REFUTING ‘ANTI IMPERIALIST’ MYTHS: A Review of Bill Warren’s Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism.

Posted on October 31, 2015 by c21styork

This article by David McMullen was originally published in September 1993 in the journal “Red Politics”.There was also discussion of the review at the lastsuperpower site in 2006.

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Bill Warren’s book, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism, performs a useful service by refuting much of the mythology that the left has embraced in the name of ‘anti- imperialism’. However, on the other hand, he manages to create his own brand of confusion. He does this, firstly, by blaming Lenin’s Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism for many of the left’s erroneous views.

And secondly, he is so busy extolling the historical mission of capitalism, that no effort is devoted to discussing how capitalism is an obstacle to human development and is becoming increasingly obsolete. Neverthelsee, despite these shortcomings it is the myth shattering quality of the book that predominates.

Warren begins by reminding us of the basics of a Marxist attitude to capitalism:

(a) It is an advance in all respects on earlier forms of society.

(b) It develops the productive forces and society generally, so creating the necessary material or objective conditions for future communist society. This development also generates the contradictions which lead to capitalism’s revolutionary overthrow.

The following passage from the Communist Manifesto that Warren quotes (Warren 1980, p 11) says it all.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fact-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones becomes antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind. (Marx and Engels, 1968, pp 34-5.)

This approach to capitalism is at total variance to that prevailing in the “left’, The usual practice is to bemoan the development of capitalist productive relations and productive forces, and to cherish the things that capitalism is destroying. A few examples might clarify this point.

(1) Increased economic concentration and the destruction of the petty bourgeoisie. A classic case of the left’s response is its bemoaning such things as agribusiness, supermarkets and fastfood chains.

(2) The increasing internationalisation of capital and the division of labor, which increases human intercourse on a world scale and lays the basis for a global society. This is denounced for destroying our independence and national heritage and placing us at the mercy of the multinationals.

(3) The destruction of cherished skills by new technologies (cherished, that is, by trendy left sociologists). To a Marxist, technological development is eliminating the technical division of labor which is the material basis of class society. In other words we are moving to a situation where you will have an educated and versatile workforce, on the one hand, and on the other hand, processes of production in which all types of activities can be performed equally by all members of the workforce.

(4) The erosion of traditional culture and social bonds. Traditional life tends to be romanticized, compared with soulless modern living We have lost something. On the other hand, to a Marxist the neuroses and instability of modern life are infinitely superior to the narrow mindless certainty and security of days gone by.

So given that capitalism is a social advance and creates the conditions for social revolution, how are we to view European colonial expansion into pre-capitalist societies?

Warren cites, by way of example, Marx’s recognition of the historically progressive role of Britain’s penetration of India.

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindoostan, was actuated by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about the revolution. (S. Avineri (ed.) pp 93-94.)

Not long afterwards, Marx wrote as follows:

England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia (S. Avineri (ed.) pp 132.)

On the destruction side, they broke up or seriously undermined much of the existing social fabric and pre- capitalist modes of production. On the construction side, political unity was greatly enhanced by the British sword (mainly in the hands of local recruits), telegraph and railways, and embryonic industrialization began to emerge.

It is appropriate that the anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth century have not simply been directed at expelling the foreign oppressor. Rarely was the struggle simply one of returning to the days before colonial rule. For example, the struggle for independence in India was not directed at restoring the Mogul empire and independence in Africa did not mean returning to tribal hunter gathering or slash and burn societies.

In some cases such as in China, the revolution was directed at the total destruction of the traditional conditions that predated colonialism such as the remnants of feudalism. Even where independence from colonialism was not accompanied by fundamental social revolutions, the essential aspect of decolonisation was the establishment of a modern state, and the first steps towards a modern economy.

In the case of Czarist Russia, the modern industrial sector, which spawned the proletariat in the two decades prior to 1914, was primarily the product of foreign investment. At no stage did the Bolsheviks target this foreign ownership as something to be abhorred, an interesting point in the light of the economic nationalist position adopted by most of the Australian left.

To quote Warren:

Between 1896 and 1900 a quarter of all new companies formed were foreign, and by 1900 foreign capital accounted for 28% of the total. By 1914 the proportion had risen to 33%. Foreign capital controlled 45% of Russia’s oil output, 54% of her iron output, 50% of her chemical industry, 74% of her coal output. More than half of the capital of the six leading banks of the country – themselves controlling nearly 60% of all banding capital and nearly half of all bank deposits – was foreign (Warren 1980, p 46.)

The position commonly adopted by the left is to deny that capitalism is fulfilling its historical function in the developing countries. We are told that capitalism is not developing the productive forces nor is it destroying pre-capitalist conditions. The LDCs are supposedly being underdeveloped by the world capitalist system. A major part of Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism is devoted to refuting these views. The linchpin of these views is the modern theory of imperialism, dependency and underdevelopment. Typical of the theorists in this area are Paul Baran, Andre Gunder Frank and Samir Amin.

We are told that the people of the Third World have been getting progressively worse off during the modern era (ie since the industrial revolution) and have generally experienced a socio-economic and cultural regression. Capitalism has developed, and continues to do so, in a contradictory fashion, which generates at the same time development in the centre and underdevelopment in the periphery.

The implication is that it is fruitless to expect underdeveloped countries to repeat the stages of economic growth passed through by modern developed capitalist economies whose classical capitalist development arose out of pre-capitalist and feudal society. Hence, the historical role of capitalism in these countries is finished, or at a dead end. It is argued, moreover, that the achievement of political independence has not significantly improved prospects of development in the periphery.

A number of arguments are put forward to support the above position. Warren picks out three as being particularly important.

(a) A drain of economic surplus from periphery to centre is said to arise from the flow of profits from foreign investment in the periphery back to the metropolitan country, and from unequal exchange in trade.

Warren points out “that for such a drain to retard economic development it must be an absolute drain not simply an unequal transaction that nevertheless leaves both sides better off than before …”. For example, the comparison that people make between profit outflow and capital inflow tends to be very misleading. Surplus extraction under capitalism is not comparable to the plunder practiced by the empires of antiquity.
Foreign investment creates the surplus (with the help of local labor of course) before it extracts it; and it does this by developing the productive forces. You can certainly criticise the form taken by foreign investment and trade, and argue that Third World countries would gain if they were better organised. What you cannot argue is that the wealth of Third World countries is being depleted.

Closely related to this surplus gain concept is the idea that developed countries are better off than others because they have more than their share of the world’s resources. In other words the reason why we have better plumbing than people in Bangladesh is because we have more than our share of the world’s supply of pipes and trained plumbers.

Or to put it more generally, there is a fixed quantity of some substance called prosperity and the more that goes to one lot of people the less there is for everybody else. This is a total failure to understand economic development as a process of economic accumulation. Its most negative effect is the implication that the interests of people in the developed and underdeveloped world are at loggerheads.

(b) The ‘traditional’ division of labor between centre and periphery countries whereby the former produce manufactured goods and the latter primary goods, is seen to be imposed by the centre on the periphery and is a source of its backwardness.

Warren argues that the validity of the argument rests on two assumptions, which he sets out to refute. These are first that there was a possible and desirable alternative line of development to primary-product, export-lead growth in the backward countries concerned; and second, that the initial emphasis on the export of primary products actually erected serious impediments to subsequent diversification, especially along the lines of industrialisation.

(c) Imperialism or centre/periphery relations are said to encourage the preservation of precapitalist modes of production. This is discussed at two levels. First, there is the case where capitalist production at one point encourages pre-capitalist production at another point (eg, cotton production based on slavery). Here Warren correctly argues that the destructive force of capitalist relations would far outweigh any conserving tendencies.

Second, there is the claim that imperialism has tended to ally itself with local feudalism at the expense of progressive bourgeois forces. Warren replies thatthis is largely undercut by the almost universal willingness of feudal classes to transform themselves, at least partly, into capitalist industrialisers once conditions are ripe. Where

Warren falls short on this question in failing to emphasise that a thoroughly bourgeois revolution would far more successfully unleash capitalist development.

At a more general and theoretical level Warren attacks dependency theory on a number of grounds.

To begin with it is a static view. While a change in form over time tends to be conceded, the possibility of declining dependency is precluded. Moreover, changes in the centres of power is inadequately allowed for.

The theory is ahistorical in that it assumes the following:

(a) that there were latent suppressed historical alternatives to the development that actually took place; (b) that the failure of alternatives to materialise was primarily the result of external imposition (colonial policy).

The theory is metaphysical in that it basically explains social phenomenon in terms of external causes, rather than as an interaction of both internal and external factors. (Mao spoke of external factors as the conditions of change and internal factors as the basis of change.) Dependency theorists would, for example, explain a country’s backwardness by the fact that foreign capital is only invested in enclaves or cash crops.

A more sensible approach would perhaps be to see cause and effect running the other way – because the country is backward these industries are the only opportunities for investment. The backwardness would then be explained essentially by internal factors, namely a social system and mode of production significantly inferior to, or historically less advanced than, capitalism in developed countries.

Dependency theory has a strong thread of nationalist utopia, which establishes a set of thoroughly dubious criteria of what is good and what is detrimental. The first blossoms of bourgeois society are denounced simply as imperialist cultural penetration (coca cola culture) serving the interests of the mutinationals and reinforcing dependent status.

There is also the concept of articulated economy. Every country has to have its own steel industry, for example. It is argued that if you do not have the full range of industries you are trapped into some narrow and enslaving international division of labor.

This last point touches on a major area of confusion, namely, the distinction between dependence and interdependence. Warren says:

Since national economies are becoming increasingly interdependent, the meaning of dependence is even more elusive, not to say mystical.(Warren, 1980, p 182)

In fact with the increasing importance of international trade and capital movement, it is often the case that dependence on trade and foreign investment is a sign of economic development.

The last section of Warren’s book provides extensive evidence that considerable economic development has occurred in the Third Word during the post-war period. It has been meteoric in comparison with that in western countries. The western countries took centuries to emerge from the Middle Ages and eventually achieve an industrial takeoff in the nineteenth century.

