24.10.2001

Third camp: our war aims

There was a good turnout for the CPGB?s forum on ?islamic fundamentalism and the left? held last Sunday. Clive Bradley kicked off the discussion for the Alliance for Workers? Liberty and raised some objection to use of the words ?islamic fundamentalism?, preferring ?militant islamism?. Comrade Bradley provided the meeting with a panoramic overview of the phenomenon beginning with the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1920s, and reaching its current manifestations in the form of Sudan, Hamas, FIS in Algeria, the Iranian regime and the Taliban. These movements and governments are counterrevolutionary. Iran?s regime arose from the crushing of the progressive forces by Khomeini?s movement. And, warned comrade Bradley, militant islamic regimes might soon come to power in Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

?Why is militant islamism growing?? asked comrade Bradley. In Egypt, for example, many university graduates were no longer able to get assured jobs in the bureaucracy, which has led them to support militant islamism. There were many ?old? regimes in the Arab world, based on military-led bourgeois revolutions, he reminded us. But now that the secular nationalist project had declined, with the left discredited, islamists had been able to fill the vacuum. Nasser may have bloodily repressed the Muslim Brotherhood, but their inheritors assassinated his successor Sadat later. Egypt?s militant islamists now view tourists as legitimate targets, accusing them of bringing in Aids and other forms of ?western decadence?.

Originally the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas headed a conservative social movement that forced women to wear the veil, stoning women in the streets. Hamas has not taken the lead in fighting the Israeli army. Instead it employs the tactic of suicide bombing and has now started to attack settlers. Some on the left see in this a kind of anti-imperialism, but with a confused reactionary program. This was a wrong assessment, insisted comrade Bradley. Hamas are not worthy of socialists? support. Hamas, the Algerian FIS and Taliban violently oppose the left and are thoroughly anti-working class.

Comrade Sami of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq condemned the September 11 attacks unreservedly. He spoke of three camps in the world. The fundamentalist camp of ?political islam?, the camp of imperialism headed by Bush and Blair, and our, civilised, camp, the camp of democracy, progress and socialism. Imperialism, especially the US administration, were responsible for state terrorism. The US is the only force ever to have used nuclear weapons in war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were forms of terrorism just as much as bin Laden?s attacks on New York and Washington. The UN economic sanctions against Iraq were also forms of terrorism.

Comrade Sami described ?political islam? as the other pole of international terrorism, which has a long list of appalling crimes to its record. By imposing reactionary islamic laws on women, planting bombs on buses, etc, this camp fights to oppress people, just like imperialism. Imperialism has promoted islamic fundamentalism when it suited. Bin Laden received millions of CIA dollars. And, of course, imperialism actively shores-up the detestable and totally anti-democratic islamic regime in Saudi Arabia.

Our, third camp objectively speaks on behalf of the overwhelming majority of humanity. Comrade Sami said we must break the propaganda of the other two poles. Those who came onto the streets of London on October 13 did so in order to fight injustice. They want an end to the occupation of Palestine. These people belong to our camp. Those progressives who demand the lifting of sanctions on Iraq are also to be won for our camp.

Comrade Sami said it is hard to imagine how people could live under the systems in place in Afghanistan, Iran, etc. These systems are worse than slavery. And our movement has a dual responsibility. We must fight political islam and fight imperialism. The two tasks are not in contradiction. They are two, related, prongs in the struggle for socialism.

Marcus Larsen spoke for the CPGB as the third, and last, platform speaker. Developing the third bloc theme outlined by the other two speakers comrade Larsen argued that our main area of work in Britain must be the Socialist Alliance. Already the AWL and the CPGB had tried to get a principled anti-war motion agreed. The comrade insisted that we as Marxists must always distinguish the opposed political aims that lie behind the same slogans. For example, both Marxists and islamic fundamentalists demand a Palestinian state; we both demand an end to UN sanctions against Iraq and that US and British imperialism get out of the Gulf. But the same could be said of the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles. That did not make Hitler progressive.

Comrade Larsen disagreed with comrade Sami?s view that there was a bipolar world. Instead, he argued, there is a unipolar one. The ?other world system? perished with the Soviet Union. The ?war against terrorism? was not a war between two world systems like the cold war. Recognising that by no means obliges us to use a bankrupt ?the enemy of my enemy is my friend? approach. The Taliban are our bitter enemy in Afghanistan while, here in Britain, our main enemy is imperialism. And in the ideological struggle between imperialism and islamic fundamentalism we have a duty to oppose both sides and champion the ideas of internationalism, democracy and secularism.

Comrade Larsen said that the nearest equivalent in western European history to the Taliban, FIS, Hamas, etc, was fascism. The Taliban in particular should be understood as the counterrevolutionary opposite of the April 1978 revolution in Afghanistan led by the Peoples Democratic Party. The same is true of the islamic regime in Iran. It is the counterrevolutionary opposite of the 1979 revolution which overthrew the Shah. Counterrevolution is a punishment inflicted for not carrying the revolution to its completion.

