Re: Re:AUT: Multitude (snip) Towards a Communist Response

[chris wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sphinx enunciates a very clear critique of the supporters of the Iraqi
resistance, such as much of it is.  However, it is mostly (not entirely)
downhill from there.



First, there is no real choice between a local fascism and an imperial
invader.  So far, far from freeing Iraq, the Coalition of the Will to
Power (i.e. the U.S., Britain, Italy and a lot of countries dependent on
U.S. aid) has killed a great many people (Johns Hopkins University
estimates that actual deaths now amount to around 100,000), created new
avenues for Islamicist politics, attracted a range of international
thugs, and increased the impoverishment.



More importantly, the U.S. had no means to improve the situation, but
could only shift the burden of misery to other places.  To imagine that
this invasion was supportable, in Sphinx?s terms, is to imagine that the
values of the Enlightenment can be spread through conquest.  This is a
re-play of the ?white man?s burden?, of the civilizing mission of
colonialism.  By this logic, we should support every invasion and
military adventure against dictatorships and states which do not fall in
line with this hackneyed version of the Enlightenment.



This is quite stupid and disgusting, and it misses the point that we are
long past the day when capitalist powers waged wars against
non-capitalist powers.  The quote from Marx is disingenuous and
mis-placed.  Marx considered the world from a complex notion of progress
(I am not going to have the never-ending fight with the partisans of
?progress does not exist at all?) and what was progressive and in
relation to the unity of the working class (labor in white skin cannot
be free while labor in black skin is enslaved), the development of the
material conditions under which capital would expand creating its own
negation (and as Hegel and Marx both understood, a negation also puts
forth a positive, something new.  Negation for Marx and Hegel was
generative, was the actual creative principle.  For them, positivism,
which is indeed what the passive Being of Deleuze as rendered by Lowe,
seems to be, is static, has no dynamism, is in fact Kantian at best.)
Each instance, IMO, in which Marx stood for or against, whether or not
he was right (which is another matter), was based on a concrete
assessment of the wars and struggles on which he took a position.  His
approach was that of someone who considered communism the only
reasonable standpoint, not national liberation as an end in itself, for
example.



In Iraq, we are looking at a regime which the US helped to put in place,
a fascist dictator the US gave a career to.  In the Middle East we are
looking at an Islamicism fostered by U.S. and Saudi money, in part, and
also by a state-mandated secularism that in fact tried to do what will
never work: the legislate and enforce with violence a secular state.  We
see such a stance among liberals today, who rush to the state to defend
secularism in this country.  Amazingly, it does not work.  When the
liberals demand the reinforcement of the national state against
globalization, it is the same move.  There is nothing to defend in it,
and it plays on the same shoddy ground as the anti-imperialists.



The anti-imperialist talk about the oppression of the Iraqi people by
the U.S., which is true but which also ignores the fact that the Kurds
by and large are much happier and safer, and that in many areas women,
trade unionists, etc. are attacked by a reactionary, Islamicist
opposition to the occupation.  Sphinx however turns around and asks us
to ignore the consequences of the occupation, its reactionary character
on the same particularist basis: the oppression of women, the attacks on
communists and trade unionists, the defense of secularism by the
U.S.-derived constitution.



The sad state of capital in the 21st century is such that we no longer
have rationalist nationalist movements of the sort in Africa and Asia
(including the Middle East) and Latin America after WWII.  The last of
those was the Sandinistas, it seems and at the same time we saw the
arrival of Islamicism in Iran and Afghanistan.  Maybe this reflects that
Islamicism in Iran took hold in a very modern, fairly developed
capitalist nation, not in some backwater.  By comparison, Iran was the
most developed and sophisticated country in the region, even more so
than Israel economically.



What is abundantly clear is that Sphinx believes that the US invasion
can help institute communism.  How else to explain the constant evasion
of the word ?state??  Either these freedoms (and some very real freedoms
came with the fall of Saddam, though his regime did NOT require women
follow Sharia for example) will be guaranteed by a state that is a
client of the US and wholly dependent on it or Sphinx thinks that the US
invasion will lead to social revolution, not of a reactionary sort, but
of a progressive, secularist sort.  Clearly, the end of the occupation
should not come until the secular forces, bolstered it seems by the US,
by a Christian fundamentalist, anti-secular administration at that, have
secured control of the country and established free individualism.
Wait, that sounds like?  hmmm? uh? capitalism?



