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Class Analysis
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From: David Hungerford
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Anti-
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Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 8:09 PM
Subject: [antiwarcoalition] The Great War of the Persian Gulf: a Class
Analysis
The Great War of the Persian Gulf: a Class Analysis
The September 11 attacks on the United States and the resulting U.S.
aggression against Afghanistan have raised the danger of the largest war in
two generations. Vice President Dick Cheney, the real boss of the "Bush"
administration, speaks of war that will last "longer than our lifetimes."
Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers says the United States has not planned
military operations so broadly since World War II, and Afghanistan is only
the beginning.
What is the war about? Who is fighting whom? What is the
background, what is the content, what is the historical meaning of this war?
A class analysis is needed to answer these questions objectively.
This is much more than a "war against terror." What opened on
September 11 is a new stage in a struggle that has been going on for a long
time. It is a war for oil. It stretches from New York to Afghanistan. It has
established battlefronts in Palestine and Iraq. The center of gravity is the
Middle East. Open domestic conflict is close in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and
Pakistan. It is the Great War of the Persian Gulf.
A few false ideas have to go. It is preposterous to think that the
September 11 attacks were acts of U.S. right-wing or state conspirators. The
attacks were a devastating economic and political blow. The U.S. rulers have
thrown themselves into war in an unprecedentedly bad strategic and tactical
position. That they would have done so deliberately is beyond the absurd.
The official story of the U.S. authorities that they are engaged
in a "war against terror" is no less absurd. Many progressive people have
already pointed out that U.S. imperialism, with its hideous record in Korea,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and so many other countries, is by a
huge margin the worst terrorist in the world. Nor will military aggression
make the U.S. more secure domestically, since it will only aggravate the
hatreds that led to the September 11 attacks.
However, it is clear whom the U.S. imperialists are fighting. A
Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden, has been singled out as the leader. The
reckless Afghanistan military adventure shows how badly the imperialists
want to get him. Bush described his organizational backing on September 20
in his address to Congress as "a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist
organizations known as Al Qaeda." ("The base," in Arabic.)
Bush said something about Al Qaeda that got to the real issue:
"They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such
as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan." These are the key Arab allies of U.S.
imperialism. They give it control of the vast Persian Gulf petroleum
reserves, incomparably the most valuable and strategic mineral resource of
any description anywhere in the world. Domination of the Persian Gulf is
critical to the superpower status of the United States. The imperialists
will never give it up willingly.
Osama bin Laden likewise made a "big speech:" his video from
Afghanistan released through the TV station Al Jazeera on October 7. He said
the same thing about Arabia as Bush: "the wind of change is blowing to
remove evil from the Peninsula of Mohammad." Hence, at the heart of the war
is a conflict over the Saud monarchy in Arabia. On the one side are U.S.
imperialism and its allies, on the other are bin Laden and his allies. Let
us take a closer look at imperialism, following the ideas of the great V.I.
Lenin.
Lenin said capitalist imperialism is a stage of social development. It is
the highest stage of capitalist development. It emerged around the beginning
of the twentieth century in a few advanced industrial countries. Lenin said,
"Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the
dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which
the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the
division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the
division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers
has been completed." (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)
Hence imperialism is not just something the ruling class does.
It is the social system in which we live in the United States.
There are several countries in the Persian Gulf ruled by feudal
aristocrats. Nowhere else in the world do kings and emirs actually rule. The
British monarchy, by contrast, is only a figurehead, kept on as an
ideological prop of the bourgeoisie. The Gulf antiques are kept in place
because they are useful to imperialism. The New York Times puts it this way:
"Over the decades, the United States and Saudi Arabia have benefited from
the cold-blooded bargain at the core of their relationship. America got the
oil to run its economy and Saudi Arabia got the protection of American
military might." ("Reconsidering Saudi Arabia," editorial, 14 October,
2001.)
As an imperialist newspaper, the NYT tells only a small part of
the story. For one thing, far more important to U.S. imperialism than cheap
oil is the fact that the Saudis and the other Gulf states take only U.S.
dollars in payment for their oil. In 2000 Saudi Arabia sold more than $60
billion of oil on world markets, around half the Gulf total. Thus, Persian
Gulf oil soaks up a large part of the huge U.S. trade deficit; also, U.S.
dollars must sooner or later end up spent in the United States. This is
enormously important to the overall financial position of U.S. imperialism.
