racism, eurocentrism

[Sam Pawlett <rsp@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Carrol wrote:
> >
> My objection to the label "eurocentrism" is not to its false application
> -- all labels may be and are misused -- but to its redundancy. I claim
> that there is no instance of its use in which it would not be more
> accurate to speak of racism, of imperialism, or of racism & imperialism.

No. Western Marxism has been full of Euro-centrism. Two of the greatest
champions and fighters for socialist internationalism and against
imperialism and racism--Lenin and Trotsky-- were Euro-centrists. After
the events of 1918-19 in Germany, they moved away from this position
realizing that the German working class had put its eggs in the soc-dem
basket. If international socialism was to become an actuality, the
impetus for it would have to come from the east and the south. Further,
Marxists in the East and the South could not accept the fact that their
liberation from colonialism would be achieved on the coat tails of the
workers of Paris, London and Detroit.
  This view was summed up by the Indian communist M.N. Roy in his report
to the second congress of the Comintern (1920-- which can be called the
'third worldist' congress):

"[Comrade Roy] defends the idea that the fate of the revolutionary
movement in Europe depends entirely on the course of the revolution in
the East. Without victory of the revolution in the Eastern countries,
the Communist movement in the West would come to nothing. This being so,
it is essential that we divert our energies into developing and
elevating the revolutionary movement in the East and accept as our
fundamental thesis that the fate of world communism depends on the
victory of Communism in the East."

This view can be found in Marx (and probably Engels) as early as 1853:

"It may seem a very strange, and a very paradoxical assertion that the
next uprising of the people of Europe, and their next movement for
republican freedom may depend more probably on what is now passing in
the Celestial Empire [China]...it may be safely augured that the Chinese
revolution will throw the spark into the overloaded mine of the present
industrial system and cause the explosion of the long prepared general
crisis, which, spreading abroad will be closely followed by political
revolutions on the Continent." *Revolution in China and Europe* New York
tribune June 14, 1853.

Lenin would have none of this:

"Comrade Roy goes too far when he asserts that the fate of the West
depends exclusively on the degree of development and the strength of the
revolutionary movement in the eastern Countries. In spite of the fact
that the proletariat in India numbers five million and there are 37
million landless peasants, the Indian comrades have not succceeded in
creating a Communist Party in their country. This fact alone shows that
Comrade Roy's views are to a large extent unfounded."

As if the balance of class forces depends on how many people have a card
that says "member of the Communist Party"! And this after millions had
taken part in anti-British actions--including general strikes-- in
1920-1!

Lenin's assistant Safarov commented:

"...the Communist Parties of the imperialist countries have done
extraordinarily little to deal witht he national and colonial question.
Worse still, the flag of Communism **is used to hide chauvinist ideas
foreign and hostile to proletarian internationalism**"


Eurocentrism in the Comintern led to *disaster*.This Euro-centrism
boiled down to two theses: the liberation of the world exploited by
capitalism must be the result of socialist revolution in the West and
world socialism ment the Europeanization of the world. Capitalism had
not yet diffused out of Europe and developed in the East and South, so
communists must align with the national bourgeosie because there is only
peasants with no proletariat to make the revolution. This led to an
underestimating of the revolutionary character of the national
liberation movements (really an underestimating of the revolutionary
potential of the peasantry
) and a confusion between a particular national
bourgeosie acting in an anti-imperialist manner and the communist
movement in the same country acting in an anti-imperialist manner and
acting against the
national bourgeoisie. The Comintern supported the national bourgeoise
instead of the indigenous communists. The end result was things like the
support of the
KMT in China leading to the 1927-8 massacres and the support of Mustafa
Kemal in Turkey _after_ he had murdered all of the top communists there.
Kemal murdered Turkish Marxists with weapons given to him by the
Comintern. Same with the crushing of the Indonesian Communist Party in
1926.

Sam Pawlett