On Lenin’s views of imperialism

In Warren’s opinion, the more recent theories of imperialism, such as underdevelopment and dependency are best regarded as post-war versions of the views expressed by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,or at any rate stemming, or continuing, from where he left off. Warren also claimed that in this book Lenin was espousing views that were at variance with his earlier writings on the Narodniks and the role of capitalist development in Russia.

Here Warren is skating on thin ice. Much of his case rests on Lenin’s use of particular words, especially ‘moribund’, ‘stagnant’ and ‘parasitic’. By ‘moribund’, Lenin is referring to the increasing obsolescence of capitalism, exemplified most starkly by two world wars and economic crises of the sort that hit in the 1930s and will hit again in the future. He is not saying that social and economic development ceases.

In his use of the word, ‘stagnation’, Lenin is not saying that capitalism is no longer revolutionising the productive forces – a proposition that would obviously be wrong. He is referring to its increasing tardiness relative to a communist organisation of production – the productive forces are outgrowing the capitalist mode of production.
Warren tries to equate Lenin’s description of monopoly capital and imperialist countries as parasitic with the crude “surplus drain’ view . However, Lenin is not denying that the export of capital develops the productive forces in recipient countries; he is just saying that the centralisation in the ownership of capital shows up geographically.

Places such as London and New York have a far higher than average proportion of the world’s bloodsuckers; they tend to be richer and their ‘portfolios’ span the world. When Lenin explicitly discussed the impact of imperialism on the then colonies, he said that it was developing the productive forces. Warren unjustifiably shrugs this off as lip service to Marxist orthodoxy.

Warren had a number of other criticisms of Lenin’s position. However, they are not central to our present discussion. He claims (a) that capital exports have not increased in signifcance, (b) that Lenin espoused underconsumptionism and (c) that inter-imperialist rivalry was based on trade rather than competing capital. These and other issues could perhaps be looked at on some other occasion in a fuller discussion of Lenin’s book.

Bibliography
Amin, S., Accumulation on a World Scale, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1974.

Avineri, S., ed., Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernisation, New York, Anchor Books, 1969. Frank, A. G., Capitalism and Underdevelopment in LatinAmerica, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1971.

Greene, F., The Enemy, Notes on Imperialism and Revolution, London, Jonathon Cape, 1970. One of the more readable and also more appalling renderings of the ‘anti-imperialist’ position.

Lenin, VI, ‘On the So-Called Market Question’ Collected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1963.

———– ‘The economic content of Narodism and the criticism of it in Mr Struve’s book’, Collected Works, Vol. 7, Moscow, 1963.

———–, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Peking, Foreign Language Press.

Marx, K., Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1964.

———– and Engels, F., Manifesto of the Communist Party, Peking, Foreign Language Press, 1968.

Warren, W., Imperialism and capitalist industrialisation, in New Left Review (1973).

———–, Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism, British and Irish Communist Organisation (March 1977).

———–, Nations and corporations, in Times Literary Supplement, 1 November 1977..

———–, Poverty and prosperity in Times Literary Supplement, 12 December 1975.

———–, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism, Verso, 1980, 274 p.

Hasn’t Communism Already Failed? (More from The Communist Manifesto Project)

Posted on October 27, 2015 by c21styork

There is a lot to be done on the democratic front. This includes:

supporting freedom of speech and assembly, government transparency, right to due process and freedom from government harassment and surveillance;

helping neutralize any emerging fascists trends;

struggling for a democratic political culture within the communist movement that effectively deals with controlling personalities, sycophants and attempts to close down critical thinking;

being better than others at exposing the folly of professional politicians;

proposing changes to the constitution and system of representation that would open up politics to greater scrutiny and participation;

and showing how vested economic interests under capitalism have a corrupting effect on government.

(More from The Communist Manifesto Project)

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There is a thoroughly entrenched view that the experience of revolutions during the 20th century shows that communism has failed. There was indeed a failure. However, it was not of communism, but of an attempt to sustain a path towards it when its preconditions were absent. Russia in 1917 and China in 1949 were essentially backward pre-capitalist societies. Most people were peasants rather than proletarians, and they were more interested in land for the tiller than social ownership. There was little modern industry and thinking was medieval. They had not passed through the capitalist stage, which is required for a successful communist revolution. As the experience of other backward countries shows, even getting capitalism off the ground under these circumstances is hard enough, let alone a society that is supposed to supersede it.

This peculiar state of affairs arose because the bourgeoisie was too weak, cowardly or treacherous to carry out its own tasks. Instead, communists found themselves at the head of both anti-feudal modernist revolutions and patriotic resistance to fascist aggression and occupation. The Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union was joined after World War II by a host of other countries in what became ‘the socialist camp’. It included China, Vietnam and Yugoslavia that had taken power with their own revolutionary forces, and eastern and central Europe and northern Korea where regimes were established by virtue of Soviet military occupation in the aftermath of the defeat of Germany and Japan. So, by historical accident communists found themselves burdened with the task of raising their societies out of social and economic backwardness. They had to perform the work of capitalism. They had to create an industrial base and trained work force virtually from scratch. The “failure of communism” was a consequence of the failure of capitalism.

Under these conditions the move in a communist direction could only be quite limited and proved unsustainable. They took important preliminary measures but did not achieve the real substance. Industry was placed under state ownership which meant that capitalist industry was expropriated and the new accumulation of private wealth prevented. At the same time there was a degree of economic security for workers. The system was described as socialism, the first stage on the road to communism. However, the weakness of the proletariat placed severe limits on what could be achieved. With some minor exceptions in Europe, it only began to become a significant section of society with the industrialization that followed the revolution. Proletarians were former peasants engaged mainly in the low paid toil that you would expect at this stage of development. They were simply not ready to be a ruling class. There was not the basis for a society based on mutual regard. Enthusiasm and unprompted initiative was limited in the harsh conditions and so there was a heavy reliance on material incentives and top down command with all kinds of perverse results. The freedom and democracy required for the full development of the proletariat was not possible given the intensity of external and internal opposition and the weakness of the revolutionary forces. Conditions also dictated a heavy reliance on a “revolutionary vanguard”.

Because most work was arduous and repetitive manual labor, and the education level and background of typical workers left them ill-equipped for involvement in the mental aspects of production, there was a minority who did the thinking and deciding. These were the managers, engineers and officials – generally referred to as ‘cadres’. Members of this elite had a vested interest in entrenching their privileged position and were unlikely to encourage an invasion of their domain as workers became more skilled and educated, and industry more mechanized, nor to willingly start to take upon themselves a share of the more routine forms of labor.

Once career, income and position are the primary impulse, economic results take a second place to empire building, undermining rivals, promoting loyal followers, scamming the system and concealing one’s poor performance from superiors. The opportunity for workers to resist these developments was limited by the lack of freedom and the culture of subordination which drains away confidence and the courage to act. This can be very strong even in the absence of political tyranny as we can see in any liberal capitalist society. At the same time, one can imagine that any rank and file worker with special abilities or talents would tend to be more interested in escaping the workers’ lot by becoming one of the privileged rather than struggling against them.

Mao Zedong, the head of the Chinese Communist Party until his death in 1976, referred to this process, once fully entrenched and endorsed at the top, as capitalist restoration and those encouraging it as revisionists and capitalist roaders. The Chinese Cultural Revolution that he led in the late 1960s is the only attempt to beat back this trend. However, that revolution was sabotaged and defeated, and the capitalist roaders were able to seize supreme power in China after his death.

The Soviet Union and like regimes in Eastern Europe represented a distinctive type of dead-end economically, politically and socially, and their demise in 1989-90 is one of the celebrated events of the late 20th centuries. By discarding much of the empty and dysfunctional formal shell of socialism and operating more like normal capitalist economies both China and Vietnam have managed to achieve considerable economic development in recent decades. Cuba is now beginning to take this route. The monstrosity in North Korea relies on mass terror and the support of the Chinese. All these regimes are an affront to freedom and democracy, and must be overthrown.

Notwithstanding this grim picture, there were still some significant achievements. In a large part of the world landlords and feudal relations were swept from the countryside. Industrialization was raised from a very low base and generally outperformed the backward countries in the capitalist camp. Most importantly, after a crash industrialization in the 1930s, the Soviet Union was able to defeat Nazi Germany. This is something for which the world should be eternally grateful.

The dilemma faced by 20th century communists was anticipated by Engels in the following passage from chapter 6 of The Peasant War in Germany, published in 1850:

The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realization of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.

What is to be Done?

At the moment when inquiring minds seek to learn about communism they will encounter a range of appalling nonsense from various tiny groups claiming to be communist or Marxist. Some support the regimes in Cuba and China, and there are even the occasional North Korea supporters. The absurd regime in Venezuela inspires many of them. They all cling onto the once true but now outdated view that US imperialism is the main problem in the world today, and for this reason some even see a good side to Daesh, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They all share the mainstream view that regime change in Iraq has been a disaster and the fascist Baath Party should have been left in power. These groups never talk about how capitalism is creating the conditions for communism but simply whine about how terrible the system is, and often do this in a reactionary way particularly in their opposition to “globalization” and acceptance of green views on virtually everything. They rarely talk about and scarcely understand communism, and they simply see it as something in never-never land rather than their real purpose.

It will be up to the now very young or yet to be born to rediscover communism. For older people it would require too much of a break from their entrenched ways of thinking. Only then can we expect to see the beginnings of a communist movement.

As well as understanding and conveying the ultimate aims of communism and social ownership, with its elimination of market relations and the full development of the individual, they will also need to come to grips with how we get there. This has a number of phases. Listing them in reverse chronological order they are: the period of revolutionary transition when we shake off all the “muck of the ages”; the initial phase of the revolution, day one so to speak; and the here and now.

On the transition phase it will be particularly important to understand the tenacity of the bourgeoisie and old bad habits and thinking, and the need for the proletariat to transforms itself in the struggle. The new society cannot be created overnight. A vigorous mass movement will be critical for the transition because a passive population means certain defeat at the hands of a new bourgeoisie. In this context there would need to be a firm rebuttal to any idea of ‘socialism’ that is not seen as a revolutionary transition stage on the road to communism. There has to be a fundamental change in human behavior and the way society operates. It is that or capitalism. Any halfway stage has to proceed to communism or revert to capitalism.

