Class Struggle 132, Autumn (March-May) 2020

   CS 132 Autumn 2020 by Dave Bedggood on Scribd

Idlib: Victory to the Syrian Revolution!

 

The Syrian revolution at the cross roads

Will the Syrian people succumb to the Assad/Putin counterrevolution to recover Idlib, or will they be victorious over Assad/Putin and create a new base for the revolution to take root and revive itself as part of the suppressed permanent revolution of the region? It is necessary to assess the balance of the forces of revolution and counter-revolution as they fight to the death. Into this mix we factor in the potential game-changer of Turkey objectively taking the side of the revolution.

On the side of the revolution we have the majority of the Syrian people who have stood against and been martyred by every assault from March 2011 to today. This includes the ‘civilians’ who remain resolute and the ‘moderate’ and ‘Islamic’ militias who despite being politically at odds, are in a military bloc against the regime. Internationally support is weak (never sufficient to properly arm and augment the militias), sporadic (US, Turkey and Arab states arming militias but at odds with the revolution) and ineffective (EU and Arab states attempts at diplomacy) and must be unless it actively takes the revolutionary side in the war against the regime. The question of whether Turkey’s military intervention measures up to that standard is currently being tested on the ground and in the air in Idlib.

On the side of the counter-revolution the Assad regime is backed by Russia. Without it, the regime would have been defeated in 2015 when the rebels held most of the country and several large cities including Aleppo and Idlib. The Arab states that suppressed the Arab Spring in their countries sided with the Assad regime but were incapable of defeating the Syrian revolution. Iran is a special case, as it was instrumental in engaging Russia to intervene in Syria. Therefore, in the absence of any major imperialist power siding with the revolution, Russia’s intervention swung the balance of forces decisively in favour of the counter-revolution.

Russia and Turkey strategic partners?

Until recently, Russia and Turkey have developed as strategic partners, with Russia supplying Turkey with missiles and long-term energy. Russia collaborated with Turkey’s campaign to create a buffer zone along its border with Syria to prevent the Kurd ‘terrorists’ from creating an autonomous Kurdish republic and strengthen the PKK’s fight for self-determination inside Turkey. Imperialist Russia and semi-colonial Turkey made a deal that served the interests of both, but at the expense of the Syrian Revolution. The Astana agreement expresses that compromise deal. Russia is mainly interested in destroying the revolution in the name of the ‘war on terror’. Turkey supports the revolution only insofar as it can be used against the Kurds to create a buffer zone. Iran was interested in further spreading its influence from Iraq to Palestine. But there was a contradiction at the heart of that deal.

Russia wants Turkey to use the moderate rebels in Idlib under its influence to destroy the Islamic “terrorists” while Turkey wants to use those same rebels to set aside their differences and help create a buffer zone against Kurd autonomy. Such a contradiction was suppressed while the Astana deal held with neither side pressing its main interest. This stalemate was broken when Russia decided to join with Assad to invade Idlib against the ‘terrorists’ and take it by force. Both sides accused the other of breaking the Astana deal while professing to want a further negotiated outcome.

Russia and Turkey explode the contradiction

But the die was cast. Putin and Assad were against the ‘terrorists’ surviving anywhere. Astana was never observed on the ground and the gains made by the regime backed by Russian and Iranian forces tore it up. Assad’s revenge as elsewhere in Syria, was the total destruction of towns and cities and the targeting of civilians, men women and children, schools and hospitals. This was to be the total destruction of the revolution. Turkey’s response was to defend its buffer zone, by invoking a humanitarian crisis of the million refugees camped on its borders, and defending its authority under Astana to maintain observation posts inside Idlib. This situation then quickly escalated within weeks from a few soldiers on the ground to masses of tanks and infantry, and then F-16s in the air.

