11.02.1999
Defeatism or Defencism
The CPGB’s refusal to ‘defend Iraq’ is no error. Jack Conrad replies to James Paris of the Marxist Workers’ Group
For our friend James Paris and the comrades of the Marxist Workers’ Group - a small, but militant United States-based Trotskyite organisation - “defending” Iraq in both the 1990-91 Desert Storm and the 1998 Desert Fox conflicts is a matter of the highest principle. Comrade Paris calls them “acid tests” - decisive moments which separate out the “Marxists from the chauvinists and reformists” (Weekly Worker February 4). He puts their consequences for Marxists on a par with World War II and the collapse of bureaucratic socialism.
Not surprisingly then, given his great respect for, and feelings of solidarity towards, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the comrade is concerned, to say the least, that we refused point blank to sign a joint statement siding with Iraq in the midst of the most recent attack by the combined forces of the USA and the UK in December 1998.
Thankfully, instead of frothily denouncing our Mark Fischer and the CPGB as “Stalinist” or “capitulator” and casting us into his mind’s outer darkness, the comrade is determined that we see the light and come to walk alongside the MWG in righteousness. His 5,000-word polemic is, he says, an attempt to “correct” our supposedly “mistaken position” by demonstrating the correctness of “the Marxist method”. The comrade asks us to take his “pedagogical” and “comprehensive” remarks in that spirit. Indeed we do. Yet I have to say that, having carefully studied what the comrade has written, I for one remain firmly convinced that we are not “mistaken”.
On the contrary, as I will demonstrate, our stance is not “an opportunist vestige of the ‘official communist’ parties’ old practices”, but results from a considered analysis based on qualitative changes in the world economy - notably the ending of colonialism and the emergence of finance capital in the medium developed countries. Opposing imperialism and proto-imperialism is for us the only principled position. Ipso facto those who talk of giving Iraq - and similar such states - “support” of any kind are the “mistaken” ones.
Let me prove this, to begin with indirectly, by systematically cross-examining the propositions that comrade Paris seems to regard as self-evident; propositions which disastrously lead him and his comrades into the camp of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist regime in Baghdad (and every other such anti-working class regime in the so-called third world).
Comrade Paris kicks off with an oversimplified discussion of the Marxist attitude towards war and the legitimacy of certain wars. “Marxists,” he declares baldly, “have always understood that there are two types of war: 1. progressive wars - wars of national liberation, anti-imperialist wars; 2. reactionary wars - wars of redivision of the world, inter-imperialist wars.” It is, of course, untrue that Marxists “have always understood” that there are “progressive wars - wars of national liberation, anti-imperialist wars” and “reactionary wars - wars of redivision of the world, inter-imperialists wars”.
Marxists are not pacifists. Yes, we consider some wars as unjust (reactionary) but others are just (progressive). However, what decides our attitude is complex, being determined by an interweaving of changing historical development and class interest. Imperialism and anti-imperialism are not categories that have “always” existed. There were just wars prior to the age of imperialism (beginning in the late 19th century). Not only defensive wars, like the one brilliantly conducted by Jacobin France against the Hapsburg Austrians and the other counterrevolutionary invaders, but civil wars which pitted class against class. Spartacus, John Ball and Thomas Münzer formed and led armies of the oppressed against their own class oppressors.
Marx and Engels earnestly looked forward to the day when leaders of the modern proletariat would do the same (unlike previous attempts their ‘utopia’ is fully realisable). And it was precisely to foster the growth of the working class and thus the objective conditions for universal human liberation that both men at various times lent support to certain wars of expansion and annexation (redivision) by capitalistically more developed countries.
For example in February 1849 Engels cited the 1845-47 war between the “energetic Yankees” and the “lazy Mexicans” (following which large tracts of Mexico, including Texas, were ceded to the US). Against a sermonising Mikhail Bakunin he unashamedly praised the American volunteers and their “war of conquest”. Their war, he said, “was waged simply and solely in the interests of civilisation”. Admittedly the
“‘independence’ of a few Spanish Californians and Texans may suffer by this, ‘justice’ and other moral principles may be infringed here and there; but what does that matter against such world-historical events?” (F Engels MECW Vol 8, Moscow 1977, pp365-66).