During the initial phase, one of the first tasks of the revolution will be the neutralization of the bourgeoisie by expropriating their assets. This could be done fairly quickly and would not have to await more fundamental changes in economic arrangements. It could be achieved with a 100 per cent wealth tax on all wealth over a certain level. All the company stock, bonds, bank deposits and other income earning assets belonging to the bourgeoisie would become the property of the state. This would in an instant drastically reduce their economic and political power. People in executive positions would simply be instructed to keep doing their job under threat of dismissal. Some capable executives are indeed capitalists so some concessions may need to be made to them if they are prepared to cooperate.

During the pre-revolutionary period there are many matters that the communist movement will need to deal with. It is important to connect with those resisting the various symptoms of the existing order because they would be among the more amenable to communist ideas and there is much to be achieved in the here and now that is necessary for communism.

There is a lot to be done on the democratic front. This includes: supporting freedom of speech and assembly, government transparency, right to due process and freedom from government harassment and surveillance; helping neutralize any emerging fascists trends; struggling for a democratic political culture within the communist movement that effectively deals with controlling personalities, sycophants and attempts to close down critical thinking; being better than others at exposing the folly of professional politicians; proposing changes to the constitution and system of representation that would open up politics to greater scrutiny and participation; and showing how vested economic interests under capitalism have a corrupting effect on government.

People are seeking remedies to the various ills of the present system. They seek the alleviation of poverty, better healthcare and education. While helping to pursue improvements in the here and now communists would be there explaining the limitations of what can be achieved under the system. They would not simply be demanding the same things but in a more militant in tone. Their central focus would not be on denouncing governments for under-spending in these areas or for pursuing this policy or that. Rather, they would stress that only communism can ensure jobs and economic security and explain how it would lead to better healthcare and education through the fundamental changes in human behavior.

Communists must advocate rapid scientific advance and denounce capitalism for its tardiness in this area. It is critical to both our ability to thrive on this planet and to create the material conditions for communism. In the process they will have to lock horns with the green opponents of “technofix” who think that science just creates new problems. For the greens, the “solution” is less consumption and a population collapse.

Communists will need to be vocally demanding that the international bourgeoisie do far more to further what Marx called the bourgeois democratic revolution. Their tardiness in this area is legendary. For example, if a communist movement existed at this very moment it would be vigorously demanding that the powers that be quickly sort out the appalling situation in Syria and Iraq. Their failure to give effective assistance to the legitimate rebel forces in Syria meant that Daesh was able to thrive with appalling results. US President Barak Obama’s inaction in the early phase of the Syrian civil war should be condemned as should that country’s ongoing underwriting of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Generally we should be demanding that our rulers do everything possible to re-spark the Arab Spring.

Part of the problem is a prevailing pacifism both within the ruling class and society at large. A communist movement would be particularly concerned that the liberal democracies retain their military supremacy and stay well ahead of Russia and China. A large defense reserve should play a role, and would ensure that professionals are not the only ones with military training.

The Communist Manifesto Project – opposing the ‘reactionists’. Some annotations.

Posted on October 24, 2015 by c21styork

“The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part” – Karl Marx 1848

Marx considered capitalism revolutionary, an advance on all previous societies. Most contemporary “Marxists” and the pseudo left more broadly either disagree or are highly ambivalent… For example, they bemoan “corporate globalization” and believe that the very far from complete process of economic development is ecologically unsustainable and we need to revert to a something “simpler”. Marx refers to these people as “reactionists”.

(Via The Communist Manifesto Project)

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Annotations

These are some comments to consider while reading The Communist Manifesto. Most of them highlight the many instances where Marx’s views are contrary to those of present-day “Marxists”. Marx is referred to as the writer here. While Engels was a co-author, the final writing was the work of Marx.

Chapter 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians

“The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.”

Marx then goes on to elaborate on this point in the subsequent 11 paragraphs. He considered capitalism revolutionary, an advance on all previous societies. Most contemporary “Marxists” and the pseudo left more broadly either disagree or are highly ambivalent. They do not see the capitalist transformation of the economy and society as the launching pad for communism. Rather, the society they want requires a retreat from this process. For example, they bemoan “corporate globalization” and believe that the very far from complete process of economic development is ecologically unsustainable and we need to revert to a something “simpler”. Marx refers to these people as “reactionists”.

” We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.”

So the transition from capitalism to communism will not be unique. As well as the transition from feudalism to capitalism there was also the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture based society. In each case there was a total change in thinking and doing – “human nature”.

” For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. ”

Marx goes on to cite capitalist economic crises as a prime example of the system’s obsolescence. Some claim that crises are not inevitable under capitalism. However, the evidence seems to suggest that they can only be delayed and at the cost of making them worse.

Other economic failings of the system include its slowness to innovate [see here] and its inability to tap the enthusiasm and initiative of workers [see here].

” Owing to the extensive use of machinery, ……. according to their age and sex.”

This is an accurate description of machine tending where work becomes confined to simple repetition. However, this should not be taken to be Marx’s overall assessment of work under capitalism. In Capital Vol. I Chapter Fifteen Section 9, he has two paragraphs that gives his general view of the labor process under capitalism. These are quoted in full below.

“Modern industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative. [225] By means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is continually causing changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations of the labour-process. At the same time, it thereby also revolutionises the division of labour within the society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and of workpeople from one branch of production to another. But if modern industry, by its very nature, therefore necessitates variation of labour, fluency of function, universal mobility of the labourer, on the other hand, in its capitalistic form, it reproduces the old division of labour with its ossified particularisations.We have seen how this absolute contradiction between the technical necessities of modern industry, and the social character inherent in its capitalistic form, dispels all fixity and security in the situation of the labourer; how it constantly threatens, by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his hands his means of subsistence, [226] and, by suppressing his detail-function, to make him superfluous, we have seen, too, how this antagonism vents its rage in the creation of that monstrosity, an industrial reserve army, kept in misery in order to be always at the disposal of capital; in the incessant human sacrifices from among the working-class, in the most reckless squandering of labour-power and in the devastation caused by a social anarchy which turns every economic progress into a social calamity. This is the negative side. But if, on the one hand, variation of work at present imposes itself after the manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly destructive action of a natural law that meets with resistance [227] at all points, modern industry, on the other hand, through its catastrophes imposes the necessity of recognising, as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequently the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes. It becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt the mode of production to the normal functioning of this law. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, grappled by life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers.

“One step already spontaneously taken towards effecting this revolution is the establishment of technical and agricultural schools, and of “écoles d’enseignement professionnel,” in which the children of the working-men receive some little instruction in technology and in the practical handling of the various implements of labour. Though the Factory Act, that first and meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining elementary education with work in the factory, there can be no doubt that when the working-class comes into power, as inevitably it must, technical instruction, both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in the working-class schools. There is also no doubt that such revolutionary ferments, the final result of which is the abolition of the old division of labour, are diametrically opposed to the capitalistic form of production, and to the economic status of the labourer corresponding to that form. But the historical development of the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the only way in which that form of production can be dissolved and a new form established. “Ne sutor ultra crepidam” — this nec plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became sheer nonsense, from the moment the watchmaker Watt invented the steam-engine, the barber Arkwright, the throstle, and the working-jeweller, Fulton, the steamship. [228]”

“226.
“You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.”
Shakespeare.

227. A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: “I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing…. Once in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man.” (A. Corbon, “De l’enseignement professionnel,” 2ème ed., p. 50.)

228. John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of Political Economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: “An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness…. Bodily labour, it’s a primitive institution of God…. Labour being as proper for the bodies’ health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease…. Labour adds oil to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it…. A childish silly employ” (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) “leaves the children’s minds silly,” (“Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of all Useful Trades and Husbandry.” Lond., 1696, pp. 12, 14, 18.)”

The basic message is that despite the tendency for capitalism to impose a narrow division of labor, the objective conditions of modern industry limit the extent they can do that.

This view is very much at odds with Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital, The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. This book has had a very unfortunate influence of how people on the left view the labor process under capitalism. It claims that capitalism tends to increasingly degrade work and deskill workers. The present situation totally refutes this view given that 15-20 per cent of the workforce have university degrees and a larger number have vocational training. If it were true that capitalism was simply reducing the workforce to automatons, it would be hard to see how they could ever get rid of, and then manage without, the bourgeoisie. For a full refutation of Braverman see Deskilling Debunked.

” The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. ”

While proletarians are no longer mainly machine tenders, the point about equalization is still quite valid.
The wage disparity among the vast majority of workers is not enough to generate major differences in material conditions of life. There is a mass mainstream, with perhaps 10 per cent at the top and 10 per cent at the bottom living in different worlds. This is important from the point of view of overall solidarity and individuals identifying with most other people. The way that the vast bulk of people think of themselves as ‘middle class’ is one reflection of this.

” Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.”

Now most members of the intelligentsia are part of the proletariat. They come from proletarian families and works for a salary. Unfortunately, because of their employee status most are hacks working in the service of the bourgeoisie. This includes the pseudo left in the social sciences who have done much to stifle young inquiring minds. Under these circumstances independent thinkers with independent means would be most valuable.

” Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.”

In modern capitalist societies the vast majority of people are members of the proletariat. They are either wage or salary earners or on welfare. They have no means of production of their own. The capitalists are a tiny minority and the petty bourgeoisie comprise around 10 per cent. The proletariat is revolutionary because it has no interest in the present system and can do without the bourgeoisie. For more on the modern proletariat go here.

“All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.”

The proletariat has to own all the means of production in common. Parceling them out to separate groups of workers would simply bring you back to capitalism.

” The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.”

This is still indeed the case for a significant section of the proletariat. A pauper is someone who cannot support them-self. In the present context that means being on the dole or invalid pension. Pauperism occurs because capitalism fails to ensure that everyone is equipped with the abilities required for the workforce and also leaves many people the psychological casualties of a dog eat dog society.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

“In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.’

A lot of the pseudo left demand protection from “cheap foreign labor”.

“Communistic abolition of buying and selling”
This means no more markets. Most “Marxists” have gone to water on this and agree with the bourgeoisie that it is impossible. For a discussion of how communism would thrive without markets go here.

