> John wrote, though, that "70% of Iraq is formally
> unemployed!" When the country is under the foreign
> occupation and 70% of the labor force are formally
> unemployed, workplaces may not be where "it
> _really_ counts" (even aside from the problem of
> economism).
I also differ somewhat with what Grant says about the workplace being where it "really" counts -- I don't think it's true even in countries where most people are employed in the formal economy. If it were true in the US, for example, then union leaders -- even considering this country's low union density -- would be able to have a lot more impact in the wider society than they do. As it stands union leaders compete for their members' attention with all the bad influences out there, which is why even though union members have relatively high voter turnout, a significant chunk of them still votes against their own interests. (This is just one example.) But union work is still strategic, and it remains the most fruitful place from which to mount a counter-hegemonic project (whoa! -- check out the vocabulary!), if not the only one.
Further, it is true that Iraqis are making their living selling bootleg gas, as squeegee people, and in similar jobs in the informal sector, rather than in the state-sector employment which is the only source of formal employment these days. However, these latter industries ARE strategic from the point of view of the occupiers. Iraqi oil wealth is the linchpin of that society and the ultimate keystone of Iraqi national sovereignty. Anyone who gums up the works against Bremer, Halliburton, et. al., in the interests of the Iraqi people themselves, is doing just about the most important work in blocking the goals of the occupiers that you can imagine.
So majorities aren't always what make for a successful strategy of liberation -- strategically-placed minorities, whose own interests coincide with the interests of the people in such a way that they are best-placed to lead the liberation struggle, are arguably more decisive. But even without taking this into account, Yoshie still wouldn't be correct in arguing that Iraq's 70% unemployment rate is argument against the efforts of the two major Iraqi communist parties, because the Union of the Unemployed of Iraq (UUI) is at the heart of one of the two major union federations in Iraq right now, the one where the Workers Communist Party appears to play a big role.
Yoshie asks:
> It would make sense if Communist (organizing the
> still employed) and Worker-Communists (organizing
> the unemployed) could work out a common program
> and strategy to end the occupation and take power
> together, as the parties' strengths and weaknesses
> appear to be complementary. What's blocking them
> from creating a united front?
This is a good question, but I would hazard the guess that the differences between the two parties -- which may look obscure from the outside -- appear more glaring to the people actually involved, who probably have a whole lot invested in their organizational preferences for all sorts of reasons that may or may not be relevant in the current period. It's also the case that they're both probably pretty small, the WCPI because they're relatively new and the ICP because they were subject to near-unimaginable repression over a period of over 40 years.
My point is that we should still offer them -- or more importantly, the people they're trying to organize into mass organizations -- all the support we can, and that means concrete support (particularly but not exclusively material support like money, in-kind donations of equipment like office furniture and computers, etc.) as well as rhetorical. It seems that on this list other people are discussing whether we should feel or express sympathy for them when a group of gangsters sends a suicide bomber to their offices, even when the gangsters do it in the name of driving the occupiers from Iraq. I think the answer is pretty obvious -- and maybe other members of the list think so too, only in a bad way.
- - - - - John Lacny
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!