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This was published by Solidarity in
their pamphlet "Ceylon: the JVP Uprising". I've included it
because it explained in straightforward but non-patronising
tones why support for national liberation struggles was
non-revolutionary. Much of what it said still holds
today.
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Third Worldism or Socialism
Various theories have been put forward as to why the left, in
advanced capitalist countries, should support national liberation
struggles.
The Communist parties, for example, support such struggles because
nationalism in the Third World seems to collide with the interests of
the U.S. National liberation is thus thought to 'weaken' U.S.
imperialism. They hope that Russia, which supports these movements
ideologically and/or materially, will benefit.
The Maoists follow a similar logic, though after Nixon's visit to
China, one suspects that Mao's 'anti-imperialist' zeal may be
directed only against the Russian bureaucracy. Western Castroites and
'progressive' liberals of all hues support such movements out of a
sense of 'moral duty'.
For these people, national liberation is a universal blessing
which should be given to - or taken by - the 'leaders' of the Third
World. One should add perhaps that these noble sentiments don't stop
these same Castroites and liberals from supporting capitalist
'leaders' like McGovern in the U.S. - or calling for a return of the
Labour Party in the next British elections.
Trotskyist support for national liberation is a bit more
sophisticated. It consists of grand (and banal) historical schemes.
First, the national liberation movements should be supported ~ - this
is the communal bed of all Trotskyists (Mandel, Cliff, Healy, Ah,
etc.). Whether the support is 'critical' or 'uncritical' is another
matter - and here Trotskyists part company and proceed to their
respective rooms.
But, someone may ask, why the support in the first place? The
answer provided is an example of historical scheme -making: U.S.
imperialism will be weakened' by such movements. Such a 'weakening'
will impart another 'transitional' twitch to the 'death agony of
capitalism' which in turn will foster other twitches ... and so on.
Like all mystifications, Trotskyism fads to give a coherent answer as
to why, especially since 1945, imperialism has been able to
grant political independence to many ex -colonial countries, a
possibility that Lenin and Trotsky explicitly denied.
The theory of 'permanent revolution' blinds Trotskyists to the
realities of national liberation. They still consider that the
bourgeoisie, in the Third World, is incapable of fighting for
'national independence'. But they fail to grasp that the permanent
revolution', in Russia for example, both began and ended as a
bourgeois revolution (in spite of the proletariat's alleged
'leading role' in the unfolding of the process). In Russia, the
bourgeois stage (i.e. both February and October) very concretely
ensured that there would be no future 'socialist' unfolding. The
'permanent ~ carried out by the Bolsheviks only brought about a
state-capitalist
reorganisation of the economy and social life. The 'solving' of
the bourgeois tasks will destroy, as it did in Russia, all the
autonomous rank and file organisations of the working class (councils
and factory committees). They become subordinates of the state, which
is the organism par excellence for carrying out 'belated' bourgeois
revolutions.
Any bureaucracy, given favourable conditions, can 'solve' the
bourgeois tasks in the Third World. The 'permanent revolution'
doesn't need the working class, except as cannon fodder. The
accumulation of capital, through expanded reproduction, is the basis
of its bureaucratic power and whether the bureaucracy accumulates
successfully or not is besides the point. In any case there has never
been a 'pure' capitalist country which has 'solved' all its bourgeois
tasks. Even Britain still has a queen.
Trotskyist support for movements of national liberation, however ~
is thus support for another social group ... and not for the
working class or peasantry. Trotskyists present their support for the
leadership of various national liberation movements as a 'tactic'
which will allow them to gain control of the movement. In their
mythology, the leaderships of such movements are incapable of
carrying out the struggle for national independence. As we have seen,
this is nonsense, pure and simple: the Chinese, Cuban or North
Vietnamese bureaucracies went 'all the way' in expropriating western
capitalists without an ounce of help from any of the Fourth
Internationals. They also mercilessly slaughtered or imprisoned all
Trotskyists in those countries. Insofar as Trotskyists babble about a
'democratisation' of such regimes through 'political revolution',
they are the reformists of state capital.
Lenin's theory of imperialism, written in 1916, is usually quoted
by all the trad left groups to sanction their support for national
liberation. The theory holds that a Western 'labour aristocracy' has
been created out of super -profits squeezed out of colonial
countries. This is a bourgeois concept because it places
national factors above class analysis. Concepts such as
'proletarian nations' versus 'imperialist nations' flow naturally
from such an analysis - they were in fact peddled in the 30's by
fascists. Nowadays, Gunder Frank with his theory of 'the development
of under-development' and Emmanuel's 'unequal exchange' provide fresh
examples of the bourgeois -leninist attitudes so deeply entrenched in
the left.