Is Turkey’s military intervention on the side of the Syrian revolution? Certainly, the Syrian masses in Idlib and elsewhere declare it to be so. They are ecstatic in support of Turkey defending their lives and towns, schools and hospitals from destruction by the regime and Russian forces. Moreover, Erdogan has opened Turkey’s border to the West to allow Syrian refugees to gain access to the EU if they can. In this he is responding to the EU breaking its agreement to support Turkey for stopping the near 4 million Syrian refugees leaving for the EU. Objectively then, despite Erdogan’s overwhelming national interests, his intervention in Idlib is on the side of the revolution against counter-revolution.

Defeat Russia in a war with Turkey 

Revolutionaries who claim the tradition of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky must agree. We support the Syrian Revolution against the counter-revolution. The revolutionary people who refuse to live under Assad can make use of any support offered their cause, whether or not their long-term objectives with their allies are the same. The revolution must live to fight another day, just as the militias who surrendered to Assad in return for safe passage to (ultimately) Idlib.

Yet, in defending Turkey’s military intervention on the side of the revolution we do not agree with its bourgeois national pro-imperialism, its political regime, nor its oppression of the Kurds. And if the war escalates into a wider war between two main protagonists, Russia and Turkey, we take the side of the oppressed semi-colonial nation against the imperialist oppressor nation.

For a Socialist Union of the Middle East! 

We unconditionally take the side of the workers and poor farmers who are the life blood of the revolution. We call for a ceasefire and a workers’ and farmers’ government in Idlib supported by all the Arab masses, and defended by workers internationally.

But for this to succeed the workers of the Middle East, in particular of Turkey and Iran must overthrow their authoritarian regimes and take the leadership in the anti-imperialist fight, breaking with their imperialist masters and overthrowing their pro-imperialist bourgeois ruling classes.

We demand that the workers of Europe, and the other imperialist powers, fight to open their borders to migrants and refugees fleeing the exploitation and oppression of centuries, and build antifascist militias and workers councils capable of overthrowing their ruling classes, liberating the oppressed semi-colonies as part of the global socialist revolution, under the leadership of a new revolutionary communist international.

3 March 2020

Statement by the International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (formerly the LCC)

Class Struggle, 125, June-August, 2018

   Class Struggle 125, June-August, 2018 by davebrownz on Scribd

Class Struggle, 124, Autumn (March-May) 2018

   Class Struggle 124 Autumn 2018 by davebrownz on Scribd

Solidarity with the Iranian upsurge! For Permanent Revolution in Iran, the Middle East and North Africa!

(1) The new uprising in Iran is of world-historic significance. It proves that the masses are ready and willing to fight to overthrow capitalism in its death throes. The Iranian workers and poor farmers refuse to pay for the terminal crisis of global capitalism with their lives and their living standards. Marxists understand that this uprising is overdue and can only end in socialist revolution or barbaric counter-revolution. But we are not alone in this historic perspective. An Iranian man, aged 111 years, speaks of being born at the time of Iran’s (then Persia) first step toward bourgeois revolution that took place in 1906. He said “I knew this day would come, I stayed alive for it”. He lived through the whole epoch of imperialism in Iran during during which its national development was held back by the rivalry of the Great Powers, aided by their national bourgeois agents, and the treacherous petty bourgeois ‘democratic’ left, in the contest for control over Eurasia as the key to world domination.

(2) When Lenin wrote “Imperialism; The highest stage of Capitalism” in 1915, Iran’s place in global capitalism was already subordinated to imperialism. Lenin defined imperialism as a system in which imperialist oppressor countries dominated colonial oppressed countries. However a handful of countries were ‘transitional’ or in between which included Persia, China and Turkey. He called these semi-colonies:

"..countries which, formally, are politically independent, but which are, in fact, enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence.”
Just as the Russian revolution proved the theory/program of Permanent Revolution correct, so did Iran’s future development. The constitutional reform of 1906 limited the powers of the Shah but could not escape the “net of financial and diplomatic dependence” without breaking free from British, German and Russian imperialist rivalry for control of Persian oil. Iran’s national revolution was never completed because it was caught in the post WW1 grip of imperialism’s attempts at redivision of the world in the face of international revolutionary upsurge. The Russo-Persian treaty of 1921 protected the Soviet revolution from White incursions from the south while granting shipping rights in the Caspian Sea to Persia. Such was the re-division of the world which removed Russian imperialism from the scene replacing it with the power of the Soviet Union up until Stalin’s deal with the Anglo-American bloc during WW2.

