14.05.2008
Crocodile tears and democracy
Liberal interventionism after the Burmese cyclone would spell another disaster, writes James Turley
Nature has been cruel to south-east Asia recently. The Union of Myanmar (formerly, and still popularly known as Burma) has been rocked by a devastating cyclone, the eighth most severe in recorded history; and Szechuan province in China, saw a powerful earthquake kill upwards of 12,000 people.
While China has been criticised for failing to build strong enough buildings, resulting in thousands of people unaccounted for, many buried under piles of rubble, its rapid and very visible relief operation has mostly inoculated its government from direct criticism. The same cannot be said for the military junta in Burma, however, which has drawn widespread scorn for its refusal of foreign aid and its cynical, self-serving response.
Cyclone Nargis, a category four storm with wind speeds rising to 150mph, landed in the Irrawaddy rice-farming district - an immensely complex network of rivers, streams and tributaries - on May 3. What land the district has is low and flat. Under normal conditions, the area is only navigable by boat, but it nevertheless is densely populated, with seven million out of Burma’s 63 million people living in the area.
It is no surprise at all, then, that the eighth worst cyclone in history should produce such a catastrophic result. On May 8, the senior US diplomat in Burma estimated a death toll of over 100,000 once diseases were taken into account. At the time of writing, official government figures have reached 29,000 deaths and 42,000 missing, but the consensus among NGOs is that this is an underestimation.1
Even given the unhappy coincidence of natural factors, however, the devastation has become a full-blown catastrophe - to a considerable extent thanks to a series of failures on the part of the junta. It hesitated for almost a week before allowing shipments of international aid, and still refuses to grant visas to aid workers.
The response from the western media, as well as the political establishment, has been predictably apoplectic. I need only cite a recent Observer article by leading liberal-imperialist Nick Cohen. In it, after some of Cohen’s trademark semi-coherent ranting about the left’s support for the Viet Cong, he eventually demands that aid workers are escorted into Burma by military forces (as has, apparently, liberal pin-up activist Aung San Suu Kyi).2
Predictably apoplectic, because the same establishment has been bestowing some of its highly selective crocodile tears upon the Burmese people for years now. The publicity granted to ‘pro-democracy’ movements, particularly to Suu Kyi herself, reached a new peak during mass demonstrations last autumn.
Nevertheless, however cynical the response from imperialist officials and ideologues, it is clear that Burma is a deeply repressive state. The current regime has its roots in the military coup staged by general Ne Win in 1962. He overthrew the elected government, with the supposed threat of former president Sao Shwe Thaik’s federalist movement (and the support it enjoyed among oppressed nationalities) as a pretext, and put into place a ruthless dictatorship supposedly guiding the country along the ‘Burmese way to socialism’ - a grotesque parody of a leftwing programme which enshrined an idiosyncratic buddhism, total national isolationism and repression of national minorities.
Burma’s economy in this period (and to this day) was modelled on the Stalinist countries of the eastern bloc; but, while the latter at least managed the basic reproduction of labour-power in spite of its systematic state of disproportionality, Burma was consistently wracked with poverty and starvation - this despite the great productivity of the Irrawaddy delta, once called the ‘rice bowl of the British empire’.
The Communist Party, instead of leading the masses (or even building, as in other countries, a popular front for bourgeois ‘democracy’), was committed to a sub-Maoist guerrillaist strategy of underground paramilitary activity in the countryside, to ‘surround the cities’. In 1988, things nevertheless came to a head - mass protests demanded the end of the military regime.
In the event, another coup put pay both to the ‘Burmese way’ and the aspirations of the masses, languishing under the jackboot of Ne Win’s successors. The socialist phrase-mongering of the regime was dropped, and it reverted to a more or less undisguised version of what had long been the case - a country run by a completely corrupt ruling class, divided into bureaucratic fiefdoms. Foreign investment increased, but almost always had to be directed through joint ventures with the state companies that still control most of the economy (the private sector predominates in consumer goods and agriculture, apart from rice, but many companies are owned or co-owned by the military).
The central question in assessing the present catastrophe, then, is the viability, even on the most functional level, of the regime (now officially called the State Peace and Development Council). There are two aspects to this question - the primary aspect is the ability of the opposition movements as presently constituted to destroy the SPDC; and the second is the level of support that it can enjoy internationally.
