NZ ruling class goes to War

Members of the NZ Special Air Services in Afghanistan

As John Key and the NACT regime struggle to decide how much support for the US war against IS they can give without jeopardising their warm trading relations with China, we say that there is much more to be said about this capitalist war. It is in fact only the most recent in a long history of wars into which NZ has been dragged as a semi-colony of first Britain, then the US, as these imperialist powers fight their rivals and squabble over the spoils of war. That is, as long as they are not collaborating to defeat the threat of international proletarian revolution. Read on...

Imperialist war

NZ workers were dragged into the First Imperialist War on the side of British imperialism. The ANZACS became cannon fodder on the beaches of Gallipoli and the trenches of the Somme. NZ workers and farmers were dragged into the Second Imperialist War behind Britain and the ‘allies’ to fight fascism. They died in droves in North Africa, Italy, the Western Front and the Pacific.

Then NZ soldiers went to Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam on behalf of the UK and US ruling classes to fight the spread of ‘communism’. In each case the cause of the war was to divide workers nationally and send them to fight one another so that they would not become an international class force united in fighting for a world communist revolution.

In all of these wars the interests of the ruling classes and working class were diametrically opposed. The ruling classes were pitted against one another to divide and re-divide the world at one another’s expense. Yet when it came to opposing workers revolution, they put aside their rivalry to unite against the communist revolution.

The workers interests were therefore to oppose fighting national wars unless they were fighting against imperialist oppression, and in turning their guns on their own ruling class, unite their forces  to overthrow capitalism and bring about communism. In each case war armed workers and created the conditions in which workers could organise armed revolution.

The First Imperialist War proved this. After the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, imperialist troops on both sides began to actively oppose the war. Within a year the German troops mutinied and brought the war to a halt. The ruling classes quickly signed a ceasefire, disarmed the troops and sent expeditionary forces to attack the new Soviet Republic. It was only the threat of revolution spreading throughout Europe that caused the rise of fascist movements in every bourgeois nation to divide and smash the working class.

The failure to defeat the Bolshevik Revolution and to eliminate the communist parties in the rest of the world meant that communism was now the main enemy of all bourgeois states. Because the Treaty of Versailles punished a destitute Germany, the threat of revolution was greatest there and a strong fascist movement arose to smash it and to rally the masses behind the territorial expansion of imperialist Germany. Fascist Germany also took upon itself to invade the Soviet Union to complete the task of smashing ‘communism’.

The Soviet enemy

France and Britain declared war on Germany to prevent it and its allies from re-dividing Europe at their expense. At the same time however, their main enemy remained the Soviet Union. The Western allies enlisted Russia as a temporary ally to bear the brunt of the war where it played by far the most important role in the defeat of the Axis. After the war Western Allies resumed their fixation on defeating communism, smashing revolutionary movements in Italy, Greece and elsewhere.

The Cold War began in 1948 when the Soviet Union threw the capitalists out of Eastern Europe. They also backed the anti-imperialist struggles in the colonial world in Africa, China and Indo-China etc., as they began to fight for national independence. At that point the Allies united behind the US, the new dominant global power, to stop the ‘spread of communism’, and to ultimately defeat the legacy of 1917. The 'anti-communist' wars in Malaysia and Vietnam in which NZ participated were part of this long-term objective to restore the soviet bloc to capitalist control.

The victory of the Western imperialists had to wait until the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites from 1989 to 1991 and the restoration of capitalism. China and Vietnam followed the same path of a return to capitalism. That marked the end of ‘soviet communism’ and a scramble by the Western imperialists to pronounce the historic victory of global capitalism over 'communism'.

That triumphalism proved short-lived however. The ex-Soviet Union and ex-Communist China were not re-colonised by imperialism. Instead they became powerful state capitalist regimes that retained control over their economies and emerged as new rival imperialist powers. The rivalry between capitalism and ‘communism’, had been transmogrified into a rivalry between two big imperialist power blocs today, the US-led and China-led blocs.

The ISIS ‘enemy’

The fact is that imperialism today is re-dividing the global world afresh and causing economic, political and military wars on every continent. This time the underlying rivalry behind every war is that between the old Western bloc led by the US and the ex-Soviet bloc led by China. But as is always the case where the threat of the rise of proletarian revolution becomes paramount this rivalry is temporarily suspended.

