Why Individual Terrorism is Since Sept. Il" 2001 the United States has led a 'war on terrorism' using it to attack oil-rich states such as Iraq and to attack civil liberties and human rights. Here David Coen argues that the individual terror cannot be property and the nation state. Both are now reaction- ary and artificially maintained by the exploitation of neo-colonies and the development of an impe- rialist globalisation at the heart of which is the US hegemony. Humanity must either strike out towards social- ism, or for years ahead, witness escalating armed conflict and atrocities. The USA in various guises has embarked on wars in the Balkans, the Gulf War, and recently the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Political and economic conflicts are increasingly military conflicts - war is politics and economics by other means. This is matched by big increases in arms expenditure. In the twenty-first century, the new imperialism will not the Answer The FBI defines terrorism as, 'the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in further- ance of political or social objectives'. There have been at least three such attacks in the US over the past 8 years. The first, the 1995 attack on Govern- ment Offices in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, has almost disappeared from view - except among those patriots who seek to blame it on 'inter- national terrorism' or the Iraqis. The bombing was clearly meant as a blow against the US government by right-wing militias who regularly denounce it for being an agent of the 'world government', but it had issue_001 autumn, 2003 Socialist_Outlook not stop at war with Iraq. Already Syria, Iran and North Korea are in US imperialism's vision, if not in the short term, while Pentagon strategists ponder the threats posed to US global hegemony from the demographic, economic and eventually, military challenge of China, set to overtake the USA in every field, long before the century is out. It is doubtful if the USA will allow its dominance to be challenged. More wars will follow, along with the inevitable war crimes, including the possible use of 'tactical' nuclear weapons, if the working class and its allies among the middle classes and small farmers, allow it to happen. This is why we must build powerful anti-war movements, especially in the main impe- rialist heartlands. It is also the best support we can give to those fighting against imperialist oppression and for national liberation. the answer to imperialism. little political effect. By contrast, the 2001 anthrax scare had a big polit- ical impact. On the first anniversary of the attacks an article in the Los Angeles Times made severa salient points: that the anthrax originated within the US bio-defence programme, that the perpetrator's motive was not to kill but rather to raise public fear and thereby spur Congress to increase spending on bio-defence, that these attacks have been phenome- nally successful. ' The third attack, that on the World Trade Centre, cannot in retrospect be seen to have advanced 3 ' Barbara Hatch Rosen- berg, 'Anthrax Attacks Pushed Open an Ominous Door', Los Angeles Times, 22 September, 2002.
2 4 ' Piers Mostyn, 'Civil Liberties, the War and the Muslim Communit Socialist Resistance, October, 2002. ' Leon Trotsky, 'Why Marxists Oppose Indi- vidual Terrorism' 1909 a, www.marxist.org/archive/ trotsky/works/1909 Satanic Verses bril- liantly captures the clash between the mercantilism of imperialism and the "merchantist" roots of Islam. * The Baader-Meinhoff Group was more influ- enced by the Anarchist 'propaganda of the deed' politics than by Marxism. the cause of Muslims oppressed by imperialism in the 'war' with the US and its allies. daring, courageous, well-planned and executed the attacks were and however shocking they were to the US ruling class (Bush spent several paranoid hours flying about in a military jet), however they were applauded among Arab and Islamic peoples throughout the world, the long term effect of this Trotsky might have "propaganda of the deed' as called it, was not to encourage the masses to fling themselves on imperialism and to overthrow it but instead to alienate the US working class and to provide a convenient excuse for the neo-conserva- tives in the White House and the Pentagon to launch an 'endless war on terrorism'. Within and without the US, anti-communism has been replaced by anti- terrorism. In Britain, as in the US, it provided the excuse for government to clamp down on dissent of all kinds by widening the definition of terrorism and dismantling civil liberties. Trotsky on Terrorism Trotsky went further than simply denouncing indi- vidual terrorism: he located the upsurge in assas- sinations and attacks on state functionaries in pre- 1917 Russia in the desire of the intellectuals to strike an individual blow against tyranny, but it was a desire which disregarded its effects on the masses. Terrorism was rooted in Russian underdevelopment and specifically the penetration of European capital into Russia: the Tsarist regime (doing the bidding of external forces and bleeding the popular masses dry) came to be seen as an external force, but one which could afford the most advanced military and repres- sive apparatus. The intelligentsia likewise devel- oped ahead of 'serious revolutionary classes from which they could get support? In