Precisely. If you don't think US imperialism, especially as it makes more and more space for international jihadists of the Al Qaeda tendency, is an incomparably bigger problem than the shortcomings of populist Islamism in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, etc., what I'm saying will never make sense to you.
> Doug (and most everyone else on the list?), on the other hand, while seeing
> himself a dedicated foe of the empire, also opposes theocracy, authoritarian
> dictatorships and their respective local elites enough that he takes a glum
> pox-on-all-their-houses attitude.
A pox-on-all-their-houses attitude, espoused by anarchists, would be a great improvement over Doug's. In his case, it's a bigger pox on the empire's official enemies than the left wing of the US power elite.
> Taking realism to the extent of supporting religious dictatorships and
> party/militias that are drilling holes in peoples heads is a response to the
> crisis of socialism, right? We'd rather have the 'should we support…'
> debate about a, say, Nasser, or an arab version of lula's PT.
Here's a life of a communist under Nasser:
<blockquote><http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/753/profile.htm> Attia El-Serafi: 'The right to life'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"There is a mistaken belief that there was no torture under the monarchy. What is true is that most intellectuals were spared, but the workers were tortured — just like they were later under Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat. Having spent a total of 10 years in jail I am, unfortunately, in a position to know." The torture started on the second day of his arrest and El-Serafi remembers all the details. "The first time they tortured me for two hours. They kept asking me about DMNL leaders and members of my cell but I denied any knowledge. It was an endurance test that I had to win somehow, from moment to moment." The police beat him for days, which turned into weeks and eventually months. Then, two months after his arrest, the torture stopped and he was transferred to a jail. He was released in June 1950, when the king granted political prisoners a general amnesty. Undaunted, and strengthened by the knowledge that he had not been broken, El-Serafi returned to his political work. It was a time of nationalist mobilisation and strikes and Cairo transport workers were playing a major role. As a prominent DMNL member and, by 1951, president of the Zifta and Meit Ghamr Bus Workers' Union, El-Serafi was at the forefront of the workers' struggle, which combined nationalist demands with demands for improved working conditions and better wages. Then came the 23 July Revolution. "The workers welcomed the revolution wholeheartedly," recalls El-Serafi. "And so did the DMNL, at least initially. But then the Free Officers, led by Nasser, killed workers at Kafr Al-Dawar. This happened only three weeks after the revolution." On the night of 12 August, 1952 some 500 workers at Misr Fine Spinning and Weaving began a sit-down strike and locked themselves inside the mill, writes Egyptian labour historian Joel Beinin. On 13 August, army troops arrived, shots were fired and four workers and one soldier were killed and many others wounded. The following day a military tribunal charged two workers, Mustafa Khamis and Mohamed El-Baqari, with premeditated murder. After a kangaroo trial both men were hanged. "They killed Khamis and El-Baqari because they wanted to frighten the workers," says El-Serafi. "Which is why El-Sadat warned the workers that if he had to, he would 'erect a scaffold in front of every factory'." After Kafr Al-Dawar the Free Officers moved quickly. In December 1952, without prior consultation with the unions, they passed new legislation imposing compulsory arbitration on all labour disputes and issued a degree outlawing strikes. "Although working conditions and salaries were improved the new legislation made the unions redundant and put an end to any organised labour action," comments El-Serafi. "The revolution's legacy to the workers was the government-controlled General Federation of Trade Unions, which is still oppressing us. Nasser gave the workers bread, but he took away their freedom."
The restrictive new labour legislation provided yet another turning point in El-Serafi's life. It signalled the end of independent trade unionism in Egypt, forcing the still defiant El-Serafi back underground. He continued his work on the union committee of the Zifta and Meit Ghamr Bus Workers' Union which — on a local union level at least — retained a measure of independence.
Such defiance came at price. In 1953 El-Serafi was once again arrested for "communist agitation" and "labour incitement" and duly tortured. He spent the next three years in jail.
"Nasser released the communists in 1956 because he needed our help during the Suez War. He understood we were disciplined, had outreach and knew how to mobilise the workers. And we did, of course."
After the communists had done the job there was another major clamp-down. In 1959 El-Serafi was once again arrested and during his interrogation the cycle of torture continued. He was released in 1964.