Does this make Sphinx?s position worse than those who backhandedly
defend Islamicism?  No.



As per usual with the Left, the idea is always to do what is best for
the masses, and if they do not like it, fuck ?em.  The unfashionable
point to be made is that there is no obvious way out of the current
situation, a situation which seems to have exacerbated the problem of
social revolution in Iraq rather than improved it by lending itself to
nationalism, Islamicism, etc.  Those calling for the immediate
withdrawal of US forces ignore that the U.S. has created a situation
that makes simply withdrawing an almost guarantee of a situation as bad,
if not worse, than Hussein?s regime.  People like Sphinx ignore the fact
that the US has created a situation that makes simply withdrawing an
almost guarantee of a situation as bad, if not worse, than Hussein?s
regime.  The latter simply ignore the invasion as a completely
unsupportable act, the former hope that anti-imperialism also guides the
resistance forces, when in fact there is little basis for a comparison
between Vietnam in 1956 and Iraq or Iran in 2004.  What they do
understand that Sphinx apparently does not is that military invasion is
not a good way to spread social relations.  Ok, well it is a good way
for capital to do it, but even then what capital really aims at is the
extension of the capital-labor relation, which is connected to the
values and relations Sphinx is defending.



In the end, Sphinx?s response is oddly reminiscent of



Here is another disingenuous, but crafty, argument:

?Incumbent upon those who opposed the Iraq war and who currently oppose
the occupation is an explanation of how specifically the situation of
the Iraqi people could be improved by the absence of the coalition
troops. While there are certainly plenty of individuals who criticize
the painful loss of human life during this war, counter-proposals that
are based in internationalism and seek to prevent future massacres of
Iraqi anti-totalitarian partisans in the event of a coalition pullout
are non-existent.[7] Iraqis themselves, though beleaguered and tired of
the occupation, understand what a withdrawal would mean for their few
freedoms won.[8]?



Actually, it is not incumbent on us to explain how the situation could
have been improved.  We don?t live in Iraq.  It is not our job to tell
people in other places what to do.  We can try and establish links with
people, but frankly in the absence of large-scale social struggles where
we live, the possibilities are limited.  Sphinx here would also
apparently have us believe that he could overcome those limitations and
build solidarity between the masses of people that they themselves do
not see the need to build.



We are obliged to recognize that the U.S. would go in, kill thousands,
maybe hundreds of thousands of people, antagonize most of Iraq, increase
the purchase of Islamicist tendencies, and generally make an even bigger
mess.  The proper course was to oppose the invasion, oppose the embargo,
oppose the previous war and refuse to take sides between the secular,
modern imperialists and the secular, modern fascist Ba?ath Party.  We
really ought to call this demand for real proposals what it is: hot
air.  It is just like the Trotskyist ?military but not political
support? in its meaninglessness.



The last sentence is particularly precious.  Having made the situation
worse, the U.S. cannot pull out because that might make things even
worse than they are now because the U.S. invaded.  Apparently Sphinx
does not even understand the young Iraqi barber he quotes.

We are then assaulted with the correct observation that the young
soldiers really believe they are extending freedom and told that this
proves the progressive nature of the invasion.  This is exactly the kind
of stupidity one would expect from a workerist (not operaist or
autonomist) perspective in which whatever the workers do, it is good (oh
yeah, except the workers in Iraq opposed to the occupation, who are not
really workers because Iraq is implicitly pre-capitalist in this
analysis.)  What he misses is that the real tendency to want to defend
freedom, even with their lives, among many working class people is
complicated.  First, they define freedom as capitalism at the moment.
Second, it is riddled with racism, anti-Arabism (among Black and white
troops, btw), not internationalism.  Thirdly, it is riddled with
machismo and the rape of women, something which according to many news
reports has skyrocketed both against Iraqi women and against female US
soldiers.  This morning, the news even reported that women and children
in Fallujah are shooting at US troops and it is the working class people
of Fallujah who are too poor to flee who will be killed by this
enlightened occupation.  I would expect, as a result, that many of them
will be converted to Islamicism.  Apparently the Sphinx can?t smell
bullshit.



