Chris Burford wrote:
We will see how the peace movement responds and evolves, and we can each make our personally minuscule contribution to the debate. Peace now, or Cease fire now, may remain the main slogans, but a purely pacifist position will isolate the movement from its wide hinterland, and so I suggest would a campaign based mainly on a rearguard defence of national sovereignty.
To the contrary, a "pacifist" (in the sense of being opposed to the right of the imperialists to make war) position
By pacifist, I mean someone absolutely opposed to war under all circumstances. I see the peace movement as composed of pacifists, anarchists, and liberals who think the present war is disproportionate and a manifestation of hegemonism.
is the only one that principled Marxists, radicals and progressives can put forward.
I do not see the main objection to imperialism being that it claims a right to go to war, and I am genuinely puzzled by this emphasis on "right" as if our struggles are mainly about whether we uphold or oppose a moral right. Imperialism in the sense of the highest stage of capitalism is now a global system of oppression and exploitation. Of course it uses war. But its prefered policy is increasingly one of peaceful domination and manipulation, G W Bush not withstanding.
I think there is a serious criticism of imperialism that it trashed Africa and did nothing to stop the genocide in Rwanda. I might be right or wrong, but a lot of other people think that. Why absolutise a concept of the "right" of imperialism to go to war, or absolutise opposition to it?
I absolutely uphold not the right but the duty of imperialism to go to war against Nazi Germany in alliance with Soviet Russia. Louis Proyect and I have well-known and quite unsurprising differences on that. Louis Proyect supports Lenin's position at Zimmerwald. I support the turn in the international communist movement at its seventh congress in 1935.
Tactics combine with strategy. If the current demonstrations only oppose as a matter of unarguable principle the "right" of imperialism to go to war, then that is already proved to be obviously futile. But as the stories mount of unnecessary civilian deaths and maimings, and of deaths through "friendly fire" and accidents, this propels the relevance of continued protests, against an unjust and inappropriate use of force. Yes even if they find some prisoners in Saddam's jails who have had their tongues cut out, as they promise us, it will still be relevant to campaign against the excessive and inappropriate use of force!
As far as "rearguard defence of national sovereignty" is concerned, I have no idea what this means and, moreover, and am afraid to learn more.
What is surprising is if there has temporarily been some measure of common ground between Louis Proyect and myself, who is allegedly indistinguishable from a liberal. What would be much more frightening for both of us would surely be if we were in complete agreement.
But without arguing through innuendo and instead to present the case at its best:- in a world in which imperialism, not just as a matter of policy, but by its very nature, is interfering in national sovereignty in so many ways, what are the merits for the democratic forces of the world to try to maintain the right of national sovereignty in every case? National sovereignty is a limited right which has existed to a limited degree for a period of history. The bourgeois nation state is not an absolute structure that has existed for all time and will continue to exist for ever. It is a product of the development of the productive forces. State structures are in a process of rapid change and transition. We are, through the clash of contradictions, watching a process of the formation of a global state structure in which the scope of armed forces and the emergence of global law is central. We do not need to oppose that in every case. Indeed in general it is progressive, relative to the world of individual states.
I can see why progressive people in the USA may immediately, in opposing the hegemonistic tendencies of their government, seek to respect the sovereignty of all other nations. But that is too narrow a political base for the participation of the progressive people of the USA as an important contingent of the progressive people of the world.
As another speaker said at the demonstration in London yesterday evening: they say there is now only one superpower in the world. But there is another power: the mass power of the people of the world.
That mass power will be best expressed in a global movement which subjectively will be a movement for peace and justice. It may often defend national sovereignty against outside oppression, but by no means always. There may be other times when this massive, vibrant force, will flexibly, according to the demands of the situation, transcend national boundaries.
Thus to be very explicit, the global movement needs not only to oppose the hegemonistic attack on Iraq now, but perhaps even within a couple of weeks, it needs to be able to unite with Iraqis who to some extent saw Saddam as a greater evil than the USA, yet care passionately for justice in the rest of the Middle East, and would join in demanding that Israel, not only recognises the rights of the Palestinians to their own state, but demands that it respects the rights of the Palestinians within its own "sovereign" borders.
Mass movements can lose momentum as well as gain momentum rapidly. It is not impossible that if it develops in a broad and flexible way, rather than being judged by narrow shibboleths, the present onslaught on the Saddam state, could turn into a movement across the Middle East for peace and justice, inherently opposed to all forms of oppression, by imperialist superpowers and by local reactionary regimes.
"Shibboleth" is an appropriate word, because it refers to the political principle that it is cleansing to slaughter everyone who cannot pronounce a certain word correctly. (Judges Chapter 12). Are we to orientate ourselves by simple shiboleths or by what is progressive and aids the unity of the working people of the world in a host of complex struggles, but especially the principle struggle between the people of the world and finance capitalism?
I would like to read a case for giving central prominence to the defence of the sovereign right of nations, in the current peace movement. Who cares for it except as an obstacle to hegemonism? Then why not oppose hegemonism directly and deal with the sovereignty of nations on a case by case basis? I would be interested to see the case for its central importance in the 21st century.
Chris Burford
London
