tunisian and Egyptian model, this change (sought by the U.S. in Syria) would not be a radical one but a change within the regime itself,” Kaileh said. One possible form would be a split within the power structure, particularly the armed forces, and a coup, spurred on by or even possibly brought about by foreign military intervention.
The necessity was to step in to resolve a situation – a popular uprising – that imperiled American interests. The opportunity was that it had become possible to envisage taking out a formerly stable regime that formed a bloc with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Palestinian Hamas, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, posing serious problems for the U.S. and threatening its reactionary regional allies. It is no coincidence that the U.S.’s eagerness to bring down Assad comes amid heightened U.S. threats to attack Iran and/or back Israel in attacking it.
Even as the popular revolt in the Middle East and North Africa continues to acutely challenge some of the existing regimes and forms of imperialist domination, and the genie of the people’s awakening has been released from the bottle, instead of giving in to the popular will and or even retreating slightly, the U.S. has worked to advance its interests amid these turbulent waters.
To the so-called Tunisian and Egyptian models has now been added the “Libyan model” in which the U.S. and the European powers (acting both in concert with the U.S. and also out of rivalry with the U.S. and each other) basically invaded (if mainly from the skies) and brought down the Gaddafi regime. This show of force was meant not only to assert control of Libya but also to proclaim and maintain regional dominance in the face of both the peoples and other rivals, including Russia and China.
The foreign interference and stoking of civil war by the U.S. and its allies in Syria is exactly the kind of thing the UN supposedly exists to prevent. A few years ago, the U.S. blustered threats against the Assad regime for interfering in Lebanon and demanded that the UN step in. For the U.S., UK and France, the question is not what is morally right or legal according to international law but what serves their imperialist interests.
Now these powers have taken the opposite position regarding Syria: outside interference can be justified because Assad is “killing his own people.” Further, if it is true that forces linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq is now fighting in Syria, this is not unrelated to the Gulf States’ backing of other Islamic fundamentalist forces there. The point, for the West, is that their interference (or moves backed by them) is good, while anyone else’s is an excuse for… NATO intervention.
As Robert Fisk pointed out in the UK Independent, one particularly sharp illustration of the hypocrisy of the U.S. and Europe is that the absolute monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are now portrayed as the region’s best champions of “democracy” in Syria. The fact that the Saudi regime sent in troops to put down a rebellion by the Shia majority in Bahrain and is shooting Shia demonstrators in eastern Saudi Arabia has been politely overlooked.
The increasing importance of the alliance between the U.S. and the reactionary Gulf States – driven by the dread that the “Arab Spring” inspires in them all – is exemplified by the fact that they were able to change the position of the Arab League overnight, from one of at least apparent neutrality toward the Assad regime to putting forward a stunningly arrogant and detailed plan for what should happen next in Syria, beginning with a transfer of power from Assad to others within his regime, with or without a military coup.
The Arab League has called for a “joint Arab-UN peacekeeping mission” in Syria, but this isn’t about peace. It called for providing “all forms of moral and material support” to opposition forces, but this isn’t about helping the advance of what has been the main thrust of the people’s revolt so far, an end to oppression.
What it resembles more closely is the 19th century “gunboat diplomacy” when Western powers used their warships to force those local governments not already under colonial control to comply point-by-point with an imposed agenda. The fact that these demands come from Arab mouths does not change the fact that the U.S. wrote the script, or at least gave it the green light. How could the Gulf monarchies threaten Syria without the spectre of Western gunboats (and aircraft and armies) looming just behind them?
With the pretext that Saddam Hussein was “killing his own people,” two invasions separated by a decade of murderous sanctions not only led to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people but also plunged the Iraqi people into as dark a night as they have ever faced before, a situation very unfavorable for revolt. Then, on the same pretext, came the “Libyan” model, in which a regime that had become highly compliant with Western (and especially British and Italian) interests was brought down amidst the unleashing of all sorts of reactionary interests and forces, making life in Libya today as great a hell as ever before.
Right now the U.S. is in no position to mount another large-scale invasion, thanks not to any sudden change of heart but the way the American projects in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out. On the other hand, the kind of “cheap” war in Libya (cheap to the U.S. and other NATO members, not to the Libyan people who are still paying a horrendous price) may not be possible in Syria, where the last five months of revolt have shown that the reactionary regime does have a stronger social base as well as a real army.
American strategists (see, for example, Foreign Policy.com) bemoan the fact that an “air exclusion zone” would have little affect in Syria, where the regime hasn’t been using war planes, and that air power cannot be applied to aid anti-regime forces because to the extent that combat is going on now, it is in densely populated cities. “What is presented as an alternative to military intervention [on the ground] is more likely to pave the way to such intervention once it fails,” Marc Lynch warns in that publication.
We can’t predict what will happen – how the U.S. and its allies might try to solve their dilemma and make a grab for Syria. But we should know by now, after all that we’ve seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and so many other places, that what the imperialists are capable of is sometimes worse than we can imagine – and the results of their intervention are always disastrous for the people.
Maoist Rebel News said
I really hate this lesser of two evils position. Its quite difficult not to take sides. Personally I’ve taken the stance that there should be no foreign support for the rebels, and no foreign support for Assad. I think given the suspicious nature of both sides in the conflict, the people of Syria need to work this one out themselves. Interesting to note is the Arab League suppressed a report that shows they along with the Western media have been exaggerating the claims against Assad. http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ehauben/Report_of_Arab_League_Observer_Mission.pdf
Andrei Kuznetsov said
Wow, I am utterly appalled that A World To Win News Service- one of the best Maoist publications out there- is siding with imperialist intervention with such appalling declarations such as “No to Assad!”.
