[Marxism] Iraq and Ireland and anti-imperialism

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis writes:
> (I received this offlist. I thought that it raised some important
> questions, so I will answer it publicly while leaving the correspondent
> unnamed.)


Well, this is perhaps a bit naughty Louis, as one doesn't need to be a
rocket scientist to figure out who your "un-named" correspondent is.
Anyway, since he's now taking up the issue openly, I'll respond to a
couple of his off-list comments as well.

Anon:
> > I don't know if that's necessarily true. I would think Marxists would
> > support the anti-colonial cause everywhere but there are some characters
> > and outfits (and forms of resistance) who I wouldn't be supporting. E.g.
> > does that mean marxists overseas should support dissident Republicans
> > even if they are being effectively run by British military intelligence
> > to do more damage to the Republican cause than they're worth. It's
> > resistence but not as we know it...




Louis:
> This sounds like a reference to internal Irish politics rather than
> anything having to do with Iraq. My guess is that no faction of the
> Irish nationalist movement was ever being "effectively run by British
> military intelligence."


Louis, you're quite right to be dubious about Anon's comments here.

The British state understands that it has captured the republican
leadership around Adams.  It doesn't need to run any dissident
republican organisation to discredit the struggle.  There simply is no
struggle any more to discredit!

This line by Anon is a Provo smear of people who disagree with them,
just as in the early 1970s the Officials tried to smear the Provos as
being a reactionary force run by the Southern Irish state.

It does no credit at all to any Provos that they are now using smear
tactics that were once used against them by a leadership that was (also)
selling out.

The dissidents who Anon is attacking are merely reacting in the
traditional knee-jerk militarist way that some republicans have done
every time the 'politicals' sell out.

The problem in Ireland now is that there is no base of support for the
armed struggle, which is why the Marxist IRSP have, intelligently,
suspended the actions of their armed wing.

The small split-offs from the Provos don't have the political nous to do
likewise, but that doesn't make them British agents, just traditional
Irish republican militarists - which is still better than sell-outs in
my book.

The situation in Iraq is quite different, because an actual invasion and
war has only just taken place and there is an armed population of
Iraqis, a very large section of which see armed resistance as legitimate
and supportable (at the very least) and (in many cases) worth
participating in.

Leftists in the West who attempt to tell occupied Iraq not to engage in
armed resistance are just contemptible chauvinists and reformists.

It is difficult to see how any organisation in Iraq could gain any kind
of anti-imperialist credibility among the masses if it doesn't put up
some kind of fight against the occupation.

The reason that the Provos, and not any of the Trotskyist currents in
Ireland, emerged as the mass radical force in the northern Irish
ghettoes in the 1970s was because while the Trots were busy talking
about the transitional programme and armed militias the Provos actually
went out and did the biz.

The reason the Islamic fundamentalists are making the running in a
number of areas in the Middle East is because so much of the secular
left has compromised with imperialism and abandoned armed resistance.
No point in attacking the fundies - they will continue to fill the
vacuum created by the retreats and sell outs of the secular left (both
Marxist and nationalist).


Anon:
> > I've read a lot of marxists who weren't too scared of voicing opposition
> > to the PLO or ANC's strategies. Weren't/Aren't these groups
> > anti-imperialist/anti-colonialist? I think that the SWP put out a
> > pamphlet on the 'Shining Path' - what did that say but condemn an
> > anti-colonialist movement? That must have been written along time ago.

Ah yes, the Trotskyist 'experts' who knew all about how to make a
revolution in South Africa or Palestine but were/are incapable of
building anything in their own countries!

Of course, there were also some who reduced themselves to cheerleading
mindlessly and uncritically for the PLO and ANC, even as both
leaderships were doing deals in which they bartered away their
principles for a few positions for their leaders to be wine waiters at
the imperialists' tables.

The point, however, remains, that the responsibility of the *left in the
West* is to struggle to get our ruling classes' heels off the necks of
the Third World and defend the right of people in the oppressed
countries to resist imperialism in any way they see fit.

The fact that the US is in a quagmire in Iraq is largely due to the
armed resistance.  If the left in the West can't turn that to advantage
then it really is pretty pathetic and pretty stuffed.

Philip Ferguson


















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