After Bowie and Crockett came gold prospectors, cattle ranchers, captains of industry and the teeming multitude: ie, the dynamic pulse of progress. We could also usefully mention the writings of Marx and Engels vis-à-vis the British in India, the rights of the non-historic Slavs, etc. Comrade Paris is certainly aware of all this. My intention is not to ‘pedagogically’ teach people what they surely know already, but to simply bring to the fore the fact that our attitude towards war alters because it is historically determined. In other words there is no timeless formula. Those who preach that there are certainly do not apply the Marxist method.
Comrade Paris writes eloquently about dialectics. However, his line of argument is damaged, made inflexible and brittle by a normative approach redolent with dogmatism. Instead of discovering the dialectic through material changes in the real world itself he presents us with quotes, followed by conclusions which are supported by nothing more substantial than formal logic.
Hence for our comrade the “central question” concerning Iraq is “whether or not it is an oppressor (imperialist) or oppressed (semi-colonial) state”. There are no other possibilities. Iraq must be one or it must be the other. It is a classical ‘either-or’ method. All comrade Paris needs to do is reproduce Lenin’s 1916 descriptive outline of the “five essential features” of imperialism and he is home (basing himself on Burkharin’s Imperialism or Hilferding’s Finance Capital would have been slightly more problematic).
How did Lenin define imperialism? Regular readers of this paper will need no reminding, but to facilitate the discussion and leave no doubt let us reproduce Lenin’s Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism schema (a work which, it should be emphasised, he modestly described as “a popular outline” along with a definition, which, no matter how useful, was in his own words “inadequate”, “conditional and relative”). Anyway what were the five “basic features” highlighted by Lenin? They were:
“1. the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; 2. the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital’, of a financial oligarchy; 3. the export of capital, as distinguished from the export of commodities, acquires exceptional importance; 4. the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world between themselves; and 5. the territorial division of the whole world amongst the biggest capitalist powers is completed” (VI Lenin CW Vol 22, Moscow 1977, p266).
Comrade Paris is triumphant: “Even a cursory glance at Iraq shows that it does not fit these five features.” Iraq “does not” export capital, it has “not formed” international capitalist monopolies and has not divided the world alongside the “greatest capitalist powers” (diligent readers will note that comrade Paris is using an earlier translation than mine). Therefore Iraq is not even a minor imperialist power “like Canada or Greece”. It might have played the role of “proxy” in the war with Iran, but it is “fundamentally an exploited state - an oppressed semi-colonial state”.
The reasoning employed by comrade Paris here reminds me of the crude metaphysical approach taken by Tony Cliff towards the Soviet Union in his much overrated “Marxist”analysis. For him too countries have to be “either ... or”: in this case either capitalist or socialist (T Cliff State capitalism in Russia London 1974, p282). Thus having methodically and correctly proven that the post-1928 Soviet Union was neither socialist nor any kind of workers’ state - no matter how degenerated - he ‘logically’ concludes that it has to be an example of capitalism, albeit a bureaucratic state capitalist variation. That it might have been an ectopic - ie, non-capitalist, non-socialist - social formation does not even occur to him.
What of comrade Paris? How would he analyse the Soviet Union in respect of Lenin’s fivefold criteria? Obviously it was not imperialist in the sense meant above. But are we then left with no choice other than to categorise it as a “semi-colony”? I know full well that comrade Paris would laugh the suggestion out of court. So why apply such formal logic to Iraq? Surely it must be studied concretely, not classified a priori.