This is a time when we need to be showing unconditional, unwavering, unquestioning loyalty to the Syrian President, who is beloved by his people. Any other position is 100% support for foreign intervention.
PatrickSMcNally said
“This is a time when we need to be showing unconditional, unwavering, unquestioning loyalty to the Syrian President, who is beloved by his people.”
I’m not sure if this was written as a parody of North Korean propaganda, but if so it’s a good one.
Sks said
Damn both their houses.
Andrei Kuznetsov said
How beautifully snarky, Patrick, instead of engaging what I’m saying.
To be honest, after I have never been a fan of Assad or his father. After all, the article does mention that Hafez al-Assad sold out to the Zionists and supported the US in the Gulf War.
But what other choice do we have? To criticize Assad is to criticize the wishes of the Syrian people, to criticize him is to leave Syria exposed to the imperialists. By criticizing him, we leave the Syrian people vulnerable. No matter how we feel about Assad or Ba’athism, it is important that at this point we need to be promoting him and his government. By criticizing Assad in even the slightest, one is essentially giving full support to foreign intervention. Think of what happened in Libya: much of the Western left supported the rebels (including many here on the Kasama blog) instead of rallying behind the Brotherly Leader Gaddafi, and look at Libya now!
Marq Dyeth said
I have the suspicion that Mr. Kuznetsov is pulling our leg here.
“The wishes of the Syrian people”? Which ones? Are there no contradictions among the Syrian people? And what do their wishes have to do with who their ruler is anyway?
“By criticizing Assad even in the slightest, one is essentially giving full support to foreign intervention.”? Oh go on. This is reductive and a little silly. It assumes that there are only two sides to any situation, and that we have to choose one. It also assumes that there are no contradictions among the opposition to the Assad regime.
And all this also assumes that we, a handful of leftists on a blog, have a realistic idea of what is actually happening in Syria right now, and that our opinions and criticisms have any effect whatsoever on the balance of forces in Homs and Latakia. The “Western Left” didn’t have any impact one way or the other on the fate of Libya. All we did was ruffle each others feathers. Assad and his family don’t care what we think, the local Coordinating Committees don’t care what we think, and the special forces ‘operators’ who are probably already in Syria by this time don’t know who we are and wouldn’t care if they did.
Let’s build something that would mean that we had a say in some of this, not just a saying.
PatrickSMcNally said
MD: “I have the suspicion that Mr. Kuznetsov is pulling our leg here.”
I thought that too, and so I tried to ask. I didn’t mean for it to come off as snark. Perhaps I should have added that in addition to parodying North Korean propaganda, some of AK’s comments read like a lampoonjing of The Nation magazine:
“To be honest, I have never been a fan of Obama. After all, he has praised Ronald Reagan as a great compromiser.”
“But what other choice do we have? To criticize Obama is to criticize the wishes of black people in America, to criticize him is to leave blacks exposed to the white racists. By criticizing him, we leave the black people vulnerable. No matter how we feel about Obama, it is important that at this point we need to be promoting him and his administration. By criticizing Obama in even the slightest, one is essentially giving full support to white racists. Think of what happened in 2000: much of the Left supported Nader instead of rallying behind Gore, and look at 8 years of Bush!”
It’s really not much different when the words are changed around in a few key places.
Marq Dyeth said
@ Patrick–
Well, I want to back off that one a little. Just to say that who is president of Syria is not really analogous to who is president of the U.S. I doubt that you are trying to say they are the same. Real life imperialism makes these comparisons perilous. What’s the saying– that the nationalism of the oppressed is not the same thing as the nationalism of the oppressor? But I think I understand the point you are trying to make.
Anyway, let’s ask the Syian communists what they think of Assad. I think some of them are still trying to work inside the Syrian government’s coalition, and some are on the street. So what do we make of that?
If we can’t come to our own conclusions on these things we are just going to keep getting led around by the nose.
PatrickSMcNally said
“What’s the saying– that the nationalism of the oppressed is not the same thing as the nationalism of the oppressor?”
Actually, liberals have invoked that kind of idea when arguing that the first black POTUS deserves support.
Marq Dyeth said
Well, regardless of what liberals argue I think that the national aspirations of oppressed people is not the same thing as the national pride and chauvinism of oppressor nations.
The form of the argument may be the same, but the content of what the arguments refer to is different.
PatrickSMcNally said
“regardless of what liberals argue I think that the national aspirations of oppressed people”
Pro-Obama liberals have invoked that argument exactly, with reference to black people in the USA as their chosen example of an oppressed people whose aspirations are advanced by Obama’s election.
“the national pride and chauvinism of oppressor nations.”
Pro-Obama liberals have pointed exactly to elements of white chauvinism which are pervasive in many sectors of the anti-Obama forces.
Ghan said
“. By criticizing Assad in even the slightest, one is essentially giving full support to foreign intervention.”
Yes because uncritical thinking is always an incredibly healthy and constructive analytical method.
“Well, regardless of what liberals argue I think that the national aspirations of oppressed people is not the same thing as the national pride and chauvinism of oppressor nations.”
So are you saying that working-class New Afrikans who voted for Barack were flexing the “national pride and chauvinism of [an] oppressor nation”?
Ghan said
“No matter how we feel about Assad or Ba’athism, it is important that at this point we need to be promoting him and his government.”
