In a message dated 3/25/03 6:12:04 AM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
When Iraq was first colonised by Britain in 1917, Iraqis were fed the same British propaganda about liberation through occupation. We fought the best part of last century to get rid of colonial Britain and, since then, have helped a great number of independence movements worldwide. Iraqis may wish for the current regime to change, but anyone who understands our culture will know that in this war Iraqis will fight and die, not to save President Saddam Hussein, but to protect their home, land, dignity and self-respect from a new world order alien to their way of life. We are an enormously proud people.
Comment
This question of the self-determination of nation's - in this instance Iraq, from the standpoint of Marxist theory, the doctrine of national development advanced by Marx and Engels, then reshaped in the hands of Lenin as the national-colonial question has undergone radical change in presentation.
This question has been observed over a long period of time by generations of Marxist. Each generation is compelled by the logic of industrial development and changes in the form of financial imperial capital to reshape the presentation of the national colonial question based on the specific state of development of the material power of the productive forces. And also, the actual (not merely juridical) equalization of nations based on their standing in reference to the actual economic development of the imperial centers.
Currently the world has been economically evened up. This does not mean every area of earth is in possession of identical means of production, but rather that every area of earth has been drawn into commodity production on the basis of a unified and interactive world infrastructure, on which sits the world distribution of the social product. These products are distributed based on possession of money. The world's people can only acquire money by working - selling their labor power. The technological revolution or the economic revolution makes this increasingly difficult for a widening scope of the world's people.
A serious presentation and summation of the evolution of the national and then national-colonial question, from the standpoint of Marxism would require a small book running perhaps 40 pages.
Without question the direct colonial system was absolutely defeated on a world scale as the result of and as a by-product of the Second imperial World War. The revolution in China and then the war of national liberation in Vietnam was highpoints in this process. This of course includes the hundreds of millions of slaves of imperialism throughout continental Africa and throughout Asia and Latin America. That is to say one can trace the national question and the question of the liberation of colonies from the American Revolution of 1776 up to the defeat of USNA imperial armed forces in Vietnam.
No Marxist worth their salt can dispute that USNA imperialism is the international hangmen of the proletarian social revolution and the enemy of the majority of the people of earth. In the face of the impossible, our arrogant bourgeoisie seeks to preserve its privilege position and that of the Anglo-American working class as a social basis for imperial aggression. The representatives of our imperial bourgeoisie have to be elected and to be elected you must protect the livelihood of the people who can vote.
The law of value and specifically the operation of the law that govern the organic composition of capital make it impossible to protect the livelihood of the working class. This law basically states that more and more advanced machinery will be added to the production process, eliminating huge sectors of human labor and compel the value system to change under the weight of destruction. Advanced robotics cannot engage in exchange or buy products. Advanced machines can replace the work that 50% of everyone in America and indeed the world do on a daily basis. Here is the essence of the economic revolution that drives the social revolution.
Iraq is no longer a direct colony of any imperial power or what for another generation of Marxist was called a semi-colony or Neo colony. The imperialist bourgeoisie long ago adopted self-determination as a political slogan during the era of the first Imperial World War. The aggressive military assault on Iraq at the hands of USNA financial imperialism is not simply a question of the self-determination of the laboring masses of Iraq. How the masses in Iraq resist and fight imperial aggression has what is called a "national character." The "national character" cannot but involve the psychological make-up of the people of this territory and this most certainly includes spiritual longings and religious doctrine. National character is not simply a concept of territory and its economic evolution, but the way people think things out in a given territory, which embraces their history of spiritual and intellectual discourse.
The invasion of the ancient Holy lands by Christian soldiers is of course contemptible and inexcusable - period.
The US aggressors are not seeking to covert Iraq into a direct colony of USNA financial imperialism, but rather the destruction of all social structures that inhibit the operation and flow of speculative capital throughout the Middle East or East Asia as it is being called. These historically evolved social structures manifest the psychological make-up of the various diverse peoples of Iraq.
The expressed doctrine of the Bush Jr. administration that calls for "Regime Change" in Iraq is a policy statement of its actual international goals: the shattering of any "national" impediments to that sector of speculative capital dominated by my Anglo-American bourgeoisie. These "impediments" to imperial investment arose on the basis of the social structures throughout the Middle East organized around and based on various families and social structures that survived the transition from agriculture to industry.
The Christian soldiers are going to be rightfully fought - to the death. Yet, there is no escape or way out of the imperial-capital relationship other than the overthrow of the power of capital - domestic and foreign. The economic revolution cannot be halted or overthrown, and here there is no escape.
The Anglo-American imperialist bourgeoisie is attempting the historically impossible; to chart and complete the political leap to another level of social organization - social relations of production, that sits upon electro-computerized production process, while preserving itself as a ruling class welding the power of capital. Preserving itself as ruling class - at any rate preserving a sector as ruling class, might be possible and realizable. Preserving the power of capital on the basis of a new mode of production is not possible.
The social revolution that is being generated on the basis of the new changes in the material power of production is proceeding in a very strange and complex way. The national and colonial is a matter of the overthrow of the power of capital, domestic and foreign.
The strategic projection of the dominant sector of finance capital does not rivet on oil, monetary policy or any one side of the economic and social equation. We are witnessing the assertion of a class - led by our Anglo-American bourgeoisie, attempting to escape the logic of history, on the basis of the economic and social structure it inherited from previous generations. No old class - including the working class but most certainly the bourgeoisie, can escape the economic revolution.
Peace
Melvin P.
