AN IRAQI TROTSKYIST ANSWERS FAQs ON THE WAR

From Class Struggle 51 July-August 2003

We opposed the war, but we failed to stop it.

What can we learn from this experience?

We opposed the war against Iraq.We tried to stop it. We built a movement that spanned the globe. From Madrid to Auckland, from California to Seoul, we organized in our millions to demonstrate our opposition, our fears, our rage and our disgust.

Yet in our millions, we were unable to win. In our millions, we were unable to stop the wheels of the American war machine. We were reduced to watching the onslaught if not in silence, then in impotent rage, in melancholy.

Has the Antiwar movement suffered a colossal defeat?

Practically, yes. Morally? Morally we have been proven correct. On the question of the validity of the case for war we have been proven correct. But the war is now a historical fact. That Bush and Blair lied and continue to lie is clear, but that they are successful liars is just as clear. The question is not whether the war was just; we always knew it was not. But knowing or proving that it was unjust will never be enough to stop a war.

Why did we fail?Isn’t opposition to war a natural and noble human instinct?

The world does not run in the interests of humanity. The world is run by imperialist superpowers in their own interests. Yankee imperialism has a number of strategic objectives that called for the war on Iraq. The only force capable of countering the imperialist machine is the working class. And yet it was precisely the working class that was not mobilized to oppose the war.

While workers certainly joined the movement, they did so primarily as individuals, atomized cells of a shattered and fragmented labor movement. In the absence of workers internationalism, it was natural they did not see themselves as part of the international working class, but as mums and dads. While mums and dads have every reason to oppose wars that their children are sent to kill and die in, they do not have the means to stop them.

Even at the height of the movement, apart from the odd euphoric moment in Hyde Park or in Rome, we knew that we were not going to win. We knew that the war would happen.

Why couldn’t the international working class stop this war with a general strike?

There were many good instances of this kind of action. The firefighters in Britain spring to mind as a union that was staunch in its opposition. In Greece(and elsewhere) transport workers refused to move military goods and supplies. These moves needed to be emulated and widened to the point of paralyzing the bosses’ economies. There are of course very good reasons why such a strike did not occur. The workers of the world are reeling from decades of counter-revolutionary advance. From New Zealand to Moscow the workers organizations have been repressed and beaten back. In this international situation the warmongers knew that they would not be defeated.

OK we opposed the war, but we failed to stop it. Who can resist the occupation as a historical fact?

In Iraq, the forces of the labor movement had suffered heavy defeats. Since 1968 the Baathist government has been very active in smashing all resistance. The catastrophic Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 was followed by even more catastrophic military adventures in Kuwait. 13 years of sanctions added their toll. By 2003, the Iraqi working class was disorganized, leaderless and exhausted.

The organizations of the Iraqi working class existed only outside Iraq, ironically in the very imperialist countries that had demanded their obliteration. Traditionally Holland, the UK, and the USA have been the main centers for the exiled Iraqi left. Since 1991 they have been operating in Northern Iraq. From exile the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), the Worker Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI) and numerous other independent Iraqi leftists opposed the war.

If the communists are weak can the Baathists muster support?

When war was declared, the Iraqi people took some measure of revenge on the Baath Party by leaving it to its fate, refusing to defend it. The Baath nationalist dictatorship was unable to stand up to the assault. Aware that it was not able to win any head-on military confrontations with the American forces, the Baath Party preferred to melt away. The dictatorship had given orders to its followers, to its Republican Guard and other elements close to the regime, to embark on a campaign of looting and murder. The world watched as the museums and the banks were stripped.

But the Baathists are still resisting the occupation

In the weeks since the fall of Baghdad, Baathist forces have been engaged in a campaign of provocation and sabotage that has reinforced their anti-worker credentials. They have routinely sent armed men into unarmed demonstrations and shot US soldiers, inviting return fire. They have attacked Iraqi electricity workers trying to restore power to parts of the city of Baghdad. They have given the occupying forces a ready excuse to do what they will. Under their leadership, Baghdad fell and was occupied by the Yankee invader. This fact alone is enough to condemn the dictatorship to ignominy.

If neither the communists nor Baathists can defeat the occupation, how do we take our fate into our own hands?

The occupation is a historical fact. We must learn from it that we must never trust a nationalist dictatorship to defend the workers anywhere, at any time.

