No Historic Compromise with Imperialism
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
In the last three years a series of key liberation struggles have entered a phase of negotiations and even negotiated settlements - Palestine, South Africa, El Salvador and Ireland among others. These negotiations and peace deals have opened a widespread debate on the left internationally about whether this represents victory or defeat for the liberation forces, and even in some sections of the left about whether a new modus vivendi with imperialism is possible. Here PAUL CLARKE opens the discussion with a personal contribution to the debate.
Each situation has to be analysed individually, but it is hard to deny that a pattern is emerging. Sinn Fein in Ireland, for example, specifically refers to the peace processes in South Africa and Palestine as a model for what they are attempting. No analysis of specific peace deals is thus possible without reference to the overall balance of class forces internationally. Indeed this is precisely the context in which the leaderships of national liberation movements place their own strategy and tactics.
Imperialist victories
Since the late 1970s a tremendous international offensive of imperialism has been taking place, in response to the emergence of the long wave of economic crisis which became obvious to all during the 1974-5 economic recession.
This offensive combined a savage attack on the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, an attempt to restructure the global economy to the detriment of the working class and the oppressed, and the militarisation offensive under Reagan and Bush which targeted third world liberation struggles and the post-capitalist states.
The imperialist offensive threw the international working class movement and liberation struggles onto the defensive. And it succeeded, during the 1980s and early 1990s, in imposing some harsh defeats. But none of these victories for imperialism succeeded in stabilising its economy. World imperialism has a tremendous interest in trying to pacify 'unstable' sectors of the world in order to get out of its own crisis.
These processes can be illustrated in relation to the events in Central America and the Caribbean. The victory of the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979; the general offensive of the Salvadorean FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) in January 1980 and the emergence of the Maurice Bishop New Jewel movement government in Grenada posed immense dangers for imperialist stability in the region.
All of these countries are very small, but the political dynamic in the region, which included a revolutionary guerrilla struggle being waged in Guatemala, threatened to destabilise Latin America and the Caribbean.
The response of US imperialism was of course to unleash counter-revolutionary war: US advisors and military aid in El Salvador, the contra rebels in Nicaragua. These moves wrecked the Nicaraguan economy and fought the FMLN guerrillas to a standstill. There would be no easy repetition of the Cuban experience. The leaderships of both these revolutions were posed with immense new problems about how to continue the revolutionary process.
The outcome, as we now know, was the defeat of the Sandinistas by the UNO coalition in the 1990 elections and the peace deal negotiated in 1992 in El Salvador.
The international context facing such struggles was a very different one to that which had existed in the 1959-60 period when the Cuban revolution was won and a workers state consolidated. Then, for its own reasons, and within a general framework of 'peaceful coexistence', the Soviet leadership had been prepared to underwrite Cuba and to militarily defend it. By the 1980s, and especially with the advent of Gorbachev, Soviet aid to liberation movements was radically curtailed. The advice given to Nicaragua was not to follow the Cuban example and make a radical break with capitalism.
Even as late as the mid-1970s the Soviet leadership was prepared to act differently. In 1976, when southern Angola was invaded by South African troops, Russian pilots flew thousands of Cuban troops and Russian military advisors to the country to drive the South Africans out. The US, traumatised by the recent defeat in Vietnam, dared not intervene.
But the militarisation offensive of Reagan and the rise of perestroika radically changed the international context in which such struggles were fought.
South Africa and Palestine do not however fit easily into such a picture of the worsening international balance of forces for liberation movements. The mid-1980s township insurgency in South Africa, and the Intifadah in Palestine in the late 1980s, threw reaction in both regions onto the defensive.
For both the apartheid regime and the Israeli leadership, a peace deal became urgent if the conditions for capitalist stability were to be maintained. In particular, the recession in the South African economy and the impatience of foreign investors represented an immense pressure on Pretoria to do a deal. And under Bush, Israel's Washington benefactor became increasingly politically embarrassed by perpetual crisis in a part of the world which it regards as crucial to its strategic interests.
Nonetheless, in both these arenas the liberation movements had taken a heavy toll in terms of repression and were themselves faced with great problems about how to continue the struggle.
