Adapted from a speech by Workers World Party Chairperson Sam Marcy to a public forum in San Francisco on Feb. 2.
This is not only Bush's war. It is a war of all three branches of the government — the executive, the Congress and the judiciary. Above all, it is a war of the ruling class.
They are riding into a madness of a type the world has not yet seen. To the average person, this war is a sudden development. What is its deeper cause? What is driving the imperialists on?
We've seen lots of interventions by the imperialist powers. The U.S. in Grenada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama. England in Kenya and northern Ireland, France in Algeria. Holland subjugated and brutally oppressed a population ten times its size in Indonesia. It finally had to get out, but was superseded by the U.S. after a murