On Libya

OK comrades, this Libya thing is out of hand. Confusion reigns among too much of the left; the best of intentions are made ridiculous and I barely hear a peep about what ought to be at the core of our analysis  – the Libyan working class. I don’t claim any more insight or knowledge into the situation than anyone else, though I am sure I know a lot less than some, including some that I disagree with sharply. I haven’t held on every word of the debate, but I’ve spent more than my share of time reading and listening to them, such as they are as well as keeping up on the complicated, contradictory news from the country itself. So I suppose I have as much right to speak on the topic as everyone else shooting off their mouth at the moment.

I’ll confine mine self to the general since that is all I am comfortable with, my understanding of the specific being rather limited (like many of those who comment). I begin thinking about Libya like I begin thinking about most situations around the world; by thinking about what is best for the Libyan working class, what is in their interests both immediately and more long term, historic interests.

Those historic interests are in play, however, as the risings throughout the region attest. Those interests, which are not at all separate from more pressing interests, include workers’ democracy and the exercise of workers’ power- the socialist transformation of Libya and of the region (I’m a socialist, so I just can’t help thinking about what might point in that direction). If the future is up for grabs currently with most of the old regimes in the region on a serious wobble, than I think it only right, and necessary, that a future for workers be placed as much as possible in the mix. While such a broad perspective, overly broad I admit, leaves much to speculation, it might be a good place to start for a little clarity of the Marxist type to inform the current kerfuffle.

Qaddafi

I admit to being disgusted with those on the left who find themselves supporting Qaddafi. Though the number that actually support the regime is small, too many on the left apologize for the unacceptable. One of the reasons that the working class has not, as far as I can tell, raised much of its voice independently in the Libyan situation is that for over forty years the Qaddafi regime has rigorously and routinely suppressed and or destroyed independent trade unions, political parties and social organization. All this under the woefully misnamed Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. I suggest, as a starting point, that real analysis begins not with what people claim, but with what they do. Libya was hardly socialist (where, pray tell, were the workers?) in those heady days of the Green Book, even less so after Qaddafi’s rapprochement with imperial powers in 2003. Indeed, more and more evidence is emerging of the Qaddafi regime’s close working ties the worst of the neo-liberal, ‘war on terror, CIA dirty tricks, privatization agenda of the imperium. The guy, if reports are to be believed, had a crush on Condi Rice for Christ’s sake.

Qaddafi may claim to be an anti-imperialist, but what does that mean?

To me, to Marxists, imperialism is the system of capital accumulation internationally. To be genuinely anti-imperialist means, to me, at minimum being an anti-capitalist. So what kind of regime can be considered ‘anti-imperialist’ if it is not also anti-capitalist? Now can regimes not opposed to capitalism generally come into all kinds of conflict with the international system, ordered by and in the interests of a few leading powers- the United States most of all- without being anti-capitalist? Of course, but that doesn’t make the regime, even if I were to support it in that conflict, necessarily anti-imperialist.

I’m not exactly sure what an anti-imperialist regime, as a definition, means at all, in fact. What does it say about the class character of the regime? Absolutely nothing and without clearly identifying the class in power and how that class rules, how can we begin to get our bearings? At best it might describe an attitude, but it is hardly useful as a category of state, since states are defined primarily by the class interests they serve. Now some might say ‘consistent anti-imperialism leads to socialism’, to which I would respond, ‘but one needs to be a socialist (or someone with a post-capitalist perspective so as to not leave out my anarchist comrades who I do consider to be genuinely anti-imperialist) to be consistently anti-imperialist’.

Yes, his regime supported some of the independence movements of Africa, good. He gave weapons to the IRA, and for this I can’t fault him either. He also supported Idi Amin among other despots, less than good. Despots stick together, they have a simpatico. Well, worse than less than good. Criminal. While socialists seek to go beyond democratic rights in the bourgeois understanding of them, of ‘rights’ in general in fact, we defend whatever space for organizing the working class can wrest from the ruling class…we seek to expand it and utilize for our struggle. We are hardly indifferent to those rights. Those who are indifferent are obnoxious at best, having themselves, I am pretty sure, not recently been held in one of the prisons the conditions of which they are indifferent to. Aren’t we the first to raise our voices, and rightly so, when the democratic space we hold here in the west is attacked by ‘our’ governments?

I am pretty sure that most of those who support Qaddafi are also opposed to the Patriot Act, and yet ignore or excuse far more draconian repression in Libya. Or should they be happy to live without any democratic space, because the country they occupy is in conflict with imperialism? But let no one claim that repression was there to defend Libya against imperialism. It was there to defend a regime as unrepresentative of working class interests as any else in the region. No, the Qaddafi regime was as worthy of overthrow as Mubarak, as Ben Ali. No amount of fake anti-imperialist rhetoric can hide Qaddafi’s duplicitous relationship with said imperialism. And as for the ‘Socialist’ label, a product of bygone days, for the Libyan ‘republic’, well, one would have to first change the definition of socialism to make that fit.

The Rebels

It gets murky here. From the above, it must be clear that I think that Qadaffi’s regime was utterly worthy of rebellion and that it certainly did not take the CIA or anyone else to invent that need. If I were in Libya under Qaddafi (and I were not being tortured in Abu Salim) I would still be a revolutionary, because Libya needs a revolution to get the interests of workers addressed to say nothing of getting workers to power. The uprising against Qaddafi, of this I am sure, was, within the conditions specific to Libya, wholly a part of the general movement that has set fire to much of the Middle East and North Africa. That uprising quickly took a militarist turn, both the result of Qaddafi’s repression and the split within the Qaddafi camp, most importantly within the military itself. The logic of arms soon replaced the logic of mass demonstrations. Cookies crumble comrades.

