Why won’t you AWL come out and say it?
This is a bit of a polemical post addressed primarily to those in the AWL who support the “majority” position on Iraq backed by the group’s National Committee. This might initially look to the general public like a topic about as interesting as fly-fishing, but I think it is a worthwhile debate as I hope you will see.
There is currently a debate within the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty about the group’s position on the occupation of Iraq. Both of the two main positions lay claim to the legacy of third camp politics, and both also claim therefore to be advancing the cause of independent working class political representation.
The majority position (as advanced by the group’s Executive Committee and passed by its National Committee) is to call for the end of the occupation but essentially to keep specific slogans around troop withdrawal loose and vague, and to concentrate instead upon work in other areas such as trade union solidarity work. There is much to commend in the solidarity work that the AWL does, particularly in tandem with the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq and associated groups. Furthermore, this stance is tempting for those simply nauseated by watching other left-wing groups mouthing slogans of solidarity with reactionaries and refusing to brook any criticisim of dictatorial regimes which happen to oppose the USA.
The minority position, pushed for in particular by David Broder and Daniel Randall (David has an article outlining this in the latest edition of the AWL’s paper, Solidarity) is similar with regards to trade union solidarity work, but calls for a sharpening up of the slogans with regard to the troop presence. It is the case that the WCPI and the majority of progressive Iraqi groups that I have seen (by which I mean those who oppose both the sectarian militias within the current Iraqi government and those outside of it) call simultaneously for opposition to the Islamist groups operating in the Arab regions of Iraq, and also for troop withdrawal. This, along with the call for strengthening the labour movement in Iraq upon which both sides agree, is the essence of the minority position. They want “Troops Out Now” to be used as a specific focal slogan by the AWL.
The debate itself is surprisingly heated, given that superficially one would think it is essentially about the tagging on (or not) of three words to the AWL’s current position. However the reality is that the debate runs deeper than that. The majority seems particularly concerned to defeat a troops-out position, as much if not more so than it is concerned to flesh out its own stance. Two particularly important reasons are offered for this, the first being that if there was an immediate withdrawal of troops there would be a complete take-over by sectarian militias and probably a bloodbath which would crush the labour movement entirely. The second is a more esoteric concern stemming from the AWL’s re-think of its politics as a tendency in the 1980s/1990s. These two points I think go to the core of the issue.
I do not propose here to answer the points levelled against the minority position; its advocates are more than capable of doing that themselves. But a question has struck me which I have to ask of the AWL majority. Given the refusal to take a specific position – of any sort – on troop withdrawal, the clear underlying belief that troop withdrawal would worsen the situation in Iraq, and the clear concerns about what a “troops out” position would mean in relation to the AWL’s core politics, why do you not follow the logic of your position and say that you believe the troops should remain? You plainly believe that they are at least not worsening the situation, and that they provide at least some protection for the Iraqi workers’ organisations that are struggling to get off the ground. You also plainly do oppose withdrawing them.
It seems to me that a “no confidence in US/UK forces, troops to remain until the labour movement can survive” position is more or less what most AWL majority members actually think should happen in Iraq, whether they join up the dots or not. It’s not a position that I would agree with, but it’s certainly one of which they could mount a defence if they so chose. It would also be more honest than the current fudge which is held together only by increasingly shrill arguments as to why the AWL should not say something else, ie “Troops out”.
So come on comrades, come out and say it: you did not support the invasion of Iraq, but you now believe that the troops should remain until the country is stabilised. I’ll debate you furiously and so will others, but at least you’ll be acting in a manner that’s true to yourselves by being candid about what you really believe.
Clive said,
March 16, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I write here as someone who has supported and advocated the ‘majority’ position in the past, but I am speaking now only for myself. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what position to take.
But I cannot accept the logic of VP’s argument. If you say you don’t want to raise a particular slogan, and even if you argue vehemently against other people using that slogan, it simply does not follow that you are therefore, positively, of something else.