(3) Iran took advantage of the post WW2 redivision and the wave of decolonisation, but like most of the colonies fell short of completing the national democratic (bourgeois) revolution. That succeeded only in China where the capitalists refused the offer to share power with the Maoist CCP and fled to Taiwan, and belatedly in Cuba where the US refused to share power forcing the Castroites into the arms of the Stalinist USSR. In 1951 Mossadegh’s National Front, committed to oil nationalisation, won a parliamentary majority and overturned the absolute power of the constitutional monarchy but failed to go all the way to throw out the national bourgeoisie in a socialist revolution. The result was a hugely popular anti-imperialist bourgeois government that nationalised the oil industry. However, the popular workers and poor farmers movement lacked a revolutionary Bolshevik-Leninist Party capable of breaking the popular front. Mossadegh attempted to negotiate with the imperialists while they imposed production and trade sanctions as well as a naval blockade. US and British agents created divisions in Mossadegh’s support and in 1953 they conspired to stage a coup to restore their ownership and control of Iranian oil and to restore Reza Shah Pahlavi as Constitutional monarch.

The coup attempt failed initially, as the National Front and the Tudeh (Communist Party) took to the streets and the Shah fled to the US. The US and Britain planned a second attempt. This time the coup succeeded mainly because Mossadegh demobilised his mass support and the Stalinist Tudeh party was lulled into the complacency by the apparently victorious popular front which included its rival Islamic movement presaging its reactionary role in 1979. Losing support in parliament, Mossadegh then staged a referendum to dissolve parliament and strip the Shah of his remaining powers; a left constitutional coup which lost him more support. Foreshadowing Allende in Chile in 1973, Mossadegh did not mobilise his support nor call for their resort to arms. All that was needed then was to neutralise Tudeh by infiltrating provocateurs into the party to provoke a ‘communist insurrection’ losing Mossadegh more support, and finally instigating pro-Shah officers under General Zahidi to arrest him and take control of the government.

(4) We summarize our position on the 1979 anti-imperialist revolution and the counter-revolution by the Islamic bourgeoisie of the bazaar:

“The tragedy of the 1979 revolution showed that Iran was ripe for revolution but lacked a revolutionary leadership. The workers and poor peasants were the force behind the anti-Shah revolution, but were led by liberals and Stalinists who allied with the Islamic national bourgeoisie who by 1981 had turned on the most advanced workers and exterminated many thousands of the best militants. The failure of the socialist revolution can be clearly blamed on the role of the Stalinist Tudeh party which followed the fatalist Stalinist line of making a democratic revolution in alliance with the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie to kick out the imperialists. The Stalinists refused to learn from their betrayal of the revolution in China in 1927 when their ‘ally” and honorary member of the Comintern, Chiang Kai Shek, turned on the Communist Party and massacred its leadership.”

Again this serves to demonstrate that unless the workers lead the poor peasants to revolution then the reactionary national bourgeoisie will use its leadership of the anti-imperialist popular front to turn on the workers and oppressed and smash the socialist revolution. The lessons of October have still not been learned. The Stalinists, Guevarists, renegade Trotskyists and Mudjadaheen (Maoists) put their trust in bourgeois democracy rather than the revolutionary workers and poor peasants. Again and again, the workers and poor peasants rise up but lacking a revolutionary Marxist party they are defeated by the reactionary bourgeoisie, serving directly or indirectly the interests of one or other imperialist power.

