Re: AUT: Re: unions against the war??

["Nate Holdren" <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Scott-
I've been thinking about this whole anti-war thing and the relationship of
anti-war action/movements to 'anticapitalism' or revolution.
The basic question I wonder about is this: is it necessarily the case that
the 'best' anti-war movement from a revolutionary perspective (in the sense
of most building for revolution) is going to be the 'best' anti-war movement
from a solely 'stop this war' perspective (in the sense of being most
expedient and effective in preventing or ending a specific war like the
impending one w/ Iraq)?

It seems to me that you and maybe Neil seem to answer this question with a
'yes' and Laura maybe would answer with a 'no' (I'm assuming, due to her
remarks about the breadth of the movement in Italy).

My gut feeling is to go with Laura on this, but I have to think more about
it.
Part of this is due to experiences I had as part of the group that organized
an action here in Chicago against the TransAtlantic Business Dialog. I don't
have time to go into details right now (all work and no play leaves me with
less time for email), but we got into a huge argument about 'message' for
the demonstration, between groups who wanted the message to be "against war,
against capitalism, against the TABD" and groups who wanted a softer
anti-globalization/anti-corporate message (something like "TABD is not
welcome in our city"). Gotta run.
cheers,
n8



>From: Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: AUT: Re: unions against the war??
>Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 22:05:27 +0000 (GMT)
>
>
>The dominant strand of the European bourgeoisie has
>little to gain and much to lose from a unilateral US
>invasion of Iraq. The French, for instance, have
>significant interests in Iraq's oil industry. Several
>European countries - France and Germany, especially -
>are attempting to compete, or rather coexist, with
>U.S. imperialism by carving out their own 'spheres of
>influence'. There was quite a struggle over central
>Asia, especially the oil reserves there, with the
>early European ascendancy being reversed after S 11,
>the invasion of Afghanistan, and the setting up of US
>military bases in several Central Asian states.
>
>
>The Europeans are in no position to compete with the
>US militarily, and therefore look to multilateral
>institutions like the UN to muzzle US unilaterlaism
>and advance their own interests. That's what all the
>talk about 'international law' comes down to.
>
>Britain does not challenge the US in the way that
>France and Germany do - ever since the end of the
>Second World War, which confirmed the US's gradual
>usurpation of Britain's role as leading imperialist
>power and guarantor of the world economy, Britain has
>employed the strategy of attaching itself closely to
>the US and hoping to get crumbs from the big boys'
>table. Britain is in truth too weak to pursue the
>relatively independent line favoured by France and
>Germany. It has little choice but to follow the US in
>its late imperialist adventures. The liberals and
>social democrats of the Guardian and the Mirror only
>think Blair's attachment to Bush 'perverse' because
>they ignore this fact.
>
>It can also be seen, though, that a section of the
>British bourgeoisie, the so-called Europhiles
>represented by a minority of the Tory Party and to
>some extent by the Liberal Party, has become
>integrated with the dominant strand of the European
>bourgeoisie, and for this reason tends to share the
>European bourgeoisie's opposition to a unilateral US
>adventure in Iraq.
>
>Other, smaller European countries like Sweden and
>Norway are at best tinpot imperialists who rely
>economically upon trade with larger Euro-imperialists
>and hence live indirectly off the superexploitation of
>regions like the Middle East. Even more than Germany
>and France, they lack the military means to act on
>their own behalf in the semi-colonial world. It's not
>surprising, then, that they tend to favour a very
>'liberal' multilateralist imperialism conducted
>through institutions like the EU and the UN as well as
>their own ad hoc beatups like the Oslo Accords.
>
>I think, then, that there is a material basis for
>opposition to the US war drive from much of the
>European bourgeoisie. It's no wonder that so many of
>them are making anti-war and anti-US talk. It needs to
>be stressed, though, that the interests of the US
>bourgeoisie do not overlap with the interests of the
>European working class, except in the negative
>short-term sense that a section of the European
>working class, the people Engels called 'bourgeois
>workers' and Lenin called a 'labour aristocracy',
>benefit from Euro-imperialism and can be expected to
>feel the temptation to side with their bourgeoisie a
>la 1914.
>
>There is no progressive sense in which the interests
>of the European workers and the European bourgeoisie
>coincide, in the way that the feeble national
>bourgeoisie in Palestine, Venezuela, Iraq and other
>semi-colonial countries may temporarily have some
>progressive interests in common with the working class
>they exploit (ie a common interest in resisting
>occupation or invasion, or avoiding bombs). Even more
>importantly, there is no sense in which the interests
>of the Euro-bourgeoisie and the workers and peasants
>of the semi-colonial world being threatened with war
>coincide. The Euro-bourgeoisie is opposed to the US
>only because it wants to exploit more semi-colonial
>workers, not because it wants to relieve them from
>exploitation. Its beloved UN has killed more Iraqis
>with its sanctions than any US invasion will kill.
>
>Revolutionaries must break workers away from the
>Popular Front that is the anti-war movement in the
>West. Doing this, though, is easier said than done.
>Walking away and leaving the mass of the workers to
>the bureaucrats of the Popular Front, as anarchists
>appear to have done the other day in San Fransisco
>(report/retort anyone?) is no solution. We have to
>push for workers' direct action, explain the deep
>nature of imperialism, and oppose the undemocracy
>which is an inevitable feature of the Popular Front,
>so that the bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie inside the
>movement are put under pressure and expose themselves.
>
>
>We had a tiny, tiny example of this at the end of 2001
>in Auckland, when revolutionaries won a mass planning
>meeting of the anti-war Popular Front over to the
>slogan 'Stop America's War', in opposition to 'Peace
>Now' or something similar. The bourgeois Peace
>Foundation walked out of the Front, claiming that the
>protests using that slogan would be 'anti-American'. A
>few months later I saw that they had invited pro-war
>US bourgeois media 'pundit' Wynne Dyer to their annual
>black tie 'Peace Awards' dinner. I guess they were
>worried about offending him, and the people who'd pay
>$50 to come and see him. Organisations like the Peace
>Foundation are totally incompatible with a an anti-war
>United Front of labour.
>
>Cheers
>Scott
>
>
>
>
>
>=====
>"Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Everything you'll ever need on one web page
>from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
>http://uk.my.yahoo.com
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---


_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---