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by MC5
August 2005
W P Cockshott is a serious theoretician interested in many of the same questions we are. In an article from 1995 he asked what the use of anti-imperialism is anymore. Specifically he asked what new allies do we make by talking about anti-imperialism instead of just anti-capitalism.(1)
For MIM, the answer to this is at the level of class. Anti-imperialism is the political expression of the class struggle by the oppressed nation proletariat and aspiring bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations against the oppressor nation bourgeoisie.
To this, many have replied to MIM that in the oppressor nations we should not say so, because it alienates people we seek to mobilize. In the main, and in response, I'm not going to be able to come up with anything better than what Lenin said about Bernstein. If the movement is everything and the goal nothing as Bernstein said, then of course, we cannot talk about anti-imperialism in front of white audiences of England or the united $tates. As MIM has described many times before, many of our critics have a "strategy-first" approach that seeks to sweep class structure under the tactical rug. "Strategy First" is a great name for a videogame company, but for an approach to class struggle it stinks.
Proceeding from Lenin's response to Bernstein in opposing pragmatism and opportunism, I can also name some concrete manifestations of what Lenin was talking about.
In the first place, history has not vindicated Cockshott's question, because George W. Bush went and put a colonial regime in in Iraq. This time it was as a transition to a neo-colonial regime, but even that transition is not finished as the security of both Afghan and Iraqi governments depends literally on Amerikan personnel. The Haitian installed by Uncle $am was also a long time Floridian. However long this colonial period lasts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we cannot say the next such period in the next invasion won't be longer. So, part of the relevance of anti-imperialism is defensive. We need to defend the anti-colonial gains of the 1960s and 1970s. In answer to Cockshott’s question whether imperialism still reconquers Third World countries, I’d ask him to consider who was in control in 1980 Afghanistan.
In the second place, anti-imperialism is currently playing an important role in stopping imperialist country fascism--oppressor nation movements to nationalize Third World assets. Well known is the lawsuit of the World Trade Center victims seeking Saudi assets in the trillions.
The trouble is that in the aftermath of 911, we in the united $tates saw a lightning growth of hate crimes against Arab people(2)--and many of these Arabs were members of the bourgeoisie to say the least. If we were to adopt simply a Trotskyist anti-capitalist perspective, we might say that the "workers" of the World Trade Center and Amerika generally are "just" in their struggle against the Arab capitalists. MIM's anti-imperialist line protects against taking such stands.
Another concrete manifestation of how we cannot sweep international class structure under the rug in the name of finding new anti-capitalist allies is in Iraq stemming from the first Gulf War. Few people may realize that U.S. courts awarded Amerikan POWs from that war more than half of Iraq's assets abroad.(3) That is surely a class struggle of sorts—of the oppressors against the oppressed.
Can we oppose the seizure of Iraq's assets by Amerikan ex-soldiers on anti-capitalist grounds if we define anti-capitalist as not being anti-imperialist? According to David Savage at the Los Angeles Times of February 15, Richard W. Roberts awarded $959 million to 17 Amerikan POWs. That's compared with Iraq's total of $1.7 billion in assets frozen by the united $tates abroad.(4)
Liberals at commondreams.org and elsewhere have attacked the Bush administration for doing what the State Department usually does--crack down on the crackers when they go too far in destabilizing international trade. In fact, we at MIM are left in the position where we have to agree with Bu$h that confiscating Iraq's assets to divide among some troops is not right. Bu$h opposes it mainly for the precedent it would set and because it allows the courts and citizens to conduct foreign policy when all presidential administrations thus far want that prerogative for themselves. Halliburton would be jealous if it did not need to set up a corporation to rip off the Middle East.
This brings us to the next point. The nearly $1 billion award to Amerikan soldiers is a nasty reward for militarism beyond the status quo. We need to ask who is the vanguard at the cutting edge of this militarism. It is none other than the labor aristocracy. We have to say this because thus far, the imperialists as manifested by the Bu$h administration itself have successfully gone to court to block the award Judge Richard W. Roberts made.
So not only is anti-imperialism necessary, but we have to go the whole nine yards and identify the labor aristocracy as parasitic and at times even more aggressive than the imperialists themselves. This labor aristocracy exists as such with the power to take and freeze other countries' assets only in imperialist countries. If we attempted to sweep the international class structure under the rug in the name of winning some allies, there is no saying we could oppose the Amerikan confiscation of Iraqi assets --a movement complete with its own anti-Bu$h populist overtones. Of course, if people would like to see Amerikans go to court and award themselves billions in other countries' assets while not paying a dime for the millions of Vietnamese murdered in the Vietnam War for example, then surely they should oppose the MIM line and so-called anti-capitalism may suffice. Hitler also knew the difference between anti-capitalism and internationalism. Were he here, I'm sure he'd be all in favor of nationalizing the assets of the Jews or whatever other non-German group.