The fact that elements of the regime soon joined in opposition has given the revolt a character of civil war, but revolutions are civil wars in which all kinds of grievances, not just class grievances get aired. In fact, one of the tell-tale signs of a revolution is a split in the ruling camp, the ruling class. We shouldn’t be shocked by that, even if we shouldn’t embrace the ‘out bureaucrats’. The Transitional National Council is chock full of exiled former regime elements, more recent former regime elements, neo-liberals and CIA spooks (which are apparently the same former regime elements). The folks on the ground fighting include some Islamisists, Berbers and others excluded from the old regime, young people and students, petty power brokers and plenty of working class people.

When old systems fall everyone comes to the fore with their own interests, including many with interests opposite that of workers. Already the tensions in the opposition are being played out and will only continue to get more tense. The fact that so many unsavory elements are in the mix to replace Qaddafi (with recent regime elements leading the pack-with full support from imperialism) hardly alters the legitimacy of the revolt. Revolutionary Marxists have traditionally defended states led by despots against assaults by imperialism, and rightly so. But this hardly extends to the defense of those states against assaults by the people ruled by those states, even when imperialism is involved.

The idea that the rebellion was a product of some vast Imperial design is ludicrous, they have been playing catch-up in the region since the uprisings began last winter. The idea that the rebels (all the rebels?) are mercenaries for the CIA is ridiculous, as if there weren’t plenty of totally legitimate reasons for the Libyan masses to want to rid themselves of Qaddafi. However, it is undeniably true that the leadership of the TNC have made their bed with NATO and are now getting between the sheets with oil deals undoubtedly to be the progeny.

It is also clear now, even if it wasn’t to some before, that racism is a factor in the rebellion just as it was before the rebellion. Reports of attacks on black people are increasingly common and no amount of ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ can mitigate them, they are an omen of the evil that awaits Libya. An evil with roots that go back far before the rebellion, roots that need to be pulled forcefully from the soil that nourishes them before they grow to destroy any possibility of progress for the Libyan people and the people of the region. Now that the TNC has come to  be the ruling power (wobbly to be sure), with the help of the Empire, they have become the enemy facing the Libyan working class. Indeed, many of the leadership of the TNC have been the enemy all along.

One of the things that pissed me off about the debate over these last months was with that part of the left that supported the NATO intervention on the basis that it was called for by the rebellion itself and people have a ‘right’ to call on imperialism (or whoever) in such dire circumstances as those that faced Benghazi, for example. Would there have been a massacre in Benghazi? I have no idea, but the idea that the NATO intervention stopped bloodshed in Libya or prevented massacres is simply laughable. As to the ‘right’ of Libyans, or anyone else, to call for arms or airstrikes or whatever when under attack, even under dire threat, who enforces this ‘right’? Who bequeathed the ‘right’? Where is this ‘right’ codified. I have a feeling that some on the left used the term ‘right’ in a way to browbeat those who were opposed to NATO’s intervention (like me). How dare we stand against the ‘rights’ of the Libyans after all. I have to admit to scratching my head at these Marxists who talk about such ‘rights’. Did we just make up this ‘right’ so as to hand it to the Libyans or was it one of those commandments that Moses forgot to tell us about? That many of the the Libyan rebels asked for NATO intervention posed a serious problem for anti-imperialists who supported the uprising, so they started blathering about the ‘rights’ of the rebels. As far as I can tell, this ‘right’ was created on a keyboard.

For the record, if folks need weapons to defend themselves then I can’t fault them for getting those weapons where and however they can, but lets not make a virtue of that and, by all means, let us be honest about the implications of getting weapons or support from those behemoths who can provide them. Their assistance never comes without a price. That price can be paid or you can do a dine-and-dash and suffer the inevitable consequences. Either way, honesty is the best policy here. The fact is that the rebels did call for imperialist intervention and there is no such thing as benign imperialism.

The Imperialists

The imperialists have been scrambling to steady the ground shaken by revolt in the Middle East and North Africa since the uprisings there began. Stubbornly hanging onto their clients until the last possible moments, they then claim to be for change and open to the aspirations of the masses in motion. The revolts have been aimed, in part, at the system of clients and Quislings enforced for many years by the imperialists. Dictators have been preferred since allowing even the modicum of democracy in that region would mean that the interests of empire might be threatened.

Every where in the arena of revolt the imperialists want to reconstitute the Ancien Régime without the offending despot. In Egypt the military rules without Mubarak, in Yemen the military rules without Saleh (still recovering from wounds in Riyadh) and American planes still routinely bomb. Syria is more complicated as they are not sure who best to replace the Assad regime which, far from its reputation, has been as central to keeping the lid on the explosive Middle East as the Saudis have been (you notice there is no call from the Obama administration to replace the House of Saud, a Tsarist-like bulwark of reaction in the region).  In Libya it is no different where what is on offer is the Qaddafi regime sans Qaddafi.

In an attempt to break the bucking bronco of revolt and saddle it in the interests of empire the imperialists have sought to gain control, or as much control as possible, over the revolts. While it should be denounced, it is hardly surprising. For years now Qaddafi has been on the payroll of empire. True, he had his conflicts but that was so much blood under the bridge and he was warmly welcomed in  from the cold. In fact, his conversion was lauded by the mouthpieces of empire as the result of the Bush administrations’ intervention in Iraq. The war against Saddam convinced our old enemy Moammar to get onside was the line. Oil contracts and arms sales followed. Renditions and torture too. But then the people of Libya decided they wanted to join their sisters and brothers and throw off the stifling despot and his family. When leading ‘progressives’ and humanitarians began the call for intervention, imperialism saw a possibility to intervene directly in the process underway to control an outcome and regain lost legitimacy.