Negotiations & peace deals
Before examining specific negotiations and peace deals under way, it is important to consider some of the general principles which guide revolutionaries in such situations.
There is nothing unprincipled about negotiations or peace deals as such. No trade unionist who refused to engage in negotiations with the bosses would be taken in the least bit seriously; but of course no trade unionist who agreed to disband the union in exchange for ending a strike would be taken seriously either.
This general point can be illustrated for example by reference to the 1972-3 Paris peace talks between the Vietnamese leadership and the United States.
Sectarian forces denounced these peace talks as a 'sell-out'. This turned out to be absurd when just two years later the Vietnamese army marched into Saigon.
In fact, the peace talks were about creating a face-saving formula to enable the United States to withdraw the vast majority of its from the country. Whatever formal concessions were made by the Vietnamese Communist Party to achieve this objective, a vital one for eventual victory, the peace deal did not amount to surrender. The crucial thing was that the Vietnamese insurgent forces kept their weapons, did not disband their forces, but held back the struggle for a short period to enable the Americans to withdraw and 'keep face'. Far from being a 'sell-out', the withdrawal of US forces put the seal on a military defeat that the US had suffered.
Indeed, every victorious liberation struggle has ended with negotiations. It is not the fact of negotiations but the real content of what is agreed that matters.
Neither is it wrong to make compromises if these are necessary to achieve the main goal. For example, the Evian agreement which ended the Algerian war imposed harsh economic conditions on the incoming FLN government: a big price was paid for French withdrawal. With historical hindsight, it is difficult to be sure that a better deal could have been achieved.
Moreover, no national liberation struggle and no revolution, is guaranteed victory. Faced with insuperable obstacles to continuing armed struggle, a responsible leadership has to know when to retreat.
But in such cases, for the clarification of the masses and to create the basis for future struggle, it is important not to present defeats or setbacks as victories. It is one thing to declare that a certain phase of the struggle is over and can go no further - for example declaring an end to armed struggle. It is another thing to proclaim that this in itself amounts to 'victory' when everyone knows it does not. That is a prescription for undermining the revolutionary goals of the movement, demobilising the masses and demoralising the political cadres of the liberation movement.
The ending of armed struggle poses the question 'what next?'. It is one thing to end it to continue the struggle by other means. It is another thing to end it, as has happened in Colombia, and then for the former guerrillas to collapse into right-wing social democratic politics.
All negotiations with an enemy include bluff and deceit - on both sides. That is the art of negotiation. The 1973 Paris peace accords between the Vietnamese and the USA certainly included bluff and deceit from the Vietnamese: whether the US negotiators were aware of it is a moot point. So deals cannot be solely judged by their formal terms. The key question is what the revolutionary forces or liberation movements do in practice: but of course practice also involves what they say about them.
The classic case of a negotiated peace carried out by revolutionary forces was of course the Brest-Litovsk peace deal negotiated with the Germans by Trotsky, on behalf of the Soviet government. This deal involved huge concessions, including territorial concessions, by the Bolsheviks. It was characterised as robbery and an imperialist diktat by the Russian government. It was furiously attacked by the 'left' in the Bolsheviks, notably Bukharin, who demanded a continuation of 'revolutionary war' against Germany and argued it was betraying the German workers.
But Lenin and Trotsky insisted that allowing the Bolshevik government to collapse would be betraying the German workers. After a fierce faction fight, the peace deal was sanctioned by the Bolsheviks. But the Soviet government never made any concession on their revolutionary objectives.
On the contrary, they used the peace negotiations to carry out revolutionary propaganda, and Trotsky even distributed revolutionary leaflets to German troops at the negotiation site.
A new deal with imperialism?
The debate in the international left on imperialism goes way beyond these questions of negotiated peace and deals. It involves the whole strategic question of how to confront imperialism today. This debate is skewed by a massive collapse to the right, under the impact of the collapse of the Berlin wall, the defeat in Nicaragua and the Gulf war.
