[Marxism] re: East Timor replies

[Rohan Gaiswinkler <rohanger@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lay Otum:

  >First, as a general principle, when is colonial occupation OK?

  This is easy to answer; colonial occupation is never ok.  A more complicated 
question is: When is imperialist intervention a lesser evil than something 
else?  And the correct answer to that is, in some rare circumstances.

  >In any case, the practical effect of your unprincipled and dishonest
 position on Australia's invasion of Timor is to deny the principle of
 equality between peoples and to turn a blind eye to (that is, condone
in  practice) the intervention of Australia in the affairs of a small
 neighbouring state. This is big power chauvinism at its most despicable.

I find it easy to reply to this assertion vis-a-vis East Timor, 1999, because 
the "practicle effect" of opposing the intervention by imperialist Australian 
troops would have been the extermination of most of the East Timorese people 
-certainly the extermination of independence movement.

  Many peole on this list mistakenly talk about 1999 East Timor as if it were 
an independant country that was invaded by imperialist Australian troops.  The 
truth is that between 1975 and 1999 East Timor was an territory under Javanese 
(Indonesian) occupation, an occupation that was supported by successive racist, 
imperialist Australian governments (but not, ultimately, by the wider 
Australian population).

  It is not an easy idea to accept (certainly not for Marxists anyway!) that in 
a peculiar set of circumstances an imperialist country can be forced by popular 
will to use its troops to liberate a country under occupation.  But that's what 
happened.  Get over it!


  The current situation is of course different and there is the real danger 
that the Australian presence could become an occupation or quasi-occupation.  
The DSP would not support such a thing.

  Some people might be tired of this East Timor debate but I think it raises 
important questions that go way beyond East Timor:
  Why and when do Marxist hold to a principle -  like the principle of "No 
intervention by imperialist troops" or "Never break a strike"?  I think the 
answer to this is... and I challenge anyone on this list to disagree... 
empirically.  Marxist principles are directly related to the concrete, material 
reality of cause and effect.  What advances the class struggle - what doesn't.  
THEY ARE NOT ABSTRACT.  Break a strike?  Yes, if it's the bourgeois strike 
Venezuela had a few years ago.

  In a vain attempt to back their argument with empiricism, the 
no-interventionists have come up with the bunkum about how the 
imperialist-troops-use-validating effect (such as it was) was a much more grave 
concern for Marxists than the mass slaughter of East Timorese and the 
extermination of their independance movement.  As I see it, the Australian 
people got a different lesson from September 1999, which was that if you 
mobilise an enormous mass-movement very quickly it is possible to overturn your 
government's support for the occupation of a foreign country and have that 
occupation removed.  So while the no-interventionists see "it's ok to send in 
bourgeois troops" as the only lesson learned from 1999, I think it was a mixed 
bag with "a country should not be occupied" being at least as - and probably 
more - important.

  My intention is for this to be my lasts words on the 1999 intervention.

  Cheers
  Rohan G


                
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