I appreciate Magellan's reply of 23:11 06/09/99 -0300, which is both thoughtful and concrete. Clearly such a carefully thought out position is the result of years of work which is collective and not just individual.
This illustrates that the referendum in East Timor is not just something imposed by the imperialist powers as part of their busy global agenda of neo-liberalism and atomised human rights, but is the result of years of progressive campaigning which seized the opportunity of the upheavals in Indonesia as a whole, to press the case for self-determination for East Timor.
This is strictly speaking a bourgeois democratic demand and it has contradictory aspects. Magellan has not only put up the case for its progressive aspect but has given a detailed case for how it should be supported now.
What I have been trying to do in these posts is to break through the lazy marxism that simply says anything our imperialism does is wrong. Like Magellan I am an interventionist about East Timor but I think we must have our eyes wide open about all the contradictions. I was an interventionist too about Kosovo although misrepresented as a "bombadier" on this list, and censored and banned from Louis Proyect and Mark Jones's lists (which I think is a sign more of the weakness of their arguments than of mine). I now see that Louis Proyect appears to be in favour of intervention in East Timor.
My argument is that we get our hands dirty by facing up to the contradictions involved in trying to support progressive causes globally.
I welcome Magellan positioning himself in terms not of what the west should say but what the United Nations should say. That I read as trying to take a global democratic stance.
I find it is interesting that Magellan is writing from outside the USA, and I am beginning to think that it is difficult for the majority of correspondents from within the USA to get any inflected perspective on these questions except to be against their government.
I would now ask Magellan to take on board the negative aspects of his proposals.
It is surely true that in wider geographical and economic terms the eastern part of the island of Timor is part of the south east Asian archipelago as much as the present territory of Kuwait has been part of Mesopotamian basin. This implies that any democratic solution should recognise these economic facts and should not be dominated by power struggles between different sections of capital.
I would ask him to comment on the fact that if East Timor gets independence there will be a strengthened demand for other islands of Indonesia to seek to split off independently. Much was made by the simplistic anti-imperialists in the case of Kosovo that Yugoslavia was a semi-socialist state still and that western imperialism was out to destroy it. Now in South East Asia, as the example of Malaysia has shown, there is a national bourgeoisie that is trying to resist the devastation of the IMF and the workings of global finance capital. The class basis of the undemocratic policies of the Indonesian military is in the final analysis that of keeping Indonesia together against a world dominated by western imperialism. We need dialectics to analyse this situation.
I would ask him to accept that even if Australian troops are better than US or British troops, they are likely also to be stalking horses for western imperialism. Whatever the socialist credentials of the original freedom fighters in east Timor, an Australian policed peace will impose the standards of present day finance capitalism, demanding that the territory should be open to the most rational exploitation.
Besides also, the Australian capitalists will want their profit and will not want to be consistent champions of democracy in any abstract sense if it appears to jeopardise their trading relations with Indonesia.
This brings us to Stephen Philion explicitly supporting the idea of a recall of IMF loans from Indonesia if the Indonesian military does not toe the line. I welcome his frankness, and I think the proposal is correct although if we support it, we must do so again with our dialectical eyes wide open.
Even the IMF may be constrained in its ability to threaten bankruptcy openly. If it did threaten it openly it would consolidate opinion among almost all classes and strata in Indonesia as a whole against the IMF. Indonesia has already received a pasting from global capitalism. To turn off the tap of IMF capital inflow quite so publically has political consequences which in the past, in the case of Russia, say, the IMF has tried to handle cautiously. Besides, a larger Indonesia thrown back into barter and run by a national bourgeois and peasant military dictatorship, would be quite a problem for years to come.
This is another argument for any financial pressure on Indonesia to be in the context of struggling for a radically different world economic order in which the inflow of funds to an economy, perhaps from global taxation such as the Tobin tax ridiculed by some on this list, should be regulated by fair standards of justice, and not be dependent on the interests alone of the largest capitalist powers. Any stick should be balanced by a capital fund for the democratic development of the whole of the archipelago. (It would also be cheaper in the long run for the capitalists themselves, and is not utopian pipe dream.)