We are unable to undo history. We must not tire no matter how bitter the pill it forces down our throat. The occupation of Iraq by the Yankee invaders is a painful state of affairs.

Rather than desperation, what is required now of the Iraqi revolution is firmness. We must strive to turn this reversal into its opposite, into a defeat for imperialism. A number of important steps have been taken already. Generally, we must turn the Imperialist occupation into a workers’ revolution.

How do we go from occupation to revolution?

It is clear that occupation will not end without a victorious armed struggle. Having said that, for the Iraqi left to start armed struggle against the Yankee occupier at this stage is suicidal. It would in fact not be very different from the tactics of the Islamic groups in Palestine. Small forces of armed men taking pot shots at passing US convoys may meet the mechanical demands of anti-imperialists in the West, but it offers no solution to the Iraqi working class.

What is your perspective?

Iraqi left forces must form a united front of labor and begin organizing a liberation movement. The people of Iraq already march through the streets protesting the occupation. Their anger and their energy must be harnessed. We need boycott the puppet Governing Council, which is made up of handpicked US stooges and demand and urgently build a constituent assembly. That way we can build the mass workers movement as the only possible way we can liberate Iraq.

How can we do this practically?

There are signs of this process beginning. The Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI) is playing a lead role in organizing the movement. It has already initiated “The Preparatory Committee for Forming Workers’ Councils and Trade Unions in Iraq”. This is an excellent development. The councils in particular have the potential to become the basic organizations for workers’ democracy.

The WCPI have formed a union for the unemployed. As of June 17^th, they had signed up around 20,000 members to the Union of Unemployed in Iraq (UUI). The basic demands of the union can be summarized as “either jobs, or Unemployment insurance”. They have already scored astonishing successes, such as the occupation of the old Iraqi trade union building. The soldiers of Iraq’s Army have been successful in their demand for payment of their wages.

The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) was founded on the 22^nd of June. Already they have established the first women’s shelter in the Middle East. They are organizing against the Islamist elements that are trying to impose the reactionary veil and other aspects of their reactionary politics on the secular women of Iraq, and they are organizing against the occupation.

How does this kind of organizing help in the struggle for freedom from occupation?

Firstly it takes the initiative back from the Islamists. After the collapse of the dictatorship, the Islamic currents gained a brief advantage. They were the only organization in Iraq that had a ready audience and an existing infrastructure. They sent their armed men into hospitals and food banks and set themselves up as repositories of medicine and general help.

It did not take long for the true nature of this movement to show itself. Liquor stores were bombed, women were forced to adopt Islamic customs.

Secondly, this kind of movement is a mass movement that is oriented directly to the blue-collar workers and the unemployed who number in the millions. It is imperative that the movement must encompass oil and transport and other workers, decommissioned soldiers, students etc. This movement must evolve to include all the working classes and other exploited classes in Iraq.

Is there really no alternative but a workers’ revolution?

There will be no Marshal plan for Iraq. While George Bush may be able to pledge 15 billion dollars to help fight AIDS in Africa (Bush’s re-election is coming up) he is unable to find the money to rebuild Iraq. The US economy is not the powerhouse it was in post World War II period.

Let there be no mistake, it is the imperialists of the world, and the USA in the first instance, that are responsible for all the tragedies of modern Iraq, including Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Far from being liberators, the Yankees are seen correctly as the cause of Iraq’s suffering. As Saddam himself said, the Baathists were brought to power “aboard an American train”. Far from greeting them as liberators, we should present them with a bill for the last 35 years of Iraq’s suffering.

The demands for jobs and for unemployment insurance will not be met. The capitalists of Iraq are not able to offer anything to the workers. Neither are the capitalists of the USA.

But there are factories in Iraq. There are fields in Iraq. There are minerals in Iraq. And there are millions of workers, scientists, technicians, peasants and students, soldiers and mothers in Iraq.

It is time to take these resources, from the fields of Babylon to the oilfields of Kirkuk, and to put them to work for the good of the toilers of Iraq.

How do workers and peasants take control?

It is necessary for the movement that has already started fighting to begin occupying the factories and the oil fields.

We have shown that we can organize the defense of our streets and neighborhoods; now let us run and organize the defense of our workplaces.

If we do not start taking what is ours, the American occupier will. Their plans to privatize public industry into the hands of their own capitalists are well known.