If I say I am against the slogan ‘general strike now!’ or ‘revolution now!’ or some such, I mean I am against that slogan. It might not simply be, incidentally, that I think it’s silly and has no bearing on reality. It might be I think that to run around advocating it is positively harmful, and would have bad consequences for those advocating it, and those they are seeking to influence.
It would not follow that I supported the government, or whatever, against which the hypothetical general strike or revolution was to be organised, or that I thought they were doing, for now, a good job, or any other such thing.
I am not making a direct comparison politically with ‘troops out’, just the logic of the argument.
The fact that generally sympathetic and intelligent people like VP seem unable to grasp this point, incidentally, is quite a strong argument, in my view, for the AWL to abandon its position. There comes a point where if almost nobody seems to get what you are saying, it’s probably not because they’re all too dim.
voltaires_priest said,
March 16, 2008 at 2:52 pm
It’s not just that Clive, it’s also the sub-texts about troop withdrawal being a bad thing, which is another statement you’ll frequently hear/read. I really do believe that many (though not all, and certainly not including yourself) of those who support the majority on this, actually do favour the troops remaining in because they believe that they are – whether inadvertently or not – offering some protection to the labour movement and preventing an even worse scenario than the one which we see at present. That’s an arguable position, albeit not one that I would take. I just wish they would come out and say so if that’s what they believe.
johnnyrook said,
March 16, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Supporting the presence of troops in Iraq so that they can provide “protection for the Iraqi workers’ organisations” is just left cover support for the occupation. US/UK troops do no such thing, will never do any such thing and are enemies of those very organisations.
It’s a semi-racist bourgeois idea that the majority of Iraqis can not either throw off the shackles of the US occupation, the hangers on that occupation or indeed groups that may oppose the occupation.
So there.
voltairespriest said,
March 16, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Actually, it’s wrong, patronising and misconceived. It’s not “racist”.
You really need to leave the SWP. It’d expand your vocabulary.
So there.
modernityblog said,
March 16, 2008 at 7:15 pm
interesting point, Johnny
did the SWP support the “resistance” when it attacked public utilities, gas and electric, etc in Iraq or just when they bomb the UN compound and killed the civilian workers??
you shouldn’t try to take the moral high ground, it doesn’t suit your politics!
voltairespriest said,
March 16, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Not Johnny’s fault I suspect. He strikes me as a good bloke who just joined the SWP because it was the most obviously left-wing thing on offer. Many people do it, and that’s certainly not to disparage him. It’s a principled (albeit wrong) choice in a way.
johng said,
March 17, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Volty what were the more esoteric arguments about ‘re-positioning’? i have an esoteric interest in this argument…
David Broder said,
March 17, 2008 at 2:55 pm
It is not the case that the AWL majority calls for the end of the occupation – even in a vague or ‘indefinite future’ sense. It says it is “against” the occupation, but raises no demands arguing that the troops ought to leave.
Euripides Trousers said,
March 17, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Is it time for the split yet?
Lobby Ludd said,
March 17, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Re Dave B #8.
It is hard to understand how to be against military occupation but not wish it to end.
modernity said,
March 17, 2008 at 10:10 pm
surely it might depend on what the consequence of ending would be?
Clive said,
March 18, 2008 at 9:15 am
Of course the ‘majority’ position is for the occupation to end. Of course you can’t be against something without wanting it to end.
It is perfectly reasonable – it might be wrong, but it is reasonable and logical – to think it neverthess inopportune to raise the slogan for its immediate end, ie, because you believe your own forces (meaning the working class movement) to be too weak to ensure that what replaces the existing, dire, situation is better.
Proposing some timetable, or something, instead, is wrong from a socialist point of view because it’s simply an appeal to diplomats, in practice. Instead, we should focus on what we *can* achieve – solidarity, to change the balance of forces.
