03.10.2007

No imperialist intervention

George Bush and Gordon Brown have been shedding crocodile tears over Burma. But should we demand that they intervene to sort things out? Jim Moody argues that the masses themselves are the solution

The 49 million population of Burma (officially the Union of Myanmar) have lived under military dictatorships for the past 45 years. In recent weeks it has become abundantly clear that the mass of the people no longer want to be ruled in the old way. But protests fronted by buddhist monks have shown their limitations. Last weekend the military racked up its response. Soldiers fired into crowds. Protesters were beaten, arrested and killed. Militant monks were confined to their monasteries or carted off back to their home villages.

The mass protests have been the greatest challenge to the junta?s rule in over two decades. In a panic the Burmese authorities momentarily cut off email, web and phone communications with the outside world.  Before that we could all see the events unfold. Protests grew in intensity particularly after August 19, when the government raised fuel prices. We were also able to see the vicious response of Burma?s rulers. This week their terror gangs have raided homes looking for dissident monks and civilians to beat up, terrorise and kill.

International reaction has been almost universally condemnatory of Burma?s Tatmadaw (army) regime. UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari eventually met the head of Burma?s junta, general Than Shwe, on October 2. The government also arranged an ostentatious meeting with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Meanwhile, 20,000 troops were concentrated in the former capital Yangon (Rangoon) in case of demonstrations. Gambari?s visit was part of an international carrot and stick approach.

Burma is not a fully integrated into the global capitalist economy. The UN counts it as amongst the poorest countries in the world. So there is the prospect of Bush et al saying to the generals, ?Come on in?. A deal would have them taking a back seat and handing over governmental power to safe, pro-capitalist politicians such as Aung San Suu Kyi.

Imperialist calculations clearly have nothing do with democracy and the idea that the people should take control. Doubtless the junta?s stolen billions will be guaranteed in return for opening the country up to US transnationals. Meanwhile, Britain and the US are therefore quite happy to have demonstrations on the streets of Burma?s cities so as to pressurise the generals.

Communists

Under Khrushchev, Burma got the Soviet Union?s stamp of approval as a model non-aligned, ?socialist orientated?, ?third world? country. This put the Communist Party, Burma?s oldest political party, under further strain. It had already split over Stalin?s anti-fascist popular front. One faction was determined to fight the British colonial authorities despite the outbreak of World War II. The official CPB actually played a leading role in the struggle against the subsequent Japanese occupation and grew into a mass force.

Before formal independence was conceded by Britain  there were further splits. The Red Flag CPB went underground, taking up guerrilla warfare in 1946. It aimed to ?surround the cities? in Maoist fashion. After independence there was general agreement that despite its socialistic rhetoric the regime was neo-colonial. Nevertheless, there were strategic differences and therefore a damaging split. Not that the so-called White Flag CPB should be understood as being aligned with the Soviet Union. China was the model for both. Indeed the White Flag CPB itself turned to armed struggle in 1948. As late as 1980 the CPB still had a 15,000-strong army in the north-east of the country.

General Ne Win (c 1910-2002) had undergone military training under the Japanese. He was a Burmese nationalist. But after the British reoccupation he quickly came to an accommodation. He was seen as a trusted anti-communists and became number two in the Burmese army. His star further rose after the assassination of  Aung San (father of today?s Aung San Suu Kyi), and six other leading Anti-Fascist People?s Freedom League members in 1947. He gained full control of the army in 1948 and launched a bloody offensive against the CPB. In 1962 Ne Win led a coup against the civilian government: Burma?s military has run the country ever since.

Ne Win promoted an official ideology of xenophobia, buddhism and national socialism. The country was retitled the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma on Janaury 4 1974. Ne Win?s ?Burmese way to socialism? amounted to autarchy, nationalisation, repression of minorities and a police state. It was not only the Soviet Union and China that approved. Militant Tendency, predecessor of today?s Socialist Party in England and Wales, took a similar view. Its late leader, Ted Grant, argued that Burma should be included in a list of ?proletarian Bonapartist? ?workers? states?, since it had a ?planned? economy and nationalised property forms.