This is the case in the Middle East today. The two main blocs want to defend the status quo. The US and is gendarme Israel want to continue to dominate the MENA with the right to impose puppet regimes to contain the masses struggles. Its object is to prevent the other bloc from gaining access to more oil and other resources. Meanwhile, China and Russia, allied to Iran want to defend their position in MENA also, including access to oil.

As the Arab masses have risen up to oppose their dictators, this has led to a stalemate as both blocs have backed dictatorships which have not been able to defeat mass insurgencies. The result is a vacuum in which the masses have been increasingly driven into the arms of a new Arab petty bourgeoisie that is trying to create a new state based upon reclaiming some ancient Islamic Caliphate in MENA. Both imperialist blocs and their client dictators in the MENA are against this enemy that has arisen out of their failed policies and threatens their spheres of influence.

War and Revolution

In this situation revolutionary Marxists oppose all imperialist wars, invasions and occupations, including those against the Islamic Caliphate which is a bourgeois proto-state that must align itself with one or other imperialist bloc. The Caliphate as a theocratic state is no better or worse than Israel or Saudi Arabia. War between imperialism and the Caliphate is like all such deals a process of negotiation over the fate of the Arab masses.

How does the US and China/Russia decide which bourgeois faction should rule the masses on their behalf in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iraq? Not by any hypocritical humanitarian criteria of saving mothers and children but by their ruthless efficiency in bombing mothers and children and suppressing the masses.

Only the Arab masses rallying and organising workers and oppressed as an international revolutionary force can defeat both imperialism and their secular or theocratic national bourgeois dictatorships!

To support the Arab revolution, NZ workers must oppose our lackey regime’s alignment with both imperialist blocs, and all military intervention into their proxy wars in MENA, specifically against IS. We must oppose the designation of anti-imperialist fighters as ‘terrorist’, and defend the right of NZ citizens to travel overseas to fight wars they consider just.

• Break with the imperialist militarism of ANZAC, ANZUS and the UNO!
• Victory to the Arab Revolution!
• For the Defeat of the US led coalition against IS!
• Defeat the intervention of China/Russia/Iran in MENA!
• For a Socialist United States of MENA!

No NZ troops in Iraq and Syria!

Member of New Zealand Special Air Services deployed in Afghanistan

The US and its lackeys including New Zealand are going to war again in the Middle East to replace the regimes that no longer serve US imperialist interests in suppressing the Arab Revolution. Bashar al-Assad was tolerated by the US and Israel despite being allied to Iran and Russia, because his dictatorship was a bastion against a popular revolution in Syria joining forces with the Palestine revolution and threatening its ally, Israel. The US refused to arm the Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles hoping that al-Assad and the rebels would fight to a standstill and a new moderate pro-US regime would emerge.

This strategy failed as the Syrian revolution continued to fight on for 3 years despite lacking heavy weapons. To break the stalemate al-Assad released Jihadists from his jails to build ISIS as an ally against the revolution. But this led to the rise of a new threat to US control of the Middle East – a new Islamic bourgeoisie that was hostile to the US.

ISIS broke from al Qaeda in Syria and moved into Iraq where it threatened to overthrow the US puppet Nouri al-Maliki and take over the US protectorate created as a bulwark against Iran. The US stepped in to prop the regime up, bombed ISIS in the north and armed the Kurds, while it worked to replace al-Maliki with a regime more efficient in managing Sunni, Shia and Kurds to oversee the production of oil.

The rise of ISIS (now Islamic State) is therefore not in the interests of the US plans to continue control of the Middle East. Its response was to create a huge panic about ISIS terrorists returning to their ‘homelands’ to justify bombing it and militarising police ‘terror’ against workers at home.

But ISIS is much less a threat to US domination of the region, not to mention the homelands, than it is to the popular resistance in Syria and Iraq. ISIS is the product of imperialist invasion, wars and occupation of the Middle East since WW1. It is a reactionary social movement that has grown up around warlords like Osama bin Laden only because imperialism, in cahoots with the Arab leaders and Stalinist parties, destroyed the Arab national revolution. ISIS wants to become an Islamic State bourgeoisie and negotiate deals with imperialism for a share of the oil and the exploitation of the workers.

