Below is the reply by Helen Jones to a left-wing activist who has been advocating that anti-imperialists should support the Taliban.
[December 2009]
Dear Ed:
Thank you for responding to the article I sent you.
And as I noted in my prior email, I think this topic is pertinent and
is being discussed in the left. (See, for example, the ISO website
under the topic “Afghanistan” —
http://socialistworker.org/search/node/taliban.) It is also important
to work to clarify how to assist the Afghan people in the struggle for
liberation.
You equate revolutionary defeatism with positive work for the victory of the Taliban. (“If the U.S. occupation is to be ejected, and if we are serious about revolutionary defeatism, then we must work for the victory of the Taleban.”) But I believe you have not read Lenin’s position on revolutionary defeatism lately. Your assertion, in effect, that the Bolsheviks gave material or logistic support for the victory of Japan [in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905] is nowhere to be found in Russian history, nor is there anything along these lines in Lenin’s writings on the subject of Japan and revolutionary defeatism.
Lenin’s writings on the war between Japan and Russia make clear that he did not advocate the positive victory of Japanese imperialism in its struggle with Russia, but sought to use the impending defeat of Russia as the basis upon which to wage further class struggle and civil war.
Later, in his article “The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War” (referring of course to WWI), Lenin wrote about the need of the proletariat to take independent action against the autocracy, and he criticizes Trotsky’s lack of understanding of revolutionary defeatism. Trotsky was unwilling or unable to understand that desiring and working for the defeat of one’s own imperialist government through revolutionary struggle against it is different from working for the victory of another imperialist force. Lenin wrote:
“[Trotsky’s call for “a revolutionary struggle against the war”] is an instance of high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism. A ‘revolutionary struggle against the war’ is merely an empty and meaningless exclamation, something at which the heroes of the Second International excel, unless it means revolutionary action against one’s own government even in wartime. One has only to do some thinking in order to understand this. Wartime revolutionary action against one’s own government indubitably means, not only desiring its defeat, but really facilitating such a defeat. (‘Discerning reader’: note that this does not mean ‘blowing up bridges’, organising unsuccessful strikes in the war industries, and áin general helping the government defeat the revolutionaries. [Emphasis added.])
“The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany. [Here Lenin points to the precise mistake you are making, i.e. that revolutionary defeatism must mean advocating the victory of an enemy of the proletariat.] (Bukvoyed and Semkovsky give more direct expression to the ‘thought’, or rather want of thought, which they share with Trotsky.). . . . But Trotsky regards [revolutionary defeatism] as the ‘methodology of social-patriotism’! To help people that are unable to think for themselves, the Berne resolution (Sotsial Demokrat No. 40) made it clear, that in all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth, while Semkovsky (an opportunist who is more useful to the working class than all the others, thanks to his naively frank reiteration of bourgeois wisdom) blurted out the following: ‘This is nonsense, because either Germany or Russia can win’ (Izvestia No. 2)
"Take the example of the Paris Commune. France was defeated by Germany but the workers were defeated by Bismarck and Thiers! Had Bukvoyed and Trotsky done a little thinking, they would have realised that they have adopted the viewpoint on the war held by governments and the bourgeoisie, i.e., that they cringe to the ‘political methodology of social-patriotism’, to use Trotsky’s pretentious language.”
Like Trotsky, you have fallen into the same error, do not grasp what revolutionary defeatism means and requires, and see only the possibility that either the US or the Taliban can win in Afghanistan.
In 1905, the Bolsheviks consistently pursued a path of revolutionary action against their own government during wartime, and were ultimately successful in rousing the masses into revolutionary action (rather than taking things as they were, as you advocate). They worked hard to build revolutionary working class consciousness, something which you disdain, because “it does not exist” already (sort of like your not wanting to be part of an anti-war movement that is not big already). Rather than taking things as they were in 1904, and again in 1917, the Bolsheviks continued work to build up the democratic, and then socialist revolutions in Russia!
The above-quote from Lenin also shows that far from advocating adventurism of the sort that you often glorify, Lenin specifically criticizes adventurist tactics because these tactics “only help the government defeat the revolutionaries.” Of course, at the same time Lenin also stood for armed actions, expropriations, and so on — but always when they were part of a mass revolutionary upsurge and never when they were acts of revolutionaries substituting themselves for the masses, or attempting to ‘excite’ the allegedly backward masses through heroic acts.