Moreover, U.S. imperialism gains strategic power over its rivals. The
Japanese bourgeoisie, for instance, is at a great disadvantage to U.S.
imperialism when it controls a large part of Japan's oil supply.
The price to the Arabian people of continued feudal rule is very
high. The corrupt royal clan wastes huge fortunes in high living. In a
country of 22 million there are more than 7 million foreign workers because
the royal family is afraid to develop an indigenous working class. It
invests hundreds of billions of dollars abroad rather than in Arabia. It
subsidizes U.S. government debt with purchases of billions in treasury
bills, for instance. The Saud clan rules by medieval brutality. There is no
modern code of law, no modern political institutions of any kind. Even the
New York Imperialist Times has finally gotten around to saying, "Until now,
the stream of Saudi oil and money has all but silenced serious American
criticism of the royal family's pervasive corruption, its contempt for
democracy and the appalling human rights abuses carried out in its name."
(ibid.)
Similar things are true of the other feudal states of the Gulf,
including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
Now, the interesting thing about bin Laden is that he does not
come from the aristocracy-he comes from the other big exploiting class, the
bourgeoisie. His father was a billionaire construction man.
Recent reports in the bourgeois press reveal that Osama bin
Laden's financial support and his main social base come from this class of
Arab and Arabian society. William Pfaff, for example, writes that "Saudi
Arabia is, at the same time, under attack from the radical and violent
movement mobilized by the children of the Saudi elite, such as Mr. bin
Laden. He is joined by recruits from an alienated and often well educated
generation of young Muslims elsewhere, declared enemies both of America and
of their own allegedly corrupted national leaders." (Los Angeles Times
Syndicate, 1 October 2001.)
As for bin Laden's financial support, "They are the elite of
Saudi society- wealthy, respected men with investments that span the globe
and reputations for generosity . . . Yasin al-Qadi is among the prominent
Saudis who those in need of charity or shrewd business advice could turn to
. . . But the United States government now says that Mr. Qadi and many other
well-connected Saudi citizens have transferred millions of dollars to Osama
bin Laden through charities and trusts like the Muwafaq Foundation
supposedly established to feed the hungry, house the poor and alleviate
suffering." ("Philanthropist, or Fount of Funds for Terrorists?" by Jeff
Gerth and Judith Miller, New York Times, 13 October, 2001)
That fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were
Arabians further shows it is that country which is the center of gravity in
the new stage of war.
There is a contradiction between imperialist capital as
represented by the United States and national capital as represented by
Osama bin Laden and his supporters. The bin Ladenists' objective is not, as
Bush claims, the overthrow of U.S. imperialism itself, but, as previously
said, the overthrow of the Saud aristocracy. Another way to say it is that
the socio-historic side of the imperialists' problem in the Gulf is, of all
things, the development of capitalism!
The feudal/bourgeois contradiction of Arabian society is of a
kind that has been seen again and again in history. The only unusual thing
about it is that it occurs so late. The Great French Revolution of the 1790s
was driven by the same forces. Indeed, the U.S. Civil War was a united front
of the workers, small farmers, and slaves led by the industrial bourgeoisie
against the southern slaveholders. Now it is the turn of the house of
al-Saud to get the same ax. The U.S. imperialists are in a dead panic over
it.
Marx and Engels described the overthrow of feudalism by pre-imperialist
capitalism in the Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got
the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic
relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound
man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left no other bond between man and
man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned
the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm,
of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation."
It might appear that bin Laden's espousal of holy war against
the United States is incompatible with a bourgeois revolution against
feudalism. That is not the case. A religious ideology is extremely useful to
an exploiting class that faces as powerful an enemy as U.S. imperialism. The
Arabian bourgeoisie must arouse the masses in their own country and
elsewhere to struggle against imperialism. But the struggle must not go too
far! The bourgeoisie faces the danger that it will in its turn be overthrown
by the masses. The heavenly ecstasies of religion are needed if the
bourgeoisie is to avoid this fate. In this respect there is nothing about
Islam that distinguishes it from any other religion. It is simply the faith
that happens to be there.