No matter how we feel about Ba’athism, it’s important to remember that Ba’athists have murdered and imprisoned communists at every opportunity.
Marq Dyeth said
@Ghan — I think I didn’t make myself clear. I didn’t say anything about Obama or elections. To put it very simply: I think that nationalism on the part of oppressed people can be progressive (but sometimes not), and that nationalism on the part of members of a majority or controlling nationality is nearly always wrong. That’s the opposite of what you have me saying above.
@Patrick– Again: I don’t really care what pro-Obama liberals have said. I’m against lots of things that liberals are for, but I’m not against what liberal are for simply because they are for them. That’s ridiculous.
I will not refrain from criticizing Assad – he’s a butcher. And I will not condone U.S. intervention in Syria- that’s imperialism.
If there is no other paths for us to walk than the path of Christopher Hitchens or the path of the Workers World Party then we are truly fucked here.
PatrickSMcNally said
“I’m against lots of things that liberals are for, but I’m not against what liberal are for simply because they are for them.”
Is that a round-about way of saying that you support Obama? I can hadly tell from the way you’ve phrased it.
“If there is no other paths for us to walk than the path of Christopher Hitchens or the path of the Workers World Party then we are truly fucked here.”
Hitchens quit The Nation after 911. But The Nation has been a leading voice in giving a kind of Leftish form to Obama-supporters. So I guess they might represent your “other path”?
Marq Dyeth said
Patrick S McNally: now it is you who are pulling peoples legs.
I don’t read the Nation and I don’t know what they advocate. So please stop snarking.
I oppose many things that liberals support, but the reason that I oppose them is not because liberals support them. Does that make it any clearer?
I am very sorry that I have given the impression that I support Obama or the Democratic party (even ‘critically’ whatever that means.) In fact I think the big divider in left politics today is: are we trying to eat with the Democrats, or are we trying to build something apart from them?
I think that we should do the later. I’m against what Carl Davidson advocates and I am for what SKS proposes: a political formation that is on the left edge of what is possible in this country and still be mass and popular. That means the PT in Brazil, the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal, Die Linke in Germany. That means hundreds of thousands of people in this country. If we fall short of that we are just a call-in show.
The fact that there is no such formation in the United States is one of the reasons why these conversations about U.S. imperialism vs. repressive anti-imperialist governments often take on such a silly and surreal tone. It doesn’t matter one bit what one blogger says to another about what’s going on in Syria right now because we can’t make it matter. The most organized presence in the anti-war movement right now is still the fucking IAC and the ANSWER coalition. The fact that we can’t do better than that speaks to the very low level that we are working at.
Ghan said
@Marq – “If there is no other paths for us to walk than the path of Christopher Hitchens or the path of the Workers World Party then we are truly fucked here. [...] The fact that there is no such formation in the United States is one of the reasons why these conversations about U.S. imperialism vs. repressive anti-imperialist governments often take on such a silly and surreal tone.” I agree completely, it sounds like we’re on the same page.
@Anti-imperialist – Regardless of what you think of Mike Ely it is important to criticize Ba’athists as murderous social fascists and the Assad regime as an outpost of social-imperialism that tortures proletarians and has cow-towed to US imperialism and Zionist-fascism for decades. Having a nuanced understanding of this issue is not the same time as supporting imperialism, the above-mentioned article (not the work of Mike Ely but the World to Win News Service) is very adamant in opposing US imperialism, if you cannot criticize US imperialism without cheer-leading reactionary ideologies such as Ba’athism, and their comprador-bourgeois practitioners such as Assad you are fucked. We need to reject macho dinosaur anti-imperialism that has no understanding of neo-colonialism or 21st century imperialism. Approximately 1 million people were killed in the genocidal inter-imperialist war between Iraqi Ba’ath fascism and Iranian Shi’ite fascism.
But yes, let’s throw the revolutionary Marxist, feminist, internationalist, and secular left under the bus and join Ramsey Clark in defending genocidal compradors who happen to piss of the US….because such a strategy is not going to come back to bite the international rev. left in the ass…
Sks said
Andrei asks:
“But what other choice do we have? To criticize Assad is to criticize the wishes of the Syrian people, to criticize him is to leave Syria exposed to the imperialists.”
We let Syria self-determine:
1) Oppose any and all efforts to influence Syria’s politics externally – including the use of our tax dollars to overtly and covertly support the Assad opposition.
2) Explain our lack of love for the regime in Syria is no excuse to eschew the right of national self-determination for Syria: Syrian affairs are Syrian affairs, and this is a Syrian affair.
The ideas you spouse a a false internationalism – one that is a mirror image of neo-conservatism: the world is not neatly divided into a comic book of villains and heroes.
We are not Syrians, and we have little if none capacity to reach Syrians. We do live in the USA, were we could have some influence. So opposition to intervention is necessary. But if we really have no love for the Assad regime, then our position should be made clear in the USA – we have no love for Assad, but that is up to the Syrian people to struggle with.
I am not familiar with Syria enough to measure what the socialist and communist forces there (which are not insignificant) are doing. I know some are part of the “loyal opposition” to Assad – the semi-legal Communist Action Party for example – and some like the SCP participate in parlamient. Others however are indeed in the violent opposition.
On top of this, the issue of Kurdistan looms large: Syria, along with Russia, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, have been historical enemies of the rights of self-determination of the Kurdish people, pushing then to the extremes of seeking imperialist “help” in their righteous struggle. While this imperialist deviation is opposed internally by many Kurds, this shouldn’t affect the fact that the Kurds have a right of national self-determination, and that Syria crushes it.
