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Title: Third Worldism or Socialism
Author: Solidarity
Date: April 1971
Language: en
Topics: Maoism, socialism, Third World, third world ideology, Sri Lanka, national liberation, Trotskyism
Source: Retrieved on 6th December 2020 from https://libcom.org/library/third-worldism-or-socialism-solidarity-group

Solidarity

Third Worldism or Socialism

Various theories have been put forward as to why the left, in advanced

capitalist countries, should support national liberation struggles.

The Communist parties, for example, support such struggles because

nationalism in the Third World seems to collide with the interests of

the U.S. National liberation is thus thought to ‘weaken’ U.S.

imperialism. They hope that Russia, which supports these movements

ideologically and/or materially, will benefit.

The Maoists follow a similar logic, though after Nixon’s visit to China,

one suspects that Mao’s ‘anti-imperialist’ zeal may be directed only

against the Russian bureaucracy. Western Castroites and ‘progressive’

liberals of all hues support such movements out of a sense of ‘moral

duty’.

For these people, national liberation is a universal blessing which

should be given to — or taken by — the ‘leaders’ of the Third World. One

should add perhaps that these noble sentiments don’t stop these same

Castroites and liberals from supporting capitalist ‘leaders’ like

McGovern in the U.S. — or calling for a return of the Labour Party in

the next British elections.

Trotskyist support for national liberation is a bit more sophisticated.

It consists of grand (and banal) historical schemes. First, the national

liberation movements should be supported ~ — this is the communal bed of

all Trotskyists (Mandel, Cliff, Healy, Ah, etc.). Whether the support is

‘critical’ or ‘uncritical’ is another matter — and here Trotskyists part

company and proceed to their respective rooms.

But, someone may ask, why the support in the first place? The answer

provided is an example of historical scheme -making: U.S. imperialism

will be weakened’ by such movements. Such a ‘weakening’ will impart

another ‘transitional’ twitch to the ‘death agony of capitalism’ which

in turn will foster other twitches ... and so on. Like all

mystifications, Trotskyism fails to give a coherent answer as to why,

especially since 1945, imperialism has been able to grant political

independence to many ex -colonial countries, a possibility that Lenin

and Trotsky explicitly denied.

The theory of ‘permanent revolution’ blinds Trotskyists to the realities

of national liberation. They still consider that the bourgeoisie, in the

Third World, is incapable of fighting for ‘national independence’. But

they fail to grasp that the permanent revolution’, in Russia for

example, both began and ended as a bourgeois revolution (in spite of the

proletariat’s alleged ‘leading role’ in the unfolding of the process).

In Russia, the bourgeois stage (i.e. both February and October) very

concretely ensured that there would be no future ‘socialist’ unfolding.

The ‘permanent ~ carried out by the Bolsheviks only brought about a

state-capitalist reorganisation of the economy and social life. The

‘solving’ of the bourgeois tasks will destroy, as it did in Russia, all

the autonomous rank and file organisations of the working class

(councils and factory committees). They become subordinates of the

state, which is the organism par excellence for carrying out ‘belated’

bourgeois revolutions.

Any bureaucracy, given favourable conditions, can ‘solve’ the bourgeois

tasks in the Third World. The ‘permanent revolution’ doesn’t need the

working class, except as cannon fodder. The accumulation of capital,

through expanded reproduction, is the basis of its bureaucratic power

and whether the bureaucracy accumulates successfully or not is besides

the point. In any case there has never been a ‘pure’ capitalist country

which has ‘solved’ all its bourgeois tasks. Even Britain still has a

queen.