While alleging in your response that I would only support a socialist regime in Afghanistan (which is not true), you assert that we must provide material and logistic support to the Taliban because they represent a progressive force, that their demand for “self-determination” is a bourgeois democratic rather than a socialist demand.” But there is nothing democratic about the Taliban.
In looking at the effects of imperialism and the development of national liberation struggles in the context of colonialism, Lenin took the stand of the working class, writing of “the need for a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries” and “the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the position of the khans, landowners, mullahs, . . ..” (Second [Congress of the Communist -- CV] International, Draft Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions.) Even then, Lenin also warned of the national bourgeoisie: “There has been a certain rapprochement between the bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies, so that very often—perhaps even in most cases—the bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries, while it does support the national movement, is in full accord with the imperialist bourgeoisie, i. e. , joins forces with it against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes.” (Second Congress [of the Communist International–CV], Report Of The Commission On The National and The Colonial Questions.)
It is imperative that we study the class forces at work in any war and in struggles within a nation. The Taliban, although it is armed, is a force of reaction. It is not seeking “self-determination” for the Afghan people, nor is it a “bourgeois democratic” or progressive force. As Marxists, we must “judge” the character of struggling forces, and we positively ally ourselves with those that further the historical objectives of the working class, though even then not uncritically. Lenin’s writings are full of judging the nature of social forces that arose at various times in history. Marxists do at times provide critical support for a bourgeois national movement, where that national movement will further the struggles of the toiling masses. But the Taliban seeks to strengthen the position of the khans, landowners, and mullahs, and will continue the brutal oppression of the Afghan people. Bourgeois democratic and working class forces do exist in Afghanistan, and just because they are not armed to the teeth does not mean they don’t exist. It is they who deserve support.
You write that “[o]nly privileged Americans would characterize support for this anti-imperialist struggle (the Taliban) as undeserving of our support. These ‘comrades’ have not internalized the important lesson that class trumps all other forms of oppression.” It is interesting to me that your reply is so emphatic about the importance of class, but it never actually points to the class nature or class interests of the Taliban, or anyone else. The Taliban is an ultra-fundamentalist regime that springs from mujahedeen circles which were funded for over a decade by the CIA to fight a dirty war in Afghanistan in the 80's and early 90's. The fact that this fundamentalist trend is currently at loggerheads with US and European imperialism doesn’t mean that it is against all imperialism, any more than the fact that the pan-Islamic and pan-Turkish movements of 1920's were at loggerheads with US and European imperialism meant they were against all imperialism.
The erroneous idea that the Taliban is a progressive class force leads to another error -- the idea that it is also leading a national liberation struggle for Afghanistan’s right of self determination. You equate the struggle of the Taliban to rule Afghanistan without outside interference with a national liberation struggle, a struggle against imperialism. But there is no evidence that that the Taliban is the government of choice for the Afghan people. You illogically equate “the Taliban” with “the nation” and neglect to mention the interests and desires of the masses of people who live there and their democratic strivings. Democratic people opposed to warlordism (as well as “NGO-lords,” and US imperialism, etc.) do exist in Afghanistan, and it is our job as Marxist-Leninists to promote these progressive forces.
You write that we do not “pin our hopes on forces that do not and will not exist in any material sense.” Revolutionaries don’t “pin our hopes” on anyone -- we work, ourselves, to build revolutionary consciousness and organization. And we do work to assist in any way we can the revolutionary-democratic currents in Afghanistan, and particularly any Afghan communists. While we can debate whether the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan is truly communist, it certainly exists in a material sense, as does the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, as do the masses who elected Malalai Joya to parliament.
But even if none of these organizations existed, and the latter hadn’t happened, we would still take the stand that we do. There are working masses in Afghanistan and there are progressive forces in Afghanistan who are fighting, and we support their ultimate victory, just as we support the ultimate defeat of US imperialism. And we do this making a consistent call for revolutionary action against the imperialist government and by supporting the progressive Afghan forces of various kinds. Falling in line behind those with the guns right now does nothing to actually further an anti-imperialist struggle in the southwest Asia. This is not the stand of the working class.
You believe that only someone who is willing to go to prison for their supposedly more radical actions is a real radical, and that militancy breeds resistance. Do you have evidence that the Brigades’ “militancy” i.e. use of weapons, etc., played a meaningful role in building revolutionary consciousness or objectively furthered the revolutionary cause of the working people? Some well-meaning and good people spent many years in prison, but it is not clear that any class-conscious trends developed out of the actions of individuals within a small elite.