Nationalism and class struggle are irreconcilably opposed. A
nation is a bourgeois reality: it is capitalism with all its
exploitation and alienation, parcelled out in a single geographical
unit. It doesn't matter whether the nation is 'small, 'colonial',
'semi-colonial' or 'non -imperialist'. All nationalisms are
reactionary because they inevitably clash with class consciousness
and poison it with chauvinism and racialism. The
nationalist sentiment in the advanced countries is reactionary,
not only because it facilitates the plundering of the colonial
workers and peasants, but because it is a form of false consciousness
which ideologically binds the western workers to 'their' ruling
classes. Similarly, the 'nationalism of the oppressed' is reactionary
because it facilitates class collaboration between the
colonial workers and peasants and the 'anti-imperialist' nascent
bureaucracies.
The Trotskyist myth that a successful national liberation will
later unleash 'the real class struggle' is false, as the examples of
Ethiopia, North Vietnam, Mexico under Cardenas, and Brazil under
Vargas bear out. It is a rationalisation for the defence of new
ruling classes in the process of formation. As historical evidence
shows, those new elites usually become appendages of the already
existing state capitalist bloc. To this degree Trotskyism is a
variety of vicarious social patriotism.
Any intelligent person can see that the fate of the advanced
capitalist countries doesn't depend on the Third World's ability to
cut off supplies of raw materials. The Third World's ruling classes
will never get together to plan or practice an effective boycott on a
world scale. Furthermore, the U.S. and Western Europe are becoming
less dependent upon many of the products of the Third World. Add to
that the falling prices for raw materials in the world market, the
protectionist barriers in the advanced countries, and one gets a
picture of imminent barbarism in the Third World. Its bargaining
position vis-à-vis the West weakens every year. Third
Worldists should seriously ponder about these tendencies.
National liberation struggles can be seen as attempts of sections
of the native ruling classes to appropriate a larger share of the
value generated in 'their own' countries. Imperialist exploitation
indeed generates this consciousness in the more 'educated' strata of
the Third World. These strata tend to consider themselves as the
repository of 'the Fatherland'. Needless to say, a worsening in 'the
trade terms for raw materials in the Third World aggravates this
situation. The growth of many national liberation movements in the
past 25 years is a manifestation of the imbalance existing in the
world market. The Third World countries plunge deeper into decay,
famine, stagnation, political corruption and nepotism. National
rebellion may them be channelled into active politics by discontented
army officers, priests, petty bureaucrats, intellectuals and (of
course) angry children of the bourgeois and landlord classes. The
grievances of the workers and peasants are real too (the above
mentioned worthies largely account for them), but the nationalist
leaders can still hope to capture the imagination of the exploited.
If this happens one sees the beginnings of a national liberation
movement based
explicitly on class collaboration, with all the reactionary
implications this has for the exploited. They emerge out of the
frying pan of foreign exploitation into the fire of national
despotism.
For such regimes to survive against the open hostility of the
Western capitalist bloc, or its insidious world market mechanisms, it
is imperative that the regimes become dependent on the state
capitalist bloc (Russia and/or China). If this is not possible, an
extremely precarious balancing act ('neutralism') becomes the
dominant fact of life (as shown by Egypt or India). Without massive
assistance from the state capitalist bloc it is impossible for any
such regime even modestly to begin primitive accumulation. The
majority of the Third World countries don't have the resources to
start such a programme on their own. And even if they did, it could
only be done (as any accumulation) through intensified exploitation.
Higher consumption levels and welfare programmes may temporarily be
established by these regimes. Those who can see no further than
economistic steps to 'socialism' usually quote this to explain why
Castro is 'better' than Batista or Mao 'preferable' to Chiang.
Without dealing with the reactionary implications of such reformism
at a national level, let's see how the argument works
internationally. Castro supported the 1968 Russian invasion of
Czechoslovakia, Ho Chi Minh defended the Russian crushing of the
Hungarian revolution of 1956 and Mao supported Yahya Khan's genocide
in Bangladesh. Thus what is 'gained' at home is lost abroad, in the
form of heaps of corpses and massive political demoralisation. Does
the trad left keep account of such a reactionary balance sheet?
The ideological repercussions of such inter -national events are
difficult to gauge, but are no doubt reactionary. The further
bureaucratisation of the Third World merely reinforces working class
prejudices and apathy in the advanced countries. The responses of the
imperialist bourgeoisies will be to mount further protectionist
barriers and, at the same time, to increase the profitable arms
trade. The bureaucratisation of the Third World will enhance the
prestige - both ideological and diplomatic - of the state capitalist
bloc, in spite of the latter's inter-imperialist rivalries. This
process will be accompanied by an increasing demoralisation and
cynicism in the circles of the trad left. This is already patently
clear today: in many demos covering international affairs, portraits
of Ho, Mao, Castro, Guevara and a host of other scoundrels (Hoxha,
Kim-Il Sung, etc.) are obscenely paraded. Such cults express the
ideological debasement of our times, and it's no accident that
working people feel only contempt or indifference towards the trad
left and the heroes it worships.