In the struggle of 1988, many former communists and leftwing sympathisers were active organisers and supporters of the democracy movement and strike committees in the cities, but the countryside-based CPB was caught out by the urban uprisings. And without arms the struggle was completely unequal. Over 3,000 people were killed by the military as it reimposed control.

The regime?s espousal of ?Burmese socialism? was junked after Ne Win was overthrown in the 1988 coup. Since 1992 general Than Shwe has headed the State Peace and Development Council and Burma has been run almost along feudal lines by often nakedly competing military elites.

As for the CPB, it continues to doggedly uphold its own brand of Burmese national socialism: ?Junta?s interest is not national interest ... We cannot let the national interests be damaged by the military regime ... Politic activities should be left to the politicians. If the junta persists on political activities, they should set up a political party of their own. The party thus formed will be a party among the contemporary politics? (www.cpburma.org/NatlIntrsteng.htm).

Amazing

There is another CPB that takes a less than principled stand in relation to Burma - the Morning Star?s Communist Party of Britain.

In view of what has happened in Iraq it was surely amazing to read the Star?s front-page article by Louise Nousratpour, headlined ?Activists call for Myanmar intervention? (September 27). The two ?activists? named turn out to be John McDonnell MP and CPB general secretary Rob Griffiths.

McDonnell is quoted as saying: ?The oppression and brutality levelled against Myanmar people at the moment is the result of support given to the regime in the past by Britain and the US, including military aid. Britain and the US now have a role in ensuring that the military regime is isolated and that support is given to democratic forces within the country? (my emphasis). Plainly, McDonnell is naive and therefore guilty of spreading illusions in imperialism.

As for ?Mr Griffiths?, he refers to ?embarrassing questions about why Britain and the US have done little or nothing about the regime?. And the Morning Star editorial concludes: ?The British government should show some humility, acknowledge its own repressive role - historical and contemporary - and adopt an impartial and consistent attitude to norms of government that are dictated by international law rather than imperial power.?

So what is this ?intervention? that the Morning Star?s editor, John Haylett, has in mind under ?international law?? Sanctions (which indirectly led to the deaths of thousands of children when they were applied to Iraq)? Or perhaps military intervention would fit the bill if it were under the auspices of the United Nations. Either way, this whole approach reeks of social-imperialism. Frankly, he should be sacked as editor just for presiding over such a disgraceful headline (leave aside his nonsense about ?international law?).

Communists - genuine communists, that is - are absolutely clear. It is up to the people of Burma themselves to overthrow the military dictatorship. It is not for the US and the UK to sort out Burma in order to make it safe for capitalism.

Thankfully, on this occasion the main allies of the Morning Star?s CPB in the Stop the War Coalition take a principled position. The article by Giles Ji Ungpakorn in this week?s Socialist Worker appears under the subtitle, ?Revolt from below, not intervention from the west, is the key to overthrowing Burma?s military junta?. Comrade Ungpakorn lists a few possible tactics the mass movement could take up against the military: ?strikes, cat-and-mouse demonstrations or fraternising with lower ranking soldiers to encourage them to break from their officers? (October 6).

Arms

However, although comrade Ungpakorn finds it ?encouraging? that one of the national minority groupings has urged Burmese soldiers to ?turn their guns on their officers?, he does not make a clear call for the masses to arm themselves. If the army were to meet with armed resistance, that would give added impetus to those soldiers disgusted at having to shoot down civilians to refuse to do so and to mutiny.

Military action organised through and by the working class vanguard aims to maximise division in the state?s armed forces ranged against it. Ordinary soldiers are  drawn from the mass of the people, including its working class. In times like these in Burma, they have every reason to respond positively to a revolutionary appeal by the armed workers.

As Lenin once noted, ?Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty. The sooner the proletariat succeeds in arming, and the longer it holds its fighting positions as striker and revolutionary, the sooner will the army begin to waver; more and more soldiers will at last begin to realise what they are doing and they will join sides with the people against the fiends, against the tyrant, against the murderers of defenceless workers and of their wives and children? (VI Lenin, ?The beginning of the revolution in Russia? Vperyod No4, January 31 1905).