You repeatedly point out within your response that certain progressive forces don’t exist, and argue that we have to take things as they are. Certainly we must analyze and understand the objective situation, but we don’t “take things as they are.” This is a depressing, defeatist outlook, which is contradictory for a revolutionary -- who by definition is working to overturn what is.
On the other hand, I believe that my analysis is more accurate and thus “taking things as they are,” (rather than as I would have them be), because I perceive accurately the class basis of the Taliban, and its position in the context of the movement of the international proletariat. I see how your position diminishes class struggle, and I thus decline to support it. It is you who paint the Taliban as what you want them to be (a progressive “democratic” force, or national liberation force), rather than as what they are.
Similarly, you believe that your methods are truly militant, yet you have shown that you will not actually work to build revolutionary class consciousness by doing revolutionary work among the masses. You repudiate these efforts as pointless marching “from point A to point B,” and rely instead on spontaneity, heroic acts of individuals, and support for reaction and terror. So it means you get to stay home a lot and dream of explosions. But to what end?
It is support for the Taliban, and unscientific, non-class-based views which actually serves US imperialism. It is a refusal to agitate among the masses, and preferring “heroic” “blowing up bridges” over mass struggle, which shows alliance with the ruling class. Unless there is disciplined work in the actual class and anti-war struggles in the US, the US ruling class will never be defeated. When you advocate support for the forces of reaction, you discredit the anti-imperialist movement. By advocating material or logistic support to the Taliban, you work against building a class-conscious revolutionary movement that will develop from out of the anti-imperialist instincts of the working masses (most of whom will—rightly—never feel any international class solidarity with the Taliban).
Revolutionary Regards,
Helen []
November 18, 2009
Dear comrade,
Here in the Philippines, a large group of leftist movement (Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Sanlakas, Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino, etc.) has been watching the development of “socialist” experiment (Evo Morales, etc) in the Latin American countries. In my opinion they are not only watching but finding in them the inspiration for their program and activities. The said organization had just emancipate itself from the Maoist CPP 1992 split.
Do you have a systematic critique regarding those historical development in the Latin America or at least a stand?
[AD, Philippines]
November 21, 2009
Dear comrade,
I was happy to receive your email, and would like to learn more about your views and the movements you are associated with.
Unfortunately, we are a small group and haven’t been able to pay the Latin American movements in different countries the attention they deserve. Nevertheless, we have a general stand towards the struggle there, and over the years have paid special attention to the struggle in a number of countries, such as Nicaragua, Mexico, and so forth.
There is a definite increase in the mass struggle throughout Latin America, and this is a very welcome phenomenon. But the left wing movement is disoriented, as it is elsewhere in the world. And it is reformist movements and governments that have the limelight.
Meanwhile the legacy of Maoism would make it hard to understand what is needed. Maoism, generally speaking, has a hard time discerning the particular character of the mass movement. This leads it to neglect the specific proletarian and socialist tasks in the movement, believing the movement as a whole is of a socialist nature.
So I am not surprised that today that Maoist-influenced movements, or trends that inherited something of a Maoist background, would still have this difficulty. This would be a major problem in dealing with the present situation in Latin America.
Today there are a number of reformist governments in Latin America, and they have a different character in different countries. Lula’s government in Brazil, for example, is quite neo-liberal. But in some countries, particularly Venezuela and Bolivia, the government is carrying out a number of reforms, and is connected to movements of the people.
For example, in Venezuela the Chavez government has used oil money to benefit the masses, and has increased social benefits. This and other reforms have created a lively situation in Venezuela. Nevertheless, the Chavez government is not socialist, or moving to socialism, or even a working-class based government. It is a reformist government, and it has relied in large part on oil revenues both for social benefits and to attempt to maintain support among certain sections of the bourgeoisie.
To deal with this requires a careful attitude. The key necessity for the Venezuelan working class is to develop an independent political movement of its own, and to rally other working people around it. Without this, sooner or later the present political energy will dissipate. There are many examples in Latin America -- and I’ll mention a few in a moment -- of when a lively political situation in a country during a reformist interlude was followed either by the degeneration of the reformist government, or its overthrow, and the masses found themselves left out in the cold because they had no solid class organization that could continue the struggle. So a key question is whether a significant section of Venezuelan workers and activists will develop a truly independent political movement. They will need to have close connection with the large section of the masses who, while believing in Chavez, nevertheless take part in this or that type of struggle, but they should not merge into the Chavista movement. The aim is not to form a left faction of the Chavistas, but to form an independent trend, albeit one which seeks to influence and work among the basic masses who follow Chavez.
