On the Libyan Opposition

(Letter)

21 March

To the editor:

Apropos of the Libyan civil war, you declare in the latest issue of Workers Vanguard that “Marxists presently have no side in this conflict.” This is absurd. The civil war began with a mass civil uprising that the Qaddafi regime brutally crushed in Tripoli and then moved to extirpate in other cities as well. Are you neutral when unarmed protesters are shot down in the streets? Do you take no side when the most elementary democratic rights are violated? In your statement on the US, UK, and French intervention, you refer to the Benghazi opposition as a “cabal of pro-imperialist ‘democrats,’ CIA stooges, monarchists, and Islamists.” What about the thousands of ordinary workers fighting for their lives against the nationalist regime? Are they less worthy of support than the Egyptian, Yemeni, or Bahraini masses? This is a travesty of Marxism. You people have really lost your way.

Daniel Lazare

WV replies:

What began as an uprising against the bonapartist bourgeois regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi quickly turned into a civil war between the Tripoli-centered government and an imperialist-backed opposition in the eastern areas, heavily overlaid by tribal and regional divisions. For Marxists, the question of extending military support in civil wars and other conflicts is determined by whether the victory of one side or the other would further the cause of the working class and the oppressed. As we explained at the time in “Imperialists Hands Off Libya!” (WV No. 976, 18 March), from this class standpoint neither the Qaddafi regime nor the Benghazi-based opposition—a motley crew of former officials of the Qaddafi regime, monarchists, Islamists and tribal leaders who early on appealed for imperialist intervention—merited support. But, as the article noted, the world proletariat would have a side in opposing any intervention into Libya by the imperialists.

Indeed, immediately after NATO forces began their attack on Libya, the International Communist League declared in a March 20 statement: “The civil war in Libya has now been subordinated to the fight of a neocolonial country against imperialism” (“Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack,” WV No. 977, 1 April). In this war, it is the duty of Marxists to stand for the military defense of Libya against imperialism and the opposition forces that are acting as the imperialists’ ground troops, while not giving Qaddafi an ounce of political support. Daniel Lazare, who writes for the Nation and other publications, does not say where he stands on the imperialist war against Libya.

The ICL statement continued: “Every step taken by the workers of the imperialist countries to halt the depredations and military adventures of their rulers is a step toward their own liberation from capitalist exploitation, impoverishment and oppression.” We also note that militant opposition to imperialist intervention is a prerequisite for the working class in Egypt, Tunisia and throughout North Africa and the Near East to emerge as a revolutionary force under its own class banner.