Trotskyist support for movements of national liberation, however ~ is

thus support for another social group ... and not for the working class

or peasantry. Trotskyists present their support for the leadership of

various national liberation movements as a ‘tactic’ which will allow

them to gain control of the movement. In their mythology, the

leaderships of such movements are incapable of carrying out the struggle

for national independence. As we have seen, this is nonsense, pure and

simple: the Chinese, Cuban or North Vietnamese bureaucracies went ‘all

the way’ in expropriating western capitalists without an ounce of help

from any of the Fourth Internationals. They also mercilessly slaughtered

or imprisoned all Trotskyists in those countries. Insofar as Trotskyists

babble about a ‘democratisation’ of such regimes through ‘political

revolution’, they are the reformists of state capital.

Lenin’s theory of imperialism, written in 1916, is usually quoted by all

the trad left groups to sanction their support for national liberation.

The theory holds that a Western ‘labour aristocracy’ has been created

out of super-profits squeezed out of colonial countries. This is a

bourgeois concept because it places national factors above class

analysis. Concepts such as ‘proletarian nations’ versus ‘imperialist

nations’ flow naturally from such an analysis — they were in fact

peddled in the 30’s by fascists. Nowadays, Gunder Frank with his theory

of ‘the development of under-development’ and Emmanuel’s ‘unequal

exchange’ provide fresh examples of the bourgeois-leninist attitudes so

deeply entrenched in the left.

Nationalism and class struggle are irreconcilably opposed. A nation is a

bourgeois reality: it is capitalism with all its exploitation and

alienation, parcelled out in a single geographical unit. It doesn’t

matter whether the nation is ‘small, ‘colonial’, ‘semi-colonial’ or

‘non-imperialist’. All nationalisms are reactionary because they

inevitably clash with class consciousness and poison it with chauvinism

and racialism.

The nationalist sentiment in the advanced countries is reactionary, not

only because it facilitates the plundering of the colonial workers and

peasants, but because it is a form of false consciousness which

ideologically binds the western workers to ‘their’ ruling classes.

Similarly, the ‘nationalism of the oppressed’ is reactionary because it

facilitates class collaboration between the colonial workers and

peasants and the ‘anti-imperialist’ nascent bureaucracies.

The Trotskyist myth that a successful national liberation will later

unleash ‘the real class struggle’ is false, as the examples of Ethiopia,

North Vietnam, Mexico under Cardenas, and Brazil under Vargas bear out.

It is a rationalisation for the defence of new ruling classes in the

process of formation. As historical evidence shows, those new elites

usually become appendages of the already existing state capitalist bloc.

To this degree Trotskyism is a variety of vicarious social patriotism.

Any intelligent person can see that the fate of the advanced capitalist

countries doesn’t depend on the Third World’s ability to cut off

supplies of raw materials. The Third World’s ruling classes will never

get together to plan or practice an effective boycott on a world scale.

Furthermore, the U.S. and Western Europe are becoming less dependent

upon many of the products of the Third World. Add to that the falling

prices for raw materials in the world market, the protectionist barriers

in the advanced countries, and one gets a picture of imminent barbarism

in the Third World. Its bargaining position vis-Ã -vis the West weakens

every year. Third Worldists should seriously ponder about these

tendencies.

National liberation struggles can be seen as attempts of sections of the

native ruling classes to appropriate a larger share of the value

generated in ‘their own’ countries. Imperialist exploitation indeed

generates this consciousness in the more ‘educated’ strata of the Third

World. These strata tend to consider themselves as the repository of

‘the Fatherland’. Needless to say, a worsening in the trade terms for

raw materials in the Third World aggravates this situation. The growth

of many national liberation movements in the past 25 years is a

manifestation of the imbalance existing in the world market. The Third

World countries plunge deeper into decay, famine, stagnation, political

corruption and nepotism. National rebellion may them be channelled into

active politics by discontented army officers, priests, petty

bureaucrats, intellectuals and (of course) angry children of the

bourgeois and landlord classes. The grievances of the workers and

peasants are real too (the above mentioned worthies largely account for

them), but the nationalist leaders can still hope to capture the

imagination of the exploited. If this happens one sees the beginnings of

a national liberation movement based explicitly on class collaboration,

with all the reactionary implications this has for the exploited. They

emerge out of the frying pan of foreign exploitation into the fire of

national despotism.

