Imperialism: Protecting Libyan Civilians?

Yep, we're in Libya to protect innocent civilians. Definitely. As much is proven by the fact that the government forces were approaching the rebel stronghold of Benghazi at the time the decision to bomb the country was made, and that only as a direct result of that decision by the imperialists is the war still going today. Were it not for decision of the imperialists, led by the U.S., to bomb Libya and subsidize the rebels, the whole affair would almost certainly have been over by April. One can only imagine how many lives have thus far been "saved" by three months of additional, unnecessary war.

Anyhow, that simple, basic logic aside, the New York Times has recently discovered that NATO bombers recently ('accidentally', of course) killed somewhere between 5 and 9 Libyan civilians who resided nowhere near any military facilities. The Libyan government has a somewhat different story to offer. Here it is, as re-reported (and possibly skewed) by the BBC. I'm not necessarily endorsing a particular claim here. I'm just saying the imperialist intervention has certainly resulted in a lot more deaths, including yes a lot more civilian deaths, than would have been seen without such an intervention. Without further adieu though, here is the Libyan government's contrasting claim, which merits further investigation:

Libya says Nato air raids killed 700 civilians

The Libyan government says Nato air raids have killed more than 700 civilians since bombing began in March.

Spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said more than 4,000 people had been wounded, but gave no evidence to confirm his figures.

Nato has denied killing large numbers of civilians, saying its air strikes are to protect Libyans from Colonel Gaddafi's forces.

Four powerful explosions were felt in the centre of Tripoli on Tuesday night, Libyan state media reported.

Planes were heard flying over the capital, but it was not possible to determine the targets of the raids.

'No exit strategy'

Speaking at a news conference in Tripoli, Mr Ibrahim accused Nato of killing and injuring hundreds of Libyan citizens.

"Since March 19, and up to May 26, there have been 718 martyrs among civilians and 4,067 wounded - 433 of them seriously," Mr Ibrahim said.

He said the figures did not include military casualties.

Foreign reporters in Tripoli have not been shown evidence of mass civilian casualties.

Asked why not, Mr Ibrahim said casualties had not been concentrated near the capital but scattered across the country.

He also denied that South African President Jacob Zuma, who met Col Gaddafi in Tripoli on Monday, had discussed an "exit strategy" with the Libyan leader.

"If Gaddafi goes, the security valve will disappear. His departure would be the worst case scenario for Libya," he told reporters.

Moussa Ibrahim denied that Col Gaddafi had discussed a strategy for his departure

A statement released by Mr Zuma's office after he returned to Pretoria said Mr Gaddafi would not leave Libya, despite growing international pressure.

"Col Gaddafi called for an end to the bombings to enable a Libyan dialogue," the statement read.

"He emphasised that he was not prepared to leave his country, despite the difficulties."

After initially backing Nato's involvement, Mr Zuma and the African Union have called for a halt to air strikes, arguing that Nato has overstepped its UN mandate to protect civilians.

Both Libyan rebels and Nato have refused to accept a ceasefire until Col Gaddafi agrees to step down.

On Tuesday, Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that Gaddafi's regime was "finished", during a visit to the rebel capital Benghazi, in eastern Libya.

"He [Gaddafi] must leave office, he must leave the country," Mr Frattini told a joint news conference with Ali al-Essawi, the rebels' foreign affairs chief.

"His aides have left, he has no international support, the G8 leaders reject him, he must go."

Al Qaeda's Opposition to Qaddafi: Are There Two Outmodeds?

As some are probably aware, Bob Avakian (Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA) has, for many years now, been putting out a theory on America's global war of terror that he calls the two outmodeds theory. He sums it up this way:

“What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both.”

A compelling response to this formulation was provided a couple years back in the Monkey Smashes Heaven theoretical journal. The entire article is worth reading. It was in large part a polemic on the RCP's line provided in response to their position on the U.S.-backed late-2008/early-2009 Israeli attack on the people of Gaza. Below I'll provide some of the key highlights from that article that really sum up its main point on the two outmodeds theory:

According to the RCP (USA), supporting Hamas, who are the main force resisting this latest escalation of the genocidal violence against Palestinians, is tantamount to supporting the United States. To support Hamas, according to Bob Afakean, is to support the imperialist system. For the RCP (USA), Hamas and Amerikan Imperialism are two sides of the same coin. What this amounts to is a call for the Palestinian people to abandon their resistance, which happens to be often led by Islamic forces. The RIM-line, in the concrete, is a call to abandon any real resistance.

...

Maoist-Third Worldists recognize that the principal contradiction in the world is between imperialism and exploited nations. Maoist-Third Worldists support the broad united front against the principal enemy: imperialism, especially Amerikan Imperialism. Maoist-Third Worldists support the oppressed in their struggles against imperialism, even when the resistance against imperialism is not led by the proletariat.

As you can see, it is an excellent polemical response! It clearly shows that, at best, Bob Avakian's formulation is overly simplistic. In fact, in an overall sense, that MSH article is persuasive as a counterpoint to me. In the past, I had not really even thought much about what the practical alternative was for the oppressed if you opposed all their real resistance to imperialism. Back when I first read it, that article got me thinking more deeply about the real world implications of the RCP's line both regarding the two outmodeds theory and more broadly. But what I will call into question here though is whether the two outmodeds theory should be totally disregarded. Is it really accurate to say that there is absolutely no truth to the two outmodeds formulation?

Consider the present situation in Libya. We know that government leader Muammar Qaddafi for much of the last decade has supported and joined his country to America's global war of terror as part of a general rapprochement with the United States and the global Northwest more broadly. Yet when the imperialists began moving toward a direct military attack on his country, Qaddafi retreated from all this and put forward that he would be willing to forge an alliance with Al Qaeda against the U.S. and the West if attacked by his erstwhile patrons. And...

Gaddafi also indicated that certain oil and gas contracts involving Libya and several Western companies, such as Italy's state-controlled energy giant ENI, would be reviewed once the rebellion had been quashed.

'I think and I hope that the Libyan people will reconsider the economic, financial and security ties with the West,' Gaddafi said.

By contrast, what is Al Qaeda's orientation in this situation of actual U.S. and Western military attack on the legitimate government of Libya, that of Qaddafi, in support of their stooge regime in Benghazi? While Qaddafi's claims that Al Qaeda is running the rebellion are obviously untrue exaggerations, they ARE fully supporting it. They claim to be fighting against both the U.S. and the West on the one hand and against the Qaddafi government on the other. Qaddafi offers an alliance against the U.S. and the West and Al Qaeda rejects it and opts to go their own road alone. Thus which side, in Al Qaeda's view, is really the greater enemy? They are willing to support the stooge regime in Benghazi that is also embraced by the United States, after all. Thus we see how, even as they are fighting the American occupation of Afghanistan, they are effectively helping to foster one in Libya. In the latter scenario, is it not indeed transparently the case that "If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both” since they are on the same side of the battle lines, even if in an uneasy way?

Well let's dig deeper and get to the real root of this question. What do we mean by "outmoded"? I sought to clarify that matter in this earlier entry. At one point I made the statement that...

The consistent historical meaning of "left" and "right" is that "left wing" refers to those who support a new and historically more advanced mode of production, whereas "right wing" refers to those who uphold the old order, whatever it may be in the given situation (feudalism, capitalism, or whatever).

The immediate objective of authentic communist revolutionaries in the modern era, the era of capitalist imperialism, is the accomplishment of democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat. And while we demand communist leadership of democratic revolutionary struggles against imperialism, it is not always immediately possible to affect that said leadership. But we unite with anti-imperialist democratic forces regardless because they are progressive relative to the principal contradiction. From the time of Lenin we have understood that imperialism stunts and warps the development of the global countryside, the Third World, such that major remnants of feudalism remain permanently intact. Thus, in the era of capitalist imperialism, even the bourgeoisie themselves are incapable of actually rupturing with feudalism in a complete way. That is why imperialism in the main enemy of the proletariat in the contemporary world. But what if you have patriotic, or even more internationalist, feudal forces who are willing to put up a fight against imperialism to an extent, but are, at the same time and in the main, unwilling to support democratic transformation in society? How are you to treat those kinds of forces? After all, they oppose even the very first step that communist revolutionaries insist on: anti-imperialist revolution that is of a democratic quality. That is the essence of what the two outmodeds theory seeks to get at.

