¶Various theories have been put forward as to why the left, in advanced capitalist countries, should support national liberation struggles.
¶The Communist parties, for example, support such struggles because
nationalism in the Third World seems to collide with the interests of
the U.S. National liberation is thus thought to weaken
U.S.
imperialism. They hope that Russia, which supports these movements
ideologically and/or materially, will benefit.
¶The Maoists follow a similar logic, though after Nixon’s visit to
China, one suspects that Mao’s anti-imperialist
zeal may be
directed only against the Russian bureaucracy. Western Castroites and
progressive
liberals of all hues support such movements out of a
sense of moral duty
.
¶For these people, national liberation is a universal blessing which
should be given to – or taken by – the leaders
of the Third
World. One should add perhaps that these noble sentiments don’t stop
these same Castroites and liberals from supporting capitalist
leaders
like McGovern in the U.S. – or calling for a return of
the Labour Party in the next British elections.
¶Trotskyist support for national liberation is a bit more
sophisticated. It consists of grand (and banal) historical schemes.
First, the national liberation movements should be supported – this is
the communal bed of all Trotskyists (Mandel, Cliff, Healy, Ah, etc.).
Whether the support is critical
or uncritical
is another
matter – and here Trotskyists part company and proceed to their
respective rooms.
¶But, someone may ask, why the support in the first place? The answer
provided is an example of historical scheme-making: U.S. imperialism
will be weakened
by such movements. Such a weakening
will
impart another transitional
twitch to the death agony of
capitalism
which in turn will foster other twitches … and so on.
Like all mystifications, Trotskyism fails to give a coherent answer as
to why, especially since 1945, imperialism has been able to grant
political independence to many ex-colonial countries, a possibility that
Lenin and Trotsky explicitly denied.
¶The theory of permanent revolution
blinds Trotskyists to the
realities of national liberation. They still consider that the
bourgeoisie, in the Third World, is incapable of fighting for
national independence
. But they fail to grasp that the
permanent revolution
, in Russia for example, both began and ended
as a bourgeois revolution (in spite of the proletariat’s alleged
leading role
in the unfolding of the process). In Russia, the
bourgeois stage (i.e. both February and October) very concretely ensured
that there would be no future socialist
unfolding. The
permanent revolution
carried out by the Bolsheviks only brought
about a state-capitalist reorganisation of the economy and social life.
The solving
of the bourgeois tasks will destroy, as it did in
Russia, all the autonomous rank and file organisations of the working
class (councils and factory committees). They become subordinates of the
state, which is the organism par excellence for carrying out
belated
bourgeois revolutions.
¶Any bureaucracy, given favourable conditions, can solve
the
bourgeois tasks in the Third World. The permanent revolution
doesn’t need the working class, except as cannon fodder. The
accumulation of capital, through expanded reproduction, is the basis of
its bureaucratic power and whether the bureaucracy accumulates
successfully or not is besides the point. In any case there has never
been a pure
capitalist country which has solved
all its
bourgeois tasks. Even Britain still has a queen.
¶Trotskyist support for movements of national liberation, however, is
thus support for another social group … and not for the working class or
peasantry. Trotskyists present their support for the leadership of
various national liberation movements as a tactic
which will
allow them to gain control of the movement. In their mythology, the
leaderships of such movements are incapable of carrying out the struggle
for national independence. As we have seen, this is nonsense, pure and
simple: the Chinese, Cuban or North Vietnamese bureaucracies went all
the way
in expropriating western capitalists without an ounce of
help from any of the Fourth Internationals. They also mercilessly
slaughtered or imprisoned all Trotskyists in those countries. Insofar as
Trotskyists babble about a democratisation
of such regimes
through political revolution
, they are the reformists of state
capital.
¶Lenin’s theory of imperialism, written in 1916, is usually quoted by
all the trad left groups to sanction their support for national
liberation. The theory holds that a Western labour aristocracy
has been created out of super-profits squeezed out of colonial
countries. This is a bourgeois concept because it places national
factors above class analysis. Concepts such as proletarian
nations
versus imperialist nations
flow naturally from such
an analysis – they were in fact peddled in the 30’s by fascists.
Nowadays, Gunder Frank with his theory of the development of
under-development
and Emmanuel’s unequal exchange
provide
fresh examples of the bourgeois-leninist attitudes so deeply entrenched
in the left.
¶Nationalism and class struggle are irreconcilably opposed. A nation
is a bourgeois reality: it is capitalism with all its exploitation and
alienation, parcelled out in a single geographical unit. It doesn’t
matter whether the nation is small, ’colonial
,
semi-colonial
or non-imperialist
. All nationalisms are
reactionary because they inevitably clash with class consciousness and
poison it with chauvinism and racialism. The nationalist sentiment in
the advanced countries is reactionary, not only because it facilitates
the plundering of the colonial workers and peasants, but because it is a
form of false consciousness which ideologically binds the western
workers to their
ruling classes. Similarly, the nationalism of
the oppressed
is reactionary because it facilitates class
collaboration between the colonial workers and peasants and the
anti-imperialist
nascent bureaucracies.
