i should also have mentioned perhaps that this will be the second time that australia has led a UN military force in the region, leaving aside the war on vietnam, korea and (the undeclared wars against the spectre of communism in) bougainville, east timor, indonesia, etc. about seven years ago in cambodia. but here, the ballot was held with that force already in place, and for reasons which had much to do with rather close china/aust relations (including the khmer rouge in any subsequent govt and negotiations); bolstering the postions of Sihanouk (and his son), and liberals like Sam Rainsay. in any event, this was not sufficient to sideline Hun Sen et al. for obvious reasons, including the alliance of sections of aust personnel with Hun Sen. not a great situation certainly, but not one which can easily be explained by virtue of a 'west' versus 'east' slogan, nor even in terms of intervention/anti-intervention.
the issue is not whether the left is weak relative to any other time, but whether anyone should have beleived the myth of democracy without violence, whether that be the violence of the falantil resistance, the UN or Indonesia. and, this beleif in democracy is no more than a beleif, since the conditions under which the working classes imposed these kinds of forms has everywhere shifted. i guess no one is till prepared to discuss whether or not those changes have taken place and what this means for any strategies... whether or not there is the rule of law, either here or in NY or in indonesia, and indeed how that comes about.
the left has already shown, at least here, that it is more than capable of shutting down foreign trade with indonesia when it has a will to do so. whether it be the australian govt, the indonesian govt, the CNRT, the UN, each was as concerned to limit the extent or popular resistance and insurgency as they were to establish themselves as soveriegn over life, the future, the only possible means of existence and decision. those who complain about the character of demands only show that they've already abandoned any sense of working class struggle. jim h. has already said as much in the past. the rest just think it's a problem that no one seems to be listening to them. and why would anyone, since they seem to have such a dim view of people as capable of digesting only the most easy-to-read of mantras.
the issue of what demands are put or not is not judged by whether or not there are socialists in power, which seems to be the only thing that yoshie and jim can think of, but what the character and composition of the struggle is at a given moment, what are its stakes. any demand, even the most implausible or statist, is always an important element in the formation of working class identity. and here, the stakes seem to me to be clearly about whether the working class is seen as having any ability to set the framework in which capital can move. surely as marxists we already beleive this, else what does the theory of surplus value mean?
for some leninists, we clearly can't do much by ourselves -- intellectuals have to step in to tell us what our real interests are. for me, despite the almost complete dominance of the aim of military intervention here in australia, there was a brief moment in which working class action took on a life of its own, independant of the calibrations of the media and govt: trade was more or less shut down; universities which had links to the indonesian govt were trashed; a u-turn was accomplished on the issue of border control (at least in a limited sense, but nonetheless incredible); and more importantly, no one has yet to have managed a split between australian working class organisations and indonesian ones, which have in any case, picked up and which are the preamble to anything of interest happening in the next decade. i'm not celebrating by any means. but i'm not wallowing in self-pity either, hoping that one day someone might connect for me theory and practice which carrol seems unable or unwilling to envisage, since he's already disconnected the two -- almost as a matter of principle, ie., in theory.
Angela _________