Sphinx then turns to his atrophied notion of class struggle (its all
about the workplace):

?Here is the working class in composition, moving on a vulnerable
position in capital?s heart and seizing power for themselves. Clearly
such maneuvers were impossible under Saddam Hussein, with his legal
limitations on unions and his party?s murder of opposition that included
in particular the disappearing of active workers (a list of those slain
or disappeared is available at the IFTU?s website).[13]?



Many people said in 1978 that the Shah?s secret police and the military
and the repressive atmosphere made overthrowing the Shah impossible.  By
the end of the year, the impossible, and apparently unforeseeable, had
happened.  That is because revolution is not an affair of activists and
partyists and partisans.  Whether or not Sphinx realizes it, his/her
position is that of the classic militant critiqued by the
Situationists.  It is a position that when it is disappointed by the
masses not moving on its schedule, either defends nationalism and
Islamicism or the civilizing mission of imperialism.  Two sides of the
same coin.



After also giving a self-contradictory (no, not dialectical) explanation
of the recuperative role of unions and then a hope that we will all join
in with the union federations in making international solidarity (never
mind that many British and US unions will actually act in the way that
earned the AFL-CIO the nickname AFL-CIA.)  He is correct however on one
point: we need to make alliances with people in Iraq as much as we can
do so, on whatever limited basis.  But which people?  And how?
Pro-occupation trade unionists, apparently, via the union bureaucracies.



In the discussion of the invasion as a police action of Empire (qua
Negri and Hardt), he is certainly correct on some level, but one wonders
if this is what is really the logical conclusion of the idea enunciated
by Hardt and Negri that we must ally ourselves with the imperial
aristocracies against the imperialists and nationalists.  This view is
bolstered by comments like ?But what if the multitude could sling the
occupation forces against its own enemies while building its own
strength? Though dangerous compromises may lie on such a road, it
appears to be one of the few available.?  In this, we are back to Pop
Front politics: side with the radical bourgeoisie against the
reactionary, feudal bourgeoisie.  What a radical innovation.  The idea
that liberalism prepares the way for fascism (Dauve in particular in
Fascism and Anti-Fascism) is lost.



?Lastly, the Iraqi multitude gets closer to the American working class,
which has been assigned the task of destroying the tyrants of the
mid-east and their would-be successors. Building alliances between the
exploited and excluded of both countries that recognize and act on their
dispossession is critical to advancing international struggle.?  Wow,
what complete essentialism.  The American working class qua armed wing
of capital gets closer to the Iraqi working class, and the movement is
one of increasing distrust until US soldiers refuse their duties and
demand withdrawal.  Such people have no right to abuse Lenin when they
stand to his right.



The first reasonable demand comes in the defense of conscientious
objectors (but apparently not soldiers demanding US withdrawal from
Iraq!)

At the end of the sections that interest me we get the following:



First the hot air: ?Only the building of international subjectivity
among the exploited can stop further war in Iran, Syria and even an
Islamist insurgency in Iraq or Afghanistan, all of which would draw the
United States into armed conflict. Only trust in the international
multitude and its revolutionary power can dispatch the tyrants and
theocrats surrounding Iraq.?  And how should this trust come about if we
support military adventures and occupations?



?Retreat from Iraq is the proper nationalist response to mired warfare;
internationalism recognizes the virtue of Empire stretched to its limit,
the potential of solidarity against theocracy and tyranny, the necessity
of burying the Ba?ath and the virtues of freedom?s tenuous return to
Iraq.?  As if he refusal of imperial wars was inherently nationalist,
exposing the logic of this position in which we must go through empire.



And then the kicker comes: ?Minority factions in Germany (the
Anti-Germans) and Britain (Worker?s liberty), among others, have more
critical analyses of the war, with the Anti-Germans explicitly
supporting American occupation of Iraq.?  Greeeaaat.



Well, I have no more to say about this miserable mash that finds ways to
defend the invasion as a progressive act we should support.  It is
shameless and shows the complete misery of the Leftist cesspool.



Chris




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