” The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State,i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

This is totally at odds with the green anti-growth view that is now so widely held.

” In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Another way of expressing this is to say – each person’s free development depends on the free development of everyone else. This is obvious if you think about how difficult it would be to fully thrive if those around you are hopelessly inadequate.

Chapter 3: Socialist and Communist Literature

In this chapter Marx lists the various types of “anti -capitalism” that prevailed at that time. A new list for the present time needs to be prepared. There will be significant similarities and they will be as equally reactionary.

Chapter 4: Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

This chapter looks at immediate tasks for communists at that time. At the present moment the big issue is the Arab Spring. This revolution, no matter however totally bourgeois, is in the interest of the proletariat and people, both of the region and internationally. The major capitalist powers must be placed under the greatest possible pressure to do all they can assist, including militarily. The “Marxists” and other pseudo leftists have done all they can to oppose this and are a total disgrace.

Kissinger article on the Middle East and ‘scattered random notes’ by Arthur Dent (via Strangetimes)

Posted on October 23, 2015 by c21styork

This is Henry Kissinger’s take on the situation in the Middle East and Syria, followed by some critical ‘scattered random notes’ by Arthur Dent who says: “Whatever Kissinger’s ghost and its coauthors are actually blathering about, the path out of the Middle East Collapse clearly lies in the opposite direction to Westphalian states”. (Republished with permission from Strangetimes).

****

A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse

With Russia in Syria, a geopolitical structure that lasted four decades is in shambles. The U.S. needs a new strategy and priorities.

By Henry A. Kissinger Oct. 16, 2015 7:18 p.m. ET

The debate about whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran regarding its nuclear program stabilized the Middle East’s strategic framework had barely begun when the region’s geopolitical framework collapsed. Russia’s unilateral military action in Syria is the latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

In the aftermath of that conflict, Egypt abandoned its military ties with the Soviet Union and joined an American-backed negotiating process that produced peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, a United Nations-supervised disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria, which has been observed for over four decades (even by the parties of the Syrian civil war), and international support of Lebanon’s sovereign territorial integrity. Later, Saddam Hussein’s war to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq was defeated by an international coalition under U.S. leadership. American forces led the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were our allies in all these efforts. The Russian military presence disappeared from the region.

That geopolitical pattern is now in shambles. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose their rule. Over large swaths in Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army has declared itself the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL) as an unrelenting foe of established world order. It seeks to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a caliphate, a single Islamic empire governed by Shariah law.

ISIS’ claim has given the millennium-old split between the Shiite and Sunni sects of Islam an apocalyptic dimension. The remaining Sunni states feel threatened by both the religious fervor of ISIS as well as by Shiite Iran, potentially the most powerful state in the region. Iran compounds its menace by presenting itself in a dual capacity. On one level, Iran acts as a legitimate Westphalian state conducting traditional diplomacy, even invoking the safeguards of the international system. At the same time, it organizes and guides nonstate actors seeking regional hegemony based on jihadist principles: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria; Hamas in Gaza; the Houthis in Yemen.

Thus the Sunni Middle East risks engulfment by four concurrent sources: Shiite-governed Iran and its legacy of Persian imperialism; ideologically and religiously radical movements striving to overthrow prevalent political structures; conflicts within each state between ethnic and religious groups arbitrarily assembled after World War I into (now collapsing) states; and domestic pressures stemming from detrimental political, social and economic domestic policies.

The fate of Syria provides a vivid illustration: What started as a Sunni revolt against the Alawite (a Shiite offshoot) autocrat Bashar Assad fractured the state into its component religious and ethnic groups, with nonstate militias supporting each warring party, and outside powers pursuing their own strategic interests. Iran supports the Assad regime as the linchpin of an Iranian historic dominance stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean. The Gulf States insist on the overthrow of Mr. Assad to thwart Shiite Iranian designs, which they fear more than Islamic State. They seek the defeat of ISIS while avoiding an Iranian victory. This ambivalence has been deepened by the nuclear deal, which in the Sunni Middle East is widely interpreted as tacit American acquiescence in Iranian hegemony.

These conflicting trends, compounded by America’s retreat from the region, have enabled Russia to engage in military operations deep in the Middle East, a deployment unprecedented in Russian history. Russia’s principal concern is that the Assad regime’s collapse could reproduce the chaos of Libya, bring ISIS into power in Damascus, and turn all of Syria into a haven for terrorist operations, reaching into Muslim regions inside Russia’s southern border in the Caucasus and elsewhere.

On the surface, Russia’s intervention serves Iran’s policy of sustaining the Shiite element in Syria. In a deeper sense, Russia’s purposes do not require the indefinite continuation of Mr. Assad’s rule. It is a classic balance-of-power maneuver to divert the Sunni Muslim terrorist threat from Russia’s southern border region. It is a geopolitical, not an ideological, challenge and should be dealt with on that level. Whatever the motivation, Russian forces in the region—and their participation in combat operations—produce a challenge that American Middle East policy has not encountered in at least four decades.

American policy has sought to straddle the motivations of all parties and is therefore on the verge of losing the ability to shape events. The U.S. is now opposed to, or at odds in some way or another with, all parties in the region: with Egypt on human rights; with Saudi Arabia over Yemen; with each of the Syrian parties over different objectives. The U.S. proclaims the determination to remove Mr. Assad but has been unwilling to generate effective leverage—political or military—to achieve that aim. Nor has the U.S. put forward an alternative political structure to replace Mr. Assad should his departure somehow be realized.

Russia, Iran, ISIS and various terrorist organizations have moved into this vacuum: Russia and Iran to sustain Mr. Assad; Tehran to foster imperial and jihadist designs. The Sunni states of the Persian Gulf, Jordan and Egypt, faced with the absence of an alternative political structure, favor the American objective but fear the consequence of turning Syria into another Libya.

American policy on Iran has moved to the center of its Middle East policy. The administration has insisted that it will take a stand against jihadist and imperialist designs by Iran and that it will deal sternly with violations of the nuclear agreement. But it seems also passionately committed to the quest for bringing about a reversal of the hostile, aggressive dimension of Iranian policy through historic evolution bolstered by negotiation.

The prevailing U.S. policy toward Iran is often compared by its advocates to the Nixon administration’s opening to China, which contributed, despite some domestic opposition, to the ultimate transformation of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The comparison is not apt. The opening to China in 1971 was based on the mutual recognition by both parties that the prevention of Russian hegemony in Eurasia was in their common interest. And 42 Soviet divisions lining the Sino-Soviet border reinforced that conviction. No comparable strategic agreement exists between Washington and Tehran. On the contrary, in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear accord, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and rejected negotiations with America about nonnuclear matters. Completing his geopolitical diagnosis, Mr. Khamenei also predicted that Israel would no longer exist in 25 years.

Forty-five years ago, the expectations of China and the U.S. were symmetrical. The expectations underlying the nuclear agreement with Iran are not. Tehran will gain its principal objectives at the beginning of the implementation of the accord. America’s benefits reside in a promise of Iranian conduct over a period of time. The opening to China was based on an immediate and observable adjustment in Chinese policy, not on an expectation of a fundamental change in China’s domestic system. The optimistic hypothesis on Iran postulates that Tehran’s revolutionary fervor will dissipate as its economic and cultural interactions with the outside world increase.

American policy runs the risk of feeding suspicion rather than abating it. Its challenge is that two rigid and apocalyptic blocs are confronting each other: a Sunni bloc consisting of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States; and the Shiite bloc comprising Iran, the Shiite sector of Iraq with Baghdad as its capital, the Shiite south of Lebanon under Hezbollah control facing Israel, and the Houthi portion of Yemen, completing the encirclement of the Sunni world. In these circumstances, the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be treated as your friend no longer applies. For in the contemporary Middle East, it is likely that the enemy of your enemy remains your enemy.

A great deal depends on how the parties interpret recent events. Can the disillusionment of some of our Sunni allies be mitigated? How will Iran’s leaders interpret the nuclear accord once implemented—as a near-escape from potential disaster counseling a more moderate course, returning Iran to an international order? Or as a victory in which they have achieved their essential aims against the opposition of the U.N. Security Council, having ignored American threats and, hence, as an incentive to continue Tehran’s dual approach as both a legitimate state and a nonstate movement challenging the international order?

Two-power systems are prone to confrontation, as was demonstrated in Europe in the run-up to World War I. Even with traditional weapons technology, to sustain a balance of power between two rigid blocs requires an extraordinary ability to assess the real and potential balance of forces, to understand the accumulation of nuances that might affect this balance, and to act decisively to restore it whenever it deviates from equilibrium—qualities not heretofore demanded of an America sheltered behind two great oceans.

But the current crisis is taking place in a world of nontraditional nuclear and cyber technology. As competing regional powers strive for comparable threshold capacity, the nonproliferation regime in the Middle East may crumble. If nuclear weapons become established, a catastrophic outcome is nearly inevitable. A strategy of pre-emption is inherent in the nuclear technology. The U.S. must be determined to prevent such an outcome and apply the principle of nonproliferation to all nuclear aspirants in the region.