If we treat Lenin’s “conditional and relative” definition of imperialism as timeless, we are in danger of being forced to throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare, in step with social democracy, that imperialism is a thing of the now distant past. Do the big capitalist powers of today really “divide the world” up amongst themselves? Is the division “complete”? There is no longer any British or any other colonial empire. There are indeed something like 150 politically independent states represented in the UN. Moreover, small - some very small countries - like Greece and Ireland, have joined what we would call the imperialist club ... and rather effortlessly at that. Even in terms of 1916, in spite of his fivefold definition Lenin could still categorise backward Russia as imperialist. Another renowned Marxist from the same school, who will be familiar to comrade Paris, called it a colonising semi-colony, which both acted for its masters and itself - Russia therefore was a “twofold imperialism” (L Trotsky History of the Russian Revolution Vol 1, London 1965, p33). In other words, comrade Paris, Lenin is a excellent starting point, but he should not be used as a substitute for thinking.
Backwardness allows - or compels - countries to make leaps to what is most advanced. There is neither the possibility nor the necessity of retracing the path taken by Britain: ie, the deracination of the yeomen by landed interests, the slow commodification of free labour-power, the real subordination of workers with the introduction of technology, the steady concentration and depersonalisation of capital in limited companies, etc. Each in their turn, Germany, Japan and Russia fielded the enormous power of the state to skip the intermediate historical stages of capitalistic development. Their autocracies adopted, sponsored and attempted to generalise what was most advanced. Primitive accumulation resulted not in numerous small manufacturers, but industrial giants. Trotsky famously named it the “law of combined development”. That theory helps to explain why Russia in 1914 had finance capital - ie, the “confluence of industrial and bank capital” - and why in terms of industrial technique it “stood at the level of the advanced countries, and in certain respects even outstripped them”; though it was in the midst of a peasant sea (ibid pp31,27).
Imperialism is not merely an expansionist or aggressive foreign policy pursued by various governments. It is a stage of capitalism itself whereby monopoly capital is exported and reproduced on the basis of a world division of labour. The contradiction between labour and capital is that way universalised and the world as a whole becomes increasingly ripe for socialism (the first stage of communism).
Between the capitalist states there is a definite pecking order determined by size and degree of development. Fundamentally we can say that the world is divided between oppressing and oppressed countries. Yet to leave things there would, needless to say, be a lifeless abstraction. After World War II the metabolism of international capitalist exploitation underwent a marked transformation. In place of the colonial system, epitomised by an economically uncompetitive Britain, there was a shift to a system epitomised by the economically competitive USA.
This victory of the greenback over the colonial sunhat does not preclude a neo-colonial relationship with certain capitalistically underdeveloped countries (central America being a case in point). Nevertheless the main characteristic of the post-World War II capitalist system was the dismantling of the colonial empires and the opening up of markets to the stiff winds of monopolistic competition. The imperialist club has thereby been made relatively open and in consequence has tended to steadily expand. There has also been the emergence of what must be called intermediate or medium developed countries in which the ruling classes, often in cooperation with core imperialist powers, have managed to take capitalist development to a high level, whereby not only is it the dominant mode of production, but domestic finance capital is created (Turkey, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina and Taiwan being examples). Nor must the existence of the Soviet Union be discounted either. As the other superpower from 1945 to 1991, it acted as a counterweight to US hegemony. A number of capitalistic countries, including medium developed ones, were able to align themselves to it so as to ply something approaching an independent course (eg, Iraq).
Let us examine the recent history of Iraq. The country was granted formal independence by Britain in 1932. It remained pitifully backward, not least because revenues generated by the increasing demand for oil went directly into the pockets of British shareholders. In return for what amounted to a few crumbs the king and his entourage acted as little more than local agents for Britain: ie, classic neo-colonialism. Things began to change rapidly with the 1958 Free Officers revolution. The monarchy was overthrown and state power passed from the big landowners and the aristocratic elite into the hands of middling elements who typically had worked their way up through university and military academy. This new state power sought to wrest by degrees ownership of the oil and refining industry from the transnationals.
