Ali: It's somehow as if history has become too subversive. The past has too much knowledge embedded in it, and therefore it's best to forget it and start anew. But as everyone is discovering, you can't do this to history; it refuses to go away. If you try to suppress it, re-emerges in horrific fashion. That's essentially what's been going on.
Karl Carlile: Tariq Ali, in his position on Afghanistan as demonstrates the limitations faced by the politics of reformism. He suggests that history is an objective process that exists independently of humanity. For him it is not people that make history but history that makes people. This is how he can claim that with history if "you try to suppress it, it re-emerges in horrific fashion. That's essentially what's been going on." In the next breath he zig zags from the above crass objectivism to an equally crass subjectivism in which he suggests that history can be ignored by classes: "But the reason they can get away with it is that history has been totally downplayed." Adding to this subjectivism is his view that it is the US media that has been the cause of the Gulf and Afghanistan wars. Tariq Ali: If you see what passes as the news on the networks in the United States, there's virtually no coverage of the rest of the world, not even of neighbouring countries like Mexico or neighbouring continents like Latin America. It's essentially a very provincial culture, and that breeds ignorance. This ignorance is very useful in times of war because you can whip up a rapid rage in ill-informed populations and go to war against almost any country. That is a very frightening process. Karl Carlile: Now according to Tariq history and class consciousness have been negated by the power of television. The subjective actions of the US bourgeoisie can wipe out both history and class consciousness. What Tariq cannot understand is that the absence of class consciousness of the US working class together with Washington's ability to successfully attack Afghanistan has its cause in a much more complicated set of conditions. These conditions entail both objective and subjective ingredients. Ali: ...previous wars were genuinely fought by coalition. The United States was the dominant power in these coalitions, but it had to get other people on its side. In both the Gulf War and in Kosovo, the U.S. had to get the agreement of other people in these alliances before it moved forward. The war in Afghanistan, the first war of the twenty-first century, shows the United States doing what it wants to do, not caring about who it antagonizes, not caring about the effects on neighbouring regions." Karl Calile: So what! It makes no essential difference whether US imperialism fights wars in or out of coalition. They are still imperialist wars. They still constitute a form of brutal oppression. They are still violently oppressive events. The implication on Tariq's part is that, in some way, the wars fought by the US in genuine coalition with other imperialist powers are in some way less nasty than US go it alone policy. This view ties in with the political environment found in Tariq's previous home in the Pabloite International Marxist Group. Anyway even here is facts are wrong. The Vietnam war was primarily fought by US imperialism independently of any other imperialist power. Tariq Ali: U.S. is telling the Northern Alliance to kill Taliban prisoners. It's totally a breach of all the known conventions of war. Western television networks aren't showing this, but Arab networks are showing how prisoners are being killed and what's being done to them. Instead, we're shown scenes that are deliberately created for the West!ern media: a few women without the veil, a woman reading the news on Kabul television, and 150 people cheering. Karl Carlile: There is nothing unusual about this. Imperialism has always engaged in these practices. The bourgeois media is designed to deceive the masses. Again says this as if there was some pristine time under imperialism when there was more nobility displayed by good old fashioned imperialism. Again Tariq Pabloist reformism imprisons his conception of imperialist reality. He cannot see that it imperialism's nature to be nasty towards the masses. If it wasn't it would not be imperialism. It is almost as if Tariq wants to nostalgically live in the world of the sixties with its flower power and its many other utopian illusions. Tariq Ali: All these wars are similar in the way ideology is being used. It's the ideology of so-called humanitarian intervention. We don't want to do this, but we're doing this for the sake of the people who live there. This is, of course, a terrible sleight of hand because all sorts of people live there, and, by and large, they do it to help one faction and not the other. In the case of Afghanistan, they didn't even make that pretence. It was essentially a crude war of revenge designed largely to appease the U.S. public. And the United States has perfected the manipulation. The media plays a very big, big role. Karl Carlile: Tariq does not understand that these features are common to imperialist society. There is nothing new in the about the ideology of humanitarian intervention. When 19th century British imperialism was colonising Africa it was done, it claimed, to civilise the "niggers". Humanitarian interventionist ideology is a mainstay of imperialism. Tariq Ali: During the Gulf War, journalists used to challenge government news managers and insisted they wouldn't just accept the official version of events. It seems that with the war in the Balkans and now this, journalists have accepted the official version. Journalists go to press briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists too much. Karl: Totally untrue. In some ways journalism has displayed less obvious jingoism than during the Gulf war. However in both cases professional journalism in general has played the same reactionary role. At most the bourgeois role is played in superficially different ways. This is because each war possesses its own specific characteristics. Tariq suggestion that journalism in the days of the Gulf war was more progressive than journalism today is plain old Pabloist reformism with its nostalgia for the good old days. Tariq Ali: Blair does it to get attention. He does it to posture and prance around on the world stage, pretending that he is the leader of a big imperial power when, in fact, he's the leader of a medium-sized country in Northern Europe. I think Clinton certainly liked using him. But the Bush Administration doesn't take him that seriously. Karl Carlile: Tariq displays more of his vulgar subjectivism. To reduce the role of Blair to the subjective