On 25 Jan 00, at 1:59, Rob Schaap wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> >To claim as the Green Left does that the E Timorese were in
> >danger of extermination is to echo the imperialist line that the E
> >TImorese were helpless at the hands of Wiranto. This is not true, if
> >they were rendered helpless it was at the hands of the imperialists.
>
> If Djakarta had seriously suspected no foreign displeasure would be
> forthcoming, they could have kept the East Timorese independence forces
> down quite easily - as indeed they had done for a quarter of a century (I
> doubt they'd ever have wiped 'em out militarily without huge cost - but
> then it was never really necessary to go that extra yard as long as the
> Anglo-Saxons kept their noses out of it - the money had been getting to the
> right places reliably enough).
>
Yes exactly, the deal was Indonesia colonises E Timor in return for
aid and other favours. But the bottom line was Indonesia remains a
semi-colony super-exploited by the US and Japan, and to a much
smaller degree Australia. I agree that the Australian ruling class
benefitted from Timor Gap oil. But this is not sufficient to call it
'imperialist' given the massive extent to which Australia's surplus is
extracted by Britian, the US, and Japan. The reference to Aussie
being the sherrif's deputy politically is an accurate expression of
the dependent economic relationship with the US.
> >This is why we say imperialists hands off! Arm the resistance fighters!
>
> There are quite a few of those. There always have been. I suspect some
> will quietly be armed (after they're legitimised over a year or two) ...
> and some will not (amongst whom, I confidently predict, shall be numbered
> the rapidly growing Socialist Party membership).
Yes, but now in the legitimised UN social imperialist decolonisation process
which renders them open to disarming by the UN and repression
by Gusmao as soon as he gets his own army and police force
operating.
> >For a Constituent Assembly in East Timor!
>
> Until, I suppose, a bolshevik party develops and has to dissolve it on
> account of how it alone represents the working class, be the members of
> that class witting or otherwise.
Why not? In Russia, who else represented the working class? The
mensheviks? The argument that the Bolsheviks should not have
dissolved the CA is based upon the bourgeois democratic norm
that the majority of the population rules which includes the
exploiters and independent producers whose class interests do not
coincide with the working class. Russia was the classic
demonstration of the necessity for permanent revolution in our
epoch. The best that the Russian bourgeoisie could offer workers
and peasants was Kornilov. Fortunately, the workers exercised
their control of transport to fuck Kornilov up beautifully. Should we
have said at that point. The workers can defeat reaction since they
control the economy, but we have to give power back voluntarily to
the vile bourgeoisie so that they can exploit us for another epoch
before we qualify as the "revolutionary majority" according to the
Menshie textbooks?
> Doesn't matter, really. East Timorese would as likely end up shooting East
> Timorese as under my own sad expectations. Imperialism has long ago
> created its beneficiaries, its victims and its associated fragmenting
> identities. All a new hegemon can do is rearrange the lifeboats on a
> Titanic thoughtfully pre-holed by the manufacturers.
> Anyway, I do actually agree with the slogan, Dave. I just think the timing
> is more important than it might suggest. If a formally sovereign
> constituent assembly were voted in over the next few months - before the
> occupying force has a chance to put some lead in the appropriate saddlebags
> - I reckon East Timor has a half-chance of relative peace as an essentially
> social-democratic republic, integrated into a world system that will feed
> it in return for its immanent potential. If a parliament takes two
> foreign-authored years to come about, I reckon we'll have a
> robber-baron-cum-compradorial elite at the despatch box, and gunfire at the
> treeline.
Like Haiti perhaps? There is no future in an bourgeois democratic
revolution creating a breathing space for the mobilisation of the
socialist forces. The opposite happens, the so called
peacekeepers disarm the progressives and defend the local
bourgeois and the agents of imperialism. This is what the UN does
everywhere. As the Brit journal Living Marxism (which we are
familiar with on this list) stated, the UN is now an "empire on which
the sun never sets". The point about the demand for a CA is not
that I think that an advanced bourgeois republic is possible. The
opposite. IT is because it is NOT possible that mobilising the
population around such a demand brings it up flat against the
bourgeoisie's refusal to grant even minimal rights, and makes it
clear to the masses that they have to go all the way to socialism to
stay alive.
> I tend not to hold great hopes for a socialism-in-one-microscopic-dot
> project. Surely it is not ours to look to the East Timors of this world
> for democratic-socialist sovereignty? World change is where it's at, I
> reckon. The bourgouisie with which accounts must be settled don't live
> atop the local hill anymore, and the dangerous linkages capitalism has
> produced between the workers of the world are no longer decisively those of
> the shop-floor. As our BHP workers confront the local manifestation of the
> world-bourgeoisie's war against workers, they know it will not be won
> somewhere in the West Australian desert, but rather by workers around the
> world perceiving their own interests in those of the Australian few.
> Workers of the world actually can unite nowadays. Let's hope such unity
> might be forthcoming before once again workers have nothing left to lose
> but their chains.
This is true in the abstract. "World change" what is that? Unless
Aussie workers reject Aussie troops in E Timor then they will retain
the illusions of a peaceful outcome of their own and others
struggles. Just like they did in the MUA. Just as the
Zapatista/ANC/IRA solution is backfiring in Ecuador right now, as
the Nehru/MartinLutherKing "revolution" is rolled back with deadly
predictable force. In reality, each struggle no matter how small can
win, provided the working class recognises its class interests to
retain its armed independence, especially from peasant armies
who do deals with the bosses, and workers in 'Western countries
mobilise against their owned ruling class and its military machine.
Dave
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