Too much of our public debate deals with tactical expedients. What we need is a strategic concept and to establish priorities on the following principles:

So long as ISIS survives and remains in control of a geographically defined territory, it will compound all Middle East tensions. Threatening all sides and projecting its goals beyond the region, it freezes existing positions or tempts outside efforts to achieve imperial jihadist designs. The destruction of ISIS is more urgent than the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who has already lost over half of the area he once controlled. Making sure that this territory does not become a permanent terrorist haven must have precedence. The current inconclusive U.S. military effort risks serving as a recruitment vehicle for ISIS as having stood up to American might.
The U.S. has already acquiesced in a Russian military role. Painful as this is to the architects of the 1973 system, attention in the Middle East must remain focused on essentials. And there exist compatible objectives. In a choice among strategies, it is preferable for ISIS-held territory to be reconquered either by moderate Sunni forces or outside powers than by Iranian jihadist or imperial forces. For Russia, limiting its military role to the anti-ISIS campaign may avoid a return to Cold War conditions with the U.S.
The reconquered territories should be restored to the local Sunni rule that existed there before the disintegration of both Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty. The sovereign states of the Arabian Peninsula, as well as Egypt and Jordan, should play a principal role in that evolution. After the resolution of its constitutional crisis, Turkey could contribute creatively to such a process.
As the terrorist region is being dismantled and brought under nonradical political control, the future of the Syrian state should be dealt with concurrently. A federal structure could then be built between the Alawite and Sunni portions. If the Alawite regions become part of a Syrian federal system, a context will exist for the role of Mr. Assad, which reduces the risks of genocide or chaos leading to terrorist triumph.
The U.S. role in such a Middle East would be to implement the military assurances in the traditional Sunni states that the administration promised during the debate on the Iranian nuclear agreement, and which its critics have demanded.
In this context, Iran’s role can be critical. The U.S. should be prepared for a dialogue with an Iran returning to its role as a Westphalian state within its established borders.
The U.S. must decide for itself the role it will play in the 21st century; the Middle East will be our most immediate—and perhaps most severe—test. At question is not the strength of American arms but rather American resolve in understanding and mastering a new world.

Mr. Kissinger served as national-security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/a-path-out-of-the-middle-east-collapse-1445037513-lMyQjAxMTI1MjE2NzIxMDcwWj

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/us-needs-new-plan-for-middle-east/story-fnay3ubk-1227573426194

****

Arthur
October 20, 2015 at 12:09 am
I can only manage scattered random notes at the moment.

1) Kissinger’s ghostwriters appear to be practically unintelligible. This seems to be the pattern more generally so it is hardly noticeable. Presumably the article is supposed to suggest “A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse”. So one ought to be able to figure out that what the proposed start and end points are from carefully reading the article.

2) As far as I can make out the starting point might be:

“For Russia, limiting its military role to the anti-ISIS campaign may avoid a return to Cold War conditions with the U.S.”

Plainly Russia isn’t doing that and the article does clearly state that “The U.S. has already acquiesced…” to what Russia IS doing. So how could this be a starting point for a path?

3) Again my best guess for the proposed route is:

“…it is preferable for ISIS-held territory to be reconquered either by moderate Sunni forces or outside powers than by Iranian jihadist or imperial forces…The reconquered territories should be restored to the local Sunni rule that existed there before the disintegration of both Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty. The sovereign states of the Arabian Peninsula, as well as Egypt and Jordan, should play a principal role in that evolution. After the resolution of its constitutional crisis, Turkey could contribute creatively to such a process.”

My guess at the proposed starting point appears naturally enough in the middle of this jumble and has been replaced with an ellipsis.

I am not sure which “imperial forces” the ghostwriters are talking about, but “preferable” surely refers to a goal rather than a route towards achieving it? “The sovereign states of the Arabian Peninsula” presumably refers to Kissinger’s paymaster, the House of Saud who are elsewhere described as an American ally in the Iraq war which they in fact opposed, as did Kissinger and almost the entire US foreign policy establishment.

But what on earth is it proposed they should do, along this “route”? Somehow “evolve” an administration in “reconquered territory”. So are they expected to do the reconquering? At the moment the Russians are not attacking Daesh but are in fact attacking the Salafi forces the Saudis are arming and financing.

The route of this “path out” starts nowhere and returns there.

4) My best guess at the end point is:

“As the terrorist region is being dismantled and brought under nonradical political control, the future of the Syrian state should be dealt with concurrently. A federal structure could then be built between the Alawite and Sunni portions. If the Alawite regions become part of a Syrian federal system, a context will exist for the role of Mr. Assad, which reduces the risks of genocide or chaos leading to terrorist triumph.”

So Alawite “regions” still run by the regime that has displaced nearly half the population of Syria are supposed to somehow form a federal structure with the Sunnis they have been mass murdering?

5) How is this miracle to be achieved?

“The U.S. role in such a Middle East would be to implement the military assurances in the traditional Sunni states that the administration promised during the debate on the Iranian nuclear agreement, and which its critics have demanded.

In this context, Iran’s role can be critical. The U.S. should be prepared for a dialogue with an Iran returning to its role as a Westphalian state within its established borders.”

Presumably implementing military assurances without actual troops means something like periodically redrawing “red lines”!

A “Westphalian state” presumably refers to the agreements among continental European rulers between May and October 1688 based on the principle that the religion of the ruler was to dictate the religion of those ruled.

The British were not a party to it and instead invited a Dutch Protestant army to enforce the opposite principle that the religion of the people would dictate the religion of the realm.

Whatever Kissinger’s ghost and its coauthors are actually blathering about, the path out of the Middle East Collapse clearly lies in the opposite direction to Westphalian states.

The continent lagged behind the British by more than a century and it took two more world wars to thoroughly settle the issue, but the age of rulers is now over in Europe. Democratic revolution is the only path out of the Middle East Collapse.

In Britain that took more than four decades, just to get past the “Divine Right of Kings”, long before anything resembling actual democracy. That tumultuous period included periods of revolutionary military dictatorship, counter-revolutionary partial restoration and foreign invasion.

One thing about Syria is as absolutely clear as the Kissinger article isn’t. Foreign combat troops on the ground are necessary. They are needed to end, not “degrade” both Daesh and the Assad regime and to prevent mass murder of the Alawi and other minorities when the Assad regime is ended. The war will not be ended from the air, whether by America’s “coalition” or the Russians, with or without “conversations” with Iran.

If America won’t do it, Europe must.

It could take more than a year to build an expeditionary force with Syrian refugee volunteers led by British and French officers. But it could be done if necessary.

The fact that there is no sign or hint of that happening suggests that something quite different from what appears may in fact be going on.

One sentence in the article actually makes sense. It seems to come out of nowhere and lead nowhere, but here it is:

“In a deeper sense, Russia’s purposes do not require the indefinite continuation of Mr. Assad’s rule.”

One could add that neither Russia nor Iran nor anyone in the Assad regime have much reason to believe there is any remote possibility of continuation for even a few years, let alone indefinately. This much is as blindingly obvious as the fact that when Nixon and Kissinger resorted to the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi they were faced with accepting defeat within weeks, not years. (So blindingly obvious that most people were blind to it until the Paris peace agreement a few weeks later and remained only dimly aware the US had been defeated until Saigon became Ho Chi Minh city and STILL thought the US might be trying to establish imperial rule over Iraq in 2003 despite that being three decades after its defeat in Vietnam).

What may well be required, not only for Russian purposes but also by others who could easily frustrate Russian purposes, is the retention of Bashir Assad as a figurehead presiding over a regime in Damascus from which the die-hards of the Assad regime who actually run the regime and its war on the Syrian people had been removed.

Even Turkey and Britain acting alone could easily have frustrated whatever Russian purposes might be by now by simply closing the Dardanelles and the Straits of Gibralter. This “curious case of the dog that did not bark” indicates it is not just the dithering Obama that is acquiescing in what they believe Russia is up to.

For my part I would rather they hurried things up by immediately closing the Mediterranean and announcing a No Fly Zone enforced by British, French and other forces based at and near Cyprus.

But one way or another it certainly is not going to be “the sovereign states of the Arabian peninsular” who end up ruling Syria. It will be the Syrian people.

As for Egypt and Jordan assisting the House of Saud in such an endeavour, Jordan is in fact supporting the southern front, while the Egyptian fascist military dictatorship has sealed its more rapid doom by coming out openly for its fellow fascists in the Assad regime, against the interests of its main sponsors, the House of Saud as well as further outraging its own people.

There are already enough Hezbollah, Russian and Iranian forces in Syria to “stabilize” the “legitimate government” led by “President Assad” against anyone who wants to keep fighting a lost war. There is also enough Russian jamming equipment deployed to make it difficult to bring any “destabilizing forces” back to Damascus in time to prevent any governmental changes there.

The southern front is not being bombed by the Russians and the Germans have offered peace keeping troops. Hezbollah has been given 75 tanks for its own palace guard. The stage is set for something to happen.

‘It is only revolutions that make the heavenly spheres move’. I’m angry (Pussy Riot speech via #ImWithThebanned)

Posted on October 19, 2015 by c21styork

I’m angry (speech at ‪#‎ImWithTheBanned‬ )

I’m not beautiful.
I’m not ugly.
I’m angry.

I’m really angry due to the fact that the main political institutions of my country, Russia, are the law enforcement, the army, police, intelligence agencies, and prisons. But the main political institution of my country is composed of just one man – Putin.

By working together, we can build better institutions.

I’m angry, because I do not want to live in a world where you can get sent to prison for speaking a word.

Only in prison I did finally understand how valuable words can be. If you’ve been through prison you say a word and think not only about it’s meaning and value, but about the big consequences that your words can have.

I’m angry because I know too many people that went to jail for saying words or reading a speech.

I’m angry because our governments – and not just in Russia, but in Europe as well, especially in the last weeks – still believe in the power of razor wires, fences and jails.

You are in London – you might feel that razor wires, watch towers and camp-like prisons are a universe apart from you, somewhere in Belarus, Russia or Syria. But right here in the centre of London you have Julian Assange who is spending his fourth year locked up in the embassy of Ecuador for uncovering serious war crimes to the world.

You are in London. You might think that authoritarian and conservative pigs are further away from you then you think. But they are very close – and we have to resist them with our warmth and solidarity.

You have thousands of people prepared to die daily under the wheels of trucks to cross the Eurotunnel from Calais, just because the British goverment is not creating a way to process asylum applications so that people don’t die.

Every gesture you make is meaningful, even if you are clueless about it. Every gesture you make sets rules. There is no decision you make yourself alone.

I have some great advice for politicians in authoritarian countries – what it the best way to get rid of a political enemy?

Jailing your enemy is a bad idea. He will only grow stronger and his voice will become louder. I used to never be able to do push-ups like a man. But after Putin sent me to prison I learned how to do push-ups in prison and now I can do them.

So if you are Putin and want to get rid of Pussy Riot the worst idea is to put them to prison and give them a voice. You will only make Pussy Riot stronger. If you’re the Chinese government – jailing and prosecuting Ai Weiwei means that we’ll probably be making him the best known Chinese artist alive.

I’m not beautiful.
I’m not ugly.
I’m angry.

