Why these Right Opportunist Browderites must be smashed ;-)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: cord macguire <cordymac at hotmail.com> Date: Aug 20, 2006 6:05 PM Subject: Re: [SOCUNMOD] Re: Rationality and Israeli Violence To: michael.098762001 at gmail.com, socialistsunmoderated at pinko.net
Here's something to chew on, appropos this debate.
Marxism & anti-Imperialism //////////////////// excerpted from Sam Webb's July 27th Mid-East Statement for the CPUSA: http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/774/1/42/
The role of Hezbollah (as well as Hamas) warrants criticism and even condemnation. Of course, it should be done in a particular context, but our appreciation of the difference between a colonizing and colonized people, our appreciation of the difference between an occupied and occupying state, and our appreciation of the asymmetry of power and its effects should not make us silent or neutral regarding Hezbollah's reckless and deadly actions.
Neither Hezbollah (nor Hamas) are national liberation movements as we have come to understand them. Their political kinship is to regimes and movements on the right rather than the left. Neither one speaks about transforming socio-economic structures and establishing a secular democratic state. Nor do we support their tactics in many instances or their internal role in the countries in which they operate.
Do they resist occupation and colonialism? Do they make difficulties for U.S. imperialism? Some say yes.
But to leave it here misses the mark. I can't imagine that Hezbollah didn't know full well what the reaction of the Israeli ruling circle and the Bush administration would be to the capturing and imprisoning of Israeli soldiers. While they might have entertained a range of response to their actions, one must (or clearly should) have been, given the ruthlessness of the Israeli ruling class, that Israel would respond militarily and fiercely. In any case, their actions were provocative.
This is not a Marxist approach, but then again neither Hezbollah, Hamas, nor other right-wing clericalist movements can be categorized as Marxists or on the left. In fact, in most countries they are at loggerheads with Marxist parties and movements. In Iraq and Iran, for example, right-wing clericalist organizations assassinate Communists as well as other left, progressive, and democratic forces.
Marxism never considers tactics abstractly. Tactics and their efficacy are determined by concrete circumstances. They are embedded in a particular set of political, economic, and social processes.
They can't be elaborated independently of a sober and objective estimate of the class and social forces at a national and international level. Marxism doesn't absolutize any one form of struggle as suitable for all occasions.
Nevertheless, there is a tendency in a section of the left to regard armed struggle as the only valid, legitimate, and militant form of anti-imperialist struggle, regardless of circumstances. It is almost as if picking up a gun ipso facto and irrespective of its tactical appropriateness and its effects is to be applauded.
While oppressed people have a right to bear arms, we don't advocate this tactic in every circumstance nor are we duty bound to support it when undertaken by others. Under no circumstances do we support the killing of innocent civilians.
Armed struggle is appropriate only if every form of peaceful mass struggle has been exhausted, only if it advances the democratic, class, and anti-imperialist movement, and only if, a majority of a people supports military means of engagement. Every movement — working-class, democratic, anti-imperialist, and revolutionary — must examine tactics from the following point of view: do they advance, do they strengthen, and do they unite the struggle? Do they create a better terrain on which the movement can advance its struggle against imperialism?
If this yardstick is employed, it is hard to conclude that Hezbollah's actions are anti-imperialist. Has the struggle for Palestinian independence been enhanced? Have the forces of imperialism been put on the defensive? Will this war create better conditions to end the occupation of Iraq? Will it facilitate the development and sovereign status of Lebanon and other states in the Middle East? Does it weaken the forces of reaction in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East? Does it weaken the Bush administration, the main purveyor of violence? Does it make the world a safer place?
To my mind, Hezbollah's actions have done nothing to advance the struggle against U.S. imperialism or Israeli occupation and expansionism.
Hezbollah threw an easy pitch to the ruling circles in Israel and the U.S. And to no one's surprise they have jumped on it and ratcheted up their offensive to secure political dominance of that region.
Conditions of struggle have changed in the contemporary world, thus making the ground for armed struggle narrower and narrower.
The main obstacle to peace is the Bush administration and its policies. Directly and indirectly, U.S. imperialism has wreaked death and destruction in the Middle East and around the world. But the left and progressive movement can't be silent about provocations, no matter where they come from on the political spectrum and no matter how militant and "revolutionary" they sound. The task is not simply to stand up to imperialism, but to defeat it. And that can't be done by the left alone — it will take strategy and tactics that will move millions and millions of people into struggle against imperialism. A first step is to win millions to impose a cease-fire on all sides, to end the occupation of Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, and Iraq, and to secure a just peace that protects the national and security rights of all peoples in the region.
*** http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/774/1/42/
Fraternally, -Cord http://www.cpusa.org
-- Michael Pugliese