11.11.1999

Social-imperialism or working class independence

Simon Stevens of the Communist Party of Australia in Perth and Nick Fredman of the Democratic Socialist Party in Lismore have taken umbrage at recent Weekly Worker articles I have written on the Australian republic/constitutional referendum and on imperialist intervention in East Timor.

Firstly comrade Stevens. He has written about me in the CPGB’s Weekly Worker and the DSP’s Green Left Weekly. Good. However, rather than engaging in sober debate, he has merely attempted to lampoon my articles. Bad.

In Green Left Weekly he writes:

“Apparently we should follow his [Marcus Larsen’s] command and not support any UN peace-keeping force in East Timor, but instead demand the abolition of those reactionary bulwarks of anti-democracy, [Australia’s six] states. Don’t laugh; this man is serious.”

I do not equate East Timor and the democratic centralist republic, as comrade Stevens suggests. I wrote about them in separate articles. Nor do I counterpose a fight around one against the other. Poor Simon exposes his utter lack of political imagination and an inherent economism by mocking my demand for the abolition of the federal monarchy system in Australia. My goodness. I will be calling for socialism next!

Of course, the recent referendum exposes the inherently undemocratic role the states play. Had the outcome on November 6 been a nationwide majority ‘yes’ vote to the monarchical republic, but with a ‘no’ vote in Queensland, Tasmania and West Australia, this would have meant that the proposals would have fallen. The current states system allows a conservative minority to block the progressive majority. Intolerable for any democrat.

To call for the ending of the states system is neither an irrelevance nor some wild flight into leftism. It is achievable under capitalism, but it extends democracy and thus the room for initiative and manoeuvre by the working class. And if abolishing the states is so nutty, then how does comrade Stevens explain that it was on the policy books of the Australian Labor Party for years?

East Timor. Both comrades Fredman and Stevens (from Trotskyist and Stalinist backgrounds respectively) unite behind imperialism’s intervention in East Timor.

Their stance reminds me of the position taken by the then International Socialists (now SWP) in Britain over Northern Ireland in 1968. The IS said that the entry of British troops provided a ‘breathing space’ for the republican community, and for that reason welcomed imperialism’s role. However, unlike our friends Fredman and Stevens, the IS never actually demonstrated on the streets to back its assessment.

Comrades Fredman and Stevens argue that Australia was forced into East Timor by public pressure and that the DSP played a role in mobilising that pressure. I would argue that, then and now, the main factor driving imperialist intervention was not opinion at home, but strategic interests and the stability of the region - though these factors are not mutually exclusive. The mass spontaneous feelings of solidarity and sympathy for the people of East Timor were effortlessly incorporated into the ruling chauvinist consensus. The DSP tagged along with a ruling class-orchestrated propaganda campaign.

Comrade Fredman argues:

“The overriding imperative for Australian imperialism has been and continues to be maintaining its alliance with the Indonesian regime, and minimising embarrassment to the Indonesian armed forces (TNI).”

This is only a part of it. Australia’s alliance with the regime is subordinate to regional stability and continued imperialist access to Indonesian markets and cheap labour. Look around the world over the past 10 years or so. Imperialist policy after the cold war has clearly shifted to one of favouring the peaceful replacement of ‘third world’ dictators with stable liberal bourgeois democracies. Witness El Salvador, the Philippines, Haiti, Chile, South Africa, South Korea, etc.

The problem with such an imperialist-sponsored transition in Indonesia has been the complete absence of civil society outside the Suharto/Golkar system. This has now changed, opening the way for the liberal bourgeoisie … but also offering the possibility of democratic revolution.

Supporting Australian/UN troops in East Timor meant one of two things: Either you advocated that the Australian/UN forces should cooperate with the Indonesian armed forces (as they did), or you advocated war against Indonesia.

According to general Feisal Tanjung, Habibie’s coordinating minister for political affairs and security at the time of the referendum in East Timor, Habibie came close to declaring war against Australia and allegedly would have, had John Howard’s government followed the DSP’s advice. The claim came in the retired general’s biography, where it is reported that Habibie said: “If we have to go to war our nation will stake everything it has, because East Timor remains part of us. Our country loves peace, but loves freedom and sovereignty more.”

Perhaps the Australian army should not have stopped at the East-West Timor border? Perhaps it should have gone all the way to Jakarta, creating ‘space’ for the Indonesian democratic movement? Such are the illusions of democratic imperialism.

Comrade Fredman writes: “If socialists in Australia followed your [CPGB] policy, exactly what would we have urged the mass movement to demand of the Australian government? Nothing, apparently.” Not true. Read my article and the follow-up letter in the Weekly Worker.

It is quite correct to call on the Australian government to break all links with the Indonesian military. It is quite correct to call on the Australian government to immediately recognise East Timor’s independence and revoke the Timor Gap Treaty. But it is wholly another thing to advocate an imperialist adventure against Indonesia, substituting the active role of the working class and its allies for the armed might of imperialism to gain your objectives. This is social-imperialism.

There is another string to comrade Fredman’s weak bow. Australian intervention was the only thing that could stop the genocide. This is liberalism par excellence. Should Nato invade Russia to save the Chechens? Should Nato have bombed Serbia to save the Kosovars? Did you support the US invasion of Haiti in 1993 (as did Noam Chomsky)? I hope not. Why is East Timor a different case?

Comrade Fredman worries about losing the ‘ear’ of the masses. This is reminiscent of the centrists and social-imperialists in World War I. These elements collapsed into defence of their own states against the supposed ‘worse evil’ of their enemies. Snowden, David, Plekhanov and co were afraid of losing the ‘ear of the masses’ too. And it is true that the revolutionary internationalists were isolated in August 1914.

A final point for comrade Stevens (from whom I bought many a book at the CPA’s New Age bookshop on Pitt Street, Sydney when I was in the Young Socialist League). He claims my main target is not capitalism or imperialism, but the DSP. By the same measure, the main targets of Marx and Lenin were not capitalism or tsarism, but Lassalle and Proudhon, or Martov and the Mensheviks.

Yes, the Weekly Worker has an editorial policy which promotes open debate and exchange of ideas on the left. This includes polemic. I recommend it to comrade Stevens. Of course, he will not be allowed to rebut me in the CPA’s Guardian. So why not try writing a serious article for the Weekly Worker?

Marcus Larsen