He noted that our SWP allies were saying that islamic fundamentalism was ?contradictory? - as if every phenomenon did not have contradictory poles. However the philosophical device is there as a cover under which the SWP sneak through the idea that there is a progressive content to be found in islamic fundamentalism. Positively, the October 13 demonstration in London included islamic organisations and individual muslims. There was nothing uniform about them though. However there was a small pro-Taliban minority which chanted slogans along the line of ?Taliban ? lion of islam? and ?Death to Jews?. Comrade Larsen insisted that such people had to be politically challenged, not tolerated with liberal embarrassment. As more British muslims become involved in the anti-war movement, we must win them away from the mosque and towards the ideas of secularism, democracy and socialism. The left could not repeat the mistakes it made over Iran, when in 1979-81 sections of the left fawned before Khomeini and the mullahs.

Without a united left party in Britain we are in many ways hobbled. Comrade Larsen concluded by suggesting that the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq join the SA as its section in Australia had done.

During the following discussion, John Bridge (CPGB) took issue with the phrase used by comrade Sami, ?political Islam?. He thought we would not necessarily be against all political islamists, but only those who were counterrevolutionary, bigoted, and manifested fascistic tendencies. As to islamic fundamentalists on our demonstrations, the answer to those who shout ?Death to the Jews?, etc, the main problem lies with us, not them. We, in our tens of thousands, must show that we have no truck with such racism by raising our own slogans. It is not that as a matter of principle we want to deny these bigots a platform. But we need counter-slogans that stress the unity of humanity and our opposition to reactionary anti-imperialism. Neither Jews nor anti-racists should be made to feel that we have one law for white racists and another for islamic fundamentalists.

Comrade Bridge agreed with comrade Bradley that the description of Iraq, Iran, Egypt and so on as ?backward? was completely misplaced. In the 1950s and 60s these countries possessed powerful working class movements which had the potential to put a proletarian stamp on their politics. However as Marx, Engels and Luxemburg had stated, the world might not proceed smoothly towards communism. There is another possibility: barbarism. Comrade Bridge said that in much of the islamic world the system of capital shows its barbaric side. He also asked comrade Bradley how, as a Trotskyite, he explained Trotsky?s mistaken insistence that communists were as a matter of duty obliged to support the regime of any non-imperialist country against an imperialist country. Why not side with the third camp, the camp of democracy, progress and socialism?

Anne McShane (CPGB) emphasised how the war some respects is bringing positive developments. Migrant communities - from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey - were being brought together with the left in Britain. Tina Becker (CPGB) saw potential in the Stop the War Coalition. Problems arise, however, if we do not have answers to the big questions people raised, like ?What do we do with bin Laden?? CND really saw itself as a diplomatic pressure group on imperialism, wanting to hand over bin Laden to the UN and maybe even support UN-led bombing of Afghanistan.

Steve Freeman (RDG) reminded comrades that some on the left had called for ?Victory to Iraq? during the Gulf War. He insisted that we were then witnessing an imperialist war between the USA and Iraq over oil in Kuwait. However, unlike then, Steve did not think it was now possible to apply that method of fighting for a defeat for both sides in Afghanistan. There was not even a government that runs the whole country. Later, comrade Freeman wondered whether we should support the Musharaff military regime or the islamic opposition in Pakistan.

Summarising, comrade Larsen recalled how the SWP had sought to play down political questions during the general election. This has now been exposed as totally wrong. The suggestion that people are only interested in local issues, trade union demands, etc, is disproved in virtually every workplace, every bar and every social gathering. People are talking about the ?war on terrorism? being conducted in a far off country  of which they know little, called  Afghanistan. Comrade Larsen listed a series of aims that the Stop the War Coalition needed to adopt as a matter of urgency if it was to address this mass audience: stop the war; defeat imperialism; no to Islamic fundamentalism; the main enemy is at home; for democracy and secularism everywhere; condemn the attacks in New York and Washington; solidarity with all victims of terrorism, lift sanctions on Iraq; no restrictions on civil liberties; combat attacks on Arabs and muslims.

Comrade Bradley in his summary had less of a problem with pacifism than with the current populist, pseudo-anti-imperialism. He noted that ?imperialism?, ?the west?, ?globalisation? and the USA are often equated as being one and the same thing by sections of the left. However imperialism is actually a system of world capitalism. He agreed with the slogan ?the main enemy is at home?, which originated with the German social democracy of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. He did though have reservations about the slogan ?revolutionary defeatism?. It was prone to confusion. Comrade Bradley said that our task must be to map out the lines of the third camp. We are not, of course, on the verge of a revolutionary take-over of the world. But we do need a programme of anti-imperialism: against sanctions, against US support to reactionary regimes, solving the Israel-Palestine question on the basis of democracy, guaranteeing Israeli-Jewish rights. A positive program of anti-imperialism would mark a real divide of the third camp from our opponents.

Jim Gilbert