Should socialists take sides in the Gulf war?
The Socialist Workers
Party has made a turn in its attitude to the
Iran-Iraq war: from revolutionary opposition to the war to critical support supporters of the SWP.
an 'anti-imperialist' casualty?
The SWP and Iran: for Iran. The turn has been announced in a series of articles the most detailed of which is Phil Marshall's 'A test of strength' in the December 1987 issue of Socialist Worker Review. PHIL HEARSE argues that this turn is ill-conceived and will profoundly mis-educate The dead body of a young Iranian volunteer lies motionless, a picture of Khomeini in his pocket (for good luck): a victim of senseless slaughter or
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A young Iranian trains...
Kaveh Golestan/Reflex
PHIL MARSHALL says there has been a change in the character of the war signalled by the clashes between the US fleet and Iranian gunboats in the Gulf. He says: 'The war is no longer just a conflict between two ruling classes fighting for domination of the region. Washington has decided it is to be a test of strength between the west and the Arab rulers on the one hand, and the upstart Iranians on the other'. This is quite wrong.
The US and other western fleets are not in the Gulf to intervene directly in the Iran-Irag war. They are there, as they have openly said, to guarantee the west's oil supplies — even if they have shown more concern to defend boats going to Iraq than those going to Iran. The SWP are making a mistake if they think that the clashes in the Gulf are part and parcel of the Iran-Iraq war.
But it is far from clear that the US and the west simply back Iraq against Iran. Imperialism is keeping its options open. The Irangate affair blew up because the US was preparing, in the medium and long term, to 'do business' with at least a wing of the Iranian regime. The calculations of the US are much more complicated than just defending the oil sheiks against the 'upstart Iranians"
The main US ally in the middle east — Israel - is opposed to an Iraqi victory, because Israel sees a victorious Iraq as a threatening Arab regional power. Israel has been Iran's main supplier of arms, but arms have come from many western countries, including (by secret routes) from the US itself. The Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq has just as strong links with the USSR on the diplomatic plane as it has with the US. The Soviet Union has been the main supplier of Iraqi weapons. So the US preference for Iraq is far from obvious.
In any case, the preferences of US imperialism can change. Although the US wants to defend the oil sheikdoms in the region against any Iranian expansionism, that doesn't mean that it can't swivel its alliances to meet changing circumstances. The US recognises that if anyone has the upper hand it is the Iranians. And, if necessary, the US will be quite capable of making new diplomatic overtures to the Khomeini regime.
Many leading US politicians and military people have said the best option for the US will be if 'neither side wins and they go on killing one another'. This is probably nearer the consensus imperialist view than the one given by Phil Marshall.
What is incontestable is that the war remains one of conflict between two
POLEMIC domination of the region. Having re-make unpleasant choices, and he quotes pulsed the original Iragi attack, the Iranian regime took the war onto Iraqi territory with the express intention of bringing down the Saddam Hussein regime. It is the Iranians who have refused peace negotiations; Saddam Hussein realises he now can't win and desperately wants peace.
Phil Marshall has some extraordinary things to say about the character of the regime and the war. He says: 'During the Iranian revolution of 1979 Khomeini championed the mass movements of the workers, peasants, women and national minorities. But with the Shah gone, he soon revealed his intention to consolidate Iranian capitalism, while giving his Iraqi president Saddam Hussein: it is far from obvious that the US supports Iraq most important supporters among the petty bourgeoisie a bigger share in the system'
This is wrong on two counts. Khomeini never, ever, 'championed' the workers, women, peasants or national minorities and it is quite misleading to say so. Khomeini promoted the mass movement under the leadership of his supporters in the mosque and the bazaar, the demonstrations of Khomeini supporters in the streets, but he always opposed the direct expressions of the movements of workers and other oppressed groupings - especially of national minorities and women. The Iranian regime is not 'petty bourgeois' in any fundamental sense. It is a bourgeois regime, and the ruling class in Tehran is the capitalist ruling class.
