From: "David Bedggood" <d.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 10:11:29 1200+ Subject: Re: M-G: Congo: People wins! US govt., Trot etc muppets lose! > Rolf exclaims: > Congo: People wins! US govt., Trot etc muppets lose! > [Posted: 24.03.97] > > To the subject line I should perhaps add: "So far, at least". Rolfs excitement about the Kabila forces progress in Zaire is understandable. He Thinks that "so far" the result is Rolf 1 Trots 0 Do the people win? The people win if they can take control of the popular struggle against the Mobutu regime and prevent Kabila from setting up another imperialist client regime. Kabila may have a long track record as a rebel, but he looks today like any other nationalist leader trying to win control of the mineral resources of Zaire from the corrupt, dictatorial Mobutu clique, in order to offer his services to imperialism. In the process, Kabila is using the desire of the masses for democracy to win his war. The problem will come when he turns on the masses having gained power. He must do so to consolidate his rule and do a deal with one or other imperialist power. There is no room for democracy when it comes to extracting the mineral wealth of the region because the mineral wealth will not go to the `people' but to imperialism and its local bourgeois lackeys.. We should not take the "troubled" US officials as evidence that the US is against the rebels. The US is only "troubled" because there is no 100% guarantee that Kabila can deliver the goods. As all revolutionaries know, an armed people is potentially dangerous, even if they lack class organisation and independence. This is because any popular fight for democracy coming up against imperialism will unleash class forces that may get out of hand. It is our job to make sure that this happens. Therefore, while Kabila is fighting a genuine struggle against Mobutu for democracy we can point our guns in the same direction. However, we cannot give him any political support. To do so would be to become an accomplice in his bourgeois programme for national unity and independence which we know cannot deliver real democracy or independence from imperialism. Instead revolutionaries have to fight for their armed independence and to mobilise workers and poor peasants under their own class banner. Our object is such a situation should be to form independent multi-ethnic militias so that Kabila cannot use the rebel forces as his military fodder. When it becomes clear that Kabila is trying to form another bourgeois regime, then an independent militia of workers and poor peasants can remove him and proceed to take power. Otherwise Kabila, as a `left' nationalist will disarm the militia and do a deal with imperialism like Mandela in South Africa at best, or turn on the militia and destroy it like the KMT in China at worst.. If Rolf wants a South African solution in Zaire he should say so. He should also point out the probability that this will lead to another bourgeois regime every bit as reactionary as Mobutu's. Trotskyists on the contrary, fight for a permanent revolution which will put the workers and poor peasants in power. Dave. --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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