So is the right of Syrian self-determination lesser than the Kurds?
So yes, we have other answers other than expressing a hypocritical love for Assad “because conditions demand it”.
We just need – for once – to abandon the leftist helplessness and be out there talking about what we really believe in, not what we feel people need to hear. Of course, we can abandon any pretense of being socialists and communist and become liberal anti-imperialists, then it would make sense to be a comic book worldview person. But I am not.
Marq Dyeth,
The groups you mention are interesting and good models in a sense – in particular the Bloco – with the exception of the PT. The PT at one time was such a party, but Lula’s leadership transformed it internally, from a coalition party to essentially the same as the Democrats – an administrative party made up of a collection of NGOs, Think-Tanks, and interest groups rather than ideological factions around socialism. In particular, the PT today has more in common with the New Labour than with even traditional Social-Democracy, its main point of difference with the Brazilian Social-Democrats being related to cultural issues (ie the PT is “social-liberal” in outlook) and that the PT still has some anti-capitalists in the leadership.
In contrast, the Bloco, which is mainly composed of two organizations which have retained their distinct identities – one maoist the other trotskyist – is smaller than the mass organizations either faction controls (in the case of the trots, precariat/unemployed unions and some CBOs, in the case of the maoist, non-union and union workers centers in heavily proletarian areas). That is, the Bloco is an electoral expression of actually existing struggles that are not made secondary to electoral expression.
So in the USA, I believe the primary struggle not to be the electoral struggle, but capacity building and socialist agenda pushing. In this sense, there needs to be a coalition effort – but the question of electoral participation is for me secondary to the question of political and mass independence from the Democrats and their infrastructure.
In other words, a socialist MoveOn.org that is not controlled by a sect.
Now, in the concrete, there is one sect that is side-stepping this question and going at it alone, the PSL. I support this effort tactically – as they are the only socialist group putting forward a cohesive socialist campaign for national office that is not Democrat-light, but a real ideological break.
My hope is that we can one day build a broader coalition in the same style – Occupy Elections, if you will. The outlook, however, is bleak – but this is no reason to stop advocating for a strategy of mass appeal and infrastructural break with the Democrats. I do think that we can build a socialist MoveOn.org before we are there, and that it will have appeal and reach if it keeps to the message.
Ghan said
I’ve had my fair share of disagreements with Mike Ely, but if giving Russian and Chinese imperialism a pass and lining up to verbally fellate the patriarchal leaders of reactionary capitalist states that aren’t even “anti-imperialist” in any objective sense makes one worthy of having one’s brains blown out, I’ll happily have my brains blown out as well.
PatrickSMcNally said
“there is one sect that is side-stepping this question and going at it alone, the PSL. I support this effort tactically – as they are the only socialist group putting forward a cohesive socialist campaign for national office”
Although their campaign only began two weeks ago
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/feb2012/whit-f13.shtml
I expect that the SEP’s will be cohesive enough for me to write in their candidates in November.
PatrickSMcNally said
“Does that make it any clearer?”
It’s not really clear what you could have meant by:
“The form of the argument may be the same, but the content of what the arguments refer to is different.”
I had merely pointed out that the reasoning invoked by AK to justify a mindless advocacy of the Syrian regime was very, very analogous to the logic used by liberals to rally support for Obama from among the Left. Your only response if to rush off on a tangent about how you don’t necessarily disagree with liberals on everything. That is confusing.
Marq Dyeth said
@Patrick –Well how about this?
You point out that
Marq Dyeth said
Whoa screwed up the last post. Try again.
@Patrick –Well how about this?
You point out that “…the reasoning invoked by AK to justify a mindless advocacy of the Syrian regime was very, very analogous to the logic used by liberals to rally support for Obama from among the Left.”
And I’m saying for the third time: I agree that the logic is analogous. I do not agree that the elements of the analogy are equivalent. Therefore the analogy is not valid.
Put another way: I don’t care if the reasoning is analogous. That’s just guilt by association.
I’m not a liberal and I’m not for the Ba’ath and I don’t take anti-imperialism to mean that I must be for Assad. And I believe in the national self-determination of oppressed peoples worldwide, and I oppose the misuse of national self-determination to bully and oppress other peoples.
We’re closer than you think, I think.
Sks said
The Socialist Equality Party is a cult. I wouldn’t vote for them if my life depended on it.
The PSL, for all the differences I have with them, are a real party with real politics, most decidedly not a cult.
Ghan said
The PSL gets it right when it comes to issues within the USA, in that respect, I’m very impressed with their analysis and revolutionary practice. However, for the sake of constructive criticism, when it comes to international issues, they are basically a living caricature of the comic book anti-imperialism discussed above, as evidenced by their analysis of the PRC, DPRK, Latin America, former USSR, etc.
PatrickSMcNally said
“there is one sect … the PSL.”
“The PSL, for all the differences I have with them, are a real party with real politics, most decidedly not a cult.”
That’s a bit confusing. Actually none of these groups or their derivatives and antecedents (Workers World, Spartacist League, Socialist Equality Party, et cetera) are “outward cults” in the way that Avakian and the RCP used to publicly promote to the masses the worship of Comrade Bob. Internally they have all maintained cultish manners which are mostly invisible to the ordinary public but which can be detected whenever one gets closer to them. But they don’t spend time producing 12-foot posters of Sam Marcy, Jim Robertson or David North. The cultish aspects are very “inwardly” turned.