Phil Marshall says his new line 'will stick in the throats of socialists' (quite). utterly reactionary capitalist regimes for But he argues that socialists have to the example of the Spanish civil war as comparison since 'the Spanish situation has much in common with that in Iran' (sic). Now it could just possibly be that the Spanish civil war had something in common with the Iran-Iraq war, but Phil Marshall fails to mention anything, and I can't think of anything either.
Marshall says Trotsky argued that "we are not neutral' between the 'decaying bourgeois democracy' of the Negrin republican government and the Franco fascists. Quite right too. But there is no 'decaying bourgeois democracy' in Iran or Iraq. Both are utterly vile reactionary dictatorships. Both have the blood of thousands of workers, peasants, women and people from national minorities on their hands. Both want to dominate the region, and neither are in the slightest bit genuinely 'anti-imperialist' - although they both use 'anti-imperialist' rhetoric.
Socialists should, says Phil Marshall, 'encourage working class discontent' with the Iranian regime, but should not disrupt the war effort. This is a hopeless and reactionary line. What should socialists say about the sending of hundreds of thousands of young people to their deaths by Khomeini in his quest to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime? That they should go and fight in an 'anti-imperialist' cause?(!) The Khomeini regime is, if anything, the worst criminal at the present stage of the fighting in prolonging the senseless slaughter.
A final point, Marshall says that 'islamic fundamentalism is a complex and contradictory phenomenon'. Of course, any amateur dialectician will tell you that all phenomena are complex and contradictory. But if Marshall means that fundamentalism is politically contradictory he is wrong. It is a reactionary creed through and through and can never lead the peoples of the middle and near east in an anti-imperialist direction. Socialists have to fight it every step of the way.
The new swp line is misleading for socialists in Iran and in the west. While it is absolutely correct to oppose the intervention of US imperialism in the region, and right for socialists to defend Iran against attack by the US it is another thing again to side with the Iranians against Iraq. In taking sides in this bloody and pointless conflict, the SWP have concluded that the Iranians are basically anti-imperialist and the Iraqis are pro-imperialist. Such a position involves an error of fact, as well as of judgement • 35
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 6 March/April 1988
THERE IS nothing wrong in reassessing marxist interpretations, but where this has lead Socialist Organiser as far as this particular exercise is concerned is to the of the class divide. This is illustrated in the January edition of the magazine Workers' Liberty and an article therein by Sean Matgamna.
This is entitled Ireland: lies the left tells itself. A more fitting headline would have been 'Ireland: examples of the lies the right tells itself'. For what has now emerged from what at first was a sloppy and impressionistic analysis is one which stands four square with the opinions of the British ruling class.
We are told that there would be a bloody sectarian civil war if British troops left the north of Ireland, that those troops have every right to be there anyway because 'Northern Ireland has been part of the British state since the 12th century', and that Britain has no political, economic or military interest in staying in the north of Ireland
The reason they do so apparently is because of the 'power of the orangeists on the ground', and it is this power which, if British troops did leave, would result in all sorts of nasty things happening to catholics.
Not only do we have a series of views which suggests the role of the British army is to keep two sets of mad paddies apart, we have an additional reactionary bonus. This is that protestants in the north of Ireland are quite right to resist any attempt to submit them to the rule of the Irish majority because they are British, have always considered themselves so and because they are faced with 'Sinn Fein's catholic Irish nationalism' which is alien to them and their 'traditions'. These politics of Sinn Fein are also something which break from the traditional republicanism of Wolfe Tone which, contrary to Sinn Fein's version,
There is, in all this, so much disinformation it is difficult to know where to gasp most. But, for example: • 'Northern Ireland' was only part of the British state in name since the 12th century. Ulster was so resistant to British occupation that it did not happen in reality until the 17th century when the native Irish were driven from their land and were replaced by English and Scottish settlers. • The protestant community of the northeast of Ireland have rarely considered themselves as 'British' in the sense that term is understood in Britain. From the horne rule bills of the 19th and early 20th centuries to the Anglo-Irish accord 36 of today they have continually resisted
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Socialist Organiser and