This ancient civilization that gave the world the first alphabet, can once again lead the world by showing the way to a truly human, socialist society. We can do this by convincing Iraqi workers that they can win a new society in which workers and producers are able to transcend the tyranny of imperialism and capitalism.

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Workers Aid to Free Iraq!

The red-hot question facing workers internationally is this: can Bush get away with his invasion and occupation of Iraq?The US stepped up its role of world policeman by unilaterally invading Iraq to make ‘regime change’. The ‘blank cheque’ that the US issued after S11 was filled out. The invasion of Iraq marked a decisive shift from the previous Gulf War which stopped short of invasion, and the wars in Serbia, Kosovo and Afghanistan that were waged jointly by all the imperialist powers.By going it alone, the US was signaling a breakdown of the UN and the ‘collective security’ of the imperialist bloc.The open rivalry of the US, EU, and less visibly, Japan, the major imperialist powers, was now ‘all go’ again. The US invaded and occupied Iraq.

This defeat had serious international repercussions most notably the stepping up of attacks against Palestine, against the revolutionary workers in Latin America, further repression of migrants and trade union rights in the US, and the warnings to Iran and North Korea that the US would not tolerate the development of nuclear weapons. The cost of this invasion to the US is that the Emperor now has no clothes.All the flimsy pretexts for war have been exposed as lies. The end of Saddam has brought a US military dictatorship up against the Iraqi people and their desire for democracy. So now US imperialism faces the prospect of escalating resistance in Iraq. If this opposition becomes organised and spreads internationally this can reverse some of the setbacks flowing from Iraq’s defeat.

Already opposition in the imperialist countries is spreading among those who supported the war as the reasons for the invasion are being seriously challenged even inside the ruling class. However, while we call on workers in these countries (and in their lackey client states like NZ) to mobilise and defeat their own ruling classes to prevent them from going to war and to get the US/UK out of Iraq, it is the ongoing armed confrontation between US military and the Iraqi people that is the critical point for the world revolution.

Faced with this reality, we urgently need a specific plan of action to support this resistance.If it was correct to defend Iraq during its war with the imperialist invaders it is still correct to call for military aid to go to the resistance to defeat the imperialist occupiers including those of the armed forces of our‘own countries’.If it was correct to bloc militarily with the Baathists and Islamics against the imperialists, it is still correct today to bloc with all those fighting the imperialists.However, these two political currents have their class base in the national state bureaucracy and the petty bourgeoisie. Their real interests are in doing a deal with imperialism to get the franchise to run Iraq. Therefore we defend them only if they are fighting the imperialists and not the workers.

That is why we say that the working class and the poor peasants alone have an interest in liberating Iraq from imperialism.Working class organisations have to be rebuilt. We support all the efforts of revolutionaries to organise and arm workers. We support the organisation of the unemployed for jobs, workers’ occupations of factories, and the formation of workers’ self-defence committees and militias.

That is why we call for the anti-war workers in the labour movement to take action to Free Iraq.We say that workers’ material aid should go only to those workers and peasants who organise independently of the capitalist, petty capitalist and reformist parties whose class interests are to collaborate with imperialism. We also make clear that, to organise and mobilise successfully against imperialism and its national collaborators, a revolutionary party capable of leading the insurgent workers and poor peasants must be built as part of a new international revolutionary working class party.

You can get involved by taking the campaign for NZ workers’ aid to Iraqi workers into your unions and get resolutions in support of the following organisations:

“Union of the Unemployed in Iraq” Union_u_iraq@yahoo.com

Read their official letter to all labor unions and organisations around the world

http://www.wpiraq.org/english/unemployed170603.htm

“Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq”nadia64uk@yahoo.com

announcement of formation on June 22 in Baghdad

http://www.wpiraq.org/english/baghdad010703.htm

Also read about the formation of a “Preparatory Committee for Forming Workers’ Councils and Trade Unions in Iraq” at:

http://wpiraq.org/english/moayed10703.htm

AUCKLAND ANTI-IMPERIALIST ATTACKED BY RACIST WORKER

Last month, a few days before the Donnelly incident in Wellington, a member of the Anti Imperialist Coalition was subjected to a racist attack outside a meeting of the Seafarers’ Union. The seafarer shouted racist comments about Arabs and Iraqis before punching the AIC member. He had been angered by two leaflets which AIC members were distributing at the meeting (see below). One of the leaflets called for solidarity between New Zealand workers and the US Longshoremen being attacked by Bush, and the other advertised an upcoming anti-war march. The AIC has asked the Seafarers Union to show its opposition to racism and war by censuring the man who made the attack, and by getting involved in the growing anti-war movement in Auckland.
From Class Struggle 47 October/November 2002