¶The Trotskyist myth that a successful national liberation will later
unleash the real class struggle
is false, as the examples of
Ethiopia, North Vietnam, Mexico under Cardenas, and Brazil under Vargas
bear out. It is a rationalisation for the defence of new ruling classes
in the process of formation. As historical evidence shows, those new
elites usually become appendages of the already existing state
capitalist bloc. To this degree Trotskyism is a variety of vicarious
social patriotism.
¶Any intelligent person can see that the fate of the advanced capitalist countries doesn’t depend on the Third World’s ability to cut off supplies of raw materials. The Third World’s ruling classes will never get together to plan or practice an effective boycott on a world scale. Furthermore, the U.S. and Western Europe are becoming less dependent upon many of the products of the Third World. Add to that the falling prices for raw materials in the world market, the protectionist barriers in the advanced countries, and one gets a picture of imminent barbarism in the Third World. Its bargaining position vis-a-vis the West weakens every year. Third Worldists should seriously ponder about these tendencies.
¶National liberation struggles can be seen as attempts of sections of
the native ruling classes to appropriate a larger share of the value
generated in their own
countries. Imperialist exploitation indeed
generates this consciousness in the more educated
strata of the
Third World. These strata tend to consider themselves as the repository
of the Fatherland
. Needless to say, a worsening in ’the trade
terms for raw materials in the Third World aggravates this situation.
The growth of many national liberation movements in the past 25 years is
a manifestation of the imbalance existing in the world market. The Third
World countries plunge deeper into decay, famine, stagnation, political
corruption and nepotism. National rebellion may then be channelled into
active politics by discontented army officers, priests, petty
bureaucrats, intellectuals and (of course) angry children of the
bourgeois and landlord classes. The grievances of the workers and
peasants are real too (the above mentioned worthies largely account for
them), but the nationalist leaders can still hope to capture the
imagination of the exploited. If this happens one sees the beginnings of
a national liberation movement based explicitly on class collaboration,
with all the reactionary implications this has for the exploited. They
emerge out of the frying pan of foreign exploitation into the fire of
national despotism.
¶For such regimes to survive against the open hostility of the Western
capitalist bloc, or its insidious world market mechanisms, it is
imperative that the regimes become dependent on the state capitalist
bloc (Russia and/or China). If this is not possible, an extremely
precarious balancing act (neutralism
) becomes the dominant fact
of life (as shown by Egypt or India). Without massive assistance from
the state capitalist bloc it is impossible for any such regime even
modestly to begin primitive accumulation. The majority of the Third
World countries don’t have the resources to start such a programme on
their own. And even if they did, it could only be done (as any
accumulation) through intensified exploitation. Higher consumption
levels and welfare programmes may temporarily be established by these
regimes. Those who can see no further than economistic steps to
socialism
usually quote this to explain why Castro is
better
than Batista or Mao preferable
to Chiang. Without
dealing with the reactionary implications of such reformism at a
national level, let’s see how the argument works internationally. Castro
supported the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, Ho Chi Minh
defended the Russian crushing of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and
Mao supported Yahya Khan’s genocide in Bangladesh. Thus what is
gained
at home is lost abroad, in the form of heaps of corpses
and massive political demoralisation. Does the trad left keep account of
such a reactionary balance sheet?
¶The ideological repercussions of such international events are difficult to gauge, but are no doubt reactionary. The further bureaucratisation of the Third World merely reinforces working class prejudices and apathy in the advanced countries. The responses of the imperialist bourgeoisies will be to mount further protectionist barriers and, at the same time, to increase the profitable arms trade. The bureaucratisation of the Third World will enhance the prestige – both ideological and diplomatic – of the state capitalist bloc, in spite of the latter’s inter-imperialist rivalries. This process will be accompanied by an increasing demoralisation and cynicism in the circles of the trad left. This is already patently clear today: in many demos covering international affairs, portraits of Ho, Mao, Castro, Guevara and a host of other scoundrels (Hoxha, Kim-Il Sung, etc.) are obscenely paraded. Such cults express the ideological debasement of our times, and it’s no accident that working people feel only contempt or indifference towards the trad left and the heroes it worships.
¶Another equally important dimension of national liberation struggles
is ignored by the trad left. It Is the question of working class and
peasant democracy and of the revolutionary self-activity of the masses.