Imperialism doesn’t give a good god damn about the people of Libya and their needs to say nothing of their aspirations. Imperialism, being a system that cannot countenance independence from it, seeks to incorporate all opposition into the system. If it can’t incorporate it, it will attempt to destroy it. Qaddafi couldn’t be incorporated any longer, not because of his ‘anti-imperialism’, but because he was being rejected by large parts of Libyan society. So, without a blush at the monumental hypocrisy involved, imperialism declared Qaddafi an enemy (again) and went to war in an effort to place its stamp, or rather its boot, on the outcome in Libya so that it might then be able to walk over the revolt elsewhere in the Middle East. But the world is not simply a piece of clay to be molded by empire, even the most powerful of empires. Sometimes folks on the left give the imperialists far too much credit in being able to control and manipulate events, even as imperialism certainly seeks to do just that. Just because imperialism has intervened in Libya doesn’t mean that the process there is now irretrievably trapped in its web anymore than our own dynamic here in the Belly of the Beast is.

As imperialism attempts to impose its will and desires it will be confronted by the will and desires of others just as it will be greeted by the boot-lickers of every nation as a patron. It may have succeeded in getting rid of Qaddafi only to find itself with a situation less pliant than the one that came before.

The Left

It would be easy to say that there are two schools of thought on the left internationally; those who caved into, yet another, humanitarian intervention and gave succor to the imperialist assault on Libya or those who blindly followed that best Qaddafi even if his ‘anti-imperialist’ credentials were most dubious. But most of the left,, I mean the real left, doesn’t fall into either of these camps. I have been happy to have seen some on the left cite Leon Trotsky’s brilliant 1938 missive against ultra-lefts ‘Learn to Think’, though some who quote it favorably deny in practice its elemental message. I’ll quote some of it here:

‘In ninety cases out of a hundred the workers actually place a minus sign where the bourgeoisie places a plus sign. In ten cases however they are forced to fix the same sign as the bourgeoisie but with their own seal, in which is expressed their mistrust of the bourgeoisie. The policy of the proletariat is not at all automatically derived from the policy of the bourgeoisie, bearing only the opposite sign – this would make every sectarian a master strategist; no, the revolutionary party must each time orient itself independently in the internal as well as the external situation, arriving at those decisions which correspond best to the interests of the proletariat. This rule applies just as much to the war period as to the period of peace.’

and…

‘Ultra-left scholastics think not in concrete terms but in empty abstractions. They have transformed the idea of defeatism into such a vacuum. They can see vividly neither the process of war nor the process of revolution. They seek a hermetically sealed formula which excludes fresh air. But a formula of this kind can offer no orientation for the proletarian vanguard.’

and…

‘Defeatist policy, that is, the policy of irreconcilable class struggle in war-time cannot consequently be “the same” in all countries, just as the policy of the proletariat cannot be the same in peacetime. Only the Comintern of the epigones has established a regime in which the parties of all countries break into march simultaneously with the left foot. In struggle against this bureaucratic cretinism we have attempted more than once to prove that the general principles and tasks must be realized in each country in accordance with its internal and external conditions. This principle retains its complete force for war-time as well.’

and…

‘An irreconcilable attitude against bourgeois militarism does not signify at all that the proletariat in all cases enters into a struggle against its own “national” army. At least the workers would not interfere with soldiers who are extinguishing a fire or rescuing drowning people during a flood; on the contrary, they would help side by side with the soldiers and fraternize with them. And the question is not exhausted merely by cases of elemental calamities. If the French fascists should make an attempt today at a coup d’etat and the Daladier government found itself forced to move troops against the fascists, the revolutionary workers, while maintaining their complete political independence, would fight against the fascists alongside of these troops. Thus in a number of cases the workers are forced not only to permit and tolerate, but actively to support the practical measures of the bourgeois government.’

He goes on to give this example (cited by some in support of NATO intervention, handy as it is that is takes place in North Africa):

‘Let us assume that rebellion breaks out tomorrow in the French colony of Algeria under the banner of national independence and that the Italian government, motivated by its own imperialist interests, prepares to send weapons to the rebels. What should the attitude of the Italian workers be in this case? I have purposely taken an example of rebellion against a democratic imperialism with intervention on the side of the rebels from a fascist imperialism. Should the Italian workers prevent the shipping of arms to the Algerians? Let any ultra-leftists dare answer this question in the affirmative. Every revolutionist, together with the Italian workers and the rebellious Algerians, would spurn such an answer with indignation. Even if a general maritime strike broke out in fascist Italy at the same time, even in this case the strikers should make an exception in favor of those ships carrying aid to the colonial slaves in revolt; otherwise they would be no more than wretched trade unionists – not proletarian revolutionists.

Does this not signify, however, that the Italian workers moderate their struggle in this case against the fascist regime? Not in the slightest. Fascism renders “aid” to the Algerians only in order to weaken its enemy, France, and to lay its rapacious hand on her colonies. The revolutionary Italian workers do not forget this for a single moment. They call upon the Algerians not to trust their treacherous “ally” and at the same time continue their own irreconcilable struggle against fascism, “the main enemy in their own country”. Only in this way can they gain the confidence of the rebels, help the rebellion and strengthen their own revolutionary position.’