The conflicts between the national bourgeoisie and imperialism
were unknown in Marx' and Engels' time. It fell to Lenin, Stalin, and Mao to
develop this question from a proletarian revolutionary standpoint. Today we
live in the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution, the
revisionist pronouncements of certain fake "Communists" notwithstanding.
In his 1948 essay, "On the National Bourgeoisie and the
Enlightened Gentry," Mao says, "The national bourgeoisie is a class which is
politically very weak and vacillating. But the majority of its members may
either join the people's democratic revolution [against imperialism and
feudalism-AH] or take a neutral stand, because they too are persecuted and
fettered by imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism. They are part
of the broad masses of the people but not the main body, nor are they a
force that determines the character of the revolution."
A few points should be noted. Unlike China in 1948, the Arabian
bourgeoisie today leads the national-democratic struggle in its country
against feudalism and imperialism. This circumstance still does not make the
bourgeoisie the main or determining force in the revolution. In the longer
run only the working class and the masses can play that part. Further, it is
the utmost height of opportunism to claim, like some so-called "Communists,"
that a "national bourgeoisie" can emerge in an imperialist country like the
United States.
The Palestinian people's struggle is another huge problem for imperialism.
It is more of a people's mass struggle than any other in the Middle East at
this time. It plays a greater part than ever in arousing the masses
throughout the Middle East against the imperialists and their own backward
governments.
The U.S. imperialists want their Israeli counterparts to make
some kind of durable settlement with the Palestinians. The Israeli
imperialists cannot do it. War criminal Ariel Sharon's rise to power at this
point is proof of that. The Palestine problem has become one the U.S.
imperialists need to resolve, but the Israeli imperialists can't settle.
There is a considerable risk that Israel's internal war will
spread beyond its borders. Israel may, for instance, be driven into war with
Syria. This would destroy whatever vestige of control over Middle East
events that Washington still has.
Of course neither Washington nor Tel Aviv wants to lose control,
but sometimes even the most "powerful" must do not what they want but what
they must. The one certain thing is that whatever happens, the Palestinian
masses will not end their struggle until they have their national rights.
A basic aspect of the post-September 11 stage of war is that it is the
continuation and expansion of the war which U.S. imperialism has for ten
years waged against the people and state of Iraq.
The Baath Arab regime of Saddam Hussein is a bourgeois
government. It was only in 1958 that the last king of Iraq, Faisal, a
British puppet, was overthrown. In 1972 the Baath government nationalized
the oil resources of Iraq, taking them away from the British.
This was a great achievement. In 1952 the prime minister of
Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, had tried the same thing. The CIA overthrew and
killed him. It imposed the 27-year rule of the Shah. A young military
officer in Iraq took the Iranian experience into account. He figured out how
to nationalize the oil without being overthrown by imperialism. The
officer's name was Saddam Hussein. >From then until now he has been the
leader of Iraq, although he only formally assumed the Iraqi presidency in
1980.
After the Shah was overthrown in 1979, however, the Islamic
regime and the Iraqi regime came into conflict. They fought a terrible
eight-year war. Having only a third of the population and half the economy
of Iran, Iraq, remarkably enough, won the war in 1988 with a series of
battles that virtually eradicated Iran's military forces.
During the Iran war Iraq built its armed forces to a level about
the same as the conventional forces of Israel. The maintenance of Israel as
an armed power able to defeat the combined forces of all Arab countries has
been a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy for decades. Iraq's military
strength was cause for great concern in Washington. For two years
imperialist policymakers wondered what way Saddam was going to go. In
February of 1990 he let them know.