The first person who empowered the word “Revolution” was Nicolai Copernicus.

He figured out that the earth revolves around the sun and wrote a book titled On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which provoked shock, outbursts, and hysteria.

Burning me does not refute me, repeated Giordano Bruno as he made his way to the fire.

It is only revolutions that make the heavenly spheres move. People who ask themselves and others tough questions are responsible for progress. If there is no one asking questions, the future will be a paradise for conservatives and hell for everyone else.

I’m not beautiful.
I’m not ugly.
I’m angry

The Communist Manifesto Project

Posted on October 18, 2015 by c21styork

The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. That’s a long time ago. And the communist revolutions of last century have ultimately failed. So what would a C21st version look like?

That’s the aim of an exciting new project that seeks to ‘save Marx from the Marxists’!

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Here’s the preamble from the project’s draft document:

The Communist Manifesto Project, October 2015

Preamble

Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and “Marxists” have been disregarding its message ever since. It tells us how communism cannot emerge without capitalism first creating both the pre-conditions and the forces that will bring it to fulfillment. Capitalism is like the caterpillar to the communist butterfly. Communism is a consequence of capitalism and the next step in the progress of humanity

Present-day “Marxists” totally oppose this view. Their anti-capitalism is reactionary. They believe capitalism is destroying much of the past that should be preserved and is leading us down a path from which we must retreat. There are no prospects for their backward looking project and if there were it would be self-defeating because we would be simply reverting to conditions that history shows would eventually bring us back to where we are. In their day Marx and Engels had to contend with similar trends and, indeed, a section of The Communist Manifesto is devoted to them.

The message of The Communist Manifesto of course is also ignored by those for whom capitalism is the best of all possible worlds. It gets in the way of their “communism has failed” mantra which they base on abortive revolutions in backward essentially pre-capitalist regions during the 20th century. This experience in fact only confirms the message that communism can only successfully emerge from advanced capitalism.

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Don’t let them into our country! (via Pussy Riot)

Posted on October 13, 2015 by c21styork

I am a facebook friend of Pussy Riot. They rock. In every way. What enormous courage to stand up to an ultra-rightwing thug like Putin. Anyway, someone wrote a piece on their facebook page about ‘open borders’. I liked the rhythm and have broken it down, restructured the text, to see if it works as a form of poetry. I reckon it does. The words and message are passionate and no-nonsense. And on the rigth side of history. That’s Pussy Riot!

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“Don’t let them into our country!”

Why is it YOURS, though?
Some office handed you a piece of paper,
so you believe,
all innocently,
that it’s yours?
By birthright,
or bloodright, maybe?
Blood and soil?
Are you serious?
Isn’t it terrifying trying to justify yourself that way?

“Lucky me, too bad for you,”
you tell the Syrian girl
who crossed
five
national
borders
to end up in your country.

“Ha! You’re such a loser,
and I’m fucking awesome!”

That Syrian girl
crawled up
and over
a barbed-wire fence
on the Hungarian border.
She fell and broke her arm.
She got up,
but the Hungarian cops
grabbed her.
They sent her to court,
and under a new law
passed by Putin’s little buddy
Orban,
she could get up to three years in jail
for crossing the border.

“Tough luck,
but I’ve got blood and soil,”
you tell her.

Should people have the right
to choose where they’re going to live?
Some office tells you,
“Look at all those illegals swarming in!”
But can a person ever actually be
illegal?

(translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega)

Care about refugees? Listen to them. Syrians are primarily fleeing Assad!

Posted on October 11, 2015 by c21styork

First survey (of Syrian refugees in Germany) shows Syrians are fleeing from Assad, not Isis. Nearly all want to go home. Republished from the diary.thesyriacampaign.org

Syrian refugees don’t want to stay in Europe. But unless politicians start listening to why they’re fleeing and what needs to happen for them to go home, many more will come.

Here are six key results from the first ever survey of Syrian refugees in Europe (full results below):

1. Most Syrians are fleeing from Assad, not Isis

Contrary to what you might read in the papers, it’s not the media-grabbing brutality of Isis that most people are fleeing from. It’s the much larger scale, state organised violence of the Assad regime that is driving most people from their homes.

70% are fleeing the violence of the Assad regime and its allies (32% Isis, 18% Free Syrian Army, 17% Al Nusra, 8% Kurdish forces).

2. Most fear arrest or kidnap by the Assad regime

All armed groups have been involved in detention and disappearances in Syria, but none to the extent of Bashar al-Assad’s government, as thousands of leaked images of torture in state prisons prove.

86% say kidnapping or arrest was a threat to their personal safety. 77% of them fear it from the Assad regime, 42% Isis, 18% Al Nusra, 13% Free Syrian Army and 8% Kurdish forces.

3. Nearly all Syrians want to go home

It might seem that the people struggling in boats across perilous waters or jumping over barbed wire fences really want to be in Europe. But they don’t. Syrians want to go home to the country they know and love. The problem is with the violence raging they can’t.

Only 8% said they’d want to stay in Europe indefinitely

4. Assad needs to go for Syrians to return home

While Russia and others are asking countries to unite with Assad to fight Isis, it’s important to note that the majority of Syrian refugees will not go back while he remains in power. Syria needs peace and an end to dictatorship.

52% said that Bashar al-Assad would need to leave power before they would return home

5. Stopping the barrel bombs would help more stay in Syria. Much more than increased aid
Stop the barrel bombs with a no-fly zone

The vast majority of refugees said they feared Assad’s barrel bombs – the improvised metal barrels packed with explosive and scrap metal that government helicopters drop from miles up in the sky onto civilian neighbourhoods.

These barrel bombs and other aerial attacks are the number one killer of civilians in Syria – the barrels alone have killed more than 2,000 children since the UN banned them in 2014. They routinely destroy hospitals, schools and homes. Syrians living under the barrel bombs find it difficult to forget the terror, even once they have fled to safety.

To stop the refugees pouring over Syria’s borders we have to stop the bombs. More aid isn’t the answer.

73% said barrel bombs were a threat to their personal safety. 58% said a no-fly zone would help more stay in Syria, only 24% said the same for increased aid.

6. The cause of today’s situation is Assad’s military response to peaceful demonstrations

So much has changed in the last four and a half years in Syria yet still an overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees hold Bashar al-Assad responsible for today’s events. According to most of those surveyed, Assad’s decision to use military force against peaceful protesters demanding freedom and dignity in 2011 is the cause of today’s violence.

79% said it was the Bashar al-Assad’s military response to the demonstrations that led most to the situation today.

What should Europe do?
To reduce the number of Syrian refugees to Europe and to help create the conditions for their return, European politicians should:

1. Enforce a stop to the bombs. There are various initiatives from no-fly zones, no-bombing zones and safe zones which while all different in their implementation, would prevent the biggest killer of civilians in Syria today: Bashar al-Assad’s aerial attacks and barrel bombs. Europe needs to get serious about stopping the bombs.

2. Push for a peaceful transition of power away from Assad. There is no military solution to the conflict and there is international agreement that a transition to a new government is the only way to end the violence. The longer that takes, the more people will be driven from their homes.

It goes without saying that Europe should open its borders to those fleeing war – that’s a human imperative.

European leaders need to realise that unless they do more to constrain the violence of the Assad regime and make more effort to stop the war, the waves of refugees will not stop. The UN has predicted another million will be displaced in Syria before Christmas, and that was before Russia joined in the fighting.

To solve the refugee crisis, we have to stop the Syria crisis.

This survey interviewed 889 Syrians living in Germany between 24 September 2015 and 2 October 2015 using a standardised questionnaire. Interviews were held in 12 centres housing arriving refugees, other refugee accommodation and refugee registration points in Berlin, Hanover, Bremen, Leipzig and Eisenhüttenstadt. Researchers from the Berlin Social Science Center were involved in the conception, implementation and evaluation of the survey. Full results are available here.

Russia back on the front line

Posted on October 2, 2015 by c21styork

Some “quick off the cuff notes” by Arthur Dent in response to The Australian’s Tom Switzer who wrote an article on 30 September titled ‘Russia back on the front line’. The notes were originally published at Strange Times. I’m running Arthur’s notes first, followed by Tom Switzer’s article.

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1. Vivid demonstration that realists live in a parallel universe with a different “reality”. Switzer is actually quite clear that he wants to go back to the old US policy of backing the autocracies and tyrants against their people to maintain the region as a backward swamp (originally for cheap oil and anti-communism then contention with Soviet imperialism and “security” – especally Israeli security in occupying more and more territory and then sheer inertia and blind stupidity of an entire generation of the foreign policy establishment who had devoted their careers to it and persisted with it long after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the end of cheap oil and the failure of the war for Greater Israel having made Israel a strategic albatross hanging around the US neck rather than a US base in the region (the only regional power that could not join the coalition liberating Kuwait from Baathist Iraq and who had to be told their planes would be shot down if they pretended to be part of it by sending any into coalition airspace).

2. In Switzer’s alternate universe, the problem in the Ukraine is “.. the widespread Western failure to recognise an old truth of geopolitics: that a great power fights tooth and nail to protect vital security interests in its near abroad”.

In our universe there is no such Western failure. No Western government is even allowing the Ukrainian government to buy weapons to defend itself against the Russian bullying because they understand with total clarity that they have no power to confront Russian bullying behaviour in that part of the world. The facts Switzer recites about that from lessons about geopolitics drummed into him more than half a century ago are totally obvious to every policy maker and ignored only by the usual shouters.

3. In Switzer’s alternative universe “Putin fears that if Bashar alAssad’s regime falls, Russia’s presence in western Syria and its strategic military bases on the Mediterranean will be gone.” and “Russia’s navy and advanced antiaircraft missile systems are based along the Mediterranean. It’s likely to deploy ground troops to the eastern coast.”

In fact Russia’s navy in the Meditarranean is about the size of the US army in the Ukraine. If the Russians were imbeciles attempting what Switzer imagines they are going to do in Syria and Obama was indeed as inept and vacillating as he has successfully convinced pretty well everybody he has always been then the British, French and Turks would have both vital national interests in their near abroad and the capability to act that would compel them to stop the nonsense immediately without waiting a day longer for Obama to stop dithering.