I give the example to make a point that the example Trotsky gives here is NOT analogous to the events in Libya; the rebellion that broke out there was not aimed, primarily, to throw off imperialist shackles, but to throw off the shackles of one who, falsely, claimed anti-imperialism. However, our situation now must be faced in the same way: 1) Reality is concrete and has to be analyzed on the basis of actual events, forces and possibilities 2) Workers and the left, if they are to have any impact on events, have to act independently of the imperialists, even if we might have, temporarily, aligned immediate interests 3) The interests of the working class, both immediately and historically, can only be safeguarded by the working class themselves; everywhere in this article it talks about what workers should do, NOT what the imperialist should do.

I think we need to have the same independence of thought and of orientation around events in the Middle East as Trotsky has in this article. We begin, as partisans of the working class, with what is in the interests of that class then we determine what is permissible to advance those interests. Admittedly, this is quite difficult when, almost nowhere, do workers organize in their own name and their own interests. A presupposition of the Old Man’s advice, however, is to begin from the interests of the working class. That class still exists comrades, it exists in Libya despite the years of repression as it exists here in the United States despite decades of retreat and confusion. It will never raise itself on the back of NATO bombers or Qaddafi’s faux anti-imperialism. It has to seek out its own path, concretely determined and historically defined, or it will forever be a tool of other interests.

So what about the workers of Libya comrades? What about the workers of North Africa and the Middle East? What about the workers of the United States? Surely the choice can’t be the imperialists or Qaddafi, America or Assad, Democrat or Republican. Too much of the debate already has been an echo of ‘lesser-evilism’. This is no time for lesser -evilism, whether it be the lesser-evil of a NATO bomb or the lesser-evil of an ‘anti-imperialist’ demagogue. The world is in motion like no time in my political life, the revolutions begun in the Middle East are going to be determined over the coming period. We can continue to have the powers-that-be make a list of choices for us, or we can choose independence of analysis and of action.

Aside: Apologies for the haphazardness of this rant. It is just not possible to dot all of the i’s and cross all of the t’s in a situation like this. I am sure comrades will find as many faults and as many missing elements in the article as I do. Further apologies for the quietness of the blog for too many weeks. My neglect was warranted, but neglect it has been. We’re back to our normal inconsistencies here at the Rustbelt now.

Marxism Casts Its Eye On Empire

What sets imperialism of the capitalist sort apart from other conceptions of empire is that it is the capitalist logic that typically dominates, though … there are times in which the territorial logic comes to the fore. But this then poses a crucial question: how can the territorial logics of power, which tend to be awkwardly fixed in space, respond to the open spatial dynamics of endless capital accumulation? And what does endless capital accumulation imply for the territorial logics of power?

David Harvey, The New Imperialism

Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism, primitive accumulation, war, democracy, nation and revolution; all of these and more are major theoretical and practical considerations for Marxists. Unfinished, and in some ways, unfinishable in their contemplation, they continue to define the world we live in. We need to understand what we seek to overcome and to constantly reevaluate and deepen that understanding.

I still hold to Lenin’s conception fundamentally, that imperialism is:

…capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and fiance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

But that is not the whole story. The political, social, geographic and economic dynamics of the international system of capitalist accumulation have gone through inevitable change in the century passed since Lenin wrote his work. However, it is impossible to address what has changed, to frame our current reality, without an understanding of the system’s origins, development and consequences over the last hundred years and more.

The list below necessarily addresses that past though many of these writings retain their pertinence and their vibrancy, some with great eloquence and even elegance. As much as I like the easy convenience of lists, things are never as simple as 1-2-3. These are in no particular order, nor is it a reading list for a study, though I certainly suggest the reading of these articles, essays, speeches, manifestos and books. Some of them are history, some are theory, some are debate. All of them played a role in the development of the ideas of imperialism and the struggle against it.

Hardly exhaustive, I encourage readers to suggest other works both past and contemporary on the subject. Here then is a brief survey of some of what Marxism sees when it casts its eye on empire:

Self-Determination of Nations and Self-Defense (1915) and The Main Enemy Is At Home (1915) Karl Liebknecht

Analysing Imperialism (2003) Chris Harman

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism (1965) Kwame Nkrumah

Economics Cannot be Separated from Politics [On Growth and Imperialism] (1961) Che Guevara

The Canton, Ohio Anti-War Speech (1918) Eugene Debs

The Empire and the Revolution (1922) MN Roy

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa PDF (1973) Walter Rodney

The Junius Pamphlet [The Crisis of Social Democracy] (1915) Rosa Luxemburg

Erin’s Hope The End & The Means (1909) James Connolly

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

War and the Fourth International (1934) Leon Trotsky

The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1916) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

On Neoliberalism: An Interview with David Harvey (2006) David Harvey

Preface to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” (1961) Jean-Paul Sartre

Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State (1915) Nikolai Bukharin

The Marxist Theory of Imperialism and its Critics (1955) Ernest Mandel

The Structure of US Imperialism: America Nears the Crisis (1952) Harry Braverman

Democracy, Pacifism and Imperialism (1917) Leon Trotsky

And finally I end with Mark Twain’s rewriting of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Composed in 1901 as the United States was entering the international struggle for markets for the first time. Twain was an anti-imperialist from the get-go and here he pours his derision on the republican Empire whose conquest of the Philippines was done in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘humanitarianism’. A sick joke of a precedent never to be gotten tired of, it seems.

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps—
His night is marching on.

I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”

We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!

In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom—and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.

