gotiations and peace deals involves not just profound strategic debates, but a shake-up and recomposition of the political forces involved. In each situation a right and a left wing will emerge, a conflict between class struggle and class compromise.
This represents, in a certain way, the political wearing out of a series of leaderships of liberation struggles, not only because of defeats but also because of the inherent limitations in their strategies, goals and alliances.
For example, no analysis the Middle East peace process can be abstracted from an analysis of the Arafat Fateh leadership, which has always been a bourgeois nationalist movement, which has always been authoritarian and bureaucratic and which has never had a strategy based on the self-organisaThen those fighting tion and mobilisation of Arab workers in the whole region. In today's conditions of eco nomic crisis and imperialist offensive, the political space for a series of former strategies and alliances is eroding - for example strategies based on alliance with the Soviet Union or support from radical bourgeois nationalist regimes have largely collapsed.
For revolutionary and liberation forces in many parts of the world this means a profound strategic reassessment. A good example is the process now underway in the different wings of the Philippines Communist Party. Marxists have every interest in intervening in these debates and addressing those forces who reject an historic compromise with imperialism. Every such discussion involves concrete elements based on the I defence, is a frequently necesbiggest compromise with impespecificities of particular struggles.
But there are common guidelines, which can only be briefly outlined here.
The first is the understanding that the struggle for democracy is an anti-capitalist struggle. This directly implies the impossibility of a long-term strategic alliance with the 'national' bourgeoisie or a 'stagist' conception of revolution. It also implies the necessity for the class independence and self-organisation of the working class and oppressed. The second crucial issue is the democratic self-organisation of the masses in struggle, and thus a rejection of bureaucratic militarism.
Armed struggle, or armed selfsary tactic in anti-imperialist struggle. But the effects of fetishisation of armed struggle, or its elevation outside any democratic control, are always corrosive and result in bureaucratic degeneration and substitutionism. Rejection of an alliance with the 'national' bourgeoisie implies an alliance centred on the Socialist Outlook is the world's best selling marcist fortnightly Subscribing gives you more than high quality news and analysis. theory + prachce, our theoreti cal supplement, and Liberation! working class, uniting the oppressed. That cannot be done without the self-organisation, and championing, of struggles of women; and also by victims of national and racial oppression.
But that in itself requires democratic forms of struggle and mass organisation, not bureaucratic or militarist ones.
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