[Marxism] re: East Timor replies (neo-colonial occupation, not "colonial occupation")

[dwalters@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Well, then, let me appologize for my short-sighteness on the question of
genocide too, because Lajany Otum is clearly correct about the material basis
for all these situation Rwanda and Yugoslavia included: the political economic
machinations of imperialism in creating 'genocides'.

Also, on other comments about WWII, well, yes on the question of oppostion or
support to Japanese and US imperialism. There has been a lot written on the
massive jubiliation when the Japanese entered Jakarta and Manila. But it was
not "toward the end of the war" that this started to turn, it was shortly after
the invasions when the face of the "East-Asia Co-Prosperity Zone" started to
show it's true brutal face. But it's interesting, after all, that there was
ongoing anti-Japanese imperialist guerrilla actions, often but not always lead
by various Communist groups enjoying high levels of support from the masses in
Indonesia to Vietnam to Malaysia to the Philipines. They also, correctly,
readily accepted aid from the 'other' imperialism. Ho chi-Mihn, if I'm not
mistaken, recevied his firt military training from OSS agents and KMT arms, in
South China.

It is true that support for the Japanese in Burma remained high, sort of an
oddity, through to the end. And...in India, there was far from massive support
to the British as has been well established.

The bigger question, perhaps, is Europe. Capitalism created Fascism, and a wing
of capitalism thought that Fascism represented a threat to it and so we had an
imperialist war directed against Fascism with the support of (and bulk of the
fighting by...) the USSR. Nevertheless, in Western Europe no one welcomed the
German army in Brussels, Oslo, Paris, etc. Wasn't done. At the point *in which
the US entered the war in a big way*, that is, the spring of 1942, had not
occurred, what would of been the result? Had not the US provided Lend-Lease in
1940 to the UK and the USSR, would the USSR have surrvived or Britain had been
defeated, and what would THAT mean today?

My point about the US left was not in, say, 1940, but after December 7th, 1941,
there was ZERO anti-war activity by any segment of the US left, even at a
propaganda level. And it was not just *security* concerns. Rather, it was that
the sentiment of the US working class *as a class* had now shifted and
homoginized toward defeating Japanese and German imperialism. Period. That
meant that groups like the SWP and the WP and other leftists had to find a way
to meet what was arguably genuine anti-facsism among workers and the
generalized and overwhelming support for the war against Germany and Japan.
"Anti-war" activity was not part of the meeting of the minds.

Well, I've expressed this "revisionism" om mine only in off list comments to
people in the past. It was alway one of those little asteriks I kept filed away
in my mind after I joined the YSA in 1973 and after reading Socialism On Trial
(still agreat book).

David



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