On Clarity

The worse things get, the clearer the solution becomes.

I can't remember the last time I read the news and did not become actively pissed off at what I was hearing. Regardless of whether I learn something on corporate news networks or a Marxist blog, the facts themselves are almost always enraging. Despite the brief rays of hope we saw during the Arab Spring, and the events around the world inspired by the heroic struggles of the Middle East (e.g. Wisconsin), the powers-that-be are still to strong to allow events to spiral out of their control for too long. When the Arabs finally rose up in revolt against the brutal Western-backed dictators that had held them down for decades, the corporate elite was taken totally by surprise. Yet they clawed their way back to relevance through the most blunt expression of their power: brute military force.

NATO's Libya adventure has now lasted for months and is probably the most visible expression of the increasing lawlessness of the Western bourgeoisie. Barack Obama's autocratic decision to commit the United States to another Middle Eastern war was helped along by a Congress seemingly more eager than ever to demonstrate its own irrelevance. The Obamabots - those Democratic loyalists who will cheer whatever Obama does, despite criticizing the same conduct when Bush did it - fell for the ruse of a "humanitarian war" hook, line and sinker. The accompanying propaganda has been excruciating, as another designated official enemy - in this case, Libyan strongman Col. Qaddafi - becomes the latest Hitler.

Most mornings on the way to work, I read the free newspaper Metro that they hand out at the TTC train stations. It contains recut articles from the Associated Press and so you get the most blandly uninformative, "objective" (i.e. corporate-friendly) account of the news possible. Ever since the Libya war began, Western reporters have dutifully fallen in line, accepting any and all propaganda their governments feed them while playing the part of adversarial, hardcore journalists when it comes to reporting on the Libyan side. There's plenty of reason to doubt the allegations of Qaddafi equipping his troops with Viagra and condoms and ordering them to engage in mass rapes, but our "free press" are the best stenographers around when it comes to swallowing government claims wholesale.

Oh, today Obama dramatically escalated his other undeclared illegal war in Yemen, giving the CIA carte blanche to intensify its drone strikes. During all of this, of course, the overriding concern of the crusading journalists in the U.S. media was Anthony Wiener's wiener - naturally overlooking the fact that nothing illegal happened and this was a purely personal matter between the Representative and his wife. It makes me sick to see them question a humiliated, powerless figure like Wiener (despite the fact that I'm no fan of his slavish pandering to Israel and AIPAC) and pretend that they're the heroic checks on power they apparently still think they are. As always, Glenn Greenwald said it best.

Why do I mention all these disparate subjects? I guess because they illustrate the rapid decline of our media, politics, and socio-economic system over the last few decades, but especially the American one. All the way up to a few years ago, I would read blogs like Crooks and Liars to hear the latest inanities uttered by some Republican politician and get annoyed that anybody could be stupid enough to believe their lies. Now, of course, things are so exponentially worse that I don't even notice things like that anymore. I almost have more respect for the deluded Republican base than the Obamabots, because at least they're opposed to Obama, despite it being for completely fictitious and nonsensical reasons cooked up at False News and right-wing talk radio. I certainly have more "respect" (not the right word, but the best I could think of) for Republicans than Democrats, because at least they're basically honest about screwing working people and fellating the rich, while the Democrats lie their asses off pretending to care about ordinary people.

With the total bankruptcy of the two-party system - and that includes both Democrats/Republicans in the U.S. and the Liberals/Conservatives in Canada - the necessity for a socialist alternative has never been greater. In Canada the NDP is coming off strong from the recent federal election, when it finally became the Official Opposition. Down south, the need for a Labor Party is increasingly obvious even to the reformists; witness AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka finally getting the message and beginning the process of jettisoning labour from the Democratic Party. Most people in North America are far from having any kind of socialist ideology, but I've learned so much in the past several months from Fightback and the International Marxist Tendency that I have a far better grasp of theory than ever. The class struggle is an objective reality and most workers are beginning to realize that.