Social democratic currents in the Brazilian Workers Party and other sectors of the Latin American left, for example, theorise that it is possible to do a 'new deal' with imperialism which avoids semi-colonial subjugation. From this perspective, the end of the cold war and superpower rivalry has created conditions for a new 'third way' between utopian models of socialism or simply being the victims of imperialist exploitation.
This kind of theorisation underpinned the extraordinary declaration of the Salvadorean FMLN leader Jaoquin Villalobos that El Salvador 'cannot be considered a capitalist country'.
The idea that, freed from the conflict with the Soviet Union, American imperialism can be made to see that it is in its interests to adopt a benevolent attitude to the 'third world', is actually the height of utopianism. For the simple fact is that it is not in the interests of US capitalism, in a period of crisis, to extend largess to the third world.
This kind of theory replaces a materialist economic-political theory of imperialism with an idealist geo-political one: that at the heart of imperialism was the confrontation with the Soviet Union.
In fact the notion of a 'third way' for the third world had much more going for it in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, bourgeois nationalism in the third world was much stronger. It was possible for the ruling layers in some third world states (for example the oil exporting states) to negotiate a new arrangement with imperialism, which gave the indigenous ruling classes a greater share of imperialist super-profits. Naturally, the benefits of these new arrangements stayed largely in the pockets and Swiss banks accounts of domestic rulers. But the living standards in many third world countries did improve. Some more radical nationalist governments did develop the material infrastructure of their country with some benefits for the masses - although this was never a 'non-capitalist' model of development.
This relationship of forces has now totally collapsed, under the weight of the world economic crisis. A new third way is thus dead in the water.
This debate has great relevance, for example, to the discussion about what kind of measures should be implemented if the PT (Workers Party) should come to power in the 1994 elections in Brazil. Indeed this discussion concentrates the whole debate about the way forward against imperialism today.
The question of power
A revolutionary movement can only become the government party, or take part in government, with the perspective of a more-or-less rapid mobilisation of the masses to take power. This is not because of some doctrinaire imperative learned from textbooks or a line-by-line study of Lenin and Trotsky; neither is it because of an abstract sectarian model. It is because of the dynamics of the class struggle.
A revolutionary movement in the government signals alarm for the bourgeoisie and the mobilisation of counter-revolution to overthrow that government. It means a race between the mobilisation of revolution and the mobilisation of counter-revolution.
For revolution to win this race, a revolutionary government has to take immediate measures to answer the concrete material needs of the masses, and that means challenging the economic power of the bourgeoisie. It means acting in a way to deepen the self-organisation and mobilisation of the masses, including measures of workers control, and, for elementary self-defence of the masses and their social gains, arming the working class.
The precise timetable of socialisation of major industries is not the issue here. The Bolsheviks carried out their major nationalisations in 1918, far too 'early' in the opinion of Lenin, under the impact of working class mobilisations and seizures of bosses' property. The dynamic of the class struggle demanded it. For Lenin, it was either repression of the mass movement or going ahead with the nationalisations.
But he never hid the fact that he considered that the revolutionary forces had too little expertise to run industry themselves and a more gradual transition would have been preferable. In this case politics - the dynamics of the class struggle - overrode strictly 'economic' considerations.
To many, including in Latin America, this kind of discussion seems totally unrealistic in the concrete conditions of Brazil today. There are two arguments used for saying it is unrealistic: first, the international balance of class forces, second the state of domestic politics in that country. If either of these arguments were valid it would be necessary to say that it would be irresponsible for the Workers Party to take the government under such conditions. And it would be necessary to ask what kind of political profile and practice had enabled the PT to take the government when a real workers' government were not on the agenda.
In any case, the assumption of government by the PT in the most populous country of Latin America would profoundly modify the international relationship of forces. It would electrify Latin America and be an important element for the remobilisation of mass movements of the oppressed. Brazilian domestic politics would be totally re-cast.
A PT government would immediately be on trial: either it would progressively take measures in the interests fo the workers, or it would capitulate to imperialism and domestic reaction. If it did the former, it would face a tremendous campaign of destabilisation by imperialism and the domestic bourgeoisie. Its only answer would be the revolutionary mobilisation of the workers.