I don’t know as much about Bolivia as Venezuela, but I think something similar must be true of it as well. I can see that some activists might be enthusiastic about Evo Morales because, while Chavez reached power through a section of the state bureaucracy, namely the army, Evo Morales came up through the mass movement. He has a strong connection to the indigenous peasants who are small producers. Nevertheless, his government is certainly not socialist (and indeed, I believe the vice-president talks of “Andean capitalism”). It is a government which is trying to bring various reforms to Bolivia, but which is not a working class government, albeit it may be one which represents many of the illusions that small producers often have. Here too the important question is whether the Bolivian working masses can develop an independent movement, one which would not be indifferent to the reforms of the Morales government, but one which would be independent of it.
The situation may be particularly complicated in Bolivia because of the troubled historical relationship between the working class and the indigenous peasantry. Moreover, according to some accounts I looked at, the Morales government has attacked certain sections of the workers. Meanwhile the workers movement has had the problem of the heavy influence of Trotskyism on the trade unions and the leftist workers, and this has led to disastrous tactics.
I have concentrated here on the internal class relations in Bolivia and Venezuela. But it is also quite clear that the foreign policy pursued by Chavez and Morales is not a socialist policy, nor a working-class internationalist policy. In saying this, I would add that of course we firmly oppose US imperialist pressure on Latin America including the imperialist campaign of lies against Venezuela and Bolivia and the pressure to overthrow Chavez and Morales. But I am not discussing here all the tasks of how to fight US imperialist threats against Latin America. Instead I am referring to the orientation that Chavez puts forward to the masses in his foreign relations, such as his solidarity with utterly repressive regimms. It’s one thing for Chavez to seek to avoid having Venezuela be isolated, but Chavez goes way beyond that.
More generally, Chavez is highly interested in the Cuban model of state-capitalism. And he also promotes a bourgeois-nationalist ideological framework. Those who really believe that the wave of Latin American reformism is socialist must not have a firm idea of Marxism, but must be bogged down in revisionist, social-democratic, or petty-bourgeois nationalist standpoints.
There have been examples before of the type situations that exist today. For example, the Sandinista movement fought against the dictatorship of Somoza, and overthrew it. We supported this struggle, and vehemently opposed US imperialist attempts to crush the Nicaraguan revolution. But we criticized the revisionist and petty-bourgeois nationalist ideas of the Sandinistas. And we made contact with a trend of Nicaraguan workers and activists who, for a time, stood up for revolutionary Marxism and the development of a solid proletarian base for the Nicaraguan revolution — this was MAP(M-L), who later became the Marxist-Leninist Party of Nicaragua. They represented a proletarian trend in the struggle against Somoza, and in Nicaragua under the Sandinista regime. Unfortunately, they fell prey to demoralization due to the decline of the political energy of the proletariat in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. But prior to that, they sought to build a truly working-class movement in Nicaragua, and from their experience, they could point to how the Sandinistas sought to demobilize the workers and turn them into a passive support group for the regime.
Now, if one examines what happened to the Sandinistas, one can trace both their suppression of the mass motion of the Nicaraguan workers and peasants throughout the 1980s, and their degeneration into another bourgeois gang preying on the masses in the period after the fall of their regime. This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t right to support their struggle against Somoza, or to oppose imperialist strangling of the Sandinista regime. But it does mean that it was correct for the Nicaraguan workers to try to build up an independent trend from Sandinism, and this history is also a warning of the danger when an independent working-class movement is not developed.
An example from further back in history concerns the period of the 1930s in Mexico. General Lazaro Cardenas became president of Mexico and carried out a series of reforms, and this involved not only the nationalization of oil, but a certain mobilization of the peasantry in the struggle for land. These reforms really did help the masses. But Cardenas used these reforms to overcome the crisis in the ruling party of the Mexican revolution, and he forged a new structure that suppressed the working class and maintained a dictatorial blanket over Mexico for about a half a century, until the rule of the PRI collapsed.
The problem was that the communist and working class movements couldn’t maintain political independence during the period of the Cardenas presidency. The communists were subject to the revisionism that spread through the latter 1930s. The correct standpoint wouldn’t have been to oppose all the reforms of Cardenas, but to find ways to lead the masses to go beyond the restraints Cardenas put on them. When instead the view was taken of simply trailing behind Cardenas, the stage was set for the subordination of the trade unions to the regime, and the overall suppression of the working class movement.
Perhaps this suffices to give some idea of our standpoint and to serve as a basis for further discussion. I look forward to hearing you views on these matters.
Comradely regards,
Joseph Green []
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