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AIC Leaflet
Support US workers attacked by Bush’s War of Terror
President Bush has decided that the West Coast ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) port workers struggle to renew their industrial contract is a threat to US internal security. The port employers locked out the longshoremen, and Bush threatened to call out the National Guard. Now he has imposed the Taft-Hartley Act to force the ports open for 80 days. Bush is using the war on terror to target the enemies of the US ruling class at home as well as internationally. This proves that the war on terror is a class war and that only the working class can stop war. Our first task is to build international solidarity with the locked out workers and put union bans on scab ships.

What’s behind the current attack on the ILWU?
The ILWU, representing 10,500 dockworkers at 29 major Pacific ports, is embroiled in a bitter contract dispute with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), representing the shipping lines. The longshore workers’ contract expired July 1 and the ports have been operating on the basis of day-to-day contract extensions ever since. The key sticking point involves management demands for concessions that would allow for the introduction of new technology.

Wages and benefits are not the issue in these negotiations. The hourly rate for longshore workers ranges from $27.68 to $33.48-about the same as a plumber or electrician. What they would like, however, is to keep certain workers out of the union, the vessel planners who tell the cranes where to put every shipping container; clerical workers who use computers to help track container movement, and drivers who haul containers in and out of the ports.

Workers in these jobs have already joined the ILWU, or tried to, attracted by its good wages. The union wants to include them to replace the potential loss of jobs among the clerks who track cargo manually. Negotiators for the PMA have said no. The union looks at this as an issue of survival.

The union has already made concessions to the employers to accept new technology that would see around 30% of the clerks lose their jobs. But that is not enough for PMA that also wants to claw back hard-won health conditions and freeze pensions.

According to a ILWU leader Steve Stallone, the US Labor Department told the union early on that unless it meets the employers conditions the Bush administration would invoke the seldom used Taft-Hartley Act that can delay any strike by 80 days, use the Railway Labor Act to force the union to bargain port-by-port and bring in the army or navy to run the ports. The government has threatened the union with a "PATCO-type scenario," referring to President Reagan’s mass firing of striking air traffic controllers in 1981. This week after 10 days of the lockout, Bush delivered on the first part of his promise invoked the Taft-Hartley Act and forced the ports open for 80 days.

Bush is backed by big business to smash unions
Why has a labour dispute been dragged into Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’? Bush is seizing the post September 11 clampdown on democratic rights in the US to attack the longstanding rights of unions. Both the Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfield have told the union that strikes are a threat to ‘national security’ at a time when the extreme right wing Bush Administration considers that the US is at war.

Bush’s right wing agenda is to use the war on terrorism to try to make US workers pay for the crisis of the US economy. Bush is supported by the WCWC, (West Coast Waterfront Coalition) made up of big businesses such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Ikea, Nike, Target and The Gap. The WCWC wants to prevent any strike action that would affect the $300 billion worth of goods that flow through the Pacific ports each year.

The Los Angeles Times reported a June 5 memo to Bush from the WCWC whose members "met with key Bush Administration Officials to convey the message that there is a need both to obtain labour concessions at the West Coast ports that will allow the application of technology and to avoid labour disruptions on the West Coast this summer that could stall a fragile economy."

Bush is following a precedent set already with federal employees. He used the pretext of the war on terrorism to strip 170,000 federal employees being transferred to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security of their rights as public service employees and union representation.

Rank and File solidarity undermined by officials
What has been the response of organised labour to Bush’s threats to smash the ILWU? The rank and file Longshoremen have responded with militant actions up and down the west coast. There has been huge support from unions and workers all over the world. In NZ, Seafarers and Watersiders Union officials have visited the lockout ports, and taken resolutions to ‘black’ any ships loaded by scab labour or the military.

However, the response of the official leadership of the ILWU and the AFL-CIO (main US national labour organisation) to the Bush administration’s threats has been to appeal to the Democrats in Congress to put pressure on Bush and to claim that the ILWU is fully supportive of his patriotic war on terrorism.

