Against the Current

The concept of solidarity - along with democracy - must be at the heart of any consistent formulation of socialism and the act of solidarity has a centrality to the practice of working class partisans. Two recent events and the response of the labour movement to them demonstrate just what this means. The sackings of both Rolls Royce Shop Steward Jerry Hicks and the Gate Gourmet workers have been a battle cry to the labour movement. They have received support from numerous individual trade unionists, branches and national unions. Countless people have visited the picket at Gate Gourmet and the demonstration I attended in Bristol to support Rolls Royce workers had numerous banners from a range of unions. These struggles receive generous support from fellow trade unionists and in many towns or cities you will find people arguing for donations, messages of support and other acts of solidarity who belong to one socialist group or another. Solidarity with other trade unionists is bread and butter for the movement and finds its best advocates amongst the revolutionary left … or does it?

However energetically the largest of the socialist groupings builds support for unions in this country, the coverage their press gives to struggles across Europe and the Americas or the spotlight they turn on selected other parts of the world, there is a glaring inconsistency in the solidarity they show. Why do the struggles of the insurgent trade union and socialist movements in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and many other places receive no mention in the Left press (with notable exceptions)? Why when these struggles are brought up in anti-war and other ‘progressive’ meetings are they treated with contempt? Why would the same people who’d argue for all-out action in support of British trade union struggles baulk at similar support for foreign comrades in extreme difficulty? It can’t be just a simple lack of consistency; there is a political problem.

This problem has its origins in a mixture of a mechanical understanding of what is termed ‘revolutionary defeatism’* and the race for short-term political gain (opportunism). The struggles of Hicks and the Gate Gourmet workers are not contentious because they are directed towards the business/ruling class of the UK/West. It’s easy for the enemy to be identified and for support against them to be developed amongst a wide layer of workers - and this is exactly what socialists should seek to do. This sort of work is fundamental to us. The struggles of Iraqi, Iranian and Pakistani workers are ‘difficult’ because there is an added ingredient to the class-struggle mixture. This little (or not-so-little) bit extra is imperialism. Iraq is occupied by foreign imperialist powers and Iran and to a lesser extent Pakistan are threatened by these same powers. For some on the Left, this means that the character of the ruling or would-be ruling classes in these countries is ignored, that the attempts by workers to organise are ignored and that all attention is focussed on campaigning to ‘Stop the War/Occupation’.

Stopping wars and ending occupations form part of the socialist outlook but to campaign on these issues without reference to an existing internal opposition condemns the majority in these countries to continued oppression. To maintain one form of oppression over another is not in the socialist ABC – we seek to liberate. This ‘ambivalence’ stems from the idea that ‘the main enemy is at home’. No matter what’s going on elsewhere in the world, we should concentrate on what ‘our’ ruling class is up to. If ‘our’ ruling class declares war on another then we should wish defeat for ‘our’ side. In other words we give no thought to how awful the foreign ‘foe’ may be and suspend our belief that they should be removed. So we oppose the war on Iraq but forget what we’ve been saying about Saddam for twenty years, we ignore the reactionary nature of the ‘resistance’ and in effect call for their victory (‘end the occupation’ full stop) - we take no notice whatsoever of the democratic forces fighting for real liberation. Confusing the issue with reference to the actually existing conditions in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan makes it all the more difficult to develop the all important political projects at home.

“If you copy from one person it’s plagiarism, copy from two then it’s research and copy from three – you’ve got genius”**. The Left is bereft of any genius but some research seems to have been done because in a way we’ve been here before. Once upon a time there was a country that claimed to be ‘socialist’ and saw fit to manipulate or ignore world politics to protect its own interests. With rather less to lose the contemporary Left has reinvented itself in a Stalinist mould just as sections of the ‘Trotskyist’ movement accommodated themselves post-WWII. The interests of the working-class on large sections of the planet are either ignored because to address them would be a diversion from the ‘anti-imperialist’ project or because a fully developed critique of the regimes in these places would be less than flattering to certain ideologies the Left seeks to align with for ‘political advantage’.

Rather than looking reality squarely in the eyes in order to organise and communicate to an opposition, much of the Left has developed a political-autism whereby eye contact is an impossibility and the mode of communication is repetitive and dogmatic. It’s possible, even essential, to maintain the old routine but to learn anything new is too painful.

Solidarity can have no borders and a socialist perspective demands analyses and a course of action independent from tired or misconceived formulations. Yes oppose war - but not in isolation from the existing dynamic in the countries in question. Yes call for an end to the occupation - but consider by what means this should come about. To fail to take this course is to devalue the acts of solidarity shown to Hicks and the Gate Gourmet workers.


*see www.marixts.org/archive/draper and go to ‘The myth of Lenin’s ‘Revolutionary Defeatism’ for more on this.
** attributed to Tony Cliff