While my comrades have made it clear to me that many of the forces BA lumps together in his clumsy theory are, in fact, patriotic bourgeois forces -- forces essentially both against imperialism and for democracy, that is -- such as the government of Iran, as well as Hezbullah, Hamas, and some others...I still tend to see forces like the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a qualitatively different way. Let's get down to the nitty gritty: what is the most basic aspect of democratic revolution? It is the economic dimension, of course. That is, kicking out the foreign capitalists and democratically redistributing agricultural land to tillers. Forces like the Taliban and Al Qaeda tend to support the former key task while opposing the latter. By contrast, the Iranian government, Hezbullah, Hamas, etc. all support these democratic tasks broadly. The likes of the Taliban and Al Qaeda simply oppose imperialism because they see it as an impediment to retrograde national and regional traditions and/or to the spreading of those traditions worldwide. With the patriotic bourgeoisie of the Third World the international proletariat at least has in common the objective of national development. That is the basis for their inclusion as part of the block of four progressive classes. But the likes of the Taliban and Al Qaeda broadly oppose national development. So do they still qualify as part of the block of four progressive classes with whom you can unite? Is not the whole point of our revolution to advance, not to retreat, through the historical modes of production up to communism? What has the proletariat in common with monstrous feudal oppression, even if it is motivated in part by a sense of patriotism or broader Third World unity? There is only one thing I can think of and that is a circumstantially common enemy in imperialism. (And, as I have sought to highlight above, we do not even consistently have that in common in reality.) But that is only the basis for a purely tactical, low-level, temporary united front, not for their inclusion as part of the permanent four-class alliance of progressive classes. I simply cannot imagine non-antagonistically reconciling forces like the Taliban and Al Qaeda to socialism. They are viscerally hostile toward it and toward everything it stands for.

What I am saying is that we should treat Islamic (and other Third World patriotic) forces with nuance rather than adopting these overly generalizing stances toward them, whether they be complete opposition or complete support. Some are qualitatively more progressive than others. Some are essentially bourgeois. Others are essentially feudal. This is grounds for differentiation in our orientation. Some we can ultimately form a grand alliance with. Others we can only ally with on a purely tactical, temporary basis. I hope the reader gets my point.

Leninism vs. Trotskyism: What's the Fundamental Difference?

So what was that '20s debate in the Soviet Union about anyway and how do modern communists relate to it? The two basic perspectives that were dominant therein were Leninism and Trotskyism, so let's get into what those respectively are/were a bit, since they're often confused for one-another:

Leninism consists of some main components including the recognition of imperialism as the final stage of capitalism, the corresponding labor aristocracy theory, democratic centralist vanguard organization, a strategic alliance between all the working people of a society (the proletariat, the peasantry, and the various middle strata) led by the proletariat and peasantry, and the centrality of revolutionary councils and committees to at least the early stages of socialism. Lenin believed that it was possible and desirable for the proletariat, through the aforementioned class alliance, to seize state power even in backward, underdeveloped countries like Russia, and to, from there, develop a mixed economy -- an economy with a mixture of socialist and capitalist attributes -- until such time as the proletariat became the majority of the society by way of the natural workings of capitalistic development: the more bourgeois forces in society gradually running the peasants off their land in order lay the foundation for urbanization. The strategic alliance of all working people would be maintained through the course of all this, and eventually the proletariat would naturally come to be a majority therein as its ranks grew with the development of the economy. Such was the basic idea. Many modern Leninists confuse the Stalin era with representing the application of classical Leninist views. Actually, Lenin was deeply stagist, and fairly dogmatically so. His views roughly corresponded to those which Bukharin voiced at the end of the 1920s and can be justly summed up in Bukharin's slogan for developing socialism "at a snail's pace". Lenin sought a gradual development of socialism in backward countries, seeing said gradualism as necessary in order to maintain a mass base of support for the revolution itself. As such, Lenin more or less mentally associate the objective factor and the subjective factor as inextricably and absolutely linked and inseparable. In Lenin's view, almost every peasant was destined to maintain a narrow, traditionally-peasant outlook on the world, favorable simply to their own further enrichment rather than to the abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations...etc. The ideological difference between Leninism (a.k.a. Bolshevism) and Menshevism was the difference between whether or not the proletariat should seek to seize state power in the here and now or whether instead this task should be relegated to the distant future, after the bourgeoisie have completed a long period of capitalist development that has placed the proletariat in the majority of society. The latter view was that upheld by the Mensheviks. While still upholding the classical view that a 30 or 50 year-ish transitional stage of development loosely corresponding to the bourgeois-democratic revolution would be required in countries like Russia, the Bolsheviks believed the task of achieving the bourgeois-democratic revolution and carrying it out could be done in an effort led by the proletariat, without bourgeois political power. The proletariat, the Bolsheviks contended, would not seek to develop a full-fledged capitalist economy through this revolution, but would seek to maintain a mixed economy, with the balance of economic and political muscle therein gradually swinging more and more toward the socialist component. Some people confuse the period of emergency 'wartime communism' with the actual Leninist strategy. That was an emergency policy. The New Economic Policy essentially was Lenin's strategy for getting to socialism. The NEP wasn't an ideological compromise of Leninism; it was classical Leninism in practical application. Stalin's move away from the NEP was originally conceived of as another sort of emergency policy, corresponding to the ostensibly forthcoming end of capitalism worldwide. The more distinctly Stalinist flavor of Leninism was only developed from the mid-to-late '30s. So anyhow, the Bolsheviks developed party organization according to their revolutionary approach and the Mensheviks according to their more gradualist approach.