The Democrat representatives hope that they can get Bush to back down by promising that the union will accept the bosses’ terms, in particular the job losses following the introduction of new technology. This has been the record of the ILWU leadership over the last few decades as thousands of jobs have been sacrificed with hardly a fight. In Seattle of 2,400 workers in 1963 there are only 550 left today. The union officials admit that today workers handle 10 times the cargo with one-twentieth the workforce.

The rank and file of the ILWU have to break from their officials to win this fight. If workers allow patriotism to replace working class solidarity they will lose. The union is saying "Fight terrorism, not workers". The official union line is that the workers are much more patriotic than the bosses who are importing cheap Asian goods at the expense of American jobs. So they call for worker boycotts of foreign made goods.

But this attempt to prove the workers’ loyalty to the US prevents any real working class solidarity with workers inside or outside the US. It allows Bush to shift the blame for the state of the US economy off the bosses onto the longshore workers.

By supporting the US imperialist policies of a preemptive strike against Afghanistan, Iraq or any country designated ‘terrorist’ by the Bush administration, the ILWU workers unite with the class enemy, at a time when Bush is using the ILWU dispute to unleash his union-busting domestic drive for the same reason that he is promoting the war on terrorism abroad.

US imperialism is crisis-ridden and can only be revived by massive military spending on war, and the driving down of labour conditions at home. The ‘permanent’ war against US enemies abroad and the domestic war against its own working class are one and the same. The US ruling class must resort to the super-exploitation and oppression of workers at home and abroad to survive.

What should NZ workers do?
The ILWU is a strong union with a history of struggle. It opposed the Vietnam War. It closed down Long Beach and San Francisco ports to scab ships during the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) dispute in 1998. New Zealand workers have a clear duty to take solidarity action in support of the West Coast port workers. Multinationals like Carter Holt Harvey have tried to bust the NZ Waterside Workers Union and replace workers with new technology. Only by uniting internationally can workers become strong enough to take on the global corporations that dominate the world economy and win the fight against imperialist oppression and war.

The NZ Terrorism Suppression Bill passed on October 10 is modeled on US bills like the Patriot Bill introduced after September 11. It has provisions that will allow the state to designate industrial action a threat to national security. This includes solidarity action taken by NZ workers in support of locked-out wharfies in the US. We can petition the government to respect our rights as workers, and oppose Bush’s attack on Iraq, but it will be the ability of organised workers to go on strike that wins these rights and defends Iraq from further attacks.

The recent court acquittal of the killer of Christine Clarke shows that workers can place no reliance on the protection of the government and the police to win their struggles. Quite the reverse. As NZ’s history of militant struggle proves, state forces were used to smash strikes in 1913, 1951 and every other major dispute. Mass pickets are what is needed, supported by international action to stop the state from using scab workers or the military as strike breakers.

Solidarity with the locked out US workers!
For a union ban on scab US cargo!
Rally on October 26! 12 noon QE2 Square
Stop the Attack on Iraq

Anti-imperialist Coalition meets Weds 7-30 pm Trades Hall 147 Grt North Rd Grey Lynn
025 280 0080 email anti_imperialist@hotmail.com website http://www.antiimperialist.org.nz

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Solidarity with the ILWU workers!

"This union condemns the actions of the employers to lock out the West Coast US Longshoreworkers. We also condemn the Government use of the Taft-Hartley Act to force unionists back to work and the threat of troops and scabs to do the work of unionised workers.

We defend the right of unions to take industrial action in pursuit of their aims and objectives, including the right to strike and picket. We defend the right of workers including NZ/Aotearoa to take strike action in solidarity with workers in other countries.

We call upon the unions affiliated to the NZCTU to act in solidarity with the ILWU and to take industrial action to ban any vessel that is worked by scab or military labour in the US from docking or being unloaded in NZ."

Messages of solidarity and material aid can be sent to the ULWU workers at: http://www.ilwu.org/

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Letter on Workers’ Party NZ.

Dear Comrade Editor,

On September 11 2002, the Workers’ Party of NZ walked out of the Auckland Anti-Imperialist Coalition. The WPNZ had helped initiate the AIC in September 2001 and had fully supported it up until the 2002 election campaign maintaining a presence right up until their walkout.

