From: "dave graham" <davgraham-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: some thoughts on the war - continued
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 16:43:14 +0000


Dear all

Obviously Bob has received many replies to his original message - here he 
tries to move things on a bit.

Apologies if you've seen it already

Gra

________________________________________________________________________


"Robert Myers" <bobmyers_wa-AT-hotmail.com> To <jonasnilsson-AT-inves.es>
Subject developing the anti-war movement
Date Sun, 28 Oct 2001 20:41:55 +0000 Size 11.35 KB
Message
  Afghanistan

Last week I sent out some thoughts  (half thoughts I called them) about a
response to the war in Afghanistan.  I have had some interesting responses
from different countries - but perhaps unsurprisingly because of  the past
work in Workers Aid people saw more in my letter than was really there.
They read it as if  Workers Aid was already starting a campaign and they
wanted to join it.

But  in some of my other 'e'circles attention seems to be elsewhere,
primarily on getting to grips with what is behind the US  government's
attack. So I get articles explaining the Us drive for Caspian gas. I have
read a mass of similar analyses from across the globe including from oil
industry sources in the USA and various newspapers including the Gaurdian
and others.  I am sure that this drive to exploit Caspian gas reserves via
an Afghan pipeline has a central place in strategic US business/military
/political thinking.

But by itself  I am not sure what this analysis has to do with a struggle
for communism, freedom, peace, anti-capitalism - whatever you want to call
it - I hope you don't mind my 'communism'.The fact that I can find the
essential details of all this oil question from pro-capitalist sources
reinforces this.

Do I mean that its not important for us to know what the enemy is doing and
why.  Of course not. But from what point of view do we explore this
murderous cynicism, this barbaric 'infinite justice'?

In my previous letter I said that I was not satisfied with the picture of
imperialism painted by the leaders of the anti-war movement.  A comrade
questions how can I claim to have a better one when I was a member of the
WRP which was so corrupt. But the point is that I did not claim to have a
better one.  I just know that a picture of the world which previously
allowed this same anti-war movement to remain silent throughout the murder
in Bosnia and ten years of apartheid like represssion in Kosova and only
come alive when NATO  took action cannot be a useful one for a communist.
(and as for being  in the  corrupt WRP - well  there has been a 16 year
fight to negate that history)

Comrades say that far from needing a new picture of imperialism this
present
war is a classic case of imperialist robbery - and all the oil / gas
information is used to reinforce this.

Now maybe I used the wrong word when I said 'imperialism' - maybe I meant
the totality of capital's activity - though I think 'imperialism' was
probably OK. Anyway what I was talking about was not this or that policy of
this or that government / military in relation to one specific event but
the
totality of the world we are living in.  Of course everything new also
contains a great deal of the old. But even if this oil/gas explanation for
the war is correct ( I think there are other factors involved) then this
bit
of old fashioned imperialism is taking place in a very different world from
1914 and that is why a communist response has to be different.

A said that I could not see what all these articles about oil/gas had to do
with communism.  What does this analysis lead us to in terms of what we
should do?  Of course we must always seeks to expose the lies,hypocracsy,
murderous inhumanity of our governments etc. The anti-war movement Pilger,
Chomsky et al are doing that and are right to do it. But by itself does it
  help build a movement against this terrible reality.

Everyday I get emails from around the world which take my breath away with
the ruthlessness of capital's representatives. Last week a South Africa
contact sent me details of how the ANC governemnt is cutting off water to
whole townships who refuse to pay rates and now police and troops have shot
and killed demonstrators. In Tanzania I read of the Canadian  Gold mining
company who took over a vast area of  small family gold mines in a newly
discovered reef.  300,000 miners and their families were evicted by troops
and bulldozers filled in many mines with miners still in them.  And so on
and so on.

Everytime I read these I think what shall I do with them.  If only more
people could know.  And then often I read the same news in the papers.  Of
course this kind of news only reaches a small portion of the globes
population.  And of course it does have an effect on consciouness but by
itself it doesn't lead to a movement of people striving for
communism/liberation. On the contrary it probably contributes to a feeling
of powerlessness, hopelessness, of a world gone mad beyond control. What
can
'I' do against such colossal madness?