By now Turkey would have closed the Dardanelles (not of course as a hostile act towards that deeply respected partner and Mediterranean Great Power, the Tsar of all the Russias, but simply because they were too busy dealing with the problem of two million refugees having been driven out of Syria by the Assad regime to remember to keep it open).

A few hours sailing time later, the British would have announced that their are command mines laid at Gibraltar that are currently turned on but will be turned off at the approach of any ship that is known not to be assisting anyone forcing millions of Syrians to flee Syria to Europe. Naturally this too would not be a hostile act against anybody but merely a precaution against the possible arrival of the Daesh navy, just as the Russian air to air and surface to air missiles at Latakia are to protect them from the Daesh air force. Naturally the ships of a Meditarranean Great Power like Russia would not be subject to compulsory inspection and the mines would be respecfully turned off as they went about their entirely legitmate business and if any ships of any nation were accidentally sunk by a mine that had failed to remain turned off then Her Majesty’s Government would of course pay full compensation as required by international law etc etc.

All available British and French forces would move as rapidly as possible to the British sovereign base in Cyprus not as a hostile act against anybody but merely as friendly observers of the joint naval exercises that had been announced nearby by the navies of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. After those exercises were completed they would be happy to assist their partners the Russians in returning to Vladivostok via the Suez canal without any danger of becoming subject to inspection by any Arab Gulf states wanting to check whether they were helping any notorious Syrian war criminals to escape as Britain and France are rather in favour of any assistance their Russian partners might be willing to give to Syrian war criminals leaving Damascus right now and don’t really care where they end up as long as they don’t stay in Syria.

4. In Switzer’s alternate universe Putin “has sent tanks, warships, fighter jets and troops to bolster the regime, which has faced a troop shortage and loss of towns as it seeks to maintain Alawite rule over an overwhelming Sunni majority”. Pretty well everbody agrees with Switzer about that, perhaps because those who know better have no reason not to want everybody to think that at the moment.

For my part I’ll just end by saying that Switzer and others should remember what Kissinger said the word would go out about another Great Power:

“To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”

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Tom Switzer’s piece from The Australian (30 September 2015):

Since Russia’s incursion into Ukraine 18 months ago, the West has indulged in the rhetoric of moral indignation, punished Moscow with economic sanctions and treated Vladimir Putin as a pariah in world affairs. “Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters,” President
Barack Obama declared in January. “That’s how America leads — not with bluster but with persistent, steady resolve.”

Somebody forgot to tell the Russian President. Putin’s address to the UN General Assembly this week, following his lightning military deployment to Syria, marks Russia’s resurgence on the global stage. The Russians, far from being marginalised in international relations, are playing a weak hand rather skilfully and are being allowed to do so because of considerable ineptitude and vacillation on the part of the Obama administration.

The upshot is that Washington will have to take the Kremlin far more seriously in the future. This is not just because Putin’s support for the embattled Assad regime will help degrade and destroy Islamic State jihadists in a four year civil war that has claimed nearly 250,000 lives and displaced more than nine million people. Rather, Russia’s intervention in Syria shows how rational Moscow’s concerns over Western policy in the Middle East are, and that the Obama administration had better start treating it like the great power it still is.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Moscow voluntarily jettisoned the Warsaw Pact and acquiesced in the expansion of NATO and the EU on to the frontiers of the former Soviet Union. But the limits of Russia’s post Cold War retreat have been evident since the Western backed coup against a pro-Russian ally in Kiev in February last year. Putin has played hardball to protect what Russia has deemed as its sphere of influence in the Baltics long before Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin appeared on the scene. And in the Middle East it is determined to protect what it perceives as its vital interests.

Putin fears that if Bashar alAssad’s regime falls, Russia’s presence in western Syria and its strategic military bases on the Mediterranean will be gone. That is why he has sent tanks, warships, fighter jets and troops to bolster the regime, which has faced a troop shortage and loss of towns as it seeks to maintain Alawite rule over an overwhelming Sunni majority.

And by reaching an understanding with Syria as well as Iraq and Iran to share intelligence about Islamic State, Putin is positioning Russia again as a key player in the Middle East, and one that is
more willing than the West to defeat Sunni jihadists. In the process, he has exposed the shortcomings of the White House’s policy towards Syria.

Until recently, the prevailing wisdom held that the Assad regime — the nemesis of Sunni militants was on the verge of collapse, an outcome that Washington, London and Canberra had enthusiastically encouraged for much of the past four years. And although Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop now recognise that Assad must be part of any negotiated political
solution, the Obama administration continues to insist that any resolution of the conflict must lead to the exit of the dictator.

US Secretary of State John Kerry warns Russia’s continued support for Assad “risks exacerbating and extending the conflict” and will undermine “our shared goal of fighting extremism”. British Chancellor George Osborne goes so far as to say the West’s aim should to be to defeat both Assad and Islamic State. But given Washington’s futile attempts to destroy the Sunni jihadist network
during the past year, most seasoned observers of the Syrian crisis are entitled to think that such strategies are manifest madness.

The consequences of removing Assad would be dire. The regime would collapse and its Alawite army would crumble. Sunni jihadists such as Islamic State and alQa’ida’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat alNusra, also known as alNusra Front, would exploit the security vacuum and dominate all of Syria. The ethnic minorities — the Alawites, Shi’ites and Syrian Christians — would be massacred. And there would be the flight of millions more refugees into Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

If we are to avoid these horrific outcomes, Russia will have to play a central and positive role. It has had significant influence in Damascus during the past half century; indeed, many Syrian
military officers have received training in Moscow. Russia’s navy and advanced antiaircraft missile systems are based along the Mediterranean. It’s likely to deploy ground troops to the eastern coast. And Moscow has recognised that notwithstanding Assad’s brutal conduct, his regime is fighting the jihadists that Western leaders repeatedly say pose a grave and present danger to the world.

Obama says the US would work with any nation to end the fighting in Syria. But to engage Russia, the West needs to change its policy approach substantially. Alas, the prevailing Russophobia in
Washington and Brussels remains a serious obstacle in the path of reaching accommodation with Moscow.

The problem in Ukraine is not related to a revival of the Soviet empire, as some hyperventilating politicians and pundits argue. The problem is the widespread Western failure to recognise an old
truth of geopolitics: that a great power fights tooth and nail to protect vital security interests in its near abroad. Take Ukraine: it is a conduit for Russian exports to Europe and covers a huge terrain
that the French and Germans crossed to attack Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most Crimeans are glad to be part of the country they called home from Catherine’s rule to that of Nikita Khrushchev.

From Moscow’s standpoint, the expansion of NATO and the EU into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, taken together with efforts to promote democracy, is akin to Moscow expanding military alliances into Central America. Some may respond by saying that Ukraine, however ethnically and politically divided it remains, has every right to join the West. But did communist Cuba have a right to seek political and military ties with the Soviet Union in 1962? Not from Washington’s perspective. Does Taiwan have a right to seek nationhood? Not from Beijing’s perspective.

This is a shame, but it is the way the world works, and always has. Not only does Putin know it, he calculates that a weak, inept and cautious Obama administration won’t push the issue despite the dire threats and warnings from congress and the Pentagon.

And so it was inevitable that the Russians would push back in the Baltics, first to secure the Crimean peninsula, the traditional home of the Russian Black Sea fleet (which Russian intelligence feared would become a NATO base), then to destabilise Ukraine with the aim of persuading Kiev’s anti Russian regime to protect the minority rights of ethnic Russians and maintain its status as a buffer state.

As for Syria, the problem here is not the Russians — or even Iran’s Shia crescent of Damascus, Baghdad, Hezbollah and the Yemeni rebels. After all, they’re committed to fighting Sunni jihadists. The problem is that US British aligned Sunni states — Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs — have aided and abetted the Sunni rebellion that has morphed into Sunni jihadism.

Yet these reactionary regimes still have the temerity to call for Assad’s ouster. Following regime change, we’re told, a US led coalition of Arabs and Turks can create a peaceful and prosperous Syria.

Leave aside the fact Assad’s support stems not just from Moscow and Tehran but also from Syria’s military, political and business elites, including many urban Sunnis. Assad is a brutal tyrant. He
has used chemical weapons against his own people. And he has launched relentless barrel bombs in rebel areas. But he is more popular than ever in the one third of Syria his regime still controls
(which happens to be the major cities and the coastland). That is largely because many know his demise would lead to widespread ethnic cleansing.

The idea that Assad’s fall would lead to something approaching a peaceful transition of power is as delusional as the neoconservative views about Iraq and Libya in 2003 and 2011 respectively. The
downfall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, it was onfidently asserted, would lead to viable democratic states. If anything, both postSaddam Iraq and postGaddafi Libya are failed
states that have attracted terrorists like flies to a dying animal.

As in the case of Iraq, Syria is an artificial state and an ethnically divided society created out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. In both nations the invasion and civil war, respectively, have unleashed centrifugal forces that are eroding political structures and borders that have prevailed since the end of World War I.

In Iraq, the 2003 invasion ended the nation’s sectarian imbalance between the minority Sunni and majority Shia communities. Ever since, the Shia have been more interested in seeking revenge against their former Sunni tormentors than in building a nation. The result: a Sunni insurgency that has morphed into a plethora of jihadist groups, including Islamic State.

In Syria, the Arab Spring in 2011 encouraged the Sunni majority to challenge and destroy the minority Alawite regime. The result: centrifugal forces that threaten the viability of Syria as we have known it for nearly a century.

As unfashionable as it is to acknowledge, partition is the likely outcome of the civil war. According to Joshua Landis, a veteran Syria observer and director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, many Syrians, and Alawites in particular, privately acknowledge that the prospect of outright military victory against the Sunni militants is highly unlikely and that it would be impossible to coexist with Sunni fanatics.

For Syria, partition would most likely mean an Alawite Shia state in the regime’s western heartland and a Sunni state to the southeast. Notwithstanding statements to the contrary, this is the emerging reality on the ground.

As long as the regime endures, it at least prevents Sunni jihadists from consolidating their hold over the whole nation and creating a strategic sanctuary along Syria’s coasts.