Since the WPNZ claims to serve the working class, surely it owes the AIC an explanation in its own paper the ‘Spark’ as to why it split from the AIC. The ‘Spark’ has been completely silent about the WPNZ’s desertion from the only Auckland militant anti-war united front.

The ‘Spark’, in an article written by Phil Ferguson of ‘Revolution Group’, has criticised the Socialist Workers’ Organisation for not joining the AIC, but now the ‘Spark’ group have left AIC themselves without an explanation to even its own readers. What has changed? Does the WPNZ purport to set an example to the working class on the correct way to operate in united fronts, or do they think that working class organisations should be guided by expediency alone in these matters.

The leader of the ‘Spark’ group had plenty to say on the AIC e-loop and the ‘anti-war, anti-cap"Yahoo group and no doubt these were mainly that AIC members were "mentally disturbed". She also tried to do a political character assassination on an AIC member who had been assaulted by a rightwing member of the Auckland Seafarers Union two days before for disagreeing with this guy over Iraq.

In writing she made out that this thug was a good unionist! Despite the fact an AIC member heard him say that Iraq should have the "shit bombed out of it", and that he also slandered a united front organisation, the AIC, of which the WPNZ was then a part, as supporters of Bin Laden.

I challenge the ‘Spark’ editor to publish her version of why WPNZ split after one year of intensive activity in AIC. On what issue of principle? I bet she will not and cannot say. I also challenge the ‘Revolution Group’ of Christchurch to publicly defend their ‘Spark’ splitter mates since "Revolution" has seen fit to intervene in this debate.

In its most recent edition (Spark, 15 October 2002) WPNZ writes: "the Task is to build an ‘anti-imperialist movement" and "anti-imperialism is the basis for unity with genuine forces for change" (p.3). This, one month after walking out of an avowedly and actively anti-imperialist organisation without making any public criticism of that organisation.

Signed BR

WHY THE PEACE MOVEMENT CAN'T STOP THE WAR

Polemic

Bush’s determination to go to war in Iraq is the next step in the US drive to dominate the world economy. It is a war for oil but much more than that. Saddam’s dictatorship, like al Quada’s terorism is the supposed target. But this war is really to assert US dominance over the Middle East and Central Asia over its rivals the EU and Japan, and potential rivals, China, Russia and India. While on the face of it, this is the US flexing its superpower muscles, underneath the surface US imperialism is experiencing a deep crisis at the heart of its capitalist system of production. Yet the failure to recognise the deep roots of the causes of war means that the ‘peace movement’ that is growing in the West can never succeed in bringing about peace. The anti-war movement needs to become anti-capitalist. To help this process along lets demand a Referendum on the War!

The Rogue State

It is the nature of capitalism and imperialist rivalry that makes war inevitable. It is this basic cause that makes all the superficial explanations for US warlike behaviour inadequate. The anti-war movement in the West has recently mobilised hundreds of thousands on the streets. But this opposition is to the US as a ‘rogue state’ breaking the same international legal and moral rules that it imposes unilaterally on others. It is the blatant hypocrisy of the only nation that has used nuclear weapons and which backs Israel’s nuclear arsenal, about to invade a country that even US experts say has no weapons of mass destruction, that has sparked such widespread opposition.

The question then becomes; why is it that the US considers itself above international law? Why is it prepared to risk condemnation acting as a rogue state? It is in breach of UN resolutions. It is even in breach of its own Constitution!

The most common explanations look for the most obvious causes like the greed and power mania of one section of the US ruling class – the oil barons and arms manufacturers. They have clear motives for going to war in the Middle East. At stake is 2/3rds of the world’s oil and a land bridge to Central Asia where there are further large reserves of oil.

But if it is just the greed and power of a bunch of rich oil magnates then surely the answer is to mobilise ordinary decent Americans and peaceloving citizens around the world to exercise their democratic right to enforce international law. This is the position of the famous ‘liberatarian socialist’ critic of US foreign policy, Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky and Pilger on the causes of war

Chomsky accuses the US corporate elite of hypocritically using its power to impose its own brutal interests around the world in the name of ‘democracy’. He accuses the US of being a terrorist state already indicted by the World Court for illegal actions in Nicaragua. Rogue power is the corporations that are a law unto themselves. Chomsky calls these corporations ‘totalitarian institutions" . But their rule can be challenged by a worldwide campaign for democratic change that opposses these their policies. He points to the Zapatista uprising and the anti-globalisation movement as steps towards such an international campaign (Latin America p.92)