But the really only distinguishing thing about Sam Marcy and his subsequent descendants has been more about their willingness to blandly play up to any tin-pot dictator who falls into conflict with the USA. I normally like to think that I have a strong allowance on such matters and I really don’t care for liberals who get so readily sucked into “human rights” rhetoric used by the Clintons and their ilk. But the Marcyite cults really stretch this beyond my limit, and that’s why I can’t take them as a choice. Not because they’re internally cultish (which they are, but which I can ignore when going to a voting booth) but because they’re too Pabloist.
Sks said
The SEP is a cult around North. That is why they are called – derisively – Northites. The Sparts a cult around Robertson, the SWP around Barnes. Get over it, they are.
The PSL and WWP split. One has to realize that one of the reasons was the death of their own cult leader, Marcy, and grappling with what this meant concretely.
The PSL has so far showed not tendency to engage in visible cultish behavior – and outwardly it engages is real mass line work.
Even their views on the world situation is guided by this principle – not really a comic book view, even if it ends up as one in practice.
And thus, Patrick, you reveal yourself to be a typical leftist: you wont support a good effort because its not a perfect effort, and retreat to give your symbolic vote to a spent force, rather than a dynamic force.
The average person doesn’t care or even have time to look at the details. But they see the word “Socialism” and it might attract them.
So in this sense, the PSL does a much better job in putting socialism in the agenda of the wider word. That is the task now. The other stuff we can deal with later.
I mean compare this:
http://www.pslweb.org/votepsl/2012/
To this:
http://socialequality.com/elections
Which is more dynamic, more appealing, and even more politically relevant?
Your paleo-sectarianism is representative of the nihilistic tendencies of the revolutionary left: it cannot seed good if it hit them over the head.
And Marx bless Pablo, who gave his entire life’s effort to liberate nations, in particular Algeria, from the most brutal imperialism this side of Belgium, that is, French imperialism. Rather than the caricature of support for tin-pot dictators you put forward, the people’s of the world that struggled against colonial exploitation and imperialism are grateful of this support. Because the racism of “Tin pot dictator” shouldn’t be lost on anyone.
Nuances, comrade, nuances.
Ghan said
Yeah, Pablo’s position was a lot more nuanced. Take what he wrote on the Korean War:
“To condemn these movements, to ignore them, to minimize them, to maintain ‘neutrality’ toward them because they are directed by Stalinist leaders means in reality to condemn, to ignore, to minimize, to maintain ‘neutrality’ toward the whole of the class struggle and the colonial and anti-imperialist struggle in our epoch.
Further the movement of the colonial masses is not merely necessary in the sense we have already explained. It is at the same time basically an extremely revolutionary and progressive movement from two points of view: (1) it destroys forever the equilibrium of the capitalist system and plunges the latter into a permanent and ever worsening crisis; and (2) to the degree that the anti-imperialist revolution spreads throughout the world and the crisis of capitalism deepens, the world revolution is strengthened and the regime of the Soviet bureaucracy, despite contrary appearances at the first stage, is undermined at its very foundation.”
I would be shocked, for example, if a Marcyite wrote an editorial to the effect of implying that the world-revolution would be strengthened by the undermining of the BRIC at its very foundation.
PatrickSMcNally said
> the racism of “Tin pot dictator”
Dictionary definitions of “tin-pot” and “two-bit” have always simply equated the adjective with “small-time” and the like. No racial connotation is given by the dictionary. What is true is that Marcyites could sometimes have a way of bringing up “racism” whenever they needed a distraction. That seems to be your mode to some degree also.
Pablo made many serious errors which helped to drag the Left down, but he was part of a time when major events were in motion and acted as part of these events. It’s a shame that his line of “bureaucratically defmored workers states” (which was a useful initial framework for seeing much of eastern Europe and China) led to an abandonment of any independent party.
Ghan said
@sks –
“Even their views on the world situation is guided by this principle – not really a comic book view, even if it ends up as one in practice. [...] So in this sense, the PSL does a much better job in putting socialism in the agenda of the wider word. That is the task now. The other stuff we can deal with later. ”
The PSL does an excellent job of putting socialism on the “domestic” (for lack off better word) agenda, in regards to what you correctly describe as its “real mass line work”.
However, if they are successful in helping to bring such a task to fruition, later might come sooner than later. As you yourself said: “The average person doesn’t care or even have time to look at the details. But they see the word ‘Socialism’ and it might attract them.” Meaning that with the possibility (but not certainty) of a revolutionary-socialist mass-movement in the US in the near future, of which the PSL is one of several quality organizations (of various stripes) performing decent mass-line work, when it comes time for “the other stuff”, the necessary qualitative leap from a revolutionary mass-movement in the US to an international revolutionary mass-movement, (and with the rapid pace of modern telecommunications, this qualitative leap will probably happen rather suddenly) the PSL may find themselves run aground on their world analysis which you admit is a “comic book view [...] in practice”.