(5) The Islamic Republic and its near-40 year dictatorship and episodic resistance to it has, up to its present situation as part of the Russia-China bloc, gone to war in the Middle East to re-partition it from Iraq to Lebanon. It is trying to solve its semi-colonial crisis at the expense of lesser semi-colonies and the working peoples of the Middle East and Iran. At least twice now, after the Astana parley and after Sochi, the world has been spun a tale of a Syrian settlement. All that has been settled, from the point of view of the Iranian rulers, is that Syria will have to pay for the intervention in upport of Assad! And meanwhile, the continuous expansionary policy has introduced Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni masses to the behaviors of “volunteers” from the dreaded Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. These not only mete out repressions and steal everything in sight in “liberated” areas, but have their fingers in every sort of economic enterprise wherever they are, all with the blessing of the theocrats.

As a result (as a cartoon on Facebook puts it) Iran is pumping capital and mercenaries into Iraq and Syria and Yemen in a subordinate role to Russia and China, mending its bridges with Turkey and Qatar, and starving its own workers and peasants. So the determinants of the uprising are a history of semi-colonial uneven and combined development and facing a global crisis which creates all the objective conditions for revolution but which still lacks the vital subjective condition of a rolutionary Bolshevik-Leninist Party. With only two alternatives, ultimately, the Iranian masses must find the road to Leninism to be able to carry their revolution through, because the only other alternative is worse reaction than they have experienced to date. 

How the struggle is developing and the two imperialist blocs

(6) We read that ninety percent of Iranians are feeding themselves with the equivalent of food stamps, and that these are slated to be further cut. Where 27% of the Gross Domestic Product was devoted to social welfare and a basic floor akin to the Brazilian Bolsa de Familia for all in 2008, a World Bank study now crows how this has been “reformed” down to 3% today. Youth unemployment is massive, double digit inflation has become a permanent fixture and the government minimum wage is ⅓ of the official ‘minimum necessary income’ for a family of three. This condition prevails as a result of the costs of the theocrats’ wars taking place during a global crisis of capitalism, and especially since Iran has been backing Assad’s counterrevolution with both blood and treasure. An uptick in international investment was supposed to result in improved standard of living conditions, as was the re-election of Rouhani, whom the western press calls a “moderate.” But while the shares of stocks have been sold, nothing got better on the street. In the last month, gasoline prices have doubled. Where Germany and Spain were the big investors after the 2009 protests (over the fake election results), today the money floods in from China: 

“China is financing billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese-led projects in Iran, making deep inroads into the economy while European competitors struggle to find banks willing to fund their ambitions, Iranian government and industry officials said….The Chinese funding, by far the largest statement of investment intent of any country in Iran, is in stark contrast with the drought facing Western investors since U.S. President Donald Trump disavowed the 2015 pact agreed on by major powers, raising the threat sanctions could be reimposed.

Iranian officials say the deals are part of Beijing’s $124 billion Belt and Road initiative, which aims to build new infrastructure — from highways and railways to ports and power plants — between China and Europe to pave the way for an expansion of trade.”

The masses revolt is general and not limited to the largest cities. The Government claim made to the U.K. “Guardian” that the demonstrations have faded is spurious. The revolt combines economic and political demands and calls for the ouster of the theocrats and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei have been taken up across the country. Zamaneh Media reports that the second half of 2017 has seen a spike in labor walkouts over non-payment of wages and mass layoffs. The protests are not limited to the industrial workers, who have suffered the worst of it, but have spread to all wage labor sectors. Zamaneh reports the state repressions have hit national minorities harder, also, such as the many Kurds who are miners.

Our orientalist “left” assures us of either (a) there is no working class there, or (b) that this is just the latest in a string of C.I.A. put-up jobs on the Middle Eastern and North African masses. We’re here to tell you there exists a ‘pre-revolutionary situation’ in the language of Bolshevism. We condemn in advance any attempt to foist a popular front on the Iranian masses. They are rightly sick of the leaders who bring them nothing but wars, poverty and union-busting repressions. When once they realize that these conditions are dumped onto them by an enemy social class, they too will recognize and reject any “half-way” schemes, whether popular fronts or Constituent Assemblies, and the state those support.