An historic compromise with the domestic ruling class is even less likely than a compromise with imperialism. Imperialism has had to tolerate post-capitalist states for a long period; the domestic ruling class will tolerate nothing which challenges its power and privileges.
An attempt at marginal reforms would totally discredit a PT government: it would be forced to administer the austerity dictated by the crisis of the world capitalist economy. Most likely in this case the forces involved in the PT would split into class struggle and class collaborationist components. But a split implies a sector of the mass movement going into opposition to 'their' government. A reformist solution would crash against the anti-capitalist dynamics of the mass movement.
A democratic stage?
Discussing in one category movements as diverse as the Central American revolutionary movements, the PLO, the ANC and Sinn Fein conceals important differences between them. The PLO is a bourgeois nationalist movement whose radical sectors have declined over 20 years. It has no goal of socialism, but simply that of a Palestinian homeland. The Salvadorean FMLN and the Sandinistas were very different, posing revolution and socialism as goals as well as 'national liberation' from imperialism. Sectors of the FMLN and FSLN made explicit reference to Marxism and even Leninism in a way that the leadership of the dominant Fateh wing of the PLO would never consider.
But for all these movements the question of a solution to democratic and national questions was posed centre-stage. In every country dominated by imperialism, national and democratic questions come to the fore. These include questions such as the creation of genuine national unity and independence, the solution of the land question, the dismantling of the old reactionary oligarchy to create political democracy and so on.
When posed in that way, the all round solution of national and democratic tasks requires a break from imperialism and local reaction. It is a revolutionary task. How could you solve the land question in El Salvador without crushing the local oligarchy which dominates the latifundia? And, obviously, crushing the oligarchy requires revolution - whatever term is used to describe it.
How can there be a real, lasting solution to the Palestinian national question without the defeat of imperialism's local agency - the Zionist state? And that requires a revolutionary mobilisation not only of the Palestinians, but of Arab and Jewish workers in the whole region.
There is no artificial dividing line between national and democratic questions and the 'social' question - the question of power. That is why Marxists reject the old Menshevik-Stalinist idea of two strictly divided 'stages' of the revolution in oppressed countries. But this should not be interpreted as implying the impossibility of national or democratic gains as part of the ongoing struggle.
For example, the post-second world war upsurge of the colonial revolution created a rash of newly independent states as the imperialist occupying powers withdrew. No one could deny that these were real gains for the national struggle. Marxists argued, however, that this process created semi-colonies - countries still dominated by imperialism. Moreover, while arguing that the democratic tasks remained unsolved, it would be foolish to deny that in some dependent countries, Brazil is an example, that there are democratic gains for the masses - ie real steps towards formal political democracy, however partial or fragile.
The inter-twining of democratic and revolutionary tasks was at the heart of Trotsky's theory of 'permanent revolution'.
The essence of that theory is not the idea that without socialist revolution real gains for the masses are impossible. It is the idea that securing and extending these gains requires a continuation of revolutionary struggle, otherwise they will go backwards. It is moreover the idea that partial gains in the national liberation struggle, for example the establishing of a formally independent state, crystallises a new relationship of class forces which itself involves exploitation of the masses and subordination to imperialism.
Take India. Who could deny that the driving out of the British was a victory? But then who could deny that this victory incarnated the rule of the domestic Indian bourgeoisie which cruelly exploits its own masses? Or that India was still dominated by imperialism?
Thus while rejecting the idea that there is an inseparable divide between 'democratic' and 'socialist' stages of anti-imperialist struggles, or that the solution of the democratic and national tasks can separated from the solution of the 'social' question, the question of working class power, Marxists should not fall into the trap of denying the possibility of partial democratic and national gains. These gains however re-cast the struggle in a different way: they do not conclude it.
Moreover, insofar as such partial victories are secured by negotiations and peace deals, there is an overwhelming criterion by which Marxists judge: what is the effect on the dynamic of the mass movement? Is it mobilising or de-mobilising? Does it enable the revolutionary or national liberation forces to regroup their strength for a new stage of the struggle, while securing partial gains? Or does it amount to calling off the struggle and conceding victory to reaction?