The moral and political problems posed by Syria’s civil war during the past four years have been real and extremely difficult ones. Assad heads a brutal regime that, according to The Washington Post, has killed about seven times as many people as Islamic State in the first six months of this year.

But the cold, hard reality is that if the US and its allies are serious about defeating the Sunni jihadists, and not merely determined to feel virtuous and moralistic, we will need to tone down our
antiRussian bombast, restore a dialogue with Putin and recognise the madness of regime change in Damascus. And if that means accommodating Putin’s power play in the Middle East, so be it.

Dialectics – what is it, what are examples of it?

Posted on October 1, 2015 by c21styork

I learned from this philosophical discussion of dialectical materialism in 2004 when it was published at the lastsuperpower site, and thus reprint it now for readers’ consideration and comment.

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Question “The only experience that I have with dialectics is a horrible essay that I had to write at university about Mozart and Beethoven. I’ve never really understood what dialectics means, except that it’s a great word to use when pretending to be intellectual over a cup of coffee. Most other people don’t really seem to understand the concept either, but would prefer not to admit it. I know this as I regularly drop it into conversations and no one has pulled me up on it yet.. see emperor’s new clothes post!”

Dialectics – What is it, what are examples of it?

by Keza 2004

I mentioned in The relation between materialism and idealism topic that materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett doesn’t mention the word dialectics – so in reading Dennett I’ve been looking out for what language he uses when describing concepts that are dialectical.

I’ve found one instance – he uses words like paradoxical to describe the problem and then in detailing his solution says things like, “this is not paradoxical at all”

An example is that Mother Nature / Evolution has no foresight and yet has managed to create humans who have foresight.

• Re: progress and dialectics

Posted by keza at 2004-12-28

The best laid plans of mice and men…. if practically everything that we do results in something not intended then why do we plan, why do we struggle, why do we try to move the world in a certain direction?

When Engels wrote that consciously willed actions often result in quite unintended consequences I think he was disputing the Hegelian idea that history is “the gradual realisation of ideas”. His point was that what happens in history comes about not as a direct result of abstract ideas, wishes, intentions (and so on) but is governed by ‘inner laws’ – ie what is possible (and therefore real and rational) in a given epoch. Movements don’t arise just because someone comes up with a good or bad) idea and manages to convince lots of people to follow them. Movements for change arise out of material conditions – the possibility for change is present and that opportunity is seized. The ideology in which the movement is clothed is (somewhat) secondary.

“The distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production … and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological — forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”

Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Political Philosophy (1859)

An example is the idea of “equality” in the bourgeois democratic revolution. The idea that “all men are created equal” stood in direct opposition to the feudal belief that all men are most definitely not created equal. The growth of capitalism made it not only possible but also necessary for the idea that rulers are made rather than born to take hold. Thus on a conscious level the motivation for bourgeois revolution was belief in ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ but at a more fundamental level, the revolution was driven by the necessity to liberate the productive forces from the constraints of feudalism. That reason (or motivation) was only dimly appreciated however.

Friedrich Engels wrote in 1893 that:

“Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker. Consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces.

I don’t think this means that bourgeois revolutionaries didn’t really believe in liberty, equality, fraternity – or that the battles they fought weren’t really for these things. We all know (except perhaps for the pseudo left) that as a result of the democratic revolution we have freedoms and rights that were hardly even dreamed of previously. However the ideas themselves weren’t the driving force – these ideas could only take hold because the material conditions were crying out for them (so to speak).

I think what bothers a lot of people is the feeling that perhaps this means that what they as individuals actually do doesn’t really matter – that somehow we are all carried along by a tide of “underlying forces” , that we are seized by ideas rather than seizing them ourselves etc etc. Engels refuted this when he said “freedom is the recognition of necessity” (Anti Duhring?) … once we come to understand “how things work” – “the rules of the game” then we do have a real chance of using our understanding to influence the course of history. Engels’ Letter to Franz Mehring in Berlin is interesting in this respect.”

He starts by pointing out that both he and Marx tended to neglect the role of ideas/ consciousness in bringing about change…

“Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side – the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about – for the sake of the content. This has given our adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings and distortions…..”

and later:

“Hanging together with this is the fatuous notion of the ideologists that because we deny an independent historical development to the various ideological spheres which play a part in history we also deny them any effect upon history. The basis of this is the common undialectical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, the total disregarding of interaction. These gentlemen often almost deliberately forget that once an historic element has been brought into the world by other, ultimately economic causes, it reacts, can react on its environment and even on the causes that have given rise to it.”

No time to write any more now!! I’ll finish with a quote I quite like though:

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of the living…. “
(Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napolean)

end Keza

Posted by kerrb at 2004-12-19 01:54 AM

More about the usefulness of dialectics, being a bit more specific about it than in my previous reply to sally.

1) socialist / not socialist dialectic

A few years ago (maybe 20) I went to a debate where someone from the pro-Soviet so called communist party was arguing that the Soviet Union was still a socialist country. This person was so wrapped up in the details and scope of his argument that I could see that no single point could be made in question time that could possibly persuade him that he might be wrong. I wanted to support the case that the Soviet Union wasn’t socialist and so was racking my brains for a question that might get through, if not to the speaker, then at least to the audience.

What I thought of and asked the pro-Soviet speaker was: ” Are there any possible circumstances that might arise in the future which would persuade you that the Soviet Union was no longer socialist?”

To the amusement and bemusement of some of the audience, he replied, “No, the Soviet Union will always be socialist”

2) progressive / reactionary dialectic

I think a similar sort of point can be made to the pseudo-left in connection to the US invasion of Iraq.

In my view it’s pretty straightforward that the US has led a campaign to overthrow the fascist government of Saddam Hussein and is now proceeding to help Iraqis create a democratic government. That has to be progressive.

Because historically US Imperialism has been very reactionary, as exemplified by the Vietnam war and much more, there are now many people in the world who seem incapable of conceptualising that the US could possibly do something progressive. It’s always possible for these people to point to bad things that the US does – there is no shortage of examples.

Maybe part of the problem is that they have an ingrained black and white, non dialectic world view, which implicitly denies the very possibility that the US could do something progressive.

I’m not saying that thinking dialectically is a substitute for studying the details of processes in detail – including the details of what the Soviet Union became historically and the details of what is happening in Iraq and the Middle East. But that having the concept of dialectics (the coexistence of opposites in things) might help prevent falling into the rigid black and white thinking illustrated in the two examples above. If some people can’t even conceptualise that it might be possible for US Imperialism today to do something progressive then no amount of detail is going to change their mind about Iraq. Their thinking is dogmatically stuck at another level to do with their whole world view. I’m arguing that studying dialectics is useful because it helps us keep our minds open to these possibilities.

Here’s a paragraph from Dennett:

“One of the standard (and much needed) correctives issued to those who study evolution is the old line about how natural selection has no foresight at all. It is true, of course. Evolution is the blind watchmaker, and we must never forget it. But we shouldn’t ignore the fact that Mother Nature is well supplied with the wisdom of hindsight. Her motto might well be “If I’m so myopic, how come I’m so rich?” And while Mother Nature is herself lacking in foresight, she has managed to create things – us human beings, preeminently – who do have foresight, and are even beginning to put this foresight to use in guiding and abetting the very processes of natural selection on this planet. I occasionally encounter even quite sophisticated evolutionary theorists who find this paradoxical. How could a process with no foresight invent a process with foresight? One of the main goals of my book “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” was to show that this is not paradoxical at all. The process of natural selection, slowly and without foresight, invents processes or phenomena that speed up the evolutionary process itself – cranes, not skyhooks in my fanciful terminology – until the souped up evolutionary process finally reaches the point where explorations within the lifetime of individual organisms can affect the underlying slow process of genetic evolution, and even, in some circumstances, usurp it.”
– Freedom Evolves, page 53

So, this illustrates that one can think dialectically without formally studying dialectics or even using the word dialectic. Dennett’s ability to do this would presumedly arise out of his deep study of the science of evolution combined with his materialistic philosophy.

In dialectical language no foresight and foresight would constitute a unity of opposites and in the process of development one can transform into the other. I think this way of looking at it is preferable to Dennet’s apparent paradox that turns out not to be a paradox.

But it’s probably more important to really study the topic deeply (in this case, evolution) than just to be able to spout the magic words. But I also believe that it’s important to study dialectics itself (Mao, Hegel etc.) because this creates an awareness or sensitivity to possibilities of things turning into their opposite that we otherwise might not even notice – it has the potential to make our thinking more fluid and flexible.

end post

Posted by kerrb at 2004-12-19

Dialectics is the co-existence of opposites in everything, nature, mind, society. I’ll explain by reference to something said in The Emperor’s New Clothes thread:

Think of all the people scared to speak in public, or scared to admit how they feel about something, or someone! I know for a fact that my private side is very different from my public face. So in my opinion this is a ‘problem’ that stretches right across the board, it’s not just in intellectual circles. People in general are afraid to speak their minds! Me too, so afraid that I don’t want to post this, but I will anyway.

What you are saying here is full of dialectics IMO. You talk about fear of speaking out and feeling compelled to speak out coexisting in your mind. Both of these opposites co-exist side by side. In some circumstances the fear might be stronger and you don’t speak. In other circumstances the compulsion to speak out might be stronger.

I think it’s fair to say that these opposite tendencies exist in everybody and so we are talking about something that is universal.

So, by contrast, what would be a non dialectical way of looking at this? We might view some people as always speaking out, the sort of people we wish would shut up sometimes. We might view other people as never speaking out, the sort of people that we don’t know what they are thinking. We might form black and white opinions about people with these extreme tendencies and as a result lose our curiosity, for example, not notice that a normally garrulous person has gone quiet in certain circumstances.

But of course there are no people like either of these two extremes. Although some people speak too much and others hardly at all these are just tendencies across the spectrum of possibilities. In reality, the two opposite tendencies coexist within everyone.

I’ve just taken one example of dialectics here from something you wrote in order to explain the idea. But whatever you are thinking about or studying I would argue that you can always conceptualise opposites that coexist within that thing. At the least I think it’s a very handy way to think about things because it can open up new ways of looking at something.

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