(7) Left reformist factions and fake Trotskyists, necessarily are exposed and defeated by dialectics. If the protest movement sustains, and grows over into permanent revolution by forming workers councils, occupying factories etc., and it actually begins to challenge for power, we can expect the pro-Assad left to jump to the defense of the regime as they did in Syria. These faux leftists are so fixated on their unipolar world view and blinded by their western orientalist-chauvinism that all they can see, whenever an angry populous in the semi-colonies rise up against despotic capitalist regimes, is the nefarious hand of the CIA. The faux left, (actually much like the Voice of America, which suggests hardline clerics are behind the protests!), believes the regime can be reformed/ improved. Or this “left”, the people themselves are not capable of revolution--so they must be the tools of Wall St. Thus when Trump lauds the uprising, at no political cost to himself or his brand, the fake left sees an army of spies and provocateurs at work.

The regime has launched an offensive to stop the protests. This may drive them underground as in Syria where armed militias emerged to defend the uprising from violent repression. It will be difficult (not impossible) for the fake left to present the protests in Iran as the work of the CIA and/or Islamic radicals. Of course they will try to say it is a “color revolution,” i.e., an anti-corruption, pro-capitalist one, but not many will buy this for long. They cannot defend the regime in their more usual way, claiming that the regime is secular and democratic, being fully backed by Erdogan and Putin (albeit with caution, Putin’s plans rely on keeping an alliance with Iran irrespective of leadership)! Naturally the Iranian masses have little time for these western petty-bourgeois. Color this revolution RED! We call on workers everywhere to down tools and engage in labor actions in solidarity with the Iranian uprising!

(8) Following the government-sponsored pep rally RT news declared the uprisings to be over and "like any violent protests" unacceptable. Shades of Marikana! The faux left gave the ANC a free pass and for the last 6 years they have given backhanded if not outright support to Assad. This is the nexus of the SCO/BRICS (Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Brazil Russia,India, China, South Africa) bloc which rallied to the emergent Russia/China imperialist bloc the various capitalist semi-colonies trying to break free or remain viable while free from US/EU imperialism. So alongside cheers from the World Social Forum/LINKS assemblage, from Chavez gifting Assad the Bolivarian sword to Iran supporting Assad against the Syrian Revolution, the semi-colonial comprador capitalist classes (Bolivarian, Southern African, and Iranian...) act to stop the wave of proletarian revolutionary aspiration seeking to make the national democratic revolution permanent-- that is, socialist. The Stalinist left alongside LINKS, the Castroists and the faux Trotskyists of the PSL and WWP, have chosen to support one imperialist bloc over the other. A hundred years after October and they repeat the social-imperialist treachery of August, 1914.

The common determinant of the current wave of protests is the austerity due to the global economic crisis being downloaded onto the semi-colonies by the imperialist powers. As in every uprising since the Tunisian eruption at the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” we see spontaneous uncoordinated revolts not organised by any bourgeois faction or outside influence. In Iran, blame is directed at the regime, not sanctions, etc., hence slogans opposing intervention in Syria and Gaza represent a proletarian internationalism, not a CIA plot. This is evident in the demand of the head of teachers union who calls for an end to the regime (he was jailed by the regime for 5 years so cannot be a CIA stooge). So the regime is unlikely to be able to bury this uprising by taking the line that US/Israel etc., are to blame. Hence the imperialist left defence of the regime is already exposed as bankrupt!
We do not disdain to make our view of what needs to be done known:


For international labor solidarity with the Iranian masses!

For labor actions and labor political strikes to defend Iranian trade unionists and workers!

Down with the clampdown on social media! Drop all charges and free all arrested protesters!

For Permanent Revolution in Iran! End the regime! Smash the bourgeois/clerical state!

Set up workers councils and militias, split the army, no return to the Shah, unite the revolution with the resistance in Syria and Palestine!

Down with imperialism including both the U.S./E.U. bloc and the SCO with Russia and China! Down with the bourgeois/clerical lackeys!

International workers' support for reopening of the Iranian revolution joined with the Arab Revolution!