other words: ter- rorism was engendered by the absence of a revo- lutionary class. Once a large industrial proletar- iat came into existence. terrorism was 'outdated by history' because the methods of mass struggle. the main instrument of which was the strike. had social repercussions far wider than that of some heroic individual shooting a government minister or a par- ticularly hard faced capitalist: Only the proletariat can organise a strike. A strike even of modest size, has social consequences, strengthening of the workers self confidence, growth of the trade union, and not infrequently even an improvement of the productive machinery. The murder of a factory owner produces effects of a police nature only, or a change of proprietors devoid of any social significance. So our attitude to terrorism is conditioned by the class character of those involved, and conversely, the use of terrorism also gives some indication of the class forces involved. It seems clear that those involved in 'Islamic' terrorism are classically petit bourgeois in character, who would, in other cir- cumstances, be described as nationalists bent on expelling the colonial powers in order to create national states; classic Fianna Fail-ers you might say, to cite the case of Ireland. Unfortunately for them, relations between national states and the large imperial powers have changed. No longer is inde- pendent national development behind protective trade barriers to be allowed: instead, local ruling classes are to be tightly integrated into the global capitalist system under the rhetoric of globalisa- • The kernel of truth in Islamic 'international- tion. ism' is the recognition that nationally based solu- tions are no longer enough, hence their attack on the World Trade Centre. We might also follow Trotsky's logic in suggesting that, as in Russia, where terror- ism flourished before the proletariat appeared on the stage, so the recent attacks have happened before the working class makes its presence felt politically on the global stage. But Trotsky had other reasons for opposing individ- ual terrorism beyond its class character. For those such as the Social Revolutionaries who argued for a combination of politics and terrorist methods, Trotsky cautioned against the effects on the working class. Terrorism implies there is no need for class struggle, for class organisation, for a party, meetings, agitations and elections. Further, In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to powerlessness and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The secrecy of terrorist activity also demands, ..such concentrated energy for the 'great moment', such an overestimation of the significance of individual heroism, and finally such a 'hermetic conspiracy' that - if not logi- call: then psichologically - it totally excludes agitational work among the masses. The example of the German Baader-Meinhof Group during the 1970s shows how counter- productive such methods can be. They attacked employers' representatives and state officials in order to rouse workers to root out the many fascists who were being rehabilitated within the West German state. By their actions they limited the pos- sibility of such mass resistance and as a result the German state was able to isolate them by portraying them as 'anti-democratic'. Trotsky argues that terrorism cannot be contained within the political organisation and eventually comes to dominate it. He said, Terrorism is too 'absolute' a form of struggle to be content with a limited and subordinate role in the party....... The Combat Organisation, which the official party hierarchy places under the Central Committee, inevitably turns out to be above it, above the party and its work
- until cruel fate places it under the police department. Both these strictures apply to the Republican Movement in Ireland, discussed below. Self Determination Of course, in relation to 11/9/01 it is too easy to get involved in liberal denunciations of terrorism. While denouncing individual terrorism, Trotsky had no time for the hypocrisy of those who 'make solemn declarations' about the 'absolute value' of human life yet are willing 'to shove millions into the hell of war.". Especially sick-making are those latter-day liberals who justify US, British or French intervention because of human rights abuses. In the former Yugoslavia, the Milosovic regime only col- lapsed when the US, having failed to destroy the military by bombing, blitzed the civilian infrastruc- ture, which became the decisive event in winning the war. In Afghanistan, allies of the US, such as the Northern Alliance, were given free rein to carry out much worse atrocities than the Taliban. Can the anti-occupation forces in Iraq be consid- ered terrorists? Clearly not. They are resisting US imperial control of Iraq and their legitimacy comes from that. This presupposes that the Iraqi national state has legitimacy, and therefore the democratic right to self-determination - an idea that the impe- rialists seek to demolish with their concept of 'failed states'. • We support self-determination, not only because of Marx's dictum that 'a nation which oppresses another can never itself be free', but also because those 'third way' strategists who refuse to take sides in a battle between the political (and military) 'hyperpower', the US, and Middle Eastern states