January 26, 2012
War With Iran Is Not Inevitable
There have been many theories of imperial overstretch in the past, but surely none of them would have expected any empire or its allies to be so foolish as to attack three immediately bordering targets in a row. As the sophisticated statesmen and -women of the West once again steer us all towards an unnecessary and artificial conflict, one would do well to reflect on the nature and consequences of a war zone stretching from Iraq through Iran to Afghanistan and the western regions of Pakistan. None of these areas are known for their good governance, their stable political and economic structures, or their previous history of allowing easy conquest and rule. Yet this does not appear to restrain the dogs of war from once again throwing themselves at another country of the greater Middle East, this time under the pretext of the imminent danger of nuclear weapons. Read the rest of this entry »
January 24, 2012
What Can We Expect in Egypt?
The Egyptian Parliament has just convened, recently elected by a partly proportional and partly district-based system in the first more or less meaningful elections in recent Egyptian history. Confirming the worries I laid out in earlier articles on developments in Egypt, the socialist and liberal parties performed according to their narrow, largely urban working and middle class bases (respectively); the great victory went to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Al-Nour, the more explicitly religious reactionary party. Now the first thing is to dismiss any attempts by Western commentators to condescend toward the Egyptians, to state the results as evidence that Arabs don’t know what is good for them, that pro-Western dictators are better than votes, and so forth. This kind of chauvinistic laziness only serves the interests of the thieving and warmongering cliques around the so-called ‘secular dictators’ in the Arab world, and the interests of the Western governments who supply them with money and arms. Read the rest of this entry »
November 23, 2011
Some Comments on Egyptian and Turkish Politics
In Egypt, the population has once again risen against the dictatorship – this time that of the military regime which has stepped into the vacuum of power after the overthrow of the tyrant Mubarak. Read the rest of this entry »
August 2, 2011
Israel, the CPGB, and the National Question
In their statement on the Arab Spring and the general situation in the greater Middle East, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) makes some common but fundamental mistakes in dealing with Israel and the national question. By the national question we mean the spectrum of political issues dealing with national liberation and resistance movements, the self-determination of peoples, and questions of separatism, irredentism, and the counter-nationalism of states attempting to prevent these. Dealing correctly with the national question has often been the Achilles’ heel of Marxist movements, as the evolving and sometimes confused statements by Marx & Engels on the topic have been of little help, and later ‘authorities’ have disagreed so virulently on the subject. Moreover, nationalism takes many forms and guises and this has added to the inability of many Marxists to conceive of the issue properly. Yet there is no doubt that it is a question of real significance. Although some movements and parties have attempted to deal with it by simply setting the question aside, hoping it would go away, it is clear from the history of the last century that nationalist movements have been immensely powerful in determining both the success and failure of socialist politics. From the failure of internationalism at the outbreak of the First World War to the successes of socialist anti-colonial movements in harnessing nationalist ideas, there is no evading the importance of the issue. Using the CPGB’s statement as an example, we can elucidate some of the relevant considerations and show why the CPGB’s position on the Israel/Palestine conflict is the wrong one, although well-intentioned. Read the rest of this entry »