For the right to self-determination for the Kurdish People! For a socialist Kurdistan!

For a Bolshevik Leninist Party that does not cede the leadership to Stalinists, Maoists, Bolivarians and Guevarists!

For a workers and poor farmers state!

For a federation of socialist republics of the Middle and Near East!


For a new, revolutionary Workers’ International, based on the method and Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Program: “Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International”!



Liaison Committee of Communists 8 February, 2018



LCC documents on Iran:

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1800

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/mena-yemen-and-arab-revolution.html

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1049

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/defend-iran-against-imperialism-and-its.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/defend-iran-against-us-eu-and-israel.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/us-and-chinese-imperialism-hands-off.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/iran-for-revolutionary-party.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/for-workers-socialist-federation-of.html


RCIT:

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/long-live-the-popular-uprising-in-iran/


Sources:

https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/01/ministry-truth-no-reporting-iran-protests/

https://en.radiozamaneh.com/articles/spike-in-labor-protests-in-iran-is-changing-the-political-milieu/

http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/iran/overview

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/12/01/asia-pacific/chinas-investments-iran-surge-coming-western-nations-flounder/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/30/iran-protests-trump-tweets

https://twitter.com/SMohyeddin/status/948505462596603904

https://financialtribune.com/articles/domestic-economy/65339/iran-2nd-biggest-fdi-destination-in-mena

SYRIA: Break the Siege of Ghouta

The Syrian counter-revolution rallies in Sochi, Russia. The Russian troika with Iran and Turkey meets in Sochi to make the next move in the Great Game. How to prop- up Assad, kill off ISIS and al Nusra (HTS) and remove all ‘terrorist’ threats to the division of the oil spoils. The Syrian bourgeois ‘democratic’ opposition compromises with the counter-revolution in the hope of taking its share of the spoils from Assad. The Kurds in the US controlled SDF want to join the Syrian national army in exchange for an ‘autonomous’ Rojava. The revolution is being slowly strangled as Assad, backed by his hordes of foreign mercenaries and their military hardware, tightens his grip on the rebel-held towns to force them into retreat. The relief of East Ghouta in Damascus has become a rallying point for the survival of the revolution, and a litmus test of revolutionaries everywhere. It proves at least two things. First, that capitalism in its terminal crisis is resisted by popular movements. Second, we need an internationalist revolutionary party with a program that draws the lessons of history and guides the world’s workers towards a world socialist revolution.

A half-way revolution is lost

We warned at the outset of the uprising Syria in 2011 that it was the leading edge of the Arab Revolution, and that its failure would be major setback for not only that revolution but the world revolution. The re-opening of the Arab Revolution was the direct result of the global crisis of falling profits being unloaded onto the shoulders of the semi-colonies. The widespread extent of the resistance from Tunisia to Bahrain, and the form it took, armed or not, became the touchstone of the revolution.

As the popular insurgencies moved from Tunisia to Egypt and to the Levant, the Syria Revolution became the leader of the Arab Revolution. It had the support of the Palestinian masses but not the sellout leadership of the PLO and Hamas whose bourgeois nationalist politics betrays the Palestinian revolution for a ‘dual-state’ shared with the Zionist state. It shared the basic democratic demands of the Palestinian struggle, against dictatorship and occupation, against outside interference, a right to peaceful resistance, and no sectarianism. It quickly overtook the leadership of the Arab Revolution from the Palestinians when the extreme reaction of Assad to protest forced it to arm itself to defend its survival.

We welcomed the popular uprising in Tunisia following on the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, and defended the rebels in Libya against Gaddafi. We defended Gaddafi against the NATO bombardment. But we also said that Gaddafi’s war against imperialism is fake when he was busy killing rebels to prove his usefulness to imperialism. That is why we gave military support to the rebels. True, the rebels were compromised by the intervention of NATO, but in reality, the rebels stood for the most basic bourgeois ‘democracy’ suppressed by both imperialism and Gaddafi. Most of the Western left by contrast defended Gaddafi against NATO and claimed the ‘rebels’ were really Islamic fascists and/or CIA assets.