For example, in regards to the specific local context of the US, struggling against the Miami mafia and agitating for the release of Cuban prisoners and extradition of anti-communist terrorists is commendable. Yet in their documents they instantly refer to Cuba as “revolutionary Cuba” even as Cuba restructures its economy around the Dengist model in conformity with global austerity at the cost of past revolutionary gains which the Cuban masses support. In this context, even demanding the abolition of the embargo has a subtly different political content than it did in 1968, with Cuban social-capitalism attempting build a private real estate and tourism economy for a clientele mostly comprised Cuban-American exile bourgeoisie. (At least from what I’ve read in the western and international press, I’m admittedly not an expert on the subject) I use Cuba as one example among many because it is the USA’s next-door neighbor, but in the 21st century context, revolutionaries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Polynesia, Antarctica, wherever can communicate with each other instantly. I think in this respect, internationalism is even more urgent than ever. As you pointed out, there are probably lots of Kurds who would not be too crazy about the Assad-cheerleading of the occidental left, in addition to the older generation of Arab communists in Egypt and Syria. Along the same lines there are probably lots of members of banned militant Marxist-Leninist parties in Iran who would be or are irritated by the un-nuanced take that a lot of US Marxists have on the subject of Iranian politics. (Although probably most folks from western and southern Asia would probably be merely amused and befuddled, rather than irritated, by occidental Marxists upholding both Ba’athism and Velayat-e faqih style Ithna’ashariyyah as objectively anti-imperialist political tendencies) I’m sure the revolutionary wing of the Chinese New Left wouldn’t be too thrilled about uncritical assessments of Dengism and the social-imperialism of the post-GPCR PRC. Some of their summations of more recent Soviet history borders on the sort of stuff that you could almost see being more popular among the right-wing nationalist, rather than revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, elements of anti-Putinist coalitions.
I don’t point this out as a sectarian snark, as I’ve said I think PSL is right-on in terms of what they’re focused on doing right now, and I think if there was a qaulitative leap in the future from a focus on US mass-movement building to international mass-movement building, the PSL is the sort of group that could probably sort this stuff out. But the question of genuine versus false internationalism has been a tough one for the internationale in the past, and we’re living in a world where two next door neighbors and childhood friends can have heated and venemous Facebook arguments about a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes…
Ghan said
“the release of Cuban prisoners and extradition of anti-communist terrorists is commendable.”
Just in case it wasn’t clear, I was referring to those imprisoned in the US, and extradition to Cuba…
Gary said
This is clearly a complicated situation. There appears to be a genuine mass
movement against the regime (as there was in Libya) but it is divided into
“democracy” advocates, including some eager to negotiate with the regime (and
even allowed to meet publicly in Damascus); Islamists of various stripes, including
those involved with or sympathetic to al-Qaeda; and people who have in the past
supported the Baathists but have broken with Assad for various reasons (including
outrage at the violent suppression of dissent and opportunistic alliances with
foreign forces like the formerly Assad-friendly NATO member Turkey).
The fact that Hamas, which has counted on Syrian support in the past, has come out
in strong criticism of the Assad regime, and in support of (whatever it
conceptualizes as) the opposition in Syria, is a sure sign that the regime is in deep
trouble.
But there continues to be support for the regime from people terrified by the prospect of a seizure of power by Islamists. Christians (around 9% of the population, augmented by the tens of thousands of Christian refugees from Iraq) have tended to support the regime.
We should not imagine that “the people of Syria” are rising up with one voice against the evil Bashar Assad. He does have a socio-political base.
Those who don’t realize that and depict the people of Syria rising “as one” against
the regime are essentializing a complex society and people. And those who
advocate support for Assad because he’s being targeted by the U.S. (and so demand
support for Assad as an anti-imperialist) forget that he and his father have had
cordial relations with the French imperialists (and with the US during the 1991
“Operation Desert Storm”)—ties dating back to the post WWI French occupation.
I wouldn’t say “a plague on both your houses” since I don’t favor plagues anytime,
anywhere. But in the absence of anyone clearly deserving support in this conflict I
think it best to just say HANDS OFF SYRIA and emphasize that the exercise of US
power directly or indirectly applied won’t and can’t produce any good.
Sks said
What constitute small time as opposed to big time?
I have never seen this term used in any other way than racially.
Ghan said
Obvious Ba’ath troll is obvious. PFLP had the right idea on how to handle reactionary scum like Assad. Now that’s an anti-imperialism that’s cooking with gas…
Ghan said
Actually I’m a 20-something Aspie who has [moderator snip] a historical attention span of more than 2 years so I’m still concerned about all the destructive damage that Ba’athists, Nasserites, Phalangists, and other reactionary Arab nationalists inflicted upon the historical national liberation struggle back when folks Mike Ely’s age were teenagers. It’s one think for limousine leftists in the heart of the empre to hold up signs saying “BLOL FREE PALESTINE”, (while praising a regime that has capitulated to Zionism and European imperialism over and over again) it’s another thing to study Arab history and understand that anti-imperialism and liberation for the Palestinian and all Arab peoples will only come by smashing Zionism with the one hand and reactionary Arab nationalism with the other.
Also let’s also not forget the incredibly idiotic and destructive role that eastern social-imperialism played in the whole sordid drama.
[moderator snip]
Ghan said
And I don’t intend on being in Chicago anywhere near the month of May because I have about as much interest in dealing with macho adventurist activist-tourist cock bloc’ers with no respect for the full-time residents of the city, and who want to smash windows to alleviate suburban boredom and violently settle petty sectarian scores because they have a nihilistic third positionist sympathy for comprador neo-colonial regimes that happen to be in the process of being mercilessly recalled by their imperialist masters. If Chris Hedges was smarter he would have picked folks like you as a strawman to attack instead because you make anti-imperialism look like a deranged joke. I eagerly await Ely purging this whole sordid and bitter exchange from this blog so I can get some sleep.
Am I Really Suprised? said
Once again, Maoists, like Trotskyites (see Socialist Actions’ latest statement on this issue), try to have their cake and eat it too.
It’s telling that the “Left” in the Western hemisphere does not understand what it means to be anti-imperialist.