National liberation will always repress such autonomous working class
activities because the bourgeois goals of national liberation (i.e.
nation-building) are opposed – in class terms – to the historical
interests of working people (i.e. the liberation of humanity). It thus
becomes clear why all the leaderships of national liberation movements
attempt to control, from above, any initiative of the masses, and
prescribe for them only the politics of nationalism. To do this it is
necessary actually to terrorise the working masses (Ben Bella’s FLN
massacred dozens of Algerian workers during the Algerian war of
independence
, Ho’s Viet Mihn helped the British and French to
crush the Saigon Workers’ Commune of 1945 and later assassinated dozens
of Trotskyists; Guevara publicly attacked the Cuban Trotskyists and
Castro’s attacks against them in 1966 sealed their fate even as
reformists of the Castroite ruling class.) The state capitalist elites,
even before they take power, must attempt to eradicate any independent
voice of opposition, and their complete rule wipes out any possibility
of even meagre measures of bourgeois democracy.
¶Support for any national liberation struggle is always reactionary. It usually consists of:
- support for a client state of the state capitalist bloc, which amounts to defending state capitalist imperialism against Western imperialism;
- support for despotic regimes which destroy, together with classic bourgeois property forms, any independent organisation of the working class and peasantry.
¶It is often claimed that a distinction must be made between the
reactionary and bureaucratic leaderships of national liberation
struggles and the masses of people involved in such struggles. Their
objectives are said to be different. We believe this distinction seldom
to be valid. The foreigner is usually hated as a foreigner, not as an
exploiter – because he belongs to a different culture, not because he
extracts surplus value. This prepares the way for local exploiters to
step into the shoes of the foreign ones. Moreover the fact that a given
programme (say, national independence) has considerable support does not
endow it with any automatic validity. Mass consciousness
can be
mass false-consciousness.
Millions of French, British, Russian
and German workers slaughtered one another in the first World War,
having internalised the national
ideas of their respective
rulers. Hitler secured 6 million votes in September 1930. The leaders of
national struggles can only come to power because there is a nationalist
feeling which they can successfully manipulate. The bonds of national
unity
will then prove stronger than the more important but
divisive
class struggle.
¶In practice all that revolutionaries can currently do in the Third
World is to avoid compromise on the cardinal issue: namely that working
people have no fatherland
and that for socialists the main enemy
is always in one’s own country. Revolutionaries can strive to create
autonomous organs of struggle (peasants or village committees or
workers’ groups) with the aim of resisting exploitation, whatever the
colour of the exploiter’s skin. They can warn systematically of the
dangers and repression these bodies will face from foreign imperialism
and from the nascent bourgeoisie or bureaucracy. They can point out that
their own societies are divided into classes and that these classes have
mutually incompatible interests, just like the classes in the
foreign
societies that oppress them.
¶Although difficult this is essential and the only road that doesn’t involve mystifying oneself and one’s own supporters. In South Vietnam, for instance, the conflict of interests between rulers and ruled is obvious enough. No great effort is needed to see the gulf separating the well-fed corrupt politicians and generals in Saigon and the women, riddled with hookworms, breaking their backs in the paddy fields. But in the North? Is there really a community of interests between the Haiphong docker or cement worker and the political commissar in Hanoi? Between those who initiated and those who suppressed the peasant uprising of November 1956? Between those who led and those who put down the Saigon Commune of 1945? Between Ta Tu Thau and his followers and those who butchered them? To even demand that such issues be discussed will endanger the revolutionaries. Could there be better proof of the viciously anti-working class nature of these regimes?
¶Some Third World
countries are so backward or isolated, and
have such an insignificant working class, that it is difficult to see
how such a class could even begin to struggle independently. The problem
however is not a national one. The solution to the misery and alienation
of these workers and peasants is in the international development of the
proletarian revolution. The revolution in the advanced capitalist
countries will decisively tip the scales the world over. The success of
such a revolution, even in its earliest stages, will liberate enormous
technological resources to help these isolated, weak and exploited
groups.
¶Owing to the different social, political and economic weights of
various Third World countries, proletarian revolutions or revolutionary
workers’ councils in these countries will have varying repercussions on
their neighbours, and on the advanced countries. The effects will,
however, be more political than economic. A workers and peasants’
take-over in Chile (which will irretrievably smash the Allende state)
will not damage the American economy. But such an explosive event might
provide a revolutionary example for the workers of Argentina, Peru,
Bolivia, etc., and help the American workers to gain a revolutionary
consciousness. The same could be said of Nigeria, India or even Ceylon
in their respective contexts. He who rejects this perspective as
improbable
or impossible
abandons any revolutionary
perspective for the workers of what is loosely called the Third
World
. In fact there are everywhere only two worlds
: that of
the exploiter and that of the exploited. To this degree, the
international working class is one class, with the same historical
objective.
¶We leave it to the trad left to support the imperialism of its choice, be it Russian, or Chinese, or any new shining light in the Stalinist cosmos. For us, the main enemy will always be at home, and the only way we can help ourselves and the workers and peasants of the Third World is to help make a socialist revolution here. But it would be tantamount to scabbing if at any moment we supported reactionary movements which exploit – no matter in how small a way – a section of the international working class.