Today the outcome of the civil war against Gaddafi is unresolved because it was isolated by the failure of revolutions in other MENA states and trapped by infighting between rival bourgeois fractions maneuvering between two big imperialist blocs – US/NATO, and Russia/China. The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were also trapped in the half-way houses of bourgeois democracy. The ‘democratic transition’ in Tunisia leaves the situation that saw Mohamed Bouazizi kill himself unchanged. In Egypt General Al Sisi has kept the military bourgeois faction in power.

In Egypt, the survival of the military regime was predictable given that the popular protests never turned the occupation of Tahrir Square into workers united fronts by building councils and militias. Nor did they attempt to split the ranks of the army from the officer high command, or prepare for a revolutionary general strike. The International Socialists gave a critical vote to Morsi. And when Sisi overthrew Morsi, most ‘Trotskyist’ groups called for retreat to a bourgeois Constituent Assembly against the military regime as the way forward.

The situation was different in Syria

In March 2011, Assad began to violently repress peaceful demonstrations and the movement was forced to arm itself to survive. The sheer fact that the peaceful mass protests could not be suppressed spurred Assad to even more ruthless repression. This led to many of his officers and ranks spontaneously mutinying and joining the revolution. Of course, it was still a ‘democratic’ (i.e. bourgeois democratic, revolution) but now it had escalated into armed civil war. By ‘civil war’ we mean the war between the two main classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, and their various allies, inside and outside the country, not merely a war fought among different fractions of the national bourgeoisie.

The fate of the Syrian Revolution is therefore a critical test of Marxism and its leadership of the world revolution against all the forces of counter-revolution. The lessons of history, in particular that of 1917, prove:

(1) First: that the bourgeois democratic revolution cannot be completed by the bourgeoisie. The crisis-ridden imperialist system must suppress workers basic rights when workers fight back against capitalism’s crisis of falling profits. Hence, the class interests of the national bourgeoisie are tied to imperialism as its agent in guaranteeing the super-exploitation the masses

(2) Second: we can prove that from 1917 onwards, workers and oppressed people are willing and able to spontaneously fight oppression. We can prove that even to defend basic democratic rights workers and oppressed must fight as a class independently against imperialism and its agents. The workers, leading the other oppressed, must carry that fight through to the victorious socialist revolution, or suffer fascist counter-revolution, i.e. the defeat and destruction of the only historic class capable of overthrowing the capitalist class and saving humanity and the planet.

(3) Third: we can prove the crises and spontaneous resistance to them are necessary pre-conditions for revolution, but they are not sufficient. Both necessary and sufficient is the revolutionary vanguard party with a program that embodies the historic lessons of revolution and applies them practically in the struggle. This will to prove to workers that socialist revolution is the only way out of the impasse of a dying capitalism, and so convince them to join the revolution. 

Permanent Revolution
 
How does the Syrian revolution demonstrate these historic lessons yet again? On the first point, the Assad national bourgeois regime will stop at nothing to destroy the revolution. He created the armed opposition and was losing the civil war until he was forced to call on massive direct intervention by Russia, Iran and Turkey during 2016. Today, Assad’s militias consist mainly of foreign mercenaries organized by Iran while Russia provides the air support. These invasions and occupations have pushed back the revolution into besieged enclaves such as Idlib and Ghouta so that the survival of the revolution is in danger.

Second, as already noted, the Syrian revolution is a popular uprising. We know this because of its worker/peasant/small trader composition, and the success of the armed militias in the years from 2011 until December 2016 when the fall of Aleppo marked a major defeat for the revolution.

This defeat was made easier by many of the petty bourgeois elements who broke with the revolution to sell their services to any of a number of imperialist and regional powers whose influence over Assad opened up opportunities for other scavenging bourgeois fractions to squabble over dividing up the spoils of Syria and MENA as a whole.

