On Military vs. Political Support

(Letter)

25 November 2006

We read a lot in the pages of WV about supporting groups “militarily but not politically.” If military action is just the continuation of politics, as Mao used to say, how can such a separation be made, except in one’s own mind? I do not feel comfortable supporting the Shia’te militias even if their actions help defeat the US imperialists. I am not interested in restoring the veil!

This separation into “military” and “political” is what we call, in general semantics, “elementalism” and the practical consequence of it is to distort reality.viz. into a false picture. The jihadists are not going to thank us for our support—they are going to kill us, if they can, and Kim Jung Il will throw us into prison. Pretty selfless of us, don’t you think, to support all these people who want to do us harm? Jesus would be proud!

Comradely,
C.O.

WV replies:

C.O.’s letter, at bottom, embraces “democratic” imperialism as superior to those states where capitalism has been overthrown, in this case the deformed workers state of North Korea under Kim Jong Il. Our unconditional military defense of the North Korean workers state is nothing other, nothing less than the duty of Trotskyists to defend the conquests of the proletariat internationally against imperialism, as is our call for proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucratic castes sitting atop such states which undermine their defense.

Pointing to the bureaucratic Stalinist regimes and the proletariat’s lack of political power in these states, which nonetheless rest on proletarian property forms, as a pretext to renege on military defense of these states against imperialism and internal counterrevolution is nothing new in the history of the workers movement. Nor is that fact that those who adopt such a position inevitably find themselves, as C.O. does, taking a “third camp” position that objectively puts them in a bloc with their “own” bourgeoisie.

Thus, C.O. expresses “discomfort” over our forthright and elementary military defense of those forces fighting the U.S. occupiers in Iraq, a neocolonial capitalist country. While giving no political support to such forces and making clear our vehement opposition to the communalist, sectarian slaughter taking place on all sides, we also tell the truth: this slaughter was in fact unleashed and exacerbated by the U.S. invasion and occupation. Our staunch opposition to U.S. imperialism’s bloody occupation of Iraq requires military defense of those who land blows against the occupiers.

The distinction between political and military support is not, in fact, a difficult concept to grasp if one begins by drawing the class line. Take the example of a strike led by a pro-capitalist, bureaucratic union leadership. Obviously, revolutionaries (not to mention class-conscious workers) support the strike despite political opposition to the union leadership. This becomes very concrete on the picket line.

C.O.’s semantic gymnastics cannot obscure the simple fact that C.O. is buying into the retrograde consciousness that we confront today in the aftermath of the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union. A tip off: C.O. omits the fact that it was the imperialists who supported and indeed fueled the growth of Islamic fundamentalism—veil, bride price and all—as an anti-Communist bulwark during Cold War II. This was particularly acute in Afghanistan in the 1980s, where the CIA-backed mujahedin were armed to the teeth against the intervention by the Soviet armed forces. Such an omission, along with C.O.’s writing off of the Trotskyist position of unconditional military defense of the deformed workers states, makes clear that C.O. is imbibing of and embellishing the “democratic” credentials of imperialism. Tony Cliff and Max Shachtman would be proud!