That's why the struggle in the years ahead, despite its difficulties, paints a clear picture of objective class relations that will become more and more obvious to everyone the worse the global economy gets and the more they push these austerity policies on us. I started writing again today because I've been reading for so long and it's time for me to start speaking out once more using the power of the pen. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Air Canada employees have both begun strike actions recently, which will set the tone for the years of struggle to come. It's time to get down to business - meaning it's time to fight business.

Toronto: Fred Weston speaks on the Syrian uprising

Originally published at Fightback.

Fresh from his appearance at Fightback’s 2011 national conference, In Defence of Marxism editor Fred Weston spoke at the University of Toronto’s OISE building on May 24 to discuss the Arab Revolution and specifically its effects on Syria.

While the fate of the Assad regime remains uncertain, the widespread revolts that have shaken the country to its foundations are only the beginning of a long process, which Fred put in the context of the wider Arab Revolution.

The bourgeoisie had been completely taken aback by the mass revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Prior to the eruption of popular anger, the Economist had described revolution in Tunisia as unlikely, given that the country was more “Westernized”. By contrast, once Ben Ali was deposed, the BBC stressed the unlikelihood of revolution spreading to Egypt on the conceit that that country was so unlike the West. This racist portrayal of a passive and sedate Arab population, combined with a belief that revolution was purely a phenomenon of the past, gave the bourgeois a sense of false confidence.

The sudden mobilization of the Tunisian and Egyptian proletariat revealed the true balance of power. As Fred outlined, the global working class has actually never been stronger than it is today – both numerically and as a percentage of the population. Many of the Arab countries currently roiled by revolution were actually experiencing China-level economic growth at the time. Yet the distribution of wealth was skewed towards the capitalists and the workers saw no improvement in their standard of living – a worldwide phenomenon. The anger of the working class was already evident in the explosive protests across Europe during the fall of 2010 – the strikes in Spain and Portugal, riots in Greece, and the largest student protest ever in Britain.

This revolutionary turmoil came not as a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, but was the culmination of decades of economic policy. The past 30 years saw extensive privatization and ruthless cuts to welfare and social services. Bourgeois economists’ worship of the “free market” and supposed contempt for government was utterly discredited in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, when the bankers were bailed out to the tune of billions by capitalist governments. In the Arab world, the move to privatization accelerated in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, when the state’s role in the economy began to shrink.

The revolutions in Africa and the Middle East, Fred argued, confirmed the Marxist theory of the state. In the 1970s, many leftist groups advocated terrorist methods while genuine Marxists said this would only strengthen the state (e.g. Palestinian use of terrorist methods only strengthened the Zionist state). Under the pressure of a mass movement, the state apparatus can break down. We saw this in Tunisia when a soldier first saluted a coffin, and in Egypt (with its 1.5 million armed men), when the determination of the masses swayed ordinary soldiers.

Bahrain and Libya

Fred briefly touched on the events in Bahrain and Libya. He exposed the hypocrisy of imperialist claims to be “protecting civilians” in Libya with bombing raids, while the United States quietly backed Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Bahrain to quash non-violent protesters. With the U.S. fleet based in Bahrain, much-ballyhooed concerns for “democracy” and “human rights” did not apply.

Quite simply, it was in the imperialists’ interests to intervene in Libya but not in Bahrain, with its more reliable authoritarian regime. On a more strategic level, Libya gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to intervene militarily in the Arab Revolution, which had caught it completely off-guard.

Where Egypt had led to the idea that all you needed to overthrow an authoritarian government was to go on Facebook and Twiter and gather enough people together in a square, Libya illustrated that it wasn’t so simple. In Libya, regime figures defected early out of a belief that they could channel the revolution towards their own ends. Right from the start, there was a conflict between the revolutionary youth and the interim government, which saw the events in terms of a military struggle.

There is no real difference between the economic policies of Qaddafi and the “rebel” leaders, who would promptly hand over control of Libya’s resources to the imperialists. While the dictators are now gone in Tunisia and Egypt, the regimes they headed are still largely intact. Those in power shuffle the chairs on the deck, but the same powerful economic interests always prevail.