As the FSA has split into many factions, some making their peace with Assad or Erdogan, the militias that remain staunchly fighting Assad are facing almost insuperable odds fighting on at least 3 fronts.

First front: against both rival imperialist blocs in Syria – the US/NATO/Israel, and the Russia/China bloc, that now includes the two main regional powers, Turkey and Iran.

Second front: against the Islamic bourgeois factions the IS and AQ, and the Kurdish bourgeois factions, when they bloc with Assad against the revolution. To do this, revolutionaries have to call for an end to sectarianism, the recognition of the Syrian right to national self-determination, and for religious freedoms.

Third front: within the militias that are still fighting Assad refusing to do deals at Geneva and Sochi to carve- up Syria into ‘protectorates’, revolutionaries must form military blocs where they can fight as one armed united front against Assad, while at the same time building workers councils and militias to be organized democratically so that the program for permanent revolution is raised and debated. 

How to break the Siege of Ghouta
 
Ghouta is a test which separates the best from the and worst of the self-proclaimed revolutionary left. We argue that the worst of the left has failed the test dismally. It demonstrates how not to break the siege of Ghouta. We have written at length about the failure of the Western ‘left’ to support the Arab Revolution except as a bourgeois democratic revolution. The situation hasn’t changed in broad terms because the revolution is undefeated. But the situation is critical and the revolution will be defeated unless it has international support necessary to win the civil war.

(1) Imperialist socialists

The worst of the left operate on auto-pilot and fly by numbers. They are Jacobins because they think the last serious revolution was the French revolution. For them the Arab Revolution is trying to catch up with the French Revolution. Assad is a Jacobin because he fights to defend the ‘democratic’ republic of Syria from “Islamic fascism”, “feudal terrorism”, or from the CIA. The estimated 400,000 killed by Assad since 2011 and the 400,000 civilians trapped in Ghouta are ‘hostages’ used by the Islamic rebels, and so are justifiable fallout from the civil war. For their service to the imperialists who are killing civilians by the score every day in Syria, we call these fakers imperialist socialists.

(2) Bourgeois socialists

Bourgeois socialists do not support Assad as a ‘progressive’ but see him correctly as a dictator serving imperialism. The Syrian revolution is progressive but only if led by workers and peasants who replace the bourgeoisie in completing the bourgeois revolution. This means support for a ‘democratic’ opposition only, and when this does not exist or is dominated by the Islamic ‘fascists’, the only revolutionaries that qualify as democratic are already secular democrats (Workers Voice). In other words, the revolution does not exist and cannot be supported unless it fulfills an idealist blueprint imposed by the ‘petty bourgeois democrats’ in the oppressor states. The end of the siege of Ghouta is something that must fall from socialist heaven (or the UNO) because the Western left doesn’t have a clue what to do beyond preaching ‘bourgeois democracy’ against ‘Islamic fascism’.

(3) Bolshevik Leninists (revolutionary communists)

Bolshevik-Leninists condemn the fake Western left sellout of the Syrian Revolution. Ours is the tradition which tries to keep the Russian Revolution alive today. We insist on the three preconditions for revolution stated above: first, objectively the bourgeoisie has no way out other than destruction of civilization; second, objectively the proletariat and its allies are ready and willing to fight for bourgeois democracy; and third, what is missing is the necessary and sufficient ‘subjective’ factor - an international vanguard party and program that is able to advance the struggle directly to the socialist revolution.

The Bolshevik-Leninist party is founded on the theory/program of Permanent Revolution which underlies Trotsky’s Transitional Program. In the Arab Revolution, and in Ghouta today, the anti-imperialist united front calls on all anti-imperialist forces to fight imperialism and its agents. This is a military bloc which means that we must fight alongside those who do not share our politics including IS and HTS in Syria when they are fighting imperialism and/or Assad and not the revolution itself. In doing so, we raise the program of permanent revolution to explain why the anti-imperialist struggle must necessarily lead to a break with the national bourgeoisie and all those who give it left cover such as the imperialist and bourgeois socialists – ‘Permanent Revolution!