Perhaps Cockshott is representative of an important class reality, because the Europeans are seeking to integrate the Scottish and Irish into imperialism and right now it looks like they may succeed. For the bought-off, anti-imperialism does become irrelevant. The most significant armed struggle in North America recently was over Mohawk territory. Moreover, the First Nations people living in a region surrounded by South Dakota’s borders now live in worse poverty with a lower life expectancy than Russians. We need to oppose the FBI’s invasion of First Nations. So while the spirit of struggle is nonexistent among some peoples, it cannot be said of most of the world’s peoples.
Sometimes we get caught in a limited range of theory and abstractions too long. When we look at the struggles that are actually going down on the ground, we see that Amerikans are more than ready to seize the assets of the Middle East. This has to be opposed with anti-imperialism or not at all. More importantly, without the MIM line there is no coherent way to oppose the grassroots efforts of the labor aristocracy to seize booty for itself. That labor aristocracy is a product of imperialism as Lenin described, particularly the financial power of the most advanced countries. If we think of the labor aristocracy as some kind of ally in anti-capitalist struggle, we will surely throw our internationalism out the window. Whether they know it or not, all of MIM's critics in the imperialist country "Left" objectively support the seizure of Middle East assets by the labor aristocracy.
Now I would like to return to theory, because behind Cockshott's question is the despair of intellectuals that Lenin chided so often. It is often the intellectuals that can theorize these questions but who then run from their conclusions as fast as they can if they seem "impossible." There is in fact nothing impossible about anti-imperialism and stopping the flow of super-profits.
Gaining new allies is not worth it in the imperialist nation petty-bourgeois case if it comes with increased risk of fascist mobilization to nationalize other countries' assets. The people of the united $tates and England are the one finger against the nine as Mao would say. They are the top 10% -- the bourgeoisie of the world.
In specifically answering Cockshott on what we are doing to add allies, we've already said that the imperialist country petty-bourgeoisie is going to vacillate somewhat in our direction because of the negative side effects of intra-bourgeois competition-- destruction of the environment and war. The more we mobilize the proletariat to shake the imperialists, the more those petty-bourgeois vacillations will increase.
Yet, even saying this is not enough. The labor theory of value has concrete implications. So the imperialists have changed their strategy a bit since World War II in particular. They've learned something from fighting scientific socialism. The imperialists have succeeded in buying off the 10% and concentrating that 10% in certain countries. However, labor delivered to one place is taken from another. So part of what we need to do is expose the decisions of judges such as Robert W. Roberts (no relation to the Supreme Court nominee John Roberts that we know of).
The truth is that we do not need the 10% to win. We should concentrate on mobilizing our class, the proletariat, to its full extent, to its full capability. Failure to fully mobilize our class will result in political instability and fascist movements but no real social change.
To illustrate this, let's look at Mao's revolution. At times in China's revolution, Mao had to prioritize the struggle against Japanese invaders by putting land redistribution on the backburner. Mao did this when he needed particular landlords or politicians on his side. Our class tapped into two resources--one its will not to be oppressed by other countries and two its will to be done with feudal landlords.
What would we say if in Mao's revolution in the 1930s and 1940s, someone showed up at Mao's camp to inform Mao that there is no point in the anti-Japanese struggle because the Japanese have already withdrawn from X, Y or Z cities. What if an agent of the Japanese spread a lie about Japan's true activity in various cities and made it appear that the Japanese were already in the process of leaving China. For this reason, a secret agent might try to persuade Mao to withdraw from an imminent battle to crush the Japanese. Surely, even many of MIM 's critics would agree that such an agent misrepresenting the factual situation of Japan's occupation of China should be lined up against a wall and shot.
The same question applies in the land question. If an agent of the landlords showed up at Mao's military camp to say that land has just been spontaneously redistributed in half of the provinces of China and Mao's Red Army need not travel to those places, we again would be in favor of lining up the liar against the wall for execution. The point of such lies is to prevent the mobilization of the exploited. The point of the lie was to make half of the exploitation going on disappear and hence half of the mobilization against it.
So in Mao's revolution we learned what to do with Japanese agents and landlord agents spreading misinformation. These agents seek to demobilize our class by denying the extent of oppression and exploitation that needs correcting.
Now we should picture an agent of the imperialist labor aristocracy who appears in our proletarian camp internationally. This agent denies that reparations are due to their true extent, because this agent denies that the labor aristocracy is in fact an exploiter class. Instead of Third World super-profits running in the trillions each year in the united $tates alone, this agent says it is only the profits of corporations reported abroad that need correcting, a 10 digit figure annually, not a 13 digit figure as MIM is saying.
The effect of the labor aristocracy line attacking MIM is the same as making China's farms disappear from the range of Mao's concerns, because supposedly their land has already been redistributed. If we in the imperialist countries do not explain the full extent of reparations due, the Third World communists representing the proletariat will be afraid to claim them out of internationalist politeness to us imperialist country comrades and populations. There has to be a scientific struggle to make the meaning of international proletariat tangible. This will include an important struggle against false consciousness in the Third World proletariat.
