[A-List] Kurds

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bob Enoch asks whether "the Kurds don't have a right to be 
nationalists".  From the point of view of bourgeois ideology, they 
have all the right on Earth. Not from the point of view of socialism.

History is a terrible Goddess, all of us Marxists know that, etc.

The problem with the minor nationalities in the age of imperialism is 
that _not every national struggle is, by itself, revolutionary_. The 
ultimate goal of national struggles is to generate the conditions for 
national independence and the constitution of a self-centered economy 
that can survive in the global scenario.

Thus, in the end, any national struggle seeks "independence". Not 
every "independence", however, operates in the sense of the struggle 
for socialism.

I will begin by some obvious examples, such as US independence, or 
German independence. The condition for their independence is the 
colonization of others ("Why is it that our oil lies under Iraqi 
soil"). For such nationalities, the only way to keep faithful to 
themselves _and_ to the general advancement of humanity is to 
trascend capitalism, step ahead, and become socialist states.

A second kind of example, which I broach now because it has to do 
with the Kurdish question, is what I would term "enclave" national 
questions. Israel is the most appropiate case here. Whatever many on 
the Left may believe, pro-imperialist, Zionist, Israelis are 
definitely NOT a Western outpost without qualifications. Whether we 
Marxists like it or not, there exists an Israeli nationality, a child 
of both imperialist expansion on the Middle East and the barbarian 
massacre of Jews in Europe during World War II. The problem with this 
kind of "national struggles" is that they can only achieve 
"independence" through support from and active promotion of the 
general interest of the imperialist powers in the area where they are 
implanted. These enclaves, just like the peoples in the First World 
great powers, need to revolutionize their capitalist structures and 
step ahead towards socialism, which will be the only way they can 
survive without murdering everyone around them.

A third, and more complex case, is that of peoples and countries 
which have been victimized by imperialism in the periphery. Iraq, 
says Bob, has been "invented" by the British while the Kurds are much 
older. True enough. But it does not follow that the right to 
"independence" of a Kurd nation has the same (or even a higher) level 
than the right to independence of the Iraqi nation.

While an eventual Kurdish "independent" state would most probably 
become some kind of Kurdish Kuwait (40% of Iraqi oil reserves lie 
around Kirkuk), would depend on imperialist support and funding, and 
would become a permanent menace to its neighbors, an independent Iraq 
would depend on the revolutionary unification of the Arab world, thus 
stabbing imperialism at its very heart.

It is very meaningful, in this sense, that the first movements of the 
still inchoate but rising Iraqi resistence stress the necessity of 
Arab national unity.

It has been a very old imperialist practice to put "minor 
nationalities'" rights across the road to national independence in 
the Third World. What about the Meo poppy traffickers in Laos, for 
example? What about the Tibetan "oppressed" national theocracy?

The golden rule, here as elsewhere, is that laid by the Bolsheviks: 
if it strengthens imperialists it is not good.

Peoples such as the Kurds (not the only case) are entitled to 
national autonomy not to national independence. And full national 
autonomy, of course, is completely linked to the socialist 
construction of independence in the Third World. Not easy, but nobody 
told us that making history would ever be.

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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"Sí, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Simón Bolívar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de 
Buenos Aires, 1822
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