It is by these criteria that the current rash of peace negotiations has to be judged.
Fallout in Central America
In the last three weeks two leading members of the Salvadorean FMLN have been assassinated by the reactionary death squads which still exist. This is symbolic of the failed promises given to the insurgent forces which ended with the 1992 peace deal. Land reform has hardly begun. Former FMLN guerrillas have not been given the jobs promised. Murderers and torturers in the army have not been punished. The oligarchy is still in place.
It is true that the FMLN leaders faced an impasse of the military struggle when the peace deal was concluded. The masses were war weary and demanded peace; the guerrilla war had been fought into the ground by the military aid provided by the US. A transition to a different form of struggle - one based on the neglected mass organisations, especially in the towns - was on the agenda.
But the peace deal itself, and the reception given to it in sectors of the left internationally, mystified the process underway and gave crucial concessions to reaction which are unacceptable from a revolutionary standpoint.
In particular, the decision to integrate sectors of the FMLN fighters into the national army was profoundly wrong. This either hands over insurgent fighters to be used by the class enemy, or submits these same fighters to the tyranny of bourgeois military discipline.
The issue here is not armed struggle versus other forms of struggle: the issue is the class character of the state and the political independence of the popular masses under the leadership of the working class.
Typical of the response of the left internationally was the widely read, but now defunct US Guardian 'non-aligned' left magazine which characterised the deal as a 'negotiated victory'. Even if it were necessary to accept everything in the peace deal, then socialists would have to characterise it as a diktat imposed by imperialism and reaction, not a 'victory'.
In order to portray this as a victory it is necessary to radically redefine the goals of the movement to the right.
In Nicaragua the 1990 electoral defeat of the FSLN unleashed a sharp process of political differentiation in the Sandinistas. Theories of 'co-government from below' created an impossible tension - between those who wanted to defend the gains of the revolution, particularly the mass organisations, 'from below'; and those who put the stress on 'co-government'. The result has been the growing social democratisation of the right wing of the FSLN, in particular those grouped around Sergio Rodriguez. These people openly defend a market economy and a close, albeit 'new', relationship with the United States.
What we are seeing in the Central America is a situation where defeats are leading to a terrible political collapse in left wing forces.
South Africa & Palestine
The mid-1980s upsurge in South Africa was the culmination of a twenty-year struggle of the black masses which made old-style apartheid unworkable. The National Party leadership under de Klerk has moved radically to destroy this old system. Parliamentary democracy on a universal franchise is being introduced. If this process is carried through successfully against the resistance of the right wing and Inkatha, however, the central core of the system - racial capitalism - will survive intact. When ANC leaders say that expectations among the masses are 'too high', they understand the reality of the situation. Formal democracy will not meet the needs of the masses for jobs and houses and the township system will remain intact.
The debate between revolutionary and non-revolutionary sectors of the mass movement revolves around the goals of the struggle. From this perspective there is nothing necessarily unprincipled in negotiations with the government to introduce formal democracy. The real debate is not negotiations versus non-negotiations: the crucial issue is whether or not to make an 'historic compromise' with racial capitalism - ie to call off the struggle. It is this question which has led sectors of the popular movement to refuse to participate in these negotations.
The peace deal underway in Palestine poses parallel problems. Rabin's Labour Party government has produced minimal concessions not to dismantle the national oppression of the Palestinian people, but to guarantee it. The object of the exercise is to demobilise and call off the Intifadah struggle. Even if the deal is imposed, there is no question of evicting the Zionist settlers who have taken 60 per cent of the land in the West Bank. There is no question of bringing back the majority of Palestinians who live outside Gaza and the West Bank. There is no question of any change in the status of the Palestinians as subordinate to the Zionist state.
Once again the issue is not for or against negotiations; the issue is whether or not to make an 'historic compromise' and call off the struggle.
New Era of Democracy?
A central mystification of the post-Gulf war 'new world order' is that we are in an epoch of the peaceful resolution of disputes to bring about 'democracy'. The 'forward march of democracy' thesis is based on the idea that democracy is making ten-league strides in eastern Europe and in the so-called 'third world', all this propelled by the good offices of the United States.