To take the second matter first, we have seen that at present imperialist support is rapidly waning. This has been particularly true since 1997, when the United States began to impose sanctions, which ultimately grew to a blanket ban on US investment in, and exports from, Burma. Since then, the European Union has followed with more limited embargoes on ‘non-humanitarian’ aid and arms sales.
In terms of the balance of payments, the main support for Burma is regional. The CIA factbook has most exports going to Thailand (48.8%), and imports coming from China (35.1%). Other major trading partners include India, Japan and Singapore.3 On the broader stage of diplomatic and military power, it is clear that the most important names on that list are China and India.
It would be easy, then, to paint Burma as yet another theatre for the sharpening competition, economic and political, between the old capitalist bloc and China, increasingly integrated into the world economy yet forming its own sphere of influence, complete with semi-colonies. Indeed, to trace the ‘humanitarian’ panics that have wracked the conscience of the western bourgeoisie - Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma - is in one sense to list those countries most firmly entrenched in the Chinese sphere of influence, and most reliant on Chinese trade (in Burma’s case, imports) for basic reproduction.
However, it may be that there is less going on than meets the eye. It is surely not coincidental that the first US sanctions coincided with the stalling of economic reforms introduced after the 1988 coup. The imperialist support for Suu Kyi is at least partially a simple matter of removing obstacles to full-scale ‘neoliberalisation’ of Burma.
This brings us to the opposition. It is obvious enough that ill-feeling towards the SPDC runs deep, and with good reason - it has presided over a near-permanent state of economic ruin, brutally suppressed all opposition and targeted national minorities with a callous enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, the democratic forces in Burma are hobbled by their present leadership. It is dominated by pro-imperialist elements (Suu Kyi) and religious forces. Their success would perhaps lighten the load of repression, but not result in any serious control for the workers and oppressed masses, or put another grain of rice in Burmese bellies for that matter. The anarchy of the market would certainly not be any better suited to dealing with a natural catastrophe than the current pseudo-feudal arrangements, as seen in the Hurricane Katrina debacle in New Orleans.
This is not really the issue, though: the most important weakness is displayed by the tactic of organising peaceful demonstration after peaceful demonstration, and issuing demands for piecemeal electoral reforms without any serious forces to back them up. The only plausible strategic perspective here (as with Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe) is sitting tight until UN (or US) troops turn up - or sufficient western ‘soft war’ pressure is applied to the military to force it to roll over. Both options translate quite simply into humanitarian disasters of their own kind.
The other major forces in opposition are the national minority movements and the Communist Party. The former are a fraction of their old strength, however; whereas they once organised significant fighting forces and even had limited support from Maoist China, now small armies do well simply to survive. The Karen National Union, for example, based near the Thai border, can do little more than infrequently skirmish with the junta’s forces. More seriously, there has never been any serious cohesion between the different national movements, and Burma - like many countries in the region - is complexly divided along ethnic lines.
The politically disorientated CP, meanwhile, is likewise much smaller than it once was. It failed to either foresee or truly take advantage of the 1988 events, stuck as it was in a Maoist preoccupation with the countryside. While some commentators have suggested it may yet have a serious role to play in the battle against the junta, it is difficult to see it doing so in the near future.
Genuine communists must take the lead in the democratic struggle of the masses. History has demonstrated again and again that the bourgeoisie is no force for democratic change and the working class is the only serious candidate for bringing it about. A successful strategy will have to involve a diversity of tactics - armed struggle cannot be ruled out, but not the guerrillaist dead-end of the CPB; demonstrations, of course, but not the sitting-duck orgies of martyrdom favoured by monks and Aung San Suu Kyi. It will have to be mass in its proportions - to bring out millions in the streets, and bring about a unity among the national movements.
It is too late for the 100,000-plus dead of Cyclone Nargis, but revolution in Burma - coupled with revolution across south-east Asia and the subcontinent - will open the way for future disasters to be averted.
Notes
1. www.redcross.org.uk/standard.asp?id=80843
2. ‘We must not shrink from our moral obligation to Burma’, May 11.
3. www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bm.html#Econ