On Haiti Capitulation

(Letters)

Massachusetts
29 April 2010

I welcome the 4/27/10 corrective statement issued by the ICL, “Repudiating Our Position on Haiti Earthquake: A Capitulation to U.S. Imperialism”. I had a harder time understanding the initial position taken by Workers Vanguard than any other issue since I began reading your press in 1997. I emailed my concerns on 2/6/10 and was about to follow up this weekend since I have continued to be unsatisfied with the line in WV on this issue.

Natural disasters are not a new phenomenon. Marxists have also been around for quite some time, so it’s instructive that no revolutionary has called for imperialist troops in the aftermath of natural disasters. Rosa Luxemburg didn’t do it in the aftermath of a volcano. You didn’t do it after Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in Indonesia. There is some difference between calling for “troops in” and refusing for the time being to call for them out, but it’s basically hairsplitting, and moreover was blurred by your initial analysis, which presented the US military as the only force that could provide relief. I had a hard time wondering how long you were going to refuse to call for troop withdrawal, how many other exceptions there could be, and what facts changed in WV (No. 955) that you called for “troops out,” without repudiating your initial position. I think the corrective is overdue but absolutely essential to maintaining the revolutionary future of the ICL.

I do not consider myself a great Marxist theoretician, so it’s hard to insist on my point of view against others who know far more than I do. I get things wrong and it’s frustrating. I try to learn and get things right for the next time. I hope that the comrades who held to the initial error can be convinced of the correction and that the party as a whole can find its bearings. The ICL is operating under enormous pressures, trying to accomplish the most difficult and important task in human history: international, workers revolution and the establishment of a socialist society. I would love to see the day it finally happens.

Joel

The following letter, dated February 6, was received on May 8 after we requested that it be resent.

My initial reaction to the earthquake in Haiti was for the U.S./UN military to get out and let the rescue volunteers do their job. I don’t think there’s anything reformist about demanding that the imperialist military keep their bloody hands off a small neocolony. Nor do I see anything wrong with wanting international volunteers to help a desperate people in a time of emergency. This is different from the perennial reformist demand of “butter, not guns”.

Workers Vanguard (No. 951) cites the history of imperialist abuse and the current crimes being committed, but does not call for U.S./UN troops out now. WV states: “The U.S. military is the only force on the ground with the capacity—e.g., trucks, planes, ships—to organize the transport of what food, water, medical and other supplies are getting to Haiti’s population. And they’re doing it in the typical piggish U.S. imperialist manner. We have always opposed U.S. and UN occupations in Haiti and everywhere—and it may become necessary to call for U.S./UN out of Haiti in the near future—but we are not going to call for an end to such aid as the desperate Haitian masses can get their hands on.”

The Internationalist Group, in a 1/30/10 post, takes WV to task on this position. I expect WV to respond in the next issue, but I felt the need to write anyway, as a longtime WV reader, to express my confusion on this issue. I’d like to know what’s wrong with calling for troops out now and allowing volunteer rescue workers in? If troops are allowed in, when would you call for them to leave? The devastation will be longterm and so likely will the occupation, which will be a staging ground against the Caribbean proletariat and especially Cuba.

To be clear, I do not support the IG position that the earthquake devastation opens up a good opportunity for a small but militant proletariat to lead the Haitian masses in socialist revolution. The IG seems to conjure up revolutionary opportunities all over the world. I’m just waiting for them to find a small but militant proletariat ready to lead Afghanistan in socialist revolution. I will need to research the history but Haiti does seem more akin to Afghanistan, as the SL has maintained for years. (It is not a sudden 2010 discovery, as the IG writes.) It is ultra-leftist to see revolutionary opportunities everywhere and always, despite the devastation, and in some areas disappearance, of the working class, and the tremendous retrogression in consciousness since the demise of the Soviet Union. It denies reality and leads to opportunism by ignoring the political gulf that separates even militant protesters from Marxism.

I’m writing in the hope that your next article will answer these questions and provide some historical examples where it was correct for Marxists to even temporarily drop the call for imperialist forces to get out of a neocolony. Reformists love to make exceptions, e.g., troops in Ireland to provide breathing space, etc. Marxists are relentless in criticizing any bend towards imperialism. I think your quote by Trotsky about troops putting out a fire is not a sufficient analogy. I don’t know if the SL has made a mistake by over-reacting to the IG’s erroneous position or if I am simply not understanding your analysis.

Joel

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5 May 2010

Comrades,

I am very relieved to see the line change—it was very difficult to understand how it was OK, from a Trotskyist perspective, for the US military to invade Haiti. Apparently it should have been impossible. I give you credit for publicly and vociferously rejecting and denouncing that line.

DY