Yemen, Hillary Clinton and Imperial Hypocrisy

The news coming out of Yemen, a place now uncomfortable as dinner party conversation, but still client of the United States, where the death toll is now nearing 50, is as horrific as any of the events of the last period. Groups of snipers, security forces of one kind or another we assume, on roof tops aiming head shots into massed crowds of protesters leaving Friday prayers and heading for the occupied activists’ camp. Scores fell dead, dozens more wounded. A massacre by any criteria, this.

Since the United States has (overtly, at the least) supplied “more than $250 million in military and security aid to Yemen in the past five years, until 2009”.  In just 2010 aid went to $300 million (for arms sales in for go to the for more numbers that never fail to shock got to the Arms Trade page of the Global Issues site). I think we’re pretty safe in assuming those were American equipped and developed soldiers (that would be the Yemeni Army or security services), American guns firing American bullets into the bodies of Yemen’s glorious young in defense of a despot (or, if you’re Hillary Clinton a ‘moderate voice in the region’).

Here’s Hillary the last time she visited Yemen in mid-January ‘”We face a common threat posed by the terrorists and al-Qaida, but our partnership goes beyond counterterrorism,” she told reporters after a nearly three-hour meeting with Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh. “We’re focused not just on short-term threats but long-term challenges,” like how to head off the mass uprising that is sweeping his despots lair.

That and the big cash-in on the perks of the War on Terror; Yemen supplies the dark holes filled with torture chambers and the torturers and doesn’t sweat the ‘rights’ business; The United States provides the to-be-tortured and 300 million greenbacks which the Yemenis return to American hands by way of contracts with Boeing or McDonnell-Douglass etc. for loads of  weapons needed to fight…a mythical Al Qaeda…it’s a racket. The Yemeni Army became a pet project of Petraeus. Contract after contract of the Military Industrial Complex was to be had in Yemen and not for the piddly-shit money they used to do business for. The game, Al Qaeda, was in town and the big money was coming in.

But for those angry, those dispossessed, those masses of Yemen so that the threat of the myth being made real is enough to be a real threat…or to look real, at least. Or at least something like that. It’s all in the dance, really. The dance of the deeply hypocritical; an ugly dance. Between the realpolotik of (neo)liberal ‘humanitarian’ imperialism and a stone cold dictator and his cronies (along with some House of Saud considerations) it can be, for anyone with a taste for principle and basic honesty, let alone a passion for social justice, lean one to feel a little queasy. And from those worlds, nothing but more misery. But the masses of Yemen are finding their own voice and developing their own demands, demands that do not follow those dance moves…at all. Clinton has called for the snipers to restrain themselves and urged Saleh to respect his promise to allow demonstrators to meet. And then she asked for the people to dialogue with the government that is assassinating them. And today 50 dead.

Clinton shamelessly held out her hand to the bereaved; ‘We extend our deepest condolences to the families and friends of those who have lost their lives and call on President Saleh to uphold his promise to protect peaceful demonstrators. All perpetrators of violence should be held accountable and brought to justice.’ Meanwhile, the support continues unabated for the Saleh regime. The dance is really quite deadly. It’s an ugly dance all around.

The people of Yemen would thank Hillary Clinton with wild cheers themselves for her support of ‘democracy’ (forgetting all that other stuff), except she is not hitting Yemen this trip. There was that embarrassing fall last time and there’s these riots and mass killings this time and that Gadaffi is a real son-of-a-bitch and Tahrir was great! but just not this trip. That and the people are too busy mourning their dead children and, perhaps, a little angry, oh let’s split the difference and call it ‘frustrated’, for the niceties demanded by high diplomatic parlance on an empty stomach and an aggrieved heart.

Long Live The Yemeni Revolution!

Libya: Rank Imperial Hypocrisy

The cynicism and hypocrisy on display over the vote in the United Nations Security Council, whose permanent members constitute a den of thieves if ever there was one, for an assault on forces loyal to Gaddafi in Libya is rank, even by the odoriferous standards of that body. The very same day the United States was, yet again, accused of a drone strike resulting in the mass murder of civilians in Pakistan. The very same day, just kilometers from where the United States’ vaunted Fifth Fleet is stationed, US allies Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were gunning down protesters on the streets of Manama. Just this morning nearly 30 protesters were killed by US ally Yemen.

For years since Muammar came in from the cold in 2003 European and American arms exporters have been selling weapons to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Gaddafi regime. Italy, France, Germany and Britain sought to lift the arms embargo in 2004 and they got quite a return for their efforts. Those planes bombing the Libyan revolutionaries are French Mirages, and now France will send their own against the ones they sold yesterday. And then there is the oil….

I support the overthrow of Gaddafi by his own people; he should go the way of Ceausescu. I do not support the overthrow of Gaddafi by the most criminal regimes in the world, US and European imperial powers. France bombing North Africa? No thanks, seen that movie before. The United States bombing an Arab country? Way past time to end the sequels in that franchise too. There is not an instance in the last 100 years and longer, and if readers can come up with one please do share, where imperial powers have played anything but a pernicious role in the region. Just look at where those weapons Gaddafi is using to roll over the towns held by revolutionaries come from. We are to trust those same mother fuckers with saving the Lybian people? Not for a single moment.

I wish the workers movement was in a position to independently help the Libyan revolution. I wish the popular revolts in the region were able to as well. But the left can’t take responsibility for a situation where we have little or no power. Yes, I know my wishes mean nothing to those under the most dangerous, do-or-die assault from Gaddafi and they need real assistance. If we were in a position to give genuine assistance we would do so, happily. The assistance given by the imperial powers may provide a temporary reprieve from the counter-revolutionary onslaught of the regime, but that assistance is not genuine. It comes with a huge price tag; the independence of Libya.