Also, I’m not sure who exactly PatrickSMcNally is but he is stretching pretty far if he considers the PSL a “cult”.
Sks said
@Am I Really Suprised?
Yes, why not? Being a revolutionary is precisely being told you cannot have the cake, and then eating it.
Or as Lenin called it, Revolutionary Defeatism. However, that is not what I talking about, as I said, I have no idea of the positions of the revolutionary forces in Syria.
If the USA invades, then I will take the side of the regime, but otherwise, this is an internal matter: I believe western leftists should learn to shut the fuck up and oppose their own countries’ intervention in other countries affair.
The spectacle of a bunch of american leftists fighting it out as if they could do something about it would be funny if it weren’t sad…
Mike Ely said
SKS:
Communists and revolutionaries have never considered the revolutionary prospects in other countries to be “an internal affair.”
Revolutionary defeatism does involve the support for the defeat of “your own government” in unjust war — but it also involves support for revolution in other countries.
The moment revolutionaries (strangely diminished in your comment as “a bunch of American leftists”) become agnostic or indifferent about revolution in other countries, something wrong has happened.
And there is a deep and confusing verdict, that our demand that U.S. imperialism say out of other countries, means we (who are not imperialists or oppressors) should be silent or worse indifferent to the revolutionary aspirations of our brothers and sisters.
We oppose imperialist domination and intervention. And we support revolutionary movements of the people (including against reactionary governments that are not themselves imperialist).
I don’t know a great deal about the internal events in Syria (or before it Libya), including about the various oppositional groups and their complextions. I don’t support people calling in U.S. imperialism (obviously), or seeking to ride to power with the help of U.S. drones and trainers. But beyond opposoing U.S. intervention (pending more insight into the landscape) I have been silent on Libya or Syria. But that is not a matter of principle, and nor is it some assumption that revolution and counterrevolution in some other country is inherently none of our business. Or that we should “learn to shut the fuck up” when other peoples rise in revolution.
One thing about some current (and strange) moods in the U.S., is that some politics always seem to boil down to a demand that others “shut the fuck up” — and accept that they have no right to speak.
Revolution requires the self-determination of oppressed people, but that does not mean there aren’t responsibilities of internationalism and solidarity (which precisely DEMAND of us all in the U.S. that we NOT shut the fuck up.)
Jan Makandal said
Proletarian internationalism is to deal with two objectives realities the objectives realities of the social formation of imperialism/capitalism and the objectives realities of social formations dominated by imperialism and in dealing with these objectives realities, the interest of the working class is central. Outside this perspective any alternatives, any solidarity, any analysis is for the interest of fractions or classes of the dominant classes in these social formation and in the final analysis for the interest of imperialism and for a reorganization of capitalism inside these dominated social formation.
Our internationalist role is to show the limitations of any struggle not under a genuine proletarian movement, even if it require in principle support of progressives forces.
The support of Assad, under any conditions, is class collaborationist. It is not understanding two types of contradictions the secondary contradictions in the reactionary camps whether among themselves and with imperialism and the fundamental contradictions of the masses, especially the working class, with there dominant classes and imperialism.
Again this debates show the need and importance for the constructions of proletarian revolutionary organizations in every social formations and also for the reconstruction of the international proletarian organizations capable to coordinate the proletarian struggle against our common enemies: The bourgeoisie and the rest of the dominant classes.
Proletarian revolutions must be the order of the day. WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE
GRP50 said
Syrian leftist forces are divided on this, more or less along the following lines.
1. The main secular-leftist “reformist” parties — the two descendants of the mainline CP — are part of the National Patriotic Front. They are at least part of, if not leading, the National Coordination Committee, which is open to dialogue with Assad, calls for reforms, and focuses on the three “nos” — no to intervention, no to sectarianism, no to violence. They have long been a subordinate, and relatively quiet, part of the ruling government, accepting the leading role of the Baathists. Their m.o. has been to criticize certain aspects of government policy (for instance neoliberal reforms) to varying degrees and emphasize the struggle against Zionism and imperialism. But they watch their words carefully, in exchange for being able to function above ground, and usually warn about policies that can weaken the unity of the people, open the door to imperialist schemes, etc. They also differentiated the sectarian, reactionary forces from the legitimate demands for political openness, better economic policy, etc. Problem is that they are mostly older folks, have lost ground — like so many other places in the ME — to the religious parties when it comes to recruitment of youth and the poor.
2. There are other, independent left-Arab nationalists, fiercely committed to secularism, the Palestinian struggle, etc. Some could be characterized as left-Baathists, although this trend as an organized force was largely destroyed by Assad Sr. They generally emphasize Assad as the lesser of two evils, warn of the setback (to the Arab nationalist project) of violent sectarianism, as well as the potential loss of a rearguard of the Palestinian movement. Also a disproportionately older group.
3. There are small leftist outfits, including the SCAP group (one of whose more prominent — at least online — members’ articles was posted on Kasama recently). They reportedly participated in the early Homs protests, and may be involved in the Local Coordination Committees. But as the aforementioned article says, they admit that counter-revolutionary forces are in charge of the movement. The disparate radical nationalist and leftist forces who decided to enter the movement have no national voice of their own. The SCAP grouping split from the mainline CP over the absolutely reactionary invasion of Lebanon (when the mainline CP refused to break with it), which is definitely something worth splitting over! I don’t know much more about the party though, other than the fact that Electronic Intifada’s editors praise it from time to time.