He made a speech before the Arab Cooperation Council, which
consisted of the heads of state of Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
Criticizing the United States, Saddam said that with the end of the
Iran-Iraq war "the Arabian Gulf states, including Iraq, and even the entire
Arabs would have liked the Americans to state their intention to withdraw
their fleets," which the imperialists had stationed there during the war. He
said that "if the Gulf people, along with all Arabs, are not careful, the
Arab Gulf region will be governed by the United States' will." He said that
"Against the backdrop of the vital issue related to the substance of
national Arab security, the question arises as to what we the Arabs have to
do . . . It has been proven that Arabs are capable of being influential when
they make a decision and set their minds to it for actual application
purposes." He further proposed, "Agreement should be reached over clear and
widespread pan-Arab cooperation programs among Arab countries in the
economic, political, and educational fields." (Orbis, Winter, 1991.)
In other words, Saddam made a blunt challenge to U.S.
imperialist domination of the Persian Gulf. This was the real origin of the
1991 aggression against Iraq led by U.S. imperialism. Its essence was the
assertion by a national-bourgeois regime of the sovereignty of Arab states
against imperialism.
The same class contradiction moves bin Laden and his supporters.
The difference is that Saddam is head of state. In that capacity he
challenged U.S. imperialism straight up. He got what he got. Ten years
later, somebody else pulled a covert action.
The people of Iraq have refused to knuckle under and be forced back into
colonialism. For this reason U.S./British imperialism has been unable to
install a puppet in Baghdad or achieve any other political aim, despite the
"great military victory" of 1991. The failure of the war against Iraq has
deprived U.S./British imperialism of all strategic and tactical flexibility
in the new stage of war. Already the imperialists' Afghan war effort is in
terrible shape.
Bush went blundering off to war in Afghanistan beset with
unstable alliances throughout South Asia and the Middle East. No government
in any Muslim country can support a U.S. campaign in Afghanistan for long,
yet a long campaign is a certainty. The only place to base U.S. military
ground forces is in Uzbekistan, to the north of Afghanistan. The United
States can be there only by Russian sufferance. Underlying rivalries will
lead the two countries to part ways soon enough.
U.S. logistical difficulties in Afghanistan are extreme even
with the best alliances. An "overwhelming force" response is out of the
question. Hence the imperialists cannot hope to get out of Afghanistan
without shedding a significant amount of U.S. blood. In fact in every war
the cost of victory is paid in lives. U.S. imperialism cannot pay the bill.
The greatest of all imperialist weaknesses is that the people of the United
States are absolutely unwilling to give the lives of their sons and
daughters for it.
Already headlines speak of a long war with the Taliban. Bombs
fall on schools, homes, relief agencies. Millions are at risk of starvation
and freezing as winter comes on and the imperialist aggression deprives the
people of an already devastated country of what little margin of survival
they had. The anger of the people in the region will lead them to fight all
the harder against the aggressors, and the people of the whole world will
turn more and more against the imperialists.
As Mao also observes, "Before the birth of the Communist Party of China, the
Kuomintang headed by Sun Yat-sen represented the national bourgeoisie and
acted as the leader of the Chinese revolution of that time (a non-thorough
democratic revolution of the old type). But after the Communist Party of
China was born and demonstrated its ability, the Kuomintang could no longer
be the leader of the Chinese revolution (a new-democratic revolution)."
(ibid.)
That leadership in the struggle against imperialism should fall
to the Middle East national bourgeoisie is due to the weakness of
proletarian-revolutionary forces in Arabia and the Middle Eastern countries.
Communists in the region have been subject to severe repression. However,
the main problem has been the degenerative influence of Soviet revisionism.
This negative influence sapped the will of Communist parties to struggle and
cut them off from the masses.
Even so, U.S. imperialism has no hope to win the Great War of
the Persian Gulf. At a minimum it will lose its dominant position among the
imperialist countries. Should it be so fortunate as to lose only that, the
imperialist world system will have received a blow from which it will not be
able to recover.
What the imperialists and the national bourgeoisie have started
the masses will finish. The imperialists will sink deeper and deeper into
difficulty. The struggle against them is sure to overflow all limits. The
more desperate things they do the more the masses will fight them. There
will be a great rebirth of proletarian revolutionary struggle as new
Communist Parties form and the masses come to their side. Today the world is
divided between wealthy imperialist countries and poor capital-dependent
countries. Even the wealthy countries are divided by an immense gap between
the rich and the poor. In historical terms, the final overthrow of the
obsolete social system of imperialism is not far off.
- Arthur Henson
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