There is much more to say on this and the situation is deserving of far more than a rant, but it’s 7 AM and a rant seems the most appropriate response I can give at the moment. Victory to the Libyan Revolution! Death to Imperialism!

Wounded Knee And The Bloody Birth Of Empire

Wounded Knee, December 29th, 1890 is full of meaning. Not just for the Miniconjou and Hunkpapa Lakota who were victims and perished in their hundreds, but for the course of imperial America. Its violence an echo of the violence that was the settlement of this country. The expropriation of the land from Native Americans necessarily involved a genocidal struggle, something evident very early in the history of Europeans on this continent. That genocidal war was also bound up with an economy based on private property and in irreconcilable conflict with the economy of native peoples. The Dawes Act of 1887 makes perfectly clear that the struggle against native peoples was also a struggle against native notions of collective property. And look how the land itself reels from that war!

Fly over the country today and you’ll see division imposed upon the land; plots neatly parceled (and at odds with their terrain, with nature) in the interest of sale and of tax. This pattern emerged 100 years before the Dawes Act in the Northwest Ordinance’s township and range system. The way even the land was mapped being determined by the dictates of private property. The Revolution meant the expansion of settlement, first into the Ohio River Valley, and expansion meant the commodification of land; speculation in becoming the source of great fortunes in the early ‘Republic’. For the gentleman farmers of Jefferson’s generation and after, native land use was simply a waste of resources, the exploitation of which they hungered for themselves. From the air private property is clearly visible; from the ground fences frame the story.

The settlement of the Americas was accomplished with as much racism as the slave trade, indeed it can be said to be a source of modern racism. The history of capitalism is entwined with racism and none were the greater recipients of its poison than native Americans. Yet, it would not be the first time that a race war was waged over property, nor the last. It is necessary to dehumanize those you would do to the likes of which you would never tolerate being done to. ‘Primitive accumulations’ are an ongoing, not historical, mode of capitalist appropriation. They didn’t end at Wounded Knee.

It happens now in India, in Indonesia and in Ecuador to name but a few. It was seen in the conversion of the formerly state properties of the East into private hands. It can be found even in the most developed of capitalist economies today; anywhere where sovereignty over land, labor and resources is wrenched from one group or class to another. Where economies are brought forcefully into the market. The closing of the west made gorily real on this day 120 years ago by that bitterly cold Dakota creek signaled the entrance of the United States into international struggle for markets and influence. It is a bloody marker denoting the birth of an empire.

The Seventh Cavalry responsible for the massacre was Custer’s old troop, formed in 1866 with the expressed purpose of pacifying native resistance in the West. A few short years after Wounded Knee, where seventeen men were awarded the Medal of Honor, would see the Seventh in the Philippines putting down a different native rebellion, accompanied by more Medals of Honor. The great wealth amassed from a continental appropriation would now be exported, in the name of democracy, in a manner as rapacious as the violation of the Americas, also under the name of democracy. Today, the whole world lives in the shadow of Wounded Knee.

I have been to the mass grave on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the colored ribbons tied to the surrounding fence snapping in the wind coming off the plains. It is a terribly sad place, a place befitting the terribleness it holds. In my mind the site is this country’s most important monument. Their grave holds not just the remains of the dead, but the reality, the horrible reality of the meaning of America; its birth, its growth, its present.

What would justice, genuine justice, be to the native peoples of this continent? From my perspective as the descendant of some of those settlers and citizen of the state that now strides this land whose birthright was dependent on the historic denial of another’s, the only justice possible is a death sentence on the Empire, whose epitaph will surely contain the words ‘Wounded Knee’. That and a restoration of collective ownership; an irrevocable removal of those fences, those divisions that the geometry of capitalist expansion knifed into a blood-stained earth.

Wounded Knee: Never Forget, Never Forgive.

The Lobby and Legitimacy: Let’s Get Some Things Straight

The current situation has again raised the issue of Israel’s legitimacy and the power of its American lobby.  Here are some thoughts in response to some of those issues.  And again, they are thoughts not meant as a full analysis.

The Israeli lobby obviously exists.  AIPAC and the ADL being the most prominent examples.  They have huge resources and influence.  You cross them in bourgeois politics at your peril.  However, and I think this is so often overlooked as to make me wonder why, the power that the lobby holds stems not simply from its money and the influence that brings, and certainly it doesn’t stem from any supposed “great love of the Jewish people” on the part the good citizens of the United States.  It has the influence it does because its aims, more or less, are the aims of US imperialism.  Even when the aims momentarily diverge, the logic doesn’t.  That their actions often undermine their aims is only testimony to the illegitimacy of their aims.

If the lobby decided tomorrow that, instead of Palestine they demand the US sponsor the reestablishment, support and defense of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of the former USSR does anyone think that they would get support, let alone an ear to listen?  Most of the pro-Israel sentiment, including the crazy pro-Israel sentiment, reflected in the power of the lobby stems from entirely US phenomenon; that particular brand of Christian millennialism that crosses more denominations than I can name combined with a racist, War of Civilization mentality born of empire and our own history of genocide and slavery.  The Soviet Union formerly fit the profile as civilization’s enemy, now Muslims do, but the profile is only a projection of the besiegement empires, and the imperial populace, always fear.  When you have made enemies around the world, the world is full of enemies.  When an AIPAC lobbyist engages in a conversation with John McCain over Iran, he doesn’t have to raise the Holocaust to get the old geezer’s blood up over the danger to “our way of life” threatening from East, I assure you.