I have given some background to these leftist trends, since there seemed to be a desire for it in the above comments. But in terms of devising a method for revolutionaries in the United States to approach these situations, I don’t think it’s so simple as to catalog the Syrian left. Doing politics, rather than just analyzing, is as much about judging the relationship and balance of forces, to understand the dominant trend in a given phenomenon. That means looking at leadership. It is indisputable, from my reading at least, that the main trend at the current moment is towards reactionary, pro-imperialist and sectarian forces. And they have lots of guns, and are making a bid at state power. Even the few leftists involved in the movement appear to be saying this. I think we can say this without saying that those leftists are pro-imperialist stooges; they attempted to tactically intervene in a movement, as all revolutionaries have the right to, but they did not have the forces to contend for leadership.
I would wager that a majority of Syrians do not support the Homs protests, while having no great love for the government either. The Baathists have a substantial social base, which may repeat the regime’s presentation verbatim, but there are millions outside of that base that are still deeply afraid about the escalation of civil war and sectarianism. Even if the post-colonial national unity of Syria has come at the high price of political repression and dictatorship, we cannot be glib about the meaning of civil war.
In the given circumstances, can’t we revolutionaries 1) make no-intervention the basis of our unity, and 2) without being reformists, also support the calls for reform, peace and dialogue? Perhaps that time has already closed, perhaps it will lead to nothing, but we cannot simply project revolutionary fantasies onto every situation and neglect the potentially devastating outcomes. There are real leftists making these precise arguments in Syria (and Turkey and Palestine) — and I believe doing so here definitely constitutes internationalism. Jan calls this “class collaborationist” — fine, but are there no circumstances and types of struggles that permit class collaboration (even if we insist on independent communist politics)?
Also, I’m a PSL supporter — not sure how all this amounts to a “comic book view.” But let’s leave that alone — I haven’t come here to get into a tit-for-tat.
Sks said
Mike,
Is there a revolution in Syria?
That is the question the events pose. In that sense I agree with your perspective (ie silence). No investigation, no right to speak. However we do know enough about the forces in the ground to know that they are no better (from the perspective of communists) than the current regime, except in the matters of political independence from imperialism. In this conditions revolutionary defeatism is reactionary.
Yet there is a tendency in the imperialist western left to invent revolutions when there are any: a civil war can be caused by a revolution and vice versa, but not all civil wars are revolutions. National self-determination comes into play in the case of Syria in this sense: a civil war is part of the process of nation building, or at least has been so in historical experience. Every nation in the world has had a civil war. Sometimes, the sides one must take are clear, such as in Spain or the USA, but sometimes they are not that clear, such as the case of Libya or Syria.
In this sense I agree with GRP50 on this: the projection of fantasy is at the core here. What we can do is oppose intervention, everything else is sectarian BS to beat each other up in polemics.
Jan Makandal said
The theory guiding the political line of unity with political antagonistic fundamental forces to defeat another fundamental enemy is validated by praxis as a flawed political line and as resulted to the degeneration of left organization applying such theory as a guide and implementing such political line.
From the anti fascist united front of the 1900’s to the anti government front of the 70’s praxis validated the failure of that line and its succession to revisionism. It is clear of the need for the articulation of a new political line guided by the interest of the working class base and determine on Proletarian internationalism.
Political independence with a fundamental antagonistic class enemy is less likely to be produced and the dominant tendency in this type of unity is the capitulation of the opportunist left and its transformation to a bourgeois organization, defending the interest of fraction of the bourgeoisie for the reproductions of capitalism.
The theory guiding the political line of the anti imperialist front, the class analysis of the Chinese social formation, allowed the Chinese revolutionaries to implement a fundamentally correct line toward the National Bourgeoisie due to the anti imperialist nature of that fraction of the bourgeoisie. Proletarian class autonomy, with some limitations in the case of the Chinese experience, was central.
There is an on-going class struggle in Syria that reached open confrontation with two possible alternatives: a] A reactionary alternatives from the interest of the Syrian dominant classes and imperialism b] from the interest of popular masses, under the leadership of the proletariat. The dominant tendencies are leaning toward an alternative not for the interest of the popular masses but for a restructuring of capitalism and imperialism domination.
For a rupture with opportunism and populism and for the consolidation of proletarian internationalism the working class historical role for the radical transformation of any social formation is inevitable.
Mike Ely said
SKS writes:
I’m not sure if you actually believe that last sentence.
But in any case, I oppose U.S. intervention (and uphold revolutionary defeatism) even in the many cases where all sides are reactionary.
Regardless of the problems (and human suffering) in the world — U.S. intervention makes it worse (by strengthening U.S. domination, and developing legitimacy for its system and initiatives).
We need to expose the U.S. when it claims to be intervening for “humanitarian purposes” — since this is part of a larger campaign to justify “U.S. as world policeman” and to portray the U.S. (for its home population and the world) as a kind of “moral superpower.”
louisproyect said
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/hamid-dabashi-vijay-prashad-syria-and-the-left/
Eren Buğlalilar said
Sad to see this article here.
Mao turned upside down in his grave.
Socialists form anti-imperialist fronts in the face of imperialist attacks while they protect their organizational independence through Leninist methods. They fight against imperialists with every means they have and call the petit-bourgeois regimes to stand against imperialists.
No doubt these regimes would ignore these calls and even try to crush the socialists as well at the beginning while the socialist movement is weak. But as the socialist movement paves its own way thanks to the armed struggle against the collaborators and ideological struggle against the local national dictator, it would force the state to take it seriously.
China and Vietnam are important examples to consider. Otherwise that kind of “very left but conformist in essence” policies start to dominate.