From: "J.WALKER" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
O
Subject: [Peoples War] Communist Forum statement on 11 Sept
STATEMENT ON THE ATTACKS IN
THE USA ON SEPTEMBER 11 2001.
http://www.communistforum.org.uk/
Every day throughout the world an estimated 55,000 people are
killed by malnutrition. Many more are killed by diseases that
are easily preventable. Behind these deaths lie the many
agreements forced upon the oppressed nations by bankers,
politicians and generals from across the imperialist world. As
the crisis of the world economy has deepened it has been the
oppressed nations of the world, in Africa, Asia and Latin
America, the so called �emerging markets�, that have borne the
brunt of maintaining the privileged consumption of the
majority of the North American, Japanese and West European
people. These countries, plundered by imperialism, have
lurched from crisis to crisis; debt defaults, currency collapses,
hyperinflation... On every occasion, the bankers of the imperialist
bloc, circling like vultures, have descended to sink their bloodied
beaks into the corpse.
They have bailed out the mess that their robbery has created,
demanding in return the cancellation of health, housing and
education programmes, the privatisation of public utilities that
then price water and energy out of the reach of the working
class. They have demanded �fiscal prudence�; the euphemism,
in Russia, for not paying pensions and public sector wages or,
as recently in Argentina, cutting these by 13%.
Inevitably, death, privation and destruction have followed in
the wake of these finance capitalists. Just as inevitably there
has been resistance to such parasitism. Whether it has been the
People�s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the FSLN of
Nicaragua or in Colombia the FARC, the oppressed have risen
up to end this injustice and build a new society based on
democratic social justice and the rule of the poor. To smash
this global uprising and shore up their system that sustains the
luxuries of the middle class and better off sections of the
working class, world imperialism has fought back. Led by the
butchers of the Pentagon they have stopped at nothing to
satisfy their bloodlust; running death camps in Lebanon,
bombing schools and hospitals in Afghanistan, drug running to
pay for arms and supporting any fascist who will do their
bidding.
However, as their crisis deepens, there has been less room for
even some of their erstwhile friends, the local henchmen that
once were partners in crime. With the anti-imperialist bastion
of Soviet power no longer a concern, imperialism has fallen on
the oppressed nations to start a new era of colonialism; the
�new world order�.
There has been blanket bombing of working class areas of
Panama as US imperialism secured the canal from George
Bush� drug running partner; Noriega. 100,000 Kurdish, Shiite
and Iraqi conscripts were burned alive on the Basra highway to
save the self anointed dynasty in �Kuwait� from the party once
entrusted with the butchery of the Iraqi Communist Party and
Kurdish Workers Party. Millions of people were murdered or
made into refugees in Eastern Europe to control the fascists
unleashed by imperialism�s war of conquest against the
socialist countries and millions more are now threatened with
starvation in Afghanistan after over ten years of US sponsored
terrorism.
It is no surprise then that the burning hatred of world
imperialism, its banks and armies and those of the USA at its
head has spread from the ranks of the revolutionaries and the
oppressed to those who live among the smouldering ruins of
imperialism�s foreign policy. Even some of the most ignorant
and reactionary elements within those countries have turned
against their former paymasters. While many couch their
resistance in religious and racist terminology, the roots of their
actions lie with the crisis of finance capital itself and its ensuing
drive to war and barbarism.
It is in this light that the attacks on the centres of finance
capital and imperialist militarism should be seen. Islamic
reactionaries might see among the dead only ungodly infidels.
Communists and revolutionaries though will make a
distinction. We do not mourn, but welcome, the death of any
workers at the Pentagon or any bankers at the World Trade
Center; they have killed many times over before in their
careers. Those cleaners, waiters, cooks and technicians who
died were a tragic loss in a war that sees many millions of
ordinary, innocent people die every year. The war against
oppression will continue and many more will fall before its
completion. In this war, communists stand with the oppressed
such as the Palestinian people who came into the streets on
September 11th to demonstrate their consciousness of the role
played by banks and armies from the USA.
Communists do not call for any retaliation as we do not
oppose the anti-imperialist incursions, even of our enemies.
We have no illusions about humanitarian or measured
response as imperialism is of necessity barbaric and militarist.
Sadly the same can not be said of the rest of the British left.
With so many British �socialists� benefiting from imperialism�s
superprofits and sharing the lifestyles of the bankers and
regular airline travellers, their capitulation is sadly predictable
and their irrelevance a stark reality.
A Platform of Shame
Following the attacks the left newspapers lost no time in
rushing to defend their paymasters and oppose the attacks.
Bush and Blair�s coalition against �terror� is wide indeed!
The CPGB (Sept 20th) was opposed to the killing of
imperialism�s military personnel and �condemns the September
11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Such attacks
do nothing to further the cause of the working class or
oppressed nations�.
Socialist Worker (Sept 15th), not known for the depth of its
analysis, claims that �many more innocent civilians were killed
in New York and Washington�. With their usual brand of
Eurocentrism, they describe the attacks as �desperate� and
�evil�.