Syria

Following the coup that established the Assad regime in the 1970s, Syria pursued the Soviet model of development, which provided some genuine benefits to the population. Syria experienced phenomenal growth rates in its early decades of well over 50%. By the 1980s, this had slowed to 33% growth per annum. Today, it is an anaemic 1%. The masses supported the Syrian government in the 1960s and 70s, when it provided real material benefits and the country’s oil money was partly used to fund social services.

Syria’s economic decline paralleled the stagnation of the USSR. Emphasizing that real socialism requires workers’ democracy in addition to a nationalized planned economy, Fred noted that the privileged Syrian bureaucracy became increasingly resented as the country’s economy stalled. Following the Soviet collapse, the Syrian government began taking tentative steps towards a market economy, beginning with private banking in 1991 and later progressing to foreign investment and a stock market.

Assad’s government privatized and passed on the fruits of the country’s wealth to its own cronies. In essence, the Syrian elites strove to emulate the Chinese model, transferring the means of production from public to private ownership. Identical terms were even used – e.g. “social market economy”. Having lost most of its claims to legitimacy, the Syrian regime as it stands today is one of the world’s most brutal. Legions of police are tasked specifically with monitoring the internet for any signs of dissent.

Like the Tunisian Revolution, which began when a young men harassed by the police set himself on fire, the Syrian revolt began with a small event on February 17, when hundreds of bystanders intervened after watching the police harass two motorists. Protests soon swelled to over 1500 and one of the government’s ministers was forced to intervene. Throughout February and March, the movement gradually gained in strength, with the most affected layers being the youth (who constitute 60% of the population) and the poor.

In addition to its use of brute force to repress the protests, the Assad regime has also sought to exploit certain “moderate” dissidents to dampen the revolutionary fervour. The Syrian working class pushes ahead, but the threat posed by reformist elements reflects those of leftists around the world. The task in Syria remains the same as elsewhere: building a mass revolutionary party to provide a programme and leadership for the workers’ movement.

Special brigades have been deployed to put down the Uprising, but the government does not have enough forces to repress the entire country at once. Thus far the protests have largely been confined to individual cities, allowing the security forces to move wherever trouble appears. The lesson is obvious: a truly national movement is necessary to exploit the state’s weakness.

What comes next? Fred theorized that, should the Syrian workers succeed in overthrowing Assad, the resulting government would likely follow the pattern set out by Tunisia and Egypt – probably some form of bourgeois democracy. Yet democracy is only a means to an end, and bourgeois democracy cannot solve the problems faced by Syrians today. Even in the advanced capitalist countries, the system is incapable of alleviating severe unemployment – why would it be any different in Syria?

In order to progress, the protest movements require a solid programme and revolutionary leadership. The means of production must be nationalized under the control of the workers themselves, and a genuine proletarian democracy established. The task of the Marxists is helping youth in the Arab world reach these conclusions and fight for an Arab socialist federation.

Q & A

During the question and answer period, a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq asked about the absence of socialist or communist groups in the February protests. While frontline organizers were individual working class activists, mainstream socialist parties seemed closer to the state – a dangerous development when the Iraqi government recently announced its own privatization programme.

Fred responded that when examining a jar, one should not merely read the label, but rather examine the contents inside. The leaders of so-called working class, “socialist” and “communist” parties worldwide are not up to the tasks facing humanity. There is a huge gap between the leadership and the rank-and-file. Reformist leaders came of age at a time when capitalism seemed to be able to offer reforms such as free health care and public education.

Regarding the self-proclaimed socialist/communist parties, Fred reminded his audience of the Stalinist “two-stage theory”, which these corrupted figures used to derail revolutionary situations. By claiming the need to first have a “democratic” revolution before attempting socialism later, and therefore arguing that the working class should ally itself with the “progressive” bourgeoisie now, the Stalinists abort revolutions before they begin.

In order to solve this problem, the working class must change the leadership of its mass organizations. When Fightback supporter Arash Azizi asked what the task of real socialists in Syria should be, Fred called for strikes in all industries, for Syrian youth and workers to occupy the schools and the factories, and for election of workers’ representatives to create an economic programme that will allow the working class to take total control of the country. The pressing need is for a mass revolutionary leadership.