superficial one is to misleadingly trivialise the significance of British imperialism. To collapse the politics of Blair to the level of theatre is to idealise British imperialist politics in a crassly subjective way. It is to suggest that the politics of Blair does not represent the class interests of the bourgeoisie. Britain is not, as Tariq claims, merely a medium-sized country in Northern Europe. Britain is an imperialist country that exerts a significant influence on global politics and economics. Its strategy for advancing its class interests is internationally somewhat different to the strategy of other European imperialist powers. However this does not make its international politics and diplomacy any more or less serious than that other European powers. Tariq Ali: ... Britain isn't an imperial power and the United States is. The United States is now The Empire. There isn't an empire; there's The Empire, and that empire is the United States. It's very interesting that this war is not being fought by the NATO high command. NATO has been totally marginalized. The "coalition against terrorism" means the United States. It does not wish anyone else to interfere with its strategy. When the Germans offered 2,000 soldiers, Rumsfeld said we never asked for them. Quite amazing to say this in public. Karl: It is clear from the above observations that Tariq misunderstands the role of NATO. Tariq views NATO as some kind of collectivist club designed to democratically represent the interests of all members. It is almost as if he views NATO as a progressive institution that serve to restrain the actions of Washington. NATO is and has been the primarily a US institution. As a US institution Washington uses it to advance its class interests. Consequently it uses it in different ways under different conditions. Concerning the war against Afghanistan NATO was used. However it was used in a way that suited the specific needs of US capital in relation to Central Asia. The essential point is that it of no real interest to communists as to whether NATO is used or not used by US imperialism. What is of interest is that US imperialism engaged in brutally oppressive attack on Afghanistan. What is of importance is that the working class organise itself against imperialism by transforming itself into a communist working class. Tariq Ali: The question is, will the weak be able to organize themselves to bring about changes or not? Will the weak develop an internal strength and a political strength to ever challenge the rulers that be? These are the questions posed by the world in which we live. People are increasingly beginning to feel that democracy itself is being destroyed by this latest phase of globalization and that politics doesn't matter because it changes nothing. This is a very dangerous situation on the global level, because when this happens, then you also see acts of terrorism. Terrorism emanates from weakness, no! t strength. It is the sign of despair. Karl: It is not a question of the weak being able to organise themselves. It is a question of the working class organising itself in such a way that it succeeds in effectively challenging and overthrowing capitalism. It is a class question not some abstract Nietschean conception of the weak versus the strong. Tariq Ali: People are increasingly beginning to feel that democracy itself is being destroyed by this latest phase of globalization and that politics doesn't matter because it changes nothing. Karl Carlile: It is not a question of people. The category "people" includes capitalist people. Instead it is a question of class. Tariq has illusions in democracy. He is of the view that it has been some kind of permanent fixture on the political landscape. He does not understand that in so far as democracy has existed it has existed as a response to the growing challenge of the working class. From about 1917 the political development of the working class and the growing capitalist contradictions forced the bourgeoisie to grant concessions to the working class. This was a strategy meant to disarm the proletariat and prevent the establishment of communism in a period when capitalism was experiencing great difficulties. Now that the Western working class has been comatose a new strategy has been developed by the bourgeoisie. There is nothing extraordinary about this. It is history in process. There is no suppressed history. History cannot be suppressed as Tariq suggests. To suppress history means to dissolve humanity. Tariq Ali: The main implication is a remapping of the world in line with American policy and American interests. Natural resources are limited, and the United States wants to make sure that its own population is kept supplied. The principle effect of this will be for the United States to control large parts of the oil which the world possesses. There are some people who say this war was fought because of oil. I honestly don't believe it. But that doesn't mean once they have sorted out the first phase of it, the war won't be used to assert or reassert U.S. economic hegemony in the region. They want to do it in the Middle East, as well. Karl Carlile: To reduce the actions of Washington to one of scarce resources is to miss the entire character of imperialism. The actions of Washington are a product of the growing contradictions of capitalism. They are a response to the growing difficulties in maintaining conditions of profitability. The problem is not scarcity but its very opposite --surplus. It is the overproduction of capital that explains Washington's global strategy. It is the growing problem of the overproduction of capital with regard to the given rate of exploitation of labour power by capital that is the underlying cause of the general pattern observed by imperialist capital. Tariq Ali in his comments and forecasts concerning developments with regard to Afghanistan has been way off the mark. This defect has been one common to much of the left. It overestimated the strength of the Taliban state and underestimated the power of US imperialism. Tariq also overestimated the relationship between the Pakistan state and the Taliban state. Instead of seeking to learn from their serious theoretical and political shortcomings they fall silent on the subject acting as if history had not highlighted their limitations. Consequently it is this left that is seeking to suppress history. This left acts as if it had never misunderstand the nature of the war in Afghanistan. Karl Carlile Be free to visit the web site of the Communist Global Group at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ (Ali's comments are from an interview published in The Progressive)