Workers� Power (Sept 12th) had not made up their mind if
they would support the attack on the Pentagon. �Indeed,
depending on who carried it out, the attack on the Pentagon
may indeed be a legitimate target.� They did not say which
attackers could possibly make these bloodthirsty militarist
thugs into illegitimate targets. Almost alone among the left
Workers Power were able to suggest why many of the
oppressed celebrated these attacks:
�Those who have suffered or witnessed the effects of US
cruise missile attacks on the population of Baghdad, the
families of the 700 or so Palestinians killed by US supplied
weapons, including Apache attack helicopters, have
understandably rejoiced at proof that the world's only
superpower is not invulnerable. They see the world�s trade
centre as a symbol of financial capital and the elite that plunder the
world�s resources.�
However, what is obvious to the Palestinian people was not
grasped by Workers� Power. They start their article like all the
others, with less enlightened analysis:
�Reject individual terrorism. The horrific attacks and the killing of
thousands of people in New York on 11 September have shocked millions
around the world. Revolutionary communists condemn the attack on the
World Trade Centre and massacre of civilians, because such actions
will not take forward the struggle against US world domination by a
single step.�
Continually referring to the Zionist settler state as �Israel�
makes a mockery of their claim to �remain firm in our support
for the Palestinian liberation struggle and all resistance to
imperialism.� One can only assume that their support lasts as
long as no imperialist lives are taken and no Palestinian land is
claimed that was occupied before 1967.
All of these organisations have a long history of siding with
imperialism against the IRA, PLO or the ANC, preferring
instead their cosy alliance with the imperialist Labour Party.
What is more disappointing is the response of an organisation
that in the past has supported armed liberation struggles against
British and US imperialism and still has a formal position of
opposition to Zionism.
The Revolutionary Communist Group, in their leaflet on the
attacks, line up, like all the others behind imperialism:
�Thousands of ordinary people were killed when hijacked
planes flew into the World Trade Centre in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington on 11 September. The death of
civilians is mourned, while the world waits for the US and
Britain to unleash their �War against Terrorism� on the poor of
Afghanistan.�
And from their newspaper, �Fight Racism Fight Imperialism�;
�we send them our sincere condolences�.
The rest of their analysis consists of an otherwise
commendable condemnation of US inspired terror which they
use as a radical gloss to their capitulation to the �ordinary
people� of the banking and military middle classes. However
lest anyone be taken in by this superficial radicalism, the front page
of their paper reminds us of their stand. In the months of October and
November, when imperialism might well be butchering millions of Afghan
people, Fight Racism Fight Imperialism loudly proclaims from its front
page, �The War Against Terrorism�!
After a summer when the RCG, like so much of the left, was
hardly ever seen on the demonstrations against police and
fascist terror in Asian estates and when their leaflet on this
racist terror was a much longer time coming than that on the
Sept. 11th attacks, the title of their paper now seems quite
ironic!
We ask the British left: whose terror do you want to fight a war
against?
The U.S. left are no better.
The Spartacist League (Sept 12th) called it an �indefensible
act of criminal terror� and in a disgusting and bizarre comment
argue that the attackers, "embrace the same mentality as the
racist rulers of America - identifying the working masses with
their capitalist exploiters and oppressors!!
The Socialist Equality Party on their World Socialist Web
pulled out their patriotism and allegiance to the US flag.
Recalling Bebel's remark that anti-Semitism is the socialism of
fools pull out the shibboleth of anti-Americanism the
'anti-imperialism of fools' as a stick to beat anyone who does
not agree with them.
"A group of individuals apparently inspired by Islamic
fundamentalism, one of the most reactionary ideologies on the
face of earth, smashed two airplanes into the World Trade
Center and a third into the Pentagon, while a fourth hijacked
plane crashed in western Pennsylvania. The result of this
carnage was the death of more than 6,000 human beings, the
overwhelming majority of them civilians, representing the
greatest loss of life in a single day on American soil since the
Civil War."
Having set the scene, and leaving aside the fact that as
communists and not pacifists we would certainly support the
mass slaughter of Confederate forces during the Civil War!
Our intrepid friends rant on that, "this was a heinous political
crime whose predictable outcome has been to strengthen the
capitalist state, fan the flames of right-wing chauvinism and
clear the way for US military intervention in Central Asia." So
there you go, everything is to blame for the repressive aspects
of the US bourgeoisie at home and abroad except the
bourgeoisie itself.
Entering the realms of amateur psychology and bourgeois
moralism the SEP suggest, "anyone who was emotionally
unaffected by the terror and suffering experienced by tens of
thousands as a result of this attack has no right to call him or
herself a socialist." Presumably these characters imagine that
revolutionary struggle will be a mass strike followed by an
election. As Mao said,
"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or
painting a picture or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined,
so delicate and restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is
an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class
overthrows another."
The September 11 events pale into total insignificance
compared to US/UN attacks on Korea or Vietnam in the midst
of real revolutionary struggle and anyone who does not realise
this has no right to call him or herself a socialist. Like most of the
international left the SEP is revealed as crude pacifists.
The Revolutionary Communist Party USA in a thoughtful
statement of September 14th entitled, "The Horrors That Come
>From This Horrible System" spends the overwhelming
majority of their statement condemning US imperialist
atrocities and refrains from attempting to portray the US as
'victims' of brutal and mindless 'terrorists'. The statement also has
none of the pacifist sentiment apparent in most other leftist
documentation and is head and shoulders above the swamp in terms of
political analysis. www.rwor.org
The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement has the RCP
(USA) as its major supporter and financier, so it is rather
surprising that we are back here to pacifism and patriotism.
The first sentence declares that, "On September 11, thousands
of innocent people were killed on United States soil." No they
were not. The 'ordinary people' in the Twin Towers were
overwhelmingly bankers and stockbrokers and in the Pentagon
military personnel.
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