During the Presidency of Bush I, those like Jim Baker were urging that the US build on the break in the Arab consensus developed around the first Gulf War shifting US support more decisively to the Saudis (the Bushes and the Saudis go way back) and even trying to bring Syria on board.  Loan guarantees were frozen to Israel when they refused to stop settlement activity.  Arguably the toughest measure ever taken by a US government against Israel.  But the New World Order would not come to be.  The Clinton administration returned to Israel right or wrong (the Dems have almost always been Israel’s staunchest supporters) and then 9/11 happened.

Though – and this underlines my point I hope – Saudi Arabia (a bête noire only a spot below Iran in Israeli eyes) remains as key to US interests in the region as Israel (though in different ways).  The close ties to the Wahabi monarchy, a bulwark of civilization, go back much further than those with the Zionist state, they preceded it in fact.  The US supports Israel (in part) to defend it against….its other most important ally in the region.  But on the grounds of public opinion the Saudis don’t even bother to try (except in the financial press) to exert their influence….and yet they retain it fully.  That most of the participants in the attacks of 9/11 were Saudi, curiously, didn’t lead to a single Tomahawk or drone attack.

Many of the folks, outside of liberal allies and a segment of the Jewish community, AIPAC et. al. rely on for their support are those who would be, in almost any other circumstance, classified as flirting with if not engaging in REAL anti-semitism (I fully recognize the problem with the phrase, but it is used so generally).  The bedrock of public support in the United States for Israel are not Jews, or liberals cowed by the ghosts of Auschwitz, but reactionary Christian fundamentalists.

Go after the lobby, of course, but the ideology at the heart of  support the majority of Americans (and it is a majority) have for Israel has next to nothing to do with whatever Abe Foxman or Howard Kohr might do or say.  Can we really imagine, given the history of US imperialism, that if it weren’t for the lobby the US would be embracing the Arabs as equals in a brotherly hug?  Hardly a “Jewish lobby”, the Israeli lobby appeals to folks whose only interest in Israel is that she might usher in a Biblical Armageddon (which unfortunately, Jews, being unsaved, would not survive).  With friends like these…..

The lobby, by the way, makes every effort to foster this relationship, officially sponsoring Holy Land Tours for the faithful (some of whom insist the Jews killed Jesus).  In lobbying liberal supporters the religious references are replaced by appeals to “rights”, “civilization” and, most disgustingly, to a fake feminism.  There is no doubt that the lobby uses the Holocaust to beat up with and blackmail politicians and powers, but how many white Christian fundamentalists (Israel’s most fervent supporters) feel any guilt whatsoever for the Holocaust?  For most of Israel’s US supporters saying “Poor Little Israel” is just another way of saying “Those Dirty Filthy Arabs.” As Israel’s political gravity moves to the right, so does the makeup of its supporters.  Increasingly fascist organizations, not known for shedding many tears over past Jewish suffering, have taken up the cause of the Jewish State.  If I were a Zionist, even a rabid one, that would give me pause.  And yet they carry on.

If Israel is a mill around the neck of US foreign policy (in its own terms), than isn’t also its own “War on Terror”?  Its own occupations?  The US defends Israel as vehemently as it does, not because it is blindly following Israel, but because it is blindly leading the imperialist world order.  While I share the outrage, as must be obvious, over Israel’s crimes and wish fervently for the end of the racist Zionist project, I must take up the issue of legitimacy.  Is the racist colonial, settler state of the United States more legitimate than Israel?  Or for that matter “republican” France or “multi-national and democratic” Belgium.  Weren’t all of these built on a rapine that make the worst of Israel’s crimes pale by comparison?  Don’t they all continue to uphold the bloody imperialist world, one made in their own image?

And what of Turkey, whose government is now so praised for standing up to Israel?  Turkey, that denies Kurdish aspirations with the same zeal as the Israelis deny those of the Palestinians?  The same Turkish regime that houses hundreds of leftist, Kurdish and human rights campaigners in its prisons? Turkey, who even in the midst of this crisis, ensures a military deal with Israeli for those insidious drones to suppress Kurdish resistance?  The Turkish government, who violently denies the rights of its own citizens a protector of Palestinian rights?  The Turkish government is not an ally of the oppressed.  That they have reacted as they have is an indication that it is the oppressed of Turkey, the working class men and women, whose rage and solidarity have forced the Turkish government into its present position that are the real allies of the Palestinian people.  Demand, yes.  Rely on, not a chance.

Any state that enshrines and defends private property and capitalist power, that most spurious of powers, is entirely illegitimate in my eyes.  Those states have led the word to untold disasters in defense of profit, in pursuit of accumulation.  Give me a current state and I’ll recite you a radix Mali.  Why is Israel the state that is not legitimate? The United States currently occupies several countries and has bases in well over a hundred.  It has spilled oceans of blood to protect its “civilization” and “values”.  The list of its crimes would fill the shelves of every library in Tel Aviv and then some.  And yet Israel is attacked, quite rightly, while the US is asked to intervene?  We want Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton to intervene in the conflict in the Middle East?  They are intervening!  The point should be that they stop intervening.  Israel would be forced to make peace tomorrow if the US closed her accounts.

Most of the demos currently raging around the world are demanding that their governments break or modify ties with Israel.  Quite right, but we need to break ties with our governments if we are ever to create new legitimacies.  No government is an “honest broker”  or even, by design, possible of neutrality (the response to the economic crisis by these “neutral” states– bail out the rich, screw everyone else– is only the latest, egregious as it is, example belying that claim).  New legitimacies are urgently needed.  Ones based on justice, on solidarity and on the interests of workers: that vast majority of humanity, that only force capable of truly uniting peoples.  Otherwise we’ll forever be trapped in making demands on those who do not share our interests.  On occasion we may be able to force them to accede, but they accede, in part, to relegitimize their illegitimacy in the eyes of those making demands.