It was the July 1968 Ba’athist Party revolution which put Iraq on a confrontational course against the big imperialist powers. The oil industry was nationalised and Baghdad cuddled up to the Soviet Union for protection. That alliance and the boom in oil prices after 1973 allowed the country to make huge strides forward in terms of wealth and development. Radical land reform was enacted, effectively abolishing the old ruling class. Industry was built up using state capitalist methods - unions were banned in nationalised concerns, but the relatively well paid workers were guaranteed lifetime employment (they were not free however to choose their place of employment). Relative labour costs were huge - two or three times higher than in comparable countries. Nevertheless by the late 1970s in terms of per capita levels of production Iraq stood in the same league as Portugal and Greece, not India and China. It was medium developed. There was not only finance capital, but the export of capital. Its Rafidyn Bank was calculated to be the largest commercial bank in the Arab world in 1983; the country itself had assets totalling $50 billion invested throughout the world (above all through the London and New York markets). Militarily too Iraq was transformed. Massive imports of Soviet arms made it a regional power to be reckoned with.
In general finance capital, whatever the particular level of development reached by a country, brings with it a striving to expand outwards. Capitalist development sharpens class and national antagonisms domestically no end. Accumulation means fabulous wealth for high officials and their friends and relatives. But the gap between rich and poor, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, grows continuously and visibly. Democracy is therefore precarious, often nonexistent. Class and social contradictions become acute. Economically it is very difficult for medium developed capitalist countries to take full advantage of the world economy. In terms of competition they are invariably outmatched by the transnational players. As an alternative - also as a means to prevent internal explosion, to prevent civil war - “other” means (ie, military adventures) become ever more attractive. Hence our designation of proto-imperialism.
In 1980 Iraq invaded Iran. US diplomats may well have given the go-ahead. However, Iraq was no mere “proxy”. Saddam Hussein wanted a greater Iraq. He hoped to gain a string of oilfields and a quick victory. The war proved long and hugely costly. Nearly a million people died. Economically is was equally disastrous. The Ba’ath regime was committed to a ‘guns and butter’ strategy. Where the theocracy in Tehran were prepared to use human waves against tank emplacements, Saddam Hussein willingly sacrificed territory and equipment. Moreover domestic peace was brought by maintaining living standards and compensating the families of those killed in action with cars, land and other such expensive items. At the same time oil production plummeted as facilities and shipping was destroyed. Foreign assets became debts. All in all the war is thought to have cost Baghdad something in the order of $226 billion (Japanese Institute of Middle Eastern Economies).
By May 1987 the ‘guns and butter’ strategy was unsustainable. The regime issued its decree no652, abolishing the lifetime employment guarantee in the attempt to shift from state capitalism to competitive capitalism; and thus increase the very low rate of exploitation. The war ended a year later - the social tensions could only but increase. It is against this background that Saddam Hussein gambled on an invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The country was forcibly annexed and declared Iraq’s 19th province.
Was Iraq acting again as an imperialist “proxy” in ousting the al-Sabahs, comrade Paris? The idea is not really tenable.
Possibly Iraq was set up by a US itching to launch its New World Order crusade. Either way, the principled position for communists and workers is straightforward. The main enemy is at home. The reason we opposed the US-led coalition was not only because of the sickening death and destruction Desert Storm was bound to wreak. There was, and is, nothing progressive or democratic about imperialism’s campaign against Iraq. Everything hypocritical and reactionary. Imperialism was not out to liberate ‘poor little Kuwait’ or remove a regional dictator. It was intent on reasserting its own power and re-establishing a dominant military presence.
The CPGB had no hesitation in denouncing demands from the Labour left and ‘official communists’ in Britain for UN sanctions (which naturally would not hurt ordinary folk). UN sanctions are, we said, “nothing more than a form of imperialist economic warfare”. Neither did we make a call for the restoration of the al-Sabahs and the Kuwaiti state. Instead we said that the Arab, Turkic, Kurdish and other peoples of the region should be free to redraw the boundaries of the region “as they think fit” (The Leninist December 1990).