Nevertheless in this war the two sides are not equal. We are for the defeat of the imperialist US and all its servile client states like Australia and NZ who are part of the ‘war on terror’. NZ Prime Minister Key has signed up to the US coalition supporting the US war on ISIS. He is considering the deployment of SAS troops to Iraq playing a similar role to the one it played in Afghanistan.

We call on NZ workers to oppose the deployment of SAS troops to the Middle East and support those popular forces that are fighting for the defeat of the US and its allies in the war in Syria and Iraq!

However, because ISIS is fighting the popular revolution and the Kurdish state to create its Islamic State, we do not call for a military alliance with ISIS against imperialism. Only the workers revolution can defeat imperialism and the reactionary bourgeois Islamic State. We are for the armed, independent, non-sectarian fighters in Syria and Iraq defeating ISIS and taking the lead in the struggle against imperialism and its national dictators, thereby opening the road to the socialist revolution in MENA!

FOR A SOCIALIST PALESTINE!

The events of the last weeks that saw a renewal of open hostilities between Israel and Hamas have an element of deja vu in them. Once more the Zionist state steps up its oppression of the West Bank and Gaza using as a pretext the killing of three Israeli youths. Once more the Palestinian masses rise up in resistance as Arab youth are killed and hundreds arrested. Yet we are not taken in by the arguments for or against renewed hostilities; they are a ritual exchange between the Zionist ruling class and the Palestinian bourgeois factions Hamas and Fatah to negotiate the division of Palestine. The two factions are using the Palestinian masses as no more than expendable pawns in their battle for supremacy. Lost in this exchange is the truth of what underlies this conflict between the Zionist oppressor state, and an oppressed occupied state. While both regimes negotiate with missiles the Palestinian masses pay the price in blood. Their leaders continue to sell out to Israel. In selling out they prevent the Palestinian struggle for self-determination from arming independent militias and uniting their forces with other armed struggles in the surrounding Arab states. We are for a revolutionary party and program for the defeat of the Zionist state and for a Socialist Palestine in a United Socialist States of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)!

1) Down with the Zionist State!

Israel is a settler state that came into existence after United Nations (UN) resolution 181 in 1947 which was a fig-leaf for British and US imperialist backing of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine and its partition into two legitimate states. This was followed by a series of wars starting with the civil war followed by the First Arab-Israeli war in 1948, together called al-Nakba by the Arabs, that led to defeat of Arab forces and drove Arabs off their land to the point that today all of Palestine is either settled by Israelis or controlled by the Israeli military. Those parts of the West Bank and Gaza that are not permanently occupied by the military are no more than prison camps much as are the refugee camps that house millions of displaced Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Israel justifies it’s right to occupy Palestine in terms of its Zionist claims to the ancient land of Israel. It is pre-occupied with completing its Zionist program of reclaiming its historic homeland which would not be possible without a massive military subsidy from the US. (See ‘Zionism: A Road Map to Hell’).

Israel is therefore not an imperialist economic power and only exists on the basis of US and EU imperialist support. It might be called ‘sub-imperialist’ in the sense of “sub-contracted to US imperialism”. It is an armed settler state with a theocratic Zionist regime no less ‘fundamentalist’ than its rival Islamic Republic of Iran, or the upstart rival Sunni Islamic State (ISIS), and certainly a nuclear armed ‘terrorist’ state. It is an affront not only to the Palestinians, but to Jews and to humanity as a whole that Zionist Israel exists, and so must be destroyed. (see Against Zionism).

Writing on The Jewish Problem in 1937, Trotsky foresaw the tragedy of Zionism as a reactionary solution to the national rights of Jews:

"But the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism. And how, you ask me, can socialism solve this question? On this point I can but offer hypotheses. Once socialism has become master of our planet or at least of its most important sections, it will have unimaginable resources in all domains. Human history has witnessed the epoch of great migrations on the basis of barbarism. Socialism will open the possibility of great migrations on the basis of the most developed technique and culture. It goes without saying that what is here involved is not compulsory displacements, that is, the creation of new ghettos for certain nationalities, but displacements freely consented to, or rather demanded by certain nationalities or parts of nationalities. The dispersed Jews who would want to be reassembled in the same community will find a sufficiently extensive and rich spot under the sun. The same possibility will be opened for the Arabs, as for all other scattered nations. National topography will become a part of the planned economy. This is the grand historical perspective that I envisage. To work for international socialism means also to work for the solution of the Jewish question.”