The history of the USSR, the theoretical inadequacies of the communist
movement, etc etc all play a part in this inability to respond in a class
way.  In western Europe and the USA the acceptance and benefits from the
plunder of the rest of the world also bears down heavily on outlook.

But wait - despite all this setback, this destruction of the valuable
proletarian consciousness that did once exist - however inadequate - people
are responding to the war in a way which can only be explained by the new
totality of reality that we are living in.

Despite government propaganda, despite social fragmentation, despite the
trampling of the 'brotherhood of mankind' and all the 'workers of the world
unite' ideals, I am convinced that millions of people are responding
instinctively to the news from Afghanistan as human beings.

I am sure - even in the US - many people look at the picture of the Afghan
boy  looking frighten and bewildered as he is pushed across the Pakistan
border but his parents are held back. He is alone. And people seeing this
picture think 'that could be my boy' or  'I remember being lost for five
minutes when I was little.'

You may say so what? Isn't this all a bit sentimental?  No. That responase
is the most basic human response possible because by this identification
people are recognising the equal existence of another human - in the most
simple, unthought out way they are  recognising  our social unity.  Of
course this is a fleeting thought, welling up and then denied by 'all the
crap' of ideology. In the next thought they will see in the Afghan refugee
a threat.

But this recognition in another being of ourselves human - in the other
side
of the world in a strange culture -  comes from globalisation-  both in
terms of the globally socialised nature of production ( but of course
perverted and hidden by capital) and in terms of  the new information
technologies developed to make money and exchange money but also bringing
everyone into everyone elses front room.

My proposal sent out in the last letter was trying to think how do we (and
my 'we' means  any 'we' who is against capital ) as part of this anxious
humanity try to strengthen this fleeting human response. The main weakness
of this human response is that it remains individual  and unacted upon and
therefore easily countered and suppressed by capital's insane explanations.

My aim is to see if we can find a way that allows people to go beyond that
first human thought and act upon it and by acting upon it come into a real
socialised set of relations with others also acting on it.

I mentioned the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan as a
possible way into this practical internationalism. A comrade objects that
we
know nothing about them.  And others have objected that the women have
supported the proposal for the Afghan king to head a broad government.

I'll tell you what I know about them.  They opposed the russian invasion,
the northern alliance government, the taliban regime and under the most
terrible conditions of oppression of women they tried to maintain
underground education for women in Afghanistan and in the refugee camps.
(shades of the Kosova and Tuzla education unions actions).

I'm sure if we met them we would find out a lot more.  But this alone is
enough.  They have tried to maintain a human existence in the face of  the
brutality of modern capital (Taliban).  So they are  exactly the kind of
organisation that could help develop a human response in the UK and
elsewhere.  I am not interested in their catechism - hopefully they don't
have one.  A person trying to help their nieghbours cries out for wider
assistance. How else can we  develop a universal movement of the oppressed
to  bust the insanity of capital unless millions of people move to answer
such an appeal. And the first people to move should be the communists - but
those calling themselves communist are mostly too busy  trying to turn the
human response into something for their own gain - paper sales, recruits,
demo fodder, propaganda strengtheners etc.

When Lenin wrote his 'Imperialism' in the midst of WW1 was his main
interest
to find out how and why capital was doing what it was doing?  Well he
certainly wanted to understand it but only to answer the question of how
and
why all the working class leadership had abandoned imternationalism and
supported mutual slaughter. Today we have to try to understand how changes
in the world are revealing that most of those who claim to be supporters of
Marx  are the biggest opponents of the self organisation of the oppressed
and that they are being rejected by new movements of  people seeking
liberation.  Are the ideas  - first clearly developed by Marx - of the
oppressed's revolutionary role in freeing socialised human production from
the inhuman, inverted, mad antagonism's brought about by the social
relations of capital vital for today or not. They are but most of the
people
who answer this with an equal yes are busy burying Marx's struggle to
transcend alienation with their dogma and party recruitment forms.

To understand the war  in this  context is my interest.

My proposal is now very limited.  I think we should invite a spokeswoman
from RAWA to the UK. And in helping her to meet as many people as possible
I think we should do everything to help that person spend as much time as
possible with  the anti-capitalist movement, the direct action movement in
the hope that a team of young people with energy, courage and initiative
could spearhead whatever kind of practical response is decided upon in the
course of the visit.









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