That’s the argument.
martin ohr said,
March 18, 2008 at 1:58 pm
As far as I understand it, the Broder position is a different “troops out now” than other parts of the left are calling for. The SWP/Gallowayites etc stance is troops out now -fuck the consequences. Broder’s seems to be a variation on the cpgb idea of calling for something that you don’t want, knowing it can’t happen.
More sensibly however Broder seems to be arguing that you can use the slogan to mean -build up the working class in iraq and the rest of the world to force troops out . Personally I think that a better slogan to summarise this is simply “solidarity with Iraqi workers” which is the slogan we’ve been using for quite some time.
To be clear no-one in the AWL is raising the slogan “Troops In” or “continue the occupation” since we all want the occupation to end. Correctly our slogans in the lead up to the war were “No to War, No to Saddam”, because we think (generally) our slogans should not be appeals to the ruling class to mend their ways, but calls on the working class to action, and should be immeadiately understandable in their own right without pages of explanation.
I think to most people the slogan Troops Out Now implies an immeadiate withdrawal of all troops without pre-conditions, I don’t believe that is the position of Daves Broder and Kirk or Dan Randall, so I don’t think they should argue for that slogan.
johng said,
March 21, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Sorry still interested in the unarticulated reasons for this argument that voltaire was arguing about. as the great leader at the tomb has a book coming out on murderous liberals, i should say that my interest is precisely the influence of liberal internationalist ideologies about global governance which dominated sections of the liberal left throughout the 1990’s. My intuitive, and possibly quite wrong take, was beneath the talk of third campism there was an adaptation to the idea that we lived in a post-imperial age, and that the ‘old politics’ of anti-imperialism had to be replaced with one variety or other of a global human rights regime.
Jim Denham said,
March 21, 2008 at 5:25 pm
If an ignorant, reactionary scab and idiot like Seymour “Lenin” Lenny can get a book published by a serious “left-wing” publishing house, then the “left” is in a worse moral, intellectual and literary state than even I feared in my worst nightmares.
modernityblog said,
March 21, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Jim,
Don’t worry, the next Pluto Press book is by JohnG:
The Brevity of Argumentation.
Followed by John Rees’
Me and my mate, George Galloway.
[Fond reminiscences was indestructible friendship between two comrades]
Which is part of the three volumes series: Concise Political Lessons from The Experts
modernityblog said,
March 21, 2008 at 6:32 pm
For those lacking in the humour department, the above was, of course, a joke
which brings us to a serious point, who in the fucking world would listen to the pearls of wisdom falling from the mouth of stodgy political has-beens in the SWP?
the SWP has managed to make every political mistake in the book
1) take a mass movement and turn it into a skeleton of its former self (millions against the War and now the StWC can barely get 10 of 1,000s out in a demo- five years on)
2) suck up to political reactionaries, attack the workers movement in Iraq
3) split the anti-war leadership (see Mick Rix, Mike Marqusee and Anna Chen’s work)
4) provide a platform for racists (Hamas rep in the UK, Tamimi)
5) back a divisive union campaign which split part of the UCU, and lost members
6) etc
7) oh and underestimate Galloway and his Islamists friends, then split Respect and complain about it like children.
you couldn’t make it up, if there was a poor political choice to make, then the SWP made it and as a result they are haemorrhage members, even Mark Steel, a stridently loyal member for 30 years
you’d be better taking political advice from a 5 year old copy of the Daily Mirror, or not at all.
johng said,
March 21, 2008 at 6:37 pm
So, aside from the insane reactionary nonsense above from people who can’t make up their minds whether they’re opposed to the occupation of Iraq by the US and our own government: is it or is it not the case that the AWL have been influenced by liberal internationalism. I’m genuinely interested.
modernityblog said,
March 21, 2008 at 6:52 pm
JohnG,
what’s mark steel’s views on these matters?
charliethechulo said,
March 21, 2008 at 9:32 pm
John: what’s wrong, exactly, with being “influenced by liberal internationalism”? Before you answer, consider whether or not you are a Marxist…