"I never managed to stay out of jail for too long," says El-Serafi. "I was under state security surveillance for years, but they didn't manage to break me. In January 1977 they arrested me again during the "bread riots", when people took to the streets because the Sadat administration had removed state subsidies from basic food staples. Then I was only jailed for one year. As I got older the sentences got lighter. In 1990, facing the same charges, I served only six months of hard time."
El-Serafi is still going strong. A prolific writer, he has published 10 books and is currently writing his memoirs. He is a regular contributor to Al-Ahali , the paper of the leftist Al-Tagammu Party. Labour issues remain a central part of his work. He serves on the Tagammu's labour committee and continues to "agitate" in Meit Ghamr.
So is he still a communist?
"Yes," he says, without pause, "because I still believe in the workers' right to life."</blockquote>
> But in much
> of the world the left specifically, and secular nationalism generally, is
> either in deep retreat or extinct ( latin America happily excepted).
> Nowhere more so than the middle east. There in particular, the forces of
> secular liberalism have come to be tied to local pro-western elites. Those
> more explicitly and consistently left-wing are miniscule, confined to
> intellectuals, some filmmakers and exiles.
There are some organized leftists beyond cafe society in the Middle East, but they are often junior supporters of Islamists, e.g., in Lebanon and Palestine, or of (still arguably) secular nationalists, e.g., in Syria.
> If the populist islamists'
> conservatism reflects genuine contradictions and traditional sentiments
> among their constituents and that's okay, then why in the US is nobody good
> enough, not Bernie Sanders, not a lesser evil dem, not the unions, etc? In
> the US consistent and traditional Marxist-leninists are as marginal as they
> are in Iran and Lebanon. I believe this means we need to do what george
> Jackson said, and get to the left of the people and pull. Working with,
> supporting, and building organizations, coalitions and people closer to the
> center than we are is part of rebuilding a mass center-left, left, and
> eventually radical left.
Getting involved in what's possible and worthwhile, whether union organizing or electoral campaign or whatever, standing slightly to the left of people, and trying to pull is certainly the only way to go. Given the unique problems of the USA (e.g., the USA being the hegemon, missing the windows of opportunity to build a mass social democratic party when leftists in other countries built them, federalism in political structure, extraordinary importance of money in US electoral politics compared to that in other countries, etc.), I am not certain if it is possible to build a mass center-left in electoral politics. For the time being, a weak, divided government may be the best electoral result possible, as such a government is likely to do less damage at home and abroad.
> At one point yoshie did open up her
> religious-populists-are-better-leftists-than-leftists-are
> to include the belly of the beast right here, noting the progressive
> positions taken by the mainline Christian denominations in the US.
> But that
> subject being further from her areas of expertise, she glossed over reality
> to a greater degree than when she applies this abroad.
My partner is a Presbyterian, who goes to church every Sunday and very active in his congregation, ecumenical interfaith work, and so on, and his father is a retired Presbyterian pastor, also similarly active. While I don't claim to be an expert on the matter, I'm more part of the American religious landscape than many secular liberals and leftists here, though I'm irreligious myself (as most Japanese are).
> A mass version of
> the Green party is not going to be formed by an ecumenical congress of
> latino parishes of the catholic church (or much less Pentecostals!), the
> episcopaleans (small, shrinking and composed of the wealthiest strata of our
> society), the Methodists (whose pews include bush himself, this largest
> mainline church a mirror of our own society's political divisions in which
> the left is the smallest part of the divide), the most popular religious
> leader in the black community today (TD Jakes not Al Sharption) (running-dog
> democrat anyway huh), and Unitarian universalists (as large and relevant as
> your average socialist sect is). These mainline churches are all
> shrinking, and except for those of people of color, consist of upper-middle
> class white christians. The future of Christianity in the US is less
> denominational and more ideological-cultural, and presently oriented to the
> republican right, not the green party left.
>
> And to be honest, I'd rather debate the why's and why not's of political
> engagement with conservative religious people in the United States
It seems to me now is the good time to begin such engagement, as what looks to be a division among white evangelical Christians is surfacing, as I suggested here: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20061120/023453.html>.
But, for that to happen, secular liberals and leftists have to take the religious seriously. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>