05.09.2013

Syria: Not a revolution

The left is in danger of becoming a cheerleader for overtly reactionary forces, observes Harley Filben. Syria is being divided along sectarian, not class-struggle, lines

The bloodbath in Syria, being fought out between a brutal dictator and fragmented gangs of Islamists, is still somehow being called a ‘revolution’ by many on the left. It is perhaps a new low point in an increasingly bizarre descent into self-delusion.

The likes of the Socialist Workers Party and Workers Power cling to increasingly distant images of anti-Assad protests like drowning men to driftwood. Yet one notices, inevitably, that references to “the revolution” themselves start to take on a distant, abstract character. Much is made of a Syrian group calling itself the Revolutionary Left Current, but, apart from a hastily assembled website1, it appears to have little substance - the relative prominence given to it (as opposed to, say, the larger and pro-Assad likes of the Democratic Union Party or the Communist Party of Syria) suggests that wishful thinking rather than unique insight into the situation is responsible for SWP and WP enthusiasm.

Since the character of the armed groups in the Syrian opposition (that is, the groups which actually matter) is clear to all with eyes to see, ‘the revolution’ becomes a kind of demiurge somehow at work, in no doubt mysterious ways, among the carnage. Marcus Halaby of Workers Power starts an article2 with the famous Lenin citation on the Easter Rising - “Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it,” and so forth.3

The context is a polemic against the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, whose line4 - however typically dreadful - at least has the virtue of acknowledging the reactionary nature of the Syrian rebels. Yet it is the WP account of events in Syria that is the ‘pure revolution’ - the revolution that somehow escapes grubby reality altogether. In this particular case, the analogy with the Easter Rising would hold, had the rebels of 1916 been composed mainly of run-of-the-mill Catholic reactionaries, with a growing detachment of Austrian and French proto-fascist gangs making their way to the colony specifically to conduct holy war against godless and Protestant heretics (and increasingly the ‘softer’ reactionary elements), and no significant progressive forces whatsoever.

No, comrades - if any violent disruption whatsoever to a reactionary state power counts as a ‘revolution’, then we should support the Iraqi and Afghani ‘revolutions’ as well! We should have, for that matter, supported the Yugoslavian ‘revolution’ of the early to mid-1990s, right to its bitter and bloody climax. We should have supported the Algerian ‘revolution’ - no, not that one, but the ‘revolution’ of the 1990s, in which a conflict between an oppressive state and Islamists eventually became a crucible for a level of fanaticism that makes Osama bin Laden look like Justin Welby, resulting ultimately in countless atrocities on both sides and 200,000 deaths. (I do not cite this example facetiously - the parallels with Syria are all too chillingly clear.)

It is, indeed, a sin for any Marxist to fail to recognise a revolutionary movement simply because things are not going exactly to plan A. It is equally incumbent upon us, however, to recognise the other great potentiality in this decaying society - barbarism - for what it is.

Failure to look reality soberly in the face leads, first of all, to more general errors in assessment of what is going on - in brief, while there are scarcely any states the world over that do not contain national, religious or other minorities, and few indeed where they enjoy meaningful equality, the states that once comprised the former Ottoman empire were deliberately designed for administrative convenience by French and British colonial imperialism.

There is now a real danger that the failure of the artificial Syrian state will become generalised in an acute crisis of the region, and enough examples exist in history to suggest that this process will neither be pretty nor - as should be obvious - beneficial to progressive or revolutionary forces. Historical progress demands the unification at least of the Arab east; any momentum in that direction that once existed has now been slammed into reverse. All those who imagine the Syrian catastrophe to be a ‘revolution’ are necessarily blind to this fact.

The second consequence is political - this situation is the creation, in longer-term history, of British and French imperialism and in more recent times of their American inheritor, through its uniformly destructive military adventures. If comrade Halaby wants to trade Lenin quotes, then here is a pertinent one - the main enemy is at home. This is so prevalent in Lenin’s works from 1914 onwards that I hope no footnote is necessary; and it is a particularly sharp lesson here - the ‘triple alliance’ of Britain, France and America between them are the architects of the situation that led to this bloodbath. They opposed all attempts at pan-Arab unification; they took turns in sponsoring the Israeli settler-colonial project, they prop up the brutal Gulf monarchies that are currently arming the rebels. Western intervention, we may confidently predict, will make things even worse than they already are; indeed, through indirect arming of sectarian groups, it already has.

Alas, comrade Halaby comes to a different conclusion: “The revolution needs arms!” screams another headline of his.5 “The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) ... called a protest in central London for June 15 to ‘Stop western intervention in Syria’ … The STWC has noticeably not felt any need to oppose the imperialist intervention that has actually been taking place in Syria since the outbreak of the Syrian people’s uprising in March 2011 - by Russian and Chinese imperialism in support of the Assad regime,” he complains. The main enemy is at home, so long as you are in Moscow or Beijing.

The article consists as a whole of criticisms of the western powers for “cynicism”, in that they fail to arm the ‘revolution’ despite friendly noises towards the Syrian rebels. He does not quite say that the west should arm the opposition; merely that the latter should be armed by agents unknown. As for Stop the War: “For Britain’s anti-war movement to use this tragedy as an opportunity to revive a moribund organisation that has long outlived its role is nothing less than shameful.”

At this point, it should be clear we are in dangerous territory - little more than the Workers Power masthead distinguishes this approach from the diet Eustonism of the AWL (except that, in this case, even the AWL cannot ignore the political character of the rebels). Workers Power - and the SWP, though it is not quite so far gone as to take an ‘arm the rebels’ line - need desperately to cease prettifying this grim situation, and re-acquaint themselves with reality.

Notes

1. syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com.

2. www.workerspower.co.uk/2013/06/syria-revolution-communal-war-and-a-negotiated-settlement.

3. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm.

4. www.workersliberty.org/syriaresolution.

5. www.workerspower.co.uk/2013/07/syria-the-revolution-needs-arms.