Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 10:59:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Cuba, Zaire and inter-imperialist rivalry


>From today's NY Times:

"The Helms-Burton law has been a source of conflict between the United 
States and its traditional allies for nearly a year. They have objected to one 
provision that allows Americans to sue, in court in the United States, any 
foreign firm that profits from the use of American property expropriated by 
Castro four decades ago. Canada and Europe have since passed laws that 
would retaliate against American firms that won judgments against their 
companies in American courts.

Another provision bars from the U.S. senior executives of firms that do 
extensive business in Cuba. The State Department has already informed 
executives of Sherritt International, a Canadian firm, that they and their 
families were barred. The company responded by holding a board of 
directors meeting in Havana.

At the core of the European, Canadian and Mexican complaints is the 
argument that the United States has no right to use its economic power to 
force other countries to come into line with American foreign policy. The 
Europeans say about Cuba what Washington says about China, that the 
best way to change the regime is to flood it with investment and drown it 
in the forces of a global economy."

I cite this in the context of the exchange between Will and Adam over 
Lenin's article on imperialism and its relevance to the current world situation.

Frankly, I am not sure to what degree inter-imperialist rivalries are 
beginning to govern world politics today, now that the Cold War is over. It 
is interesting to note that a Canadian multinational corporation's 
executives and *their families* are barred from the US. (No more 
Disneyland, kids.) And what a response! The board of directors meeting 
will be held in Havana.

This also has some bearing on events taking place in Zaire. Is it legitimate 
to view inter-imperialist rivalries as key to the conflict between France and 
Mobutu on one side and US imperialism and the anti-Mobutu forces on the 
other?

I don't think we can really know what US imperialism's goals are 
ultimately in a situation like this. The belief that Kabila is some kind of 
puppet on a string who the US is using to carve out a sphere of influence in 
Eastern Zaire does not give sufficient weight to the genuinely liberatory 
aspects of the anti-Mobutu struggle. Workers and intellectuals have been 
struggling for an end to Mobutu's dictatorship for some years now and 
whatever criticisms one may have of Kabila--as Guevara did--there is no 
question that the advances of his army have acted to strengthen the popular 
and democratic forces.

As Lenin pointed out in his polemics against Kautsky on the Irish struggle, 
there will never be a revolutionary situation in which the two major classes 
in society line up on either side of a barricade under clearly defined 
programs. There will be always be defections from one side to another and
programs will always be muddied.

What then is one to make of Kabila? Let us say that if he simply does in 
Zaire what Mandela and the ANC are doing in South Africa, then this 
marks major progress in the class struggle. The class struggle in Nigeria is 
aided when Mandela and Kabila are in power rather than such willing 
servants of imperialism as Mobutu and DeKlerk.

Astute politicians like Fidel Castro will learn how to take advantage of 
interimperialist rivalries in this new period. By the same token, we should 
not judge Kabila simply on the basis of who he accepts arms and financial 
aid from. We have to get deeper into the class dynamics of his movement 
and unfortunately we don't have much information beyond what we read in 
the bourgeois press.

There were all sorts of similar confusions when the German government 
put Lenin on the train to Finland Station, wasn't there? Lenin was for a
revolution in Russia, then it would be Germany's turn. Trotsky turned to 
the Mexican bourgeois nationalist Cardenas for sanctuary and wrote anti-
Stalin articles in the bourgeois press. Excluding the Maoist and CPUSA 
comrades, nobody would judge from these alliances that Trotsky was a pawn of 
imperialism, would we?

We are facing some complex situations following the collapse of the Soviet 
Union. Our obligation is to think in a much more dialectically nuanced
manner than ever before. Hard work, but obligatory.

Louis Proyect




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