Trotskyism consists of positions similar to Leninism, but differs with it in one key area: the mass basis of the proletarian state. Trotsky argued that the proletariat, upon achieving state power, would "be unable to contain itself" even generally to the historical tasks of the bourgeoisie and thus would inevitably need to press on to socialism upon the achievement of the basics of the democratic revolution, rather than more or less waiting around for another generation or two until such time as the proletariat was in the majority of society. Trotsky's view of party and societal dynamics was, well, more dynamic than that of the Leninists. He believed there existed real contradictions of class alignments within the Bolsheviks that corresponded to the existing classes within the society; there were, in Trotsky's view, Bolsheviks ideologically aligned with the peasants and Bolsheviks ideologically aligned with the proletariat, among other things. So the party was somewhat less monolithic and more plagued by contradictions in the Trotskyist view, and the task was to take the correct alignment. This meant insisting on always continuing the forward momentum of revolution. That may sound all well and good and even perhaps more essentially comparable to the Maoist outlook and orientation than the classical Leninist perspective, but here is the key issue: whereas the Maoist permanent revolution theory is built upon the foundation of the mass line...that of scientifically-founded trust in and unity with the broad masses of society toward a non-antagonistic reconciliation...the Trotskyist permanent revolution theory, by contrast, is rooted in profound distrust of most of the world's oppressed and exploited majority and takes a corresponding expression. According to the Trotskyist perspective, it is not possible to maintain a permanent united front with the non-proletarian classes. Rather, even in countries wherein the proletariat finds itself a relatively small minority, the proletariat must face off against even the broad masses of peasants that may constitute most of the population. You implement "socialism", in other words, by way of more or less imposing the rigors of 'wartime communism' on the peasants indefinitely; seizing all their surplus output for use by the military and by urban dwellers. Being that this "hostile collision" (being a sort of military exploitation of the peasantry) eliminates the mass basis of proletarian rule in recently-feudal countries (like the Soviet Union at the time), the Trostkyists thus would have the socialist state rely fundamentally on external help; upon "proletarian revolutions" in more developed, imperialist countries wherein allegedly "the proletariat" formed the majority of society already or (again, allegedly) at least was much more nearly in the majority. This makes for a sort of weak, dependent, authoritarian, and frankly exploitative (and thus clearly non-proletarian) 'bailout socialism', if you will.

Classical Leninism may not exactly have been without flaws, but at least it rooted itself in a sort of mass basis! Was that mass basis sufficiently wide? No. Was the classical Leninist outlook terribly dynamic and realistic by comparison to Maoism (or even, in some ways (as explained above), to Trotskyism)? No. Might the complement of a permanent revolutionary theory rooted in a mass basis have been a positive and worthy addition? Certainly! But here is the main point: without a mass basis, what you were inevitably left with as a vision of "socialism" was a nightmarish, warped, oppressive and exploitative puppet state. Or, in other words, you are left with a new variant of the old society. At least classical Leninism was comparatively mass-based.