2) Palestinian National Liberation

The struggle of the Palestinian masses against Israeli occupation is a national liberation struggle. To achieve Palestinian liberation the Zionist state must be destroyed. National liberation does not mean recognition of the state of Israel as legitimate nor the acceptance of a two-state solution. This is the position of one faction of the Palestinian bourgeoisie –Fatah. Nor does it mean the opportunist policy of the other bourgeois faction Hamas, i.e. military confrontation to recognise the de facto right for Israel to exist until it can be replaced by a theocratic Islamic State of Palestine. Between these two factions’ policies of dividing up Palestine with the Zionists there is no essential difference. Both are “bloody traps” for the Arab masses manipulated as pawns of the rival factions of the Palestinian bourgeoisie.

Much of the Western left also buys into a negotiated ‘peaceful’ solution such as the claim that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state which can be reformed by pressure of international public opinion and more UN resolutions to go back to the partition of 1947. This is based on the belief that Jews have national rights in Palestine that can be peacefully resolved by recognising both Palestinian and Jewish rights. This is making Palestine liberation conditional on Jewish national rights as if they have an equal claim to living in Palestine. Not so. Trotsky argued that in the 1930s that Jews could claim national rights as an oppressed nation, but not at the expense of occupying Palestine.

“The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. Interested in winning the sympathies of the Arabs who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has sharply altered its policy toward the Jews, and has actually renounced its promise to help them found their “own home” in a foreign land. The future development of military events may well transform Palestine into a bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews. Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system.” On the Jewish Problem.

The National rights of Jews therefore cannot be at the expense of the Palestinians. So the national liberation of Palestine means the defeat of Israel and the re-occupation of Palestine by the armed people of Palestine, with or without the support of militant Jews, and necessarily in conjunction with the popular revolutions that have begun in the other Arab states. The national rights of Jews will be realised in a democratic, socialist, multi-ethnic workers’ state in Palestine.

3) The Arab Revolution

Since 1948 the Palestinian revolution has been isolated (in effect quarantined) by the Arab states whose regimes professed support for Palestinian rights, but stopped short at limited wars to weakly contest the expanding borders of Israel. The surrounding Arab states condemned the Israeli state but in practice put their own separate interests before the defence of Palestine. They were rivals for leadership of the Arab states and could never agree on a unified strategy. In 1948 King Abdullar of Jordan backed by Britain, schemed with the Zionists to incorporate the US mandated Palestine into Jordan but was opposed by Egypt and Syria who had their own plans to annex Palestine. The outcome of the war was a victory for Israel and its expansion well beyond the UN partition borders (see map). 

The 1967 “Third Arab-Israeli war” between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan also led to an outright Israeli victory and further incursions into Palestinian territory. Since that time the Arab states have collaborated with Israel. Egypt and Israel struck and agreement over Gaza. In Syria, the secular Baathist regime of Assad, father and son, co-existed with the theocratic Zionist state just as much as it collaborated with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Arab and Israeli ruling classes were in agreement on their fundamental interest of keeping the Arab revolution divided and quarantined.

The Arab Spring changed that. Since 2011 the uprisings from Tunisia to Syria have forced the Arab regimes to actively suppress or co-opt the spread and synchronisation of these popular uprisings. In Syria Assad has starved and bombed the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk because the different leadership factions including Hamas that ruled the camp could not suppress the solidarity of the Palestinian masses with the Syrian Revolution. Moreover the revolutions continue in Libya and Syria where the armed resistance continues to fight the regime. The outbreak of a popular war against the Maliki regime in Iraq puts on the agenda not only the defeat of imperialism in MENA but also the defeat of imperialism’s puppet regimes in Iraq and Syria their Islamic State rivals. For the first time a Palestinian popular uprising has the potential to join forces with the Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi revolutions and to link up the Palestinian masses in Lebanon and Jordan in a wider Arab revolution to overthrow imperialism and its national bourgeois puppets.