For such regimes to survive against the open hostility of the Western

capitalist bloc, or its insidious world market mechanisms, it is

imperative that the regimes become dependent on the state capitalist

bloc (Russia and/or China). If this is not possible, an extremely

precarious balancing act (‘neutralism’) becomes the dominant fact of

life (as shown by Egypt or India). Without massive assistance from the

state capitalist bloc it is impossible for any such regime even modestly

to begin primitive accumulation. The majority of the Third World

countries don’t have the resources to start such a programme on their

own. And even if they did, it could only be done (as any accumulation)

through intensified exploitation. Higher consumption levels and welfare

programmes may temporarily be established by these regimes. Those who

can see no further than economistic steps to ‘socialism’ usually quote

this to explain why Castro is ‘better’ than Batista or Mao ‘preferable’

to Chiang. Without dealing with the reactionary implications of such

reformism at a national level, let’s see how the argument works

internationally. Castro supported the 1968 Russian invasion of

Czechoslovakia, Ho Chi Minh defended the Russian crushing of the

Hungarian revolution of 1956 and Mao supported Yahya Khan’s genocide in

Bangladesh. Thus what is ‘gained’ at home is lost abroad, in the form of

heaps of corpses and massive political demoralisation. Does the trad

left keep account of such a reactionary balance sheet?

The ideological repercussions of such inter-national events are

difficult to gauge, but are no doubt reactionary. The further

bureaucratisation of the Third World merely reinforces working class

prejudices and apathy in the advanced countries. The responses of the

imperialist bourgeoisies will be to mount further protectionist barriers

and, at the same time, to increase the profitable arms trade. The

bureaucratisation of the Third World will enhance the prestige — both

ideological and diplomatic — of the state capitalist bloc, in spite of

the latter’s inter-imperialist rivalries. This process will be

accompanied by an increasing demoralisation and cynicism in the circles

of the trad left. This is already patently clear today: in many demos

covering international affairs, portraits of Ho, Mao, Castro, Guevara

and a host of other scoundrels (Hoxha, Kim-Il Sung, etc.) are obscenely

paraded. Such cults express the ideological debasement of our times, and

it’s no accident that working people feel only contempt or indifference

towards the trad left and the heroes it worships.

Another equally important dimension of national liberation struggles is

ignored by the trad left. It is the question of working class and

peasant democracy and of the revolutionary self-activity of the masses.

National liberation will always repress such autonomous working class

activities because the bourgeois goals of national liberation (i.e.

nation-building) are opposed — in class terms — to the historical

interests of working people (i.e. the liberation of humanity). It thus

becomes clear why all the leaderships of national liberation movements

attempt to control, from above, any initiative of the masses, and

prescribe for them only the politics of nationalism. To do this it is

necessary actually to terrorise the working masses (Ben Bella’s FLN

massacred dozens of Algerian workers during the Algerian war of

‘independence’, Ho’s Viet Mihn helped the British and French to crush

the Saigon Workers’ Commune of 1945 and later assassinated dozens of

Trotskyists; Guevara publicly attacked the Cuban Trotskyists and

Castro’s attacks against them in 1966 sealed their fate even as

reformists of the Castroite ruling class.) The state capitalist elites,

even before they take power, must attempt to eradicate any independent

voice of opposition, and their complete rule wipes out any possibility

of even meagre measures of bourgeois democracy.

Support for any national liberation struggle is always reactionary. It

usually consists of:

1) support for a client state of the state capitalist bloc, which

amounts to defending state capitalist imperialism against Western

imperialism;

2) support for despotic regimes which destroy, together with classic

bourgeois property forms, any independent organisation of the working

class and peasantry.