I write this not at all to deflect or criticize the current mobilizations now happening, nor the campaign to isolate and punish Israel for its crimes.  That folks are gathering to make demands on their governments while at the same time taking action into their own hands means that an alternative foreign policy, a genuine “international community” built in opposition to imperialism, is not just possible, but happening.  Will it be co-opted, like so many before?  Or will it generalize from the experiences of the last, horrible, days and see the power inherent in, not relying on the governments of those who do not share our interests, but ourselves and our own actions?

Colony

This Saturday, as we often do, saw my brother, B. and I take a country drive on a perfect Indian Summer day through the rolling farmland of southern Michigan.  Sometimes stopping at a wooded spot or an old cemetery these drives are a pleasant necessity for the three of us; one needs to get out of town even if only for an afternoon.  As my Irish comrades say: the craic was ninety.  These are adult drives and often require a certain stamina, some strong coffee and a variety of different textured things to nosh on.

The conversation this Saturday centered on music, not rare in itself, but since my two touring partners just got back from the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco it was especially excited.  I’ll leave them to tell of that wonderful gathering.  This week also saw the release of Bob Dylan’s latest Bootleg offering Tell Tale Signs which served as our soundtrack for half the drive.  It’s a treasure trove and will keep me busy falling in and out of it for some time.  Dylan, despite everything, continues to make inspiringly good music.  If you are a Dylan fan pick it up.

At one point I mentioned, the conversations tend to meander and Dylan often reminds of me of the Civil War, how nice it was that everyday on my walk to the University I pass Sherman, Sheridan and Grant Streets.  These are the generals that made revolutionary war on the Slavocracy, for which I hold them in some esteem.   They, and more importantly the soldiers who fought “under” them, deserve the historic gratitude of free people.  They are our Dumouriez, our Carnot, our Antoine, our republican army.  I will debate the point with anyone that that war was our revolution, as profound in its way as the French, the Russian and the other giant transformations wrestled in blood from the hands of the past.

B. agreed, but was quick to point out something that I know but needed reminding of; the leaders of the Union that fought to destroy the Slave South encored their victory, a victory all of humanity shared in, by turning West and completing their national bourgeois revolution by the finals acts of the continental dispossession and genocide of Native America. In this they were as energetic as they were against the Confederacy.

B. then mentioned the song Colony by the great Irish singer Damien Dempsey as a counterpoint to my too one-sided view of those warriors.  He and I had seen Damien in Ann Arbor a couple of years ago in front of a handful of people.  He is a great talent that has picked up the torch handed to him by Dick Gaughan, Christy Moore and a few others.  I trust he will continue to give voice to working class and oppressed people.  He is nothing if not sincere, genuine.

Colony is a powerful indictment of those who think they can conquer and as powerful a vindication of those who would resist.  This video doesn’t give Damien’s voice his full due, but the song’s power is undeniable nonetheless.  Dempsey’s song is utterly modern, its themes everywhere today.  There is no good imperialism comrades, it belies every protestation of progress.

Attention Span: The Philippines

I know that the modern attention span can be short. I seem to need a constant stream of new and unrelated trivialities to satisfy my synapses. A disease of modernity? Blame it on TV or MTV in particular? I don’t know, probably. I doubt that my peasant ancestors had the same problem watching the root vegetables grow and preparing for the seasonal changes.

Still, it is remarkable that Iraq has fallen off the pages and screens of the major news outlets as quickly and determined as it has. Conspiracy? The immediacy of the recent election reality show? The creeping “oh shit” realization of many on the economy has finally hit home?

Patrick Cockburn reports that the US is holding a $50 billion dollar extortion brief over the heads of the Iraqi “government” and they still won’t bite on the deal to allow 50 permanent military bases, no control over their own borders or air space, etc. The deal would codify a colonial relationship with Iraq as real in its own way as the one the US had with the Philippines.

Stretching our attention span all the way back to 1898 and the Philippines may be asking a lot, but it’s a pretty good place to start for the story of US imperialism. Back then even the Philippine bank notes had an American stamped on them. These days tact requires a little more subtlety although I have a feeling the American dollar goes further than the new dinar in Iraq (which is not even exchanged by Iraqi banks). The US only paid about $20 million (payable to Spain) for those unfortunate islands. A big mark up on property in the last century, who knows what the total cost of the attempted Iraq colony will be but with the cost of oil these days….

A huge swath of US public opinion and discourse can’t remember last week let alone the last century but we have been here before, in different ways for sure, but with certain economic truths remaining constant in the story. Just about the first time was in the Philippines and we are lucky that Mark Twain was alive to see it and comment on it. Twain’s anti-imperialist writings continue to be some of the most powerful written. A certain, modern hypocrisy is necessary for the imperial projects of “democracies”. Read Twain and turn on NPR; he would have nailed them.  Oh, and the US is, of course, still in the Philippines.

“We have bought some islands from a party who did not own them; with real smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendliness we coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it upon them; we went back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes when we had no further use for him and chased him to the mountains; we are as indisputably in possession of a wide-spreading archipelago as if it were our property; we have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag

“And so, by these Providences of God—the phrase is the government’s, not mine—we are a World Power; and are glad and proud, and have a back seat in the family. With tacks in it. At least we are letting on to be glad and proud; it is the best way. Indeed, it is the only way. We must maintain our dignity, for people are looking. We are a World Power; we cannot get out of it now, and we must make the best of it.”