4) Role of Imperialism

There are no imperialist powers in the MENA. Israel and all the Arab regimes are semi-colonies of imperialism including the oil-rich Gulf States (and the non-Arab Iran). In the last analysis, Israel’s existence is not about land grabbing in the name of God, but its military role as the mercenary of US and EU imperialism in defending their interests in MENA against the emergence of the rival imperialist bloc of Russia and China. The Arab regimes act as agents of one or other, or both imperialist blocs, as they compete to win their favour and increase their share of the oil wealth exploited by imperialism. There can be no Arab Revolution unless it breaks with both imperialism and all the national bourgeois factions that rule over the masses on its behalf.

It is not possible to complete the national revolutions to defeat imperialism without overthrowing the national bourgeois factions that rule on behalf of imperialism. Hamas and Fatah in Palestine use the masses as military pawns to negotiate better terms with Israel for dividing Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Syria compete with the military al Sisi and Assad regimes, and secular bourgeois factions such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), for popular support to win the backing of the US and/or China/Russia. All compete to prove they can contain the Arab Revolution and that it is not they but their rivals that are the ‘terrorists’ that must be smashed. Against such brutal regimes, the Arab revolution that is historically centred on Palestine must declare its political independence from all bourgeois factions and build popular armed militias based on the workers and oppressed. See “The Arab Revolution meets NATO/Zionism”.

5) For Permanent Revolution

The struggle for an independent, secular Arab revolution has to contend with a history in which the revolutionary Marxist party has been betrayed by Stalinist popular front politics. That is, Communist Parties in MENA have historically collaborated with ‘progressive’ national bourgeois factions such as Fatah and the Baath Party purportedly against imperialism. But such collaboration has never led to national independence only to the defeat of the masses. The Arab revolution has made important advances against such historic betrayals only by taking up the armed and independent struggle against imperialism and it bourgeois lackeys. The fighting masses need to take the leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle out of the hands of the national bourgeoisie and embarking on the road to socialist revolution.

So the Palestinian Intifadas threatened to break the masses from the control of Fatah and Hamas and the threat of popular revolution forced these bourgeois lackeys to negotiate with Israel to contain the revolution. In Libya the armed militias retain a dual power against the pro-imperialist post-Gaddafi regime despite the current US attempt led by its henchman General Khalifa Hifter to disarm the militias. In Syria the secular armed revolution is holding out despite terrible odds against both the regime and the Islamic State. In Egypt, the masses are now facing a military dictatorship that strips away all illusions that the military is ‘progressive’. What is lacking is the Marxist party and program for Permanent Revolution that spells out the necessity for the armed, independent struggle for socialist republics within a wider Federation of Socialist Republics of MENA .

6) Revolutionary Party and Program

Only a revolutionary Marxist party and program is capable of addressing the Palestinian revolution as part of the Permanent Arab Revolution and as part of a global revolution. This is because as we said above the Zionist state is a military settler state funded by US and EU imperialism as its mercenary in MENA. It is the key to US and NATO control of its MENA ‘assets’ both political and economic which is today a vital defence of the US blocs oil assets against those of its rival Russia/China bloc. It is also imperialism’s weakest link in MENA because its role as imperialist gendarme forces it to militarise its settler population. This means that all Zionism’s claims to national rights and democratic legitimacy are constantly exposed as extreme hypocrisy turning the oppression of the Palestinian people the flaming beacon of the Arab Revolution. The cry “We are all Palestinians” means that while the Palestinians are not free, no-one is free!

That is why the struggle against imperialism in the MENA cannot succeed without the defeat of Israel and the smashing of the Zionist state. While it exists it will play the role it has played since 1948 as the armed mercenary of US imperialism in MENA. Just as the US imperialism can only prevent its decline as the No 1 imperialist power, so Israel’s fate is dependent on its role of protecting its master in MENA. Only the revolutionary Leninist/Trotskyist Party can cut through the pacifist liberal confusion that holds out the possibility of a negotiated peace in Palestine and in the wider MENA. Revolutionary Marxism is uncompromising in leading such a revolution because it refuses to legitimise the Zionist state!