I would ask Magellan to comment further on the wider global picture. If we try to focus our answers in terms of what the "United Nations" should do, we should not conceive this in abstract isolation of the power structures that shape the United Nations at present. He appears convinced that western imperialism will not gain further victories in the name of defending the people of east Timor.
(I wonder how our dogmatic distorters of Lenin would deal in this context with the argument about imperialist wars always being in defence of gallant little Belgium. Presumably, being dogamtists they think there is no case to answer that imperialism will have a field day with defence of "gallant little Dilli" just as it did with the defence of "gallant little Kosovo".)
But also in the United Nations, how would Magellan deal with the likelihood that China will block Security Council authorisation for any intervention force. The Chinese may appear to be arkward on this point, but they are not stupid, even though the western media will not transmit their ideas coherently. The Chinese are against any dismemberment of less developed countries by international bodies run by the US hegemonic imperialist alliance. They may not be publishing much about East Timor because they probably think internally it is being seriously mishandled, but on the wider picture, as with Kosovo, Tibet, Sinkiang, Taiwan, they are deeply opposed to intervention by the western imperialist coalition. Economically and politically they will support the national capitalists in Indonesia against the western imperialists. Remember the global politics behind the suffering in Dili: will an Asia economic and political power bloc emerge counterposed to western domination of the world.
Mark Jones on his "Leninist-International" was unable to let me discuss this fundamental strategic contradiction as posed by Lenin in October 1916 (Caricature of Marxism and 'Imperialist Economism') towards the end of section 5 (Monism and Dualism)
"Imperialism is as much our 'mortal' enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence it is *not* [Lenin's emphasis] our duty to support *every* [ditto] struggle against imperialism. We will *not* [ditto] support the struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will *not* [ditto] support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism."
Now the lazy dogmatic marxists say that this has been swept aside by the development of Lenin's thought after the victory of the October revolution when even domestically reactionary forces in a particular country, like the Emir of Afghanistan, might be progressive anti-imperialists on a world stage, and all that left wing marxists have to do in the USA and Britain is to be against anything their government does. And that is anti-imperialism!
But how do things work out concretely? The truth is always concrete.
I note that Magellan thinks Portugal will under present circumstances not get to East Timor in time to intevene, but there is one British warship there. What does he think it should do?
I know that WDK is comfortable that we leftists have no influence at all but we have have 1% of 1% influence. How is Cook going to use that warship? Just to lift out refugees, or to join with a few Australian ships to supervise, with guns tactfully but only temporarily hooded, the forced evacuation of Indonesian troops from East Timor on pain of the complete bankruptcy of Indonesia as a whole. What if they open fire on a boat of Indonesian reinforcements going into to east Timor? Do I rush out to join a protest of a few hundred ready to appear on the television news for 10 seconds as proof of public opposition, or do I join a different demonstration of the sort called for by the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia, for constructive intervention under the UN? And on these lists, which political stance should have the most respect, and which shopuld be subjected to scorn or censorship?
My scorn is for the lazy dogmatists who are not prepared to analyse the concrete contradictions but just to denounce imperialism whether it does anything or whether it does not. On the surface this looks very "anti-imperialist" but in practice it lets imperialism off the hook by failing to address a world global agenda that would be genuinely democratic, economically as well as politically.
It is probably true that we cannot have one simple blueprint or manifesto. It is probably true that what will acutally happen will be the resultant of many forces. The bourgeoisies of the world are divided and confused and are trying each to guess what the other is going to do. I suggest that progressive people may also find themselves appearing to be on opposite sides for the time being. Nevertheless if there are attempts to work out a wider progressive world strategy, and the fundamental goals of the great majority of progressive people are clear, it should be possible to talk about our differences and come up with a more coherent stance in the interests of not only one section of the working people of the world but of all working people of the world.
The examples of Kosovo and East Timor are striking. In both cases a demand for the right of self-determination by a small community with its own language and culture in the context of a much wider global battle between semi-socialised national capital and the forces of international finance capital. Plus many atrocities and much bloodshed, and amplification by the capitalist media.
Magellan's comments appear to come from a well-thought out position. I would appreciate if he can say how he thinks we should take on board some of the other contradictions which I have discussed.
Chris Burford
London