Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 04:51:17 +0100
From: Andrew Flood <andrewflood-AT-eircom.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: No Class War, Except In Critical Support?



>I want to argue that it is *fidelity* to the phrase
>'No war but the class war' which should justify
>critical support for national liberation struggles
>like the Palestinians' and the defence of oppressed
>nations like Afghanistan.

This might work in terms of support outside the
country but the reality of any 'national liberation
struggle' is a reality of class struggle within
that struggle but also outside of it. In short
you can't talk of 'no war but the class war'
at the same time as talking of 'oppressed
nations' precisely because the category
'nation' either seeks to do away with
the class struggle or assign it to
some future date.

In Afghanistan despite the absence of
organised class struggle this is very
obvious.  Which Afgan 'nation' do you support,
the Taliban?  Those who are secretly educating
women (or trimming their beards) in defiance
of the Taliban?  The various forces of
the Northern Alliance who today are in
bed with imperialism while yesterday
the Taliban were?

The same problems arise with reference
to Palestine.  Which 'nation' do you
'critically support' there?

And then there is that phrase 'critically
support'.  What on earth does that mean,
apart from something that allows the party
leadership to tack with the wind, today
the support, tomorrow after the nasty bomb
the criticism.  Actually I think the phrase
can only have meaning in a military sense, the
one sense it which it is almost never used.

If your are willing to ditch the Leninist
baggage then there is a sense in which what
you say has meaning.  We can talk of 'no
war but the class war' and at the same time
talk of the enemy being imperialism and
the friends being the workers of the region
under attack.  But this means breaking
with the absurdity of critical support for
nations precisly because the enemy of those
workers is there 'nation'.

I remember all this debate at the time of the
Gulf War.  How does 'critical support' for
the Iraqi 'nation' address the rising that took
place in Southern Iraq within that 'nation' but
also against it.  An honest and absurd answer would be
critical support for Saddam in crushing that threat
to the 'anti-imperialist unity of the nation'. Likewise
with the mass desertions from the army and the Kurdish
rising.

Andrew

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