Another equally important dimension of national liberation
struggles is ignored by the trad left. It Is
the question of working class and peasant democracy and of
the revolutionary self-activity of the masses. National liberation
will always repress such autonomous working class activities because
the bourgeois goals of national liberation (i.e. nation-building) are
opposed - in class terms - to the historical interests of
working people (i.e. the liberation of humanity). It thus becomes
clear why all the leader -ships of national liberation
movements attempt to control, from above, any initiative of the
masses, and prescribe for them only the politics of nationalism. To
do this it is necessary actually to terrorise the working masses (Ben
Bella's FLN massacred dozens of Algerian workers during the Algerian
war of 'independence', Ho's Viet Mihn helped the British and French
to crush the Saigon Workers' Commune of 1945 and later assassinated
dozens of Trotskyists; Guevara publicly attacked the Cuban
Trotskyists and Castro's attacks against them in 1966 sealed their
fate even as reformists of the Castroite ruling class.) The state
capitalist elites, even before they take power, must attempt to
eradicate any independent voice of opposition, and their complete
rule wipes out any possibility of even meagre measures of bourgeois
democracy.
Support for any national liberation struggle is always
reactionary. It usually consists of:
1) support for a client state of the state capitalist bloc, which
amounts to defending state capitalist imperialism against Western
imperialism;
2) support for despotic regimes which destroy, together with
classic bourgeois property forms, any independent organisation of the
working class and peasantry.
It is often claimed that a distinction must be made between
the reactionary and bureaucratic leaderships of national liberation
struggles and the masses of people involved in such struggles. Their
objectives are said to be different. We believe this distinction
seldom to be valid. The foreigner is usually hated as a foreigner,
not as an exploiter -because he belongs to a different culture, not
because he extracts surplus value. This prepares the way for local
exploiters to step into the shoes of the foreign ones. Moreover the
fact that a given programme (say, national independence) has
considerable support does not endow it with any automatic validity.
Mass 'con5ciouanes5 can be mass 'false-consciousness Millions of
French, British, Russian and German workers slaughtered one another
in the first World War, having internalised the 'national' ideas of
their respective rulers. Hitler secured 6~' million votes in
September 1930. The leaders of national struggles can only come to
power because there is a nationalist feeling which they can
successfully manipulate. The bonds of 'national unity' will then
prove stronger than the more important but 'divisive' class struggle.
In practice all that revolutionaries can currently do in the Third
World is to avoid compromise on the cardinal issue: namely that
working people have no 'fatherland' and that for socialists the main
enemy is always in one's' own country. Revolutionaries can
strive to create autonomous organs of struggle (peasants or village
committees or workers' groups) with the aim of resisting
exploitation, whatever the colour of the exploiter's skin. They can
warn systematically of the dangers and repression these bodies will
face from foreign imperialism and from the nascent bourgeoisie
or bureaucracy. They can point out that their own societies
are divided into classes and that these classes have mutually
incompatible interests, just like the classes in the 'foreign'
societies that oppress them.
Although difficult this is essential and the only road that
doesn't involve mystifying oneself and one's own supporters. In South
Vietnam, for instance, the conflict of interests between rulers and
ruled is obvious enough. No great effort is needed to see the gulf
separating the well-fed corrupt politicians and generals in Saigon
and the women, riddled with hookworms, breaking their backs in the
paddy fields. But in the North? Is there really a community of
interests between the Haiphong docker or cement worker and the
political commissar in Hanoi? Between those who initiated and those
who suppressed the peasant uprising of November 1956? Between those
who led and those who put down the Saigon Commune of 1945? Between Ta
Tu Thau and his followers and those who butchered them? To even
demand that such issues be discussed will endanger the
revolutionaries. Could there be better proof of the viciously
anti-working class nature of these regimes?
Some 'Third World' countries are so backward or isolated,
and have such an insignificant working class, that it is difficult to
see how such a class could even begin to struggle independently. The
problem however is not a national one. The solution to the misery and
alienation of these workers and peasants is in the
international development of the proletarian revolution. The
revolution in the advanced capitalist countries will decisively tip
the scales the world over. The success of such a revolution, even in
its earliest stages, will liberate enormous technological resources
to help these isolated, weak and exploited groups.
Owing to the different social, political and economic weights of
various Third World countries, proletarian revolutions or
revolutionary workers' councils in these countries will have varying
repercussions on their neighbours, and on the advanced countries. The
effects will, however, be more political than economic. A workers and
peasants' take-over in Chile (which will irretrievably smash the
Allende state) will not damage the American economy. But such an
explosive event might provide a revolutionary example for the workers
of Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, etc., and help the American workers to
gain a revolutionary consciousness. The same could be said of
Nigeria, India or even Ceylon in their respective contexts. He who
rejects this perspective as 'improbable' or 'impossible' abandons any
revolutionary perspective for the workers of what is loosely called
'the Third World'. In fact there are everywhere only 'two worlds':
that of the exploiter and that of the exploited. To this degree, the
international working class is one class, with the same historical
objective.
We leave it to the trad left to support the imperialism of its
choice, be it Russian, or Chinese, or any new shining light in the
Stalinist cosmos. For us, the main enemy will always be at home, and
the only way we can help ourselves and the workers and peasants of
the Third World is to help make a socialist revolution here. But it
would be tantamount to scabbing if at any moment we supported
reactionary movements which exploit - no matter in how small a way -
a section of the international working class.