Throughout the hostilities the CPGB was extremely active. There was, comrade Paris, no “abstention” nor “oblivion”. We led a highly successful and militant non-stop picket of the US embassy in Grovesnor Square and intervened on every mass demonstration. Our slogan was not for peace, but the revolutionary defeat of both belligerents, above all by class struggle methods at home. In every respect the CPGB fulfilled its proletarian internationalist duties and obligations. We used every opportunity to expose the predatory nature of the US, Britain, France, etc. The CPGB is, comrade Paris, against imperialist military actions wherever they take place, be it in Vietnam, Ireland, ex-Yugoslavia, Cuba, Somalia or Iraq. We demand the withdrawal of imperialist forces and prefer their military defeat to their military victory.
But there is another string to our bow. The CPGB criticised those such as the ‘official communist’ New Communist Party and the various Trotskyite sects, the Workers Revolutionary Party, Workers Power, etc, whose hatred of imperialism took them into the camp of Saddam Hussein’s proto-imperialism. Some of these organisations sought monetary reward for their services. Most were simply wrong, constituting a naive pro-Ba’athist left.
We evaluated both sides in Gulf War II strictly from the point of view of their class interests and the class and historical and social conditions which gave rise to the conflict. Hence we denounced Saddam Hussein’s Anschluss with Kuwait. Nothing in the policy or actions of the Iraqi regime could command our sympathy or support. That is why we sided with the Iraqi masses - the communist workers, the Kurds and Marsh Arabs - who refused to ‘suspend’ their struggle against the Ba’athists and who declined to enter a “military united front” with them. They have “every reason” to use Saddam Hussein’s “difficulties as their opportunity: an opportunity to make revolution” (The Leninist December 1990).
A revolutionary situation did present itself in the aftermath of the Iraqi army’s defeat and headlong flight from Kuwait. We did everything we could to aid and encourage the Iraqi masses in their courageous uprisings. Not the pro-Ba’athist left in Britain. They excused or glorified Saddam Hussein. For the WRP he was the leader of the pan-Arab revolution; for the Revolutionary Communist Party Iraq was the small guy facing a big imperialist bully; for the NCP Iraq was “non-capitalist” and therefore somehow socialistic - they all attacked us for our revolutionary defeatist position, branding it “pro-imperialist”.
Now in 1999 comrade Paris quotes against us the resolution of the Communist International on the tasks of communists in the colonial world from 1922. It criticises any “refusal” by its sections to “fight against imperialist tyranny, on the pretext of their supposed ‘defence’ of independent class interests” (Theses, resolutions and manifestos London 1983, p414). Comrade Paris again treats texts in a timeless fashion.
Any intelligent reading of this and other similar resolutions will show that economically and socially such countries were then extremely undeveloped. They were not only ruled by the colonial administrators and local client potentates, but in the main languished in what Comintern describes as “feudal” backwardness. The rising bourgeoisie might therefore play a revolutionary role in bringing about “state independence” and a “democratic republic”. Once the proletariat had established itself as “an independent revolutionary factor”, “temporary agreements with bourgeois democracy” - ie, political support - could be “considered permissible or necessary” (ibid p416).
Suffice to say, the key for the workers in these counties was not an alliance with the national bourgeoisie: rather winning over the peasant mass to the revolutionary struggle, and an alliance with the proletariat in the advanced west.
Is Iraq still mired in “feudal” backwardness? Is Saddam Hussein not at the head of a state monopoly capitalist and anti-working class regime? Is Iraq nowadays not ripe for socialism as part of the world revolution? In our opinion the facts speak for themselves. That is why in 1991 we wished for the victory of the Basra uprising in the south and the Kurds’ rebellion in the north, and from there the spread of the democratic, anti-Ba’ath revolution. Such a development would really have threatened imperialism, and not only in the Middle East, but in its heartlands too.
