Letter to the International
Bolshevik Tendency on "military and political support"
International Bolshevik TendencyBox 332, Adelaide St. Station
Toronto, ON, M5C 1J0
March 13, 2003
Dear comrades
I write in response to your letter of January 18, 2003 commenting
on our leaflet "Against Capitalist! War Against Capitalist
Peace!"explaining your position of defending Iraq, and further
discussing your distinction between military and political support.
As you note, our leaflet was written and distributed by people from
various political perspectives, including communist and anarchist,
but who were bound by a perspective of "no war but the class war." As
such, this letter constitutes a personal comment rather than the
outlook of the group.
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that the
statement is now available on the Internet in a slightly different
version along with a link to your
letter. We hope that you will take the opportunity to add a link
from your letter, so that your members and supporters will have the
opportunity to read the entire leaflet, rather than just the excerpts
to which you reply.
It should have been clear, that when we wrote "In effect the IBT
militarily defends the Ba'athist regime while affording ‘no
political support to Saddam Hussein' - but what the hell does that
mean?", that the question was posed rhetorically. In fact, in the
passage which follows, it is noted that "if war is politics by other
means, then ‘military defense' is nothing more than political
support by other means."Military defence or Critical support is a
slippery formula, but it is still support. Iraq may well be a former
colony (neo-colony if you wish), or even a weak capitalist power, but
it is still a capitalist power.
The core of your position seems to be "we side with the oppressed
against their oppressors regardless of their leadership." With such a
view, what does it matter to national liberation movements or corrupt
trade unions whether or not you support them politically? They are
simply happy you are supporting them in their struggle, and that you
advocate, in some cases, workers spilling their blood in order to do
so.
In your letter, you raise a series of historical instances in
which you argue it was necessary to ‘take sides." In reference
to Spain, you insist that the correct position was to militarily bloc
with the Spanish Republic against Franco while actively seeking to
"build a revolutionary movement capable of overthrowing it." But
defence of the bourgeois republic was directly counterposed to
workers' revolution, and as with Italy and Germany, democracy opened
the door to a more brutal form of bourgeois rule. In the case of
military defence though, If Iraq is to be supported in fighting the
US now, as in 1991, what attitude would you take towards desertions
from the Iraqi army, as happened on a massive scale in 1991? Are
these "oppressed soldiers" to be praised or condemned? Are they
scabbing on defence of an oppressed power? Are they to be shot like
partridges?
It seems we are in agreement that the impending war is due to
capitalist competition. Chronic difficulties in the US economy,
highlighted by trillions of dollars in debt, a stock market bubble
about to burst, and a plunging dollar have made oil, payable in
dollars, an irresistible prize. In your letter you note that the US
is aiming to seize Iraq's oilfields in order to increase its
"leverage over Japan, Germany and other imperialist powers." And yet,
you feel the need to take sides. Rather than siding with one power
against another, a better approach is that of Rosa Luxemburg, who
wrote in 1916,
In the era of the unleashing of this imperialism, national wars
are no longer possible. National interests serve only as the pretext
for putting the labouring masses of the people under the domination
of their mortal enemy, imperialism. The policy of the imperialist
states and the imperialist war cannot give to a single oppressed
nation its liberty and its independence. The small nations, the
ruling class of which are the accomplices of their partners in the
big states, constitute only the pawns on the imperial chessboard of
the great powers, and are used by them, just like their own working
masses, in wartime, as instruments to be sacrificed to capitalist
interests after the war.
Theses on the tasks on International Social Democracy
(1916).
Yesterday's national liberation movements, are today's exploiters
of the working class and tomorrow's allies of the large imperialist
powers. True, there are conflicts and rivalries within between
capitalist powers, but unless the cycle is broken, capitalism
continues. The larger point is whether an understanding of the world
economy, and a revolutionary attitude to it, is determined by an
analysis of the whole or merely by the sum of the parts.
Fraternally
Red & Black Notes
Back to Against Capitalist War! Against
Capitalist Peace
Back to Home Page