Re: [Marxism] Chechnya: what Proyect wrote back 1999...

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

David Quarter wrote:

> Liberating dynamic? If so, there must be elements in the Chechen
> resistance
> that I have not been made aware of. My impression--and I might be wrong--is
> that they are virtually indistinguishable politically from the Taliban.
>
> The Gazette (Montreal), October 26, 1999, FINAL
>
> Who's calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in
> Afghanistan and Pakistan

That's what I wrote in 1999 and I stand by most of it. The Chechen
guerrillas *are like* the Taliban in many respects. Or like the fighters
who have control of Fallujah. Or Hamas, etc. But that does not mean I
support the Russian army's occupation of Chechnya. Or the US occupation
of Iraq. Or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. For that matter,
the Israeli occupation of Palestine in its totality. If the criterion is
socialist or even politically leftist leadership, none of these
struggles could be supported.

I am under the distinct impression that you have about as much interest
in Marxist literature as you do in butterfly collecting, but there is a
rather rich body of work that you can draw on to understand these
issues. Trotsky supported the Ethiopian resistance to Italy even though
Ethiopia was an extremely backward slavocracy. In the 20th and 21st
century, struggles by oppressed nationalities or colonized nations have
always been supported by Marxists despite the character of the
leadership. Here's what Lenin said about the Irish struggle in 1916:

To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by
small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary
outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie WITHOUT ALL ITS
PREJUDICES [italics in original], without a movement of the politically
non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression
by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national
oppression, etc.--to imagine all this is to REPUDIATE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.
So one army lines up in one place and says, "We are for socialism", and
another, somewhere else and says, "We are for imperialism", and that
will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously
pedantic view would vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a "putsch".


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