Not only will the labor aristocracy line prevent the full mobilization of the world's 90% to dispense with the political system benefiting the 10%, but also, the failure to grasp the scale of reparations due will negatively affect the unity of the international proletariat. For example, the Serbian proletariat will find itself tempted to fight the Croats and Albanians, if the Serbs do not realize that they are handing the united $tates its economy.
From 1988 to 1994, the ex-Soviet republics Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over some rural villages and a mountain.(2) The result was partly the breakup of the Soviet Union, but also the impoverishment of the exploited who wasted their energies in intra-proletarian fighting. We're sure Paul Cockshott is as concerned about this as MIM is, but has Cockshott really offered something tangible to the international proletariat to bring about its fighting unity? The vast majority of border conflicts that Cockshott should find dubious are not within the United KKKingdom. Situations where imperialists manage to buy out new labor aristocracies and nations in their entirety are the exception not the rule. Where are all the "local control" freaks of the 1980s among the social-democrats and anarchists today? Where are they claiming their great success in ex-Yugoslavia? Who is bragging about the great bourgeois nationalism (sometimes disguised as social-democracy or even anarchism) of the ex-Soviet republics now? Realistically, a sea change in class struggle internationally would have to occur before a situation like ex-Yugoslavia could be avoided and proletarians there united.
The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 had similar roots--an inaccurate view of economic reality. The Belgian colonialists had made the Tutsis the privileged "minority" group of 15% within Rwanda by giving them better jobs and the only available education, but let's be clear what we mean by "better jobs" for Tutsis. One Tutsi survivor of the 1994 genocide was making a whole $600 a year in wages, when the average in her country was $350 a year. So we should say that attacking the Tutsis as the elite 10 or 15% of Rwanda is missing the point. In 1959, Hutus killed 20,000 Tutsis according to BBC, because of resentments built up about the Tutsis by the Belgians who favored the Tutsis.(5) We all know about the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis killing perhaps 800,000. The Tutsis and Hutu needed anti-imperialist unity, but the scientific communists needed to explain the real workings of the global economy are in the minority.
At this weak stage of our communist development in the imperialist countries, the real complicity of communists is in not explaining the full extent of exploitation and why the Tutsi jobs were nothing special compared with what the Belgians gave their own people. In fact, even the Tutsis were exploited. The communists fail to make this concrete for the people and we need look no further for the ultimate sources of our backwardness.
The unity of the international proletariat cannot be achieved with mere abstractions. The common underlying point unfortunately cannot be land questions. It cannot be the national question. The real glue of the international proletariat needed to lead forward even on national questions is the reparations question. The imperialists have handed us the IMF, the World Bank, the GATT and their other bourgeois internationalist inventions, but we cannot counter their tactics correctly if we stay stuck in the past. Quite the contrary, we of the revolutionary movement only win when we are much better prepared, say 10 or 15 times scientifically better than the imperialists.
The spread of McDonalds everywhere in Amerikan Empire is not only a source of despair. It is actually a dialectical opportunity for the unity of the international proletariat. The imperialists have their vision of unity, but we can ride these imperialists for another kind of unity they did not intend. The least that the imperialist country "Left" could do is fully detail the reparations due, the full extent of exploitation, the entirety of the loot consumed by the labor aristocracy that amounts not to 10 digits a year in the united $tates, but 13 digits in dollar terms. The international proletariat needs leaders who are going to unite the toilers not just against occupiers and landlords but also against imperialists and labor aristocrats. That needs to be made as concrete as a farm is in the land struggle or a border in a national struggle. Thus far, the work to explain the financial workings of imperialism are not as concrete as the farm under the peasants' nose. That needs to change for us to win.
Beyond Cockshott and even the imperialist country so-called Left, there are globally those calling themselves "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" who oppose the MIM line. Their destiny is to dump anti-imperialism. Once we start putting strategy first, the road to Cockshott's answer is clear. We have to put the goal of ending exploitation first and understand that strategy is a construction to achieve a goal--not just any goal, but a goal which we better be right is dialectically possible. (If MIM is wrong that communism is dialectically possible this whole debate is moot of course, but that would be taking up a sledgehammer type question destructive of many positions, not just MIM's.)
Notes:
1. “What extra allies does an anti-imperialist strategy bring to the struggle for communism that a simple anti-capitalist strategy would?”
http://marxleninmao.proboards43.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=math&thread=1121849639&page=1 ; http://reality.gn.apc.org/polemic/imper.htm
2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/sept112001/index.html
3. http://discuss.50plus.com/ubb/Forum62/HTML/000798.html has an example of veterans denouncing the Bush administration for not looking out for labor aristocracy interests.
4. Los Angeles Times 15Feb2005.
5. http://www.andrepicard.com/rwandaonewoman.html ; Many have observed that the
Hutu seemed to want the jobs of the Tutsis as a reason for the genocide:
http://www.udlap.mx/lustig/cursos/pdf/file1.pdf for example.
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