Saddam Hussein is opposed to US and British imperialism. But he is no anti-imperialist. No one should be fooled by his socialistic and anti-imperialist rhetoric. Nor is he a democrat. Iraq is not ready for “state independence”, but a proletarian-led democratic revolution and the sparking of the wider, worldwide conflagration. That is the only realistic and consistent way of taking the lead in fighting imperialism in the Ba’ath-ruled Iraq of today (as opposed to the British-ruled Iraq of 1922).
Of course our comrade Paris attacks those Trotskyites and others who carried portraits of Saddam Hussein in Gulf War II and who openly prostituted themselves to the Ba’athist regime. The comrade claims he can do this, without having to adopt our position for the revolutionary defeat of both sides, by drawing a sharp line of distinction between what he calls “military support for Iraq” and “political support” for its regime.
As we have repeatedly argued, the division is entirely spurious. Comrade Paris twists and turns, but in the end is implicitly forced to admit, all the while denying it, that this would involve “cooperation” with the forces of Saddam Hussein: ie, “coordinating attacks against imperialist forces”, though, rest assured, it would be a “purely episodic, coincidental phenomenon”. Why fight alongside the Ba’athists? Victory for Saddam Hussein would have “added boldness and strength to the actions of the working class in Iraq”, comrade Paris claims. Such a scenario did not unfold in victorious US nor Britain. And that is why we at least fought for the defeat of our own ruling class - as shown by Russia in 1905 and 1917 defeat, not victory, breeds revolution. That the revolution in Iraq was brutally crushed and that defeat has “demoralised” the working class is undoubtedly true, But it was the defeat of the revolution by Saddam Hussein, not the defeat of Saddam Hussein by US imperialism, that is the cause of this: ie, comrade Paris is engaged in wishful thinking at best.
But what is military support? Along with Carl von Clausewitz all serious Marxists define war and peace, and military and political methods, not as opposites, but two sides of the same coin: “War is the continuation of politics by other (violent) means” (See On war Harmondsworth 1976). Surely then, in giving Iraq military support one is also giving it political support. To argue otherwise is to descend into logical incoherence. Furthermore to claim that in “coordinating” with the military forces of the Ba’athist regime one is not offering any political support is to define war and politics as being entirely separate and unrelated - an elementary error. War - or, put another way, military “coordination” - is a form of politics. Taking sides with the Ba’athist little slaveholders against the US big slaveholders is to consciously or unconsciously fool oneself and those who follow your lead. Military “coordination” with the armed forces of Ba’athism must be based on some measure of political support for the regime and its aims. To defend Iraq militarily is to assist it in practice in attaining its political objectives and is in fact to support the Ba’ath regime politically, however much one may verbally deny it.
Of course, the comrades of the MWG have no military formations that we are aware of, certainly none in the Gulf to our knowledge. No tanks, no missiles, no MWG battalions or international brigades. Hence they cannot, even if they wanted to, offer Saddam Hussein, actual military “coordination”. As a small organisation based in the USA what do they really do? They conduct political propaganda work, like most of the left in Britain. Your main weapon, comrades, is the power of words. That is actually the only support you put at the disposal of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath regime, though you insist for your own reasons on calling it “military support”. Who are you trying to kid? Be honest, comrades.
If the CPGB had the ear of the revolutionary masses in Iraq, we would indeed call for military opposition to imperialist forces, had they tried to enter a liberated or semi-liberated Basra or Baghdad. Any parallel between these forces and those of Saddam Hussein would certainly be purely coincidental. Our aim would be to defend the anti-Ba’ath revolution against those who would drown it in blood. Is this what the MWG means by “military support”, as comrade Paris seems to suggest fleetingly? If so, then we gladly agree with him. We would both be on the same side of the barricades and share the same fate. But then there would be two Iraqs. A counterrevolutionary Iraq and a revolutionary Iraq. We defend only the latter. Never the former. That is why we say the term “military defence” of present-day Iraq should be junked immediately. It serves not to clarify our tasks, but to confuse and excuse.