It is often claimed that a distinction must be made between the

reactionary and bureaucratic leaderships of national liberation

struggles and the masses of people involved in such struggles. Their

objectives are said to be different. We believe this distinction seldom

to be valid. The foreigner is usually hated as a foreigner, not as an

exploiter, because he belongs to a different culture, not because he

extracts surplus value. This prepares the way for local exploiters to

step into the shoes of the foreign ones. Moreover the fact that a given

programme (say, national independence) has considerable support does not

endow it with any automatic validity. Mass ‘consciousness’ can be mass

‘false-consciousness’. Millions of French, British, Russian and German

workers slaughtered one another in the first World War, having

internalised the ‘national’ ideas of their respective rulers. Hitler

secured 6 million votes in September 1930. The leaders of national

struggles can only come to power because there is a nationalist feeling

which they can successfully manipulate. The bonds of ‘national unity’

will then prove stronger than the more important but ‘divisive’ class

struggle.

In practice all that revolutionaries can currently do in the Third World

is to avoid compromise on the cardinal issue: namely that working people

have no ‘fatherland’ and that for socialists the main enemy is always in

one’s own country. Revolutionaries can strive to create autonomous

organs of struggle (peasants or village committees or workers’ groups)

with the aim of resisting exploitation, whatever the colour of the

exploiter’s skin. They can warn systematically of the dangers and

repression these bodies will face from foreign imperialism and from the

nascent bourgeoisie or bureaucracy. They can point out that their own

societies are divided into classes and that these classes have mutually

incompatible interests, just like the classes in the ‘foreign’ societies

that oppress them.

Although difficult this is essential and the only road that doesn’t

involve mystifying oneself and one’s own supporters. In South Vietnam,

for instance, the conflict of interests between rulers and ruled is

obvious enough. No great effort is needed to see the gulf separating the

well-fed corrupt politicians and generals in Saigon and the women,

riddled with hookworms, breaking their backs in the paddy fields. But in

the North? Is there really a community of interests between the Haiphong

docker or cement worker and the political commissar in Hanoi? Between

those who initiated and those who suppressed the peasant uprising of

November 1956? Between those who led and those who put down the Saigon

Commune of 1945? Between Ta Tu Thau and his followers and those who

butchered them? To even demand that such issues be discussed will

endanger the revolutionaries. Could there be better proof of the

viciously anti-working class nature of these regimes?

Some ‘Third World’ countries are so backward or isolated, and have such

an insignificant working class, that it is difficult to see how such a

class could even begin to struggle independently. The problem however is

not a national one. The solution to the misery and alienation of these

workers and peasants is in the international development of the

proletarian revolution. The revolution in the advanced capitalist

countries will decisively tip the scales the world over. The success of

such a revolution, even in its earliest stages, will liberate enormous

technological resources to help these isolated, weak and exploited

groups.

Owing to the different social, political and economic weights of various

Third World countries, proletarian revolutions or revolutionary workers’

councils in these countries will have varying repercussions on their

neighbours, and on the advanced countries. The effects will, however, be

more political than economic. A workers and peasants’ take-over in Chile

(which will irretrievably smash the Allende state) will not damage the

American economy. But such an explosive event might provide a

revolutionary example for the workers of Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, etc.,

and help the American workers to gain a revolutionary consciousness. The

same could be said of Nigeria, India or even Ceylon in their respective

contexts. He who rejects this perspective as ‘improbable’ or

‘impossible’ abandons any revolutionary perspective for the workers of

what is loosely called ‘the Third World’. In fact there are everywhere

only ‘two worlds’: that of the exploiter and that of the exploited. To

this degree, the international working class is one class, with the same

historical objective.

We leave it to the trad left to support the imperialism of its choice,

be it Russian, or Chinese, or any new shining light in the Stalinist

cosmos. For us, the main enemy will always be at home, and the only way

we can help ourselves and the workers and peasants of the Third World is

to help make a socialist revolution here. But it would be tantamount to

scabbing if at any moment we supported reactionary movements which

exploit — no matter in how small a way — a section of the international

working class.