Chomsky’s view is shared by prominent left liberals such as journalist John Pilger who defines ‘imperialism’as the rule of the rich and powerful over the poor and weak. Writing just before the massive 28 September demo in London, Pilger said: "A great many people believe that democracy has been lost in this country. Today, true democracy will demonstrate its resilience on the streets of London…The credibility of the British parliamentary system is at stake".For Pilger, Blair is behaving like an absolute ruler or a Hitler. Riding roughshod over democracy and international law and sacrificing the lives of millions of Iraqis for the ‘price’ of oil. Why? Bush and his extreme right cabal are ‘criminals’ and ‘fanatics’. They have used nuclear weapons before and threaten to again. All to boost their wealth and power.

So what’s the answer. For Pilger it’s ‘street democracy’ and ‘the great tradition of dissent’ that must be reactivated. He looks back for inspiration to the civil rights movement and the anti-war campaigns of the 1960s which led to the end of the Vietnam war and nuclear treaties. "Today is another date in September to remember, and perhaps celebrate – as the beginning not of endless war, but of our resistance to it."

This certainly helps, but was this the answer back in the ‘60’s? The Vietnam war was won by the Vietnamese. The nuclear arms race was stopped by the USSR’s inability to keep up. And if it was just a matter of the peaceloving majority asserting democratic control over a power mad rich elite, why hasn’t this happened yet?

Chomsky et al have their own answer to this. The rich and powerful dominate the media and use their power to indoctrinate, divide and rule the masses.

This is clearly correct as far as it goes. The post September 11 world is one in which the US ruling class and their allies everywhere have used the media and their governments to try to impose their pro-Western views and their warlike solutions. So US workers supported Bush going to war against terrorism rather than see the US as the biggest state terrorist in the world. Anyone who questioned this view was faced with a barrage of new ‘patriotic’ laws, police state surveillance, labelled the ‘enemy’, and in many cases slammed in jail. Now it’s enough to threaten strike action to be called a terrorist as the ILWU longshore workers found out.

So what future for ‘democracy’?

By now most people who are opposed to the war must realise that it is extremely difficult to use capitalist democracy to change the system when the system is taking away any real democratic space in which you can fight it. A truth begins to emerge. ‘Democracy’ in the West cannot be the model for the rest of the world to follow. Democracy is a façade for the rule of the rich and powerful.

For example, the US Constitution is far from an ideal model of democracy. The Constitution was designed to defend the rights of private property owners That’s why it is the radical right who arm themselves against a state as usurping their property rights with laws, taxes, etc. When the radical left like the Black Panthers arm themselves they are killed by the state. Even Chomsky himself is very clear on the original purpose of the US Constitution, to keep the masses out of politics (Profit over People p 47). For him real democracy would mean a new constitution.

But if bourgeois democracy is only for the rich, why is there so much faith in ‘democracy’? A second truth begins to emerge. The liberal left presents the problem of Bush’s war as the rogue-like deviant behaviour of a rich and powerful so they can point to the ideal of a normal, just, humane and peaceful capitalism. One that is democratic, allows dissent and defends human rights. One that allows them to claim that capitalism can be ‘pacified’. OK if this is the ideal capitalism lets put it to the test.

Demand a Referendum on war

Let’s demand that no war can start without first a national debate and referendum. That would be a true test of captalist democracy. We challenge the liberal left like the Greens to make this demand. We are pretty sure that a referendum on war would not be allowed by the ruling class. This would be a clear repudation of democracy. But if public pressure did force a referendum on the capitalists, the level of public debate that would follow would surely expose the real causes of war – that of capitalist exploitation itself.

We are also pretty sure that liberal intellectuals will not demand a referendum seriously because they fear the awakening of the masses. The left liberal peaceloving people defend bourgeois ‘democracy’ but they fear the power of the working class more. They are convinced that ‘socialism’ went bad in the USSR and many think socialism is worse than Bush and Co. Lurking beneath this fear is the conviction that socialism is the will to power of the masses and once it is unleashed then there is no future for liberal democracy. That’s why the peace movement against the war in Iraq is not interested in getting rid of the real causes of war. It does not want to get rid of itself and the ‘democratic’ capitalism that justifies its existence.

For us, the end of liberal democracy will be the birth of workers’ democracy.