Re: AUT: the destruction of Israel

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nate, you wrote

> Before I thought you were > arguing against Harald
on the basis of what you take > to be the reactionary
> effects of his ideas if they were widely held...Here
> you've said (without any > support) that his ideas
are just an impossible > pipe-dream.

But the point is that utopian ideas can be used for
very practical and very reactionary ends. The idea of
social democracy, for instance, is utopian, has proven
again and again to be utopian, yet social democracy
has been a tremendous practical force in the world,
and has benefitted a couple of groups of people no
end. Harald's ideas are a left version of the
argument, which is almost hegemonic in the left of the
First World, that imperialism (the modern form of
capitalism) can be reformed, so that wars and national
liberation struggles can be ended.

This really is pie in the sky stuff, but it has
repeatedly been used to justify and reinforce
imperialist foreign policy in the First World. For
instance, the leaders of the Second International used
it - in the guise of Kautsky's theory of
ultra-imperialism, and the British Labour Party's
commitment to an International Government
(proto-League of Nations) - to justify support for the
First World War. Today, some of what is sometimes
called the 'Porto Allegre left' use it justify UN
'solutions' in 'troublespots' around the world. Many
anarchists are today echoing the social democratic
line - see, for instance, the IWW's statement on the
war.

Traditionally, revolutionaries argue that imperialism
is a crisis-ridden system, that wars happen because of
imperialism, not as aberrations. So they call for
revolution to stop imperialist war, whereas the social
democratic left looks to the reform of imperialism.

Why can't imperialism be reformed and national
liberation struggles be made outdated? Revolutionaries
argue that doing this would require raising economic
semi-colonies to the status of imperialist countries.
Only in this way could a material base be created for
bourgeois democracy and a welfare state, and the
semi-colonies be stabilised so that the question of
national liberation disappeared. But every semi-colony
cannot be made into an imperialist country anymore
than every worker can be made into a capitalist. The
programme for reforming imperialism fails in the same
way that the social democratic programme for removing
the inequalities of capitalism at home fails for most
workers. The democratic rights that we in the West
enjoy are premised on the superexploitation of
semi-colonies.

What would Harald's 'de facto(!) capitalist'
federation  require, to eliminate national liberation
as an issue for the Arab members of the federation? It
would require the raising of Lebanon and Syria to the
economic level of the imperialist countries. If the
economies of these countries expanded to this level,
then there would be 'space' for the granting of
various democratic rights and reforms. The tiny margin
that superexploitation leaves for democratic rights
would be greatly expanded. It would be possible to
have relatively free trade unions, open elections, and
even social democratic governments without provoking
revolutionary crises, because there would be enough
money in the box to pay for some pay rises to bribe a
section of the workers and for some sort of welfare
state.

This is what happened in the imperialist countries
towards the end of the nineteenth sectury and early in
the twentieth century: the economic development of
capitalism made possible the expansion of democratic
rights and social spending (and later on cheap
petrol!). These things bribed off a section of the
working class, which Lenin called the 'labour
aristocracy', and gave them an interest in supporting
their own country's imperialist policies abroad. It
was the labour aristocracy which was behind the
capitulation of the Second International to war, and
the creation of the social democratic parties. It is
the labour aristocracy which is ultimately behind the
'reformist imperialist' politics of the most of the
Western left.

There is no US national liberation movement because US
workers are not superexploited by foreign capitalists
who use either their own troops or else the security
apparatus of a puppet US government to enforce their
superexploitation by denying them and *everyone else*
except the tiny elite 'comprador' (puppet) class
democratic rights (ie the right to organsie
politically and industrially). There is no material
base for a national liberation movement in the US,
then.

What has to be hammered home is the impossibility of
repeating the Western experience in the Third World in
an effort to stabilise imperialism and end national
liberation struggles. In the first place, the Western
expansion came at the expense of the rest of the
world. Capitalism at home was stabilised by the export
of capitalist social relations to colonies and
semi-colonies. New markets, cheap resources, labour to
superexploit. The democratic rights that we in the
West enjoy are premised on the superexploitation of
semi-colonies.

In the second place, one only has to look at the
history of the last few decades, in the West and in
the semi-colonies, to see that capitalism (aka
imperialism) is a clapped out system which is
incapable of the dynamism that would be needed to
raise living standards in the Third World, let alone
transfrom semi-colonies into imperialist countries.

There was a period after the Second World War when it
looked like a number of semi-colonies were going to
break out of the loop. With high prices for their
primary product exports and protectionist policies
that were in line with Western Keynesian orthodoxy,
Brazil and Argentina in the 50s and 60s tried hard to
develop a more independent capitalism.

At the end of the 60s, though, the unravelling of the
Keynesian postwar global economic order underwritten
by the US gold standard meant that the huge sums these
nations had borrowed to finance industrialisation
began to come back to haunt them. Look at Argentina
and Brazil today. Even worse, imperialist economies
knocked by the end of the long boom began moving more
aggressively into the Third World in an effort to cut
the prices of labour and of the raw materials there,
and to open previously-protected markets to their
products. There began 'globalisation'. A few years
later Western workers got the same sort of shock
treatment with neoliberalism.

Today, it is clear to anyone who wants to look that
capitalism is unable to hold the standard of living
even in imperialist countries, let alone boost it in
the semi-colonies. Neoliberalism and globalisation
were a purge, but no real binge of capital
accumulation has followed them.

Imperialism only ever stablised after the long crisis
of (roughly) 1914-1941
by destroying huge amounts of fixed capital and
reorganising and attacking the working class during
World War Two. Today, only war and/or extremely deep
(and probably politically impossible) recession can
revive imperialism from the 'long crisis' that began
at the end of the sixties. The idea that capitalism
has enough dynamism to create a material basis for the
end of national liberation in places like Palestine is
a fantasy. Imperialism is stepping up the
superexploitation of the semi-colonies, and so
reinforcing the basis for national liberation.

The national liberation struggle inspired the lack of
democratic rights is not going to go away as long as
imperialism does not go away, whatever Harald might
wish. Assuming that Israel did not exist and it could
be conceivably created, a federation of semi-colonies
in the east meditteranean would still be dominated by
imperialism and breed cross-class nationalist
movements fighting for democratic rights. Maybe they'd
be 'East Mediterranean' nationalist movements, but
they'd have the same dynamic.

The real question is: how do revolutionaries deal with
the reality of cross-class movements for national
liberation in the semi-colonies? I argued right at the
beginning of this thread that there are three
approaches - permanent revolution, the political bloc
and two-stage revolution, and the ultra-left
non-approach. The ultra-left non-approach may be
utopian, but it is also very practical and very
dangerous in the wrong hands, just as Kautsky's theory
of ultra-imperialism was dangerous in 1914.

Cheers
Scott






=====
"Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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