In response to the left-liberal cry ‘victory for the Intifada’ we say victory can only be the victory of a revolutionary war of national liberation that (1) overthrows the Zionist IDF, (2) defeats all intervention by imperialism or its proxies, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iran and Turkey, and (3) exposes and defeats the treacherous leadership of the national bourgeois agents of imperialism in Palestine, Hamas and Fatah!

We agree with Trotsky. In 1998 we wrote:

“A democratic multi-ethnic Palestine could only be achieved as a result of a socialist revolution based on workers councils and militias. It would also be part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East. In that context not only Palestinians would have the right to return but also Arab Jews would have the right to return to Syria, Morocco, Iraq and other Arab countries. Kurds, Assyrian and other nationalities would achieve self-determination and equal rights.” Against Zionism.   

• That is why our program calls for the Egyptian working masses to build workers councils and militias to overthrow al Sisi and the military dictatorship, and to form a popular militia able to break down the walls and open the borders of Gaza to unite its people with the West Bank and Jordan! 

•  We call on the Palestinian masses in occupied Palestine and in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon to unite with the Syrian revolution to build workers councils and militias to smash both the Assad regime and the Islamic State (ISIS) and its allies Hezbollah and Iranian fighters.  

•  We condemn all self-proclaimed revolutionaries in the imperialist countries for failing in their duty to take action against their own imperialist ruling classes, whose defeat ultimately will enable the permanent revolution in MENA to be victorious. 

• We oppose all pacifist, individualist boycotts and appeals to United Nations negotiations as continuing the legitimation of imperialist rule in MENA and as barriers to the armed, independence of the Arab masses. 

•  We call on Israeli workers to take the side of Palestinian liberation, form workers councils and strike for the release of Palestinian political prisoners! 

•  We call on Israel conscripts in the military to refuse to obey orders to shoot or otherwise oppress Palestinians! 

• Defeat Zionism! We refuse to demand that the Zionist state frees its political prisoners, pulls down its walls and grants the right of return. We do not create illusions in Israel as we do not recognise its right to exist. The right of return will be enforced by Zionism’s defeat! 

•  We call on workers in the imperialist countries to mobilise in their unions to enforce bans on all diplomatic, military and trade relations with Israel! 

•  We call on the ranks of the military to mobilise against all imperialist occupation and intervention in the Arab states! 

•  We call on the unions to make political strikes against the US funding of Israeli occupation! We call on workers to build international brigades to fight alongside the armed, independent militias in Palestine, Syria and Iraq, and for weapons and medical aid to the Palestinian struggle! 

•  For a Socialist Palestine within a Federation of Socialist Republics of MENA!

References

Trotsky “On the Jewish Problem” http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm

Against Zionism http://trotskyistinspain.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/against-zionism/

The Arab Revolution meets NATO/Zionism http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/the-arab-revolution-meets-nato-zionism.html

Zionism: A Road Map to Hell. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/zionism-road-map-to-unending-conflict.html



14 July 2014

Communist Workers Group (Aotearoa/NZ)

US/NATO imperialism keep you bloody hands off Syria!

   US/NATO Imperialists Keep Your Bloody Hands off Syria by JohnnBrown

Build a United Front Defence of the Syrian Revolution!

 
For International Labor defense to stop the massacre of the Syrian workers and masses at the hands of the butcher Al-Assad!

Build international demonstrations political strikes and labor actions!

US/French/NATO/Russia: Hands off the Middle East and North Africa!

No to UN intervention! Defend the Palestinians!
 
The LCC calls on the international working class, all socialist and leftist organizations to build a united front defense of the Syrian masses, who rose up in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring and have been under brutal attack by the al-Assad regime. We call on workers in the US and on all continents and especially those of Turkey and Lebanon to rally our class’s resources in defense of the oppressed Syrian masses.

The life or death situation of Syrians with democratic aspirations could not wait for the emergence of a revolutionary proletarian vanguard party to defend themselves and advance their liberation. The Arab spring moment presented the Syrian masses with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to attempt to put an end to the murderous regime.