It is true that the US sees stability being ensured in some countries by toppling old dictatorships - for example in Zaire, Malawi and Haiti. But this is entirely contingent and tactical. It does not apply, for example, to the army dictatorship in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country; nor does it apply for the people of Kurdistan, whose democratic right to have their own state is fiercely opposed by the US. Dozens of similar examples could be given.
We are not living in a new hey-day of bourgeois democracy, we are living in a world of deepening crisis, of militarisation, of growing racism and xenophobia and widespread attacks on democracy and democratic rights. And we are living in a world where the harshness of the international class struggle is deepening, precisely because of the depth of the economic crisis of world imperialism, now in the grips of its longest-ever economic crisis.
The tactics of the imperialist rulers in this period are varied and experimental: they are in uncharted waters. Every form of capitalist rule combines repression and concessions with an ideology designed to secure the 'consent' of the oppressed. 'Democracy' and the 'peaceful resolution of conflicts' are key weapons in the ideological arsenal of imperialism because they correspond to key needs and demands of ordinary people - freedom and peace. Socialists of course are partisans of peace and democracy. It is precisely for this reason that we are opposed to any historic compromise with imperialism which is inimical to both.
But the assertion of this point in propaganda is inadequate. The slogans of peace and democracy have to be appropriated by the working class and the oppressed in action. And this involves fundamental ideas about forms of struggle and alliances.
Permanent revolution
The present wave of negotiations and peace deals involves not just profound strategic debates, but a shake-up and recomposition of the political forces involved. In each situation a right and a left wing will emerge, a conflict between class struggle and class compromise.
This represents, in a certain way, the political wearing out of a series of leaderships of liberation struggles, not only because of defeats but also because of the inherent limitations in their strategies, goals and alliances.
For example, no analysis of the Middle East peace process can be abstracted from an analysis of the Arafat Fateh leadership, which has always been a bourgeois nationalist movement, which has always been authoritarian and bureaucratic and which has never had a strategy based on the self-organisation and mobilisation of Arab workers in the whole region.
In today's conditions of economic crisis and imperialist offensive, the political space for a series of former strategies and alliances is eroding - for example strategies based on alliance with the Soviet Union or support from radical bourgeois nationalist regimes have largely collapsed.
For revolutionary and liberation forces in many parts of the world this means a profound strategic reassessment. A good example is the process now underway in the different wings of the Philippines Communist Party.
Marxists have every interest in intervening in these debates and addressing those forces who reject an historic compromise with imperialism. Every such discussion involves concrete elements based on the specificities of particular struggles.
But there are common guidelines, which can only be briefly outlined here.
The first is the understanding that the struggle for democracy is an anti-capitalist struggle. This directly implies the impossibility of a long-term strategic alliance with the 'national' bourgeoisie or a 'stagist' conception of revolution. It also implies the necessity for the class independence and self-organisation of the working class and oppressed.
The second crucial issue is the democratic self-organisation of the masses in struggle, and thus a rejection of bureaucratic militarism.
Armed struggle, or armed self-defence, is a frequently necessary tactic in anti-imperialist struggle. But the effects of fetishisation of armed struggle, or its elevation outside any democratic control, are always corrosive and result in bureaucratic degeneration and substitutionism.
Rejection of an alliance with the 'national' bourgeoisie implies an alliance centred on the working class, uniting the oppressed. That cannot be done without the self-organisation, and championing, of struggles of women; and also by victims of national and racial oppression.
But that in itself requires democratic forms of struggle and mass organisation, not bureaucratic or militarist ones.
International solidarity
When those fighting imperialism go down to defeats, this represents not something 'local', but a crystallisation of elements of the world situation. The key force responsible for defeats is that which has made the biggest compromise with imperialism - the labour bureaucracy in the advanced capitalist countries.
Imperialism's world-wide offensive is facilitated by every capitulation which they make. It is normal for socialists to have their own strategic views about the international struggle. But such views are entirely worthless without the fight against capitalism and the bureaucracy at home and the struggle to rebuild movements of international solidarity.