sitting on strategic oil resources, are making both a tactical and strategic mistake.? The argument is often reduced to the character of the regime in such states and many of the 'B52 liberals' mentioned above, either abstain or support the imperialists because of their supposed concern for human rights or, in the case of Afghanistan, concern for women's rights. There are two very powerful counter-arguments to this: one, that impe- rialists care nothing about rights, they were after a strategic location in Iraq; and two, they have shown no inclination to invade Saudi Arabia, a regime as backward as the Taliban but which happens to support the US. These questions are posed as sharply in relation to national liberation movements such as the IRA, the Tamil Tigers and currently to Palestinian organisations such as the PLO, Hizbul- lah and Hamas. Though these forces are not terror- ists in the sense that Trotsky meant, there is always a tension between militarism and mass mobilisation, and the latter is often subordinated to the dictates of an elitist military campaign which can take on the character of terrorism. In all such cases where the resistance faces over- whelming military force on the side of the occupy- issue_001 autumn, 2003 Socialist Outlook ing power, its only realistic military objective is to make the territory ungovernable, that is, to make the price of occupation too high, a key part of which is to sap the morale of the occupier's own population. In most cases this will consist in inflicting military casualties. The problem is that because of the tech- nical superiority of the aggressor, this means a high rate of risk for the guerrilla army and a widening definition of targets leading to attacks on collabora- tors and more civilian deaths. In the Irish war, IRA attacks on pubs in Britain in the 1970s, flowing from frustration at their inability to hit military targets, totally demobilised the solidarity movement and actually reinforced anti-Irish chauvinism among the British working class. Later, as targets came to include workers repairing British Army or RUC facilities in the North of Ireland, British 'psych-ops' were able to portray the IRA as killers of ordinary workers and discredit the Republicans. While some on the British left are too quick to denounce the violence of the oppressed, a suicide bombing in Israel is a crude way of evening the odds against a Palestinian youth, shot down on the streets during the Intifada. However righteous the anger and the desire for revenge, indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians cannot in the end be jus- tified on the grounds of principle or tactics. The fact that the imperialists or their cat's-paw, the Israelis, have no hesitation in killing civilians does not make it right in principle for the Palestinian resist- ance to do so. The tactical case against is an even stronger one. Attacks on civilians allow the Zionist state more effectively to galvanise Israelis behind its brutal policy of suppressing the Palestinians and ethnically cleansing the West Bank. The total effect is to strengthen the most reactionary and anti-social- ist elements on both sides: on the one hand, the most reactionary Jews who wish to occupy all the land 'given to them by God': on the other, the Muslim "jihadis' who want to expel all Jews from the region and create an Islamic state. The Role of the Masses But this does not mean that we are neutral between the oppressors of the Zionist state backed by the imperial might of the US and the Palestinian resist- ance, any more than we are neutral in the British war in Ireland or between the Tamils and the Sri Lankan state. The point is none of these liberation move- ments can succeed without mobilising the masses. To do so they will have to advance demands that go far beyond their narrow petit bourgeois politics, demands of the mass of the people? The so-called Irish peace process is a case in point. The Republi- cans came near to military defeat several times, in part because of the tactical and political mistakes mentioned earlier.* They were saved by a (reluctant) turn to mass politics during the hunger strikes of the early 1980s. The militarist habits of the Republicans however meant that the movement, which grew around the hunger strikes, was treated merely as a stage army 'Leon Trotsky, 1909 @ ' Some on the left make a between 'paleo-imperial- ism..a more localised hyper-imperialism' of the US, going on to argue that supporting the former against the latter is not progressive. This 'third way politics would not support Iraq against be similar to supporting small-scale against big capital. None of the anti- imperialist left would give unconditional support to small against big capital 3 Trotsky rooted the Combined and uneven development means that fion grows globally, it is segmented into different fit into the category of industrial proletariat that he had in mind. What unites the global working class is their exploitation by global capital centred mainly in the major politi- cal and military powers on the planet. * Though I do not subscribe to the theory that British agents in the IRA were able to steer it towards the accommodation with the British represented by the Stormont Agreement, Trotsky's point about the 'Police Department' mentioned earlier, does seem very apt in relation to the Stakeknife affair.