Al-Assad maneuvers between imperialisms but always at the expense of the masses. For years he has been the go-to guy for US imperialism which outsourced torture to his secret prisons. At the same time US intelligence and media helped the Zionist gendarmes reign in Syria’s nuclear program. US imperialism/NATO/UN have tolerated al-Assad as long as he helped contain the Arab masses in general and the Palestinian revolution in particular.

The US has deliberately stopped the supply of Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) reaching the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for fear they would be used against Israel. The street fighters remain in large part dependent on munitions captured from Syrian regulars. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Kerry promises $60 million of “non lethal aid,” dangling a carrot in front of the comprador forces assembling around the leadership of the SNC. Russia and China are supporting Assad and US/Israel are trying to negotiate a solution to prevent a revolution that could destabilize US/Zionist rule in Middle East and North Africa (MENA.) At the same time there remains a layer of social-chauvinists among the left currents who are calling on US, EU, UN to intervene. 

No to US/NATO intervention!
While opposing any imperialist intervention and fighting to stop military aid to Assad by the Russians and Chinese the workers united front would not stop military support sent to the rebel army by Obama or his proxies rather it would seek to redirect armaments (hot cargo) to the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC’s) and secular fighters.

The international working class has a side in this civil war. Instead of abstentionism or siding with Assad, socialists, anti-capitalists and all workers need to support the turning of the Arab street’s opposition to dictatorial regimes and against imperialism into labor actions and mobilizations of the entire international working class to support the uprising. Yet despite their pretenses to being the representatives of and defenders of the working class’s interests, the American “left,” the trade union bureaucracy, social democrats, Stalinists, Castroites, Bolivarians, anarchists and the renegades of Trotskyism have all been silent, are abstentionists or are openly supporting al-Assad.

The working class’s interest is in increasing the power of the democratically controlled militias and turning the Local Coordinating Committees (LCCs) into workers councils. As the task for the international working class is to support the armed struggle against the regime, a united front of workers organizations is needed to bloc militarily with the secular opposition to the brutal Syrian Ba’ath regime.

While doing so the working class united front defense of the Syrian Revolution must give absolutely no political support to the comprador bourgeois and petty bourgeois intellectuals, especially the ex-Assad generals who will act to abort the revolution and pave a path to power for the new wanna-be lapdogs of imperialism gathered as the SNC. Likewise the united front should refuse any political support to the Jihadist opposition groups! They are a reactionary anti-democratic force which is already attempting to impose Sharia law, pull down the FSA flags, arrest people, etc. The task of the workers united front is to elevate the strength and power of the secular and working class forces at the bourgeois comprador and Islamist Jihadists’ expense and to deny the Jihadists military support when they attack the secular FSA..

It is urgent that the masses break from the dead-end leadership of these elements and that the Syrian and Middle Eastern working class organize as a class and rise to the leadership of these struggles, expanding them into a fight for workers power.

We call on the international working class to mobilize in defense of our class brothers and sisters in Syria and the Middle East against imperialism and their own ruling classes (and for those in the imperialist countries in the first place their own ruling class.) Adopting the proposals emerging from the advanced combat detachments in Libya, Tunisia, and Palestine, our united front must advocate for and build up self-defense pickets of the internationalist working class who initiate actions of solidarity, such as rallies, mass mobilizations, political strikes, and labor interventions in the distribution of military supplies.

In concrete terms an internationalist labor defense of the Syrian masses needs to materially confront imperialism in Syria. In Russia and China this means workers must unite to oppose their own government’s support for Assad including taking labor actions to stop arms shipments to the regime. The key tasks of a united front in the US and EU is for workers to organize and provide military aid to the revolution. Without man portable surface to air missiles and other SAMs the masses are at the mercy of Assad’s air force.

From the United States to Spain to South Africa to China and Syria, the working class is under all-out assault by capital. Build independent working class opposition to the brutal dictatorship in Syria and to the imperialist paymasters who subject to masses to slaughter. Build this as the defense of our class as a whole.

Defend the Syrian masses! Form up local committees, link them nationally and internationally and take action to provide assistance to the secular and independent working class fighters. 

Contact the LCC to help initiate this united front.

Statement of the Liaison Committee of Communists

Integrating the RWG (Zim), CWG (A/NZ), CWG (USA)

March 1, 2013