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Link to its new article at bottom. After supporting Assad's denial of responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks – and by this denial facilitating future such attacks - the author, Bill Onasch - says this: "Nothing good comes from the attack on Syria. Regime change in Syria needs to be accomplished by Syrian workers and peasants—not by more foreign bombs and troops." This echoes the claim of SA's Jeff Mackler in previous columns that Assad's victory in a regime struggle with imperialism (a struggle that doesn’t even exist) would open space for working class activity! The same twisted argument is in another new SA statement (not online yet but sent to an SA email list): “The defeat of imperialist intervention is the prerequisite for the Syrian masses to organize their own independent class-struggle forces aimed at fully meeting the needs and aspirations of Syria’s workers and farmers as they strive in the future to build a socialist society.” This contorted logic is ironically a reversal of “the enemy is at home mantra” which the tankies always lecture us about: But here SA is saying the main enemy of the Syrian people is not their own dictatorship, but Washington (and ignoring Washington’s backhanded support to the regime’s continuation)! Although no-one that I know of has raised this parallel, SA’s adaptation to the Stalinists in the “antiwar” movement seems to me a perfect example of the mechanical method of analysis, of applying the valid results of a dialectical approach to a case where the underlying facts are the exact opposite. In this case we have a misapplication of the lessons of the debate with the Shachtmanites in 1939-40. In that debate a dialectical approach mandated support to a Stalinized Soviet Union against imperialism – but SA has abandoned the method which led to those results and mechanically applied the results to a completely different situation. In World War II the question was whether the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union would find themselves dragged back to capitalism or, should the Soviet Union be victorious in war, would they be able to resume the fight for socialist democracy. In Syria, the primary feature of the revolution/civil war is not an imperialist attempt to re-occupy or re-colonize the country by overthrowing Assad; rather the most salient axis of struggle is a neoliberal dictatorship attempting to crush a worker and peasant revolution. So the conclusion can only be the exact opposite of SA’s claim: Only the success of the anti-Assad struggle can provide space for working class organizing. https://socialistaction.org/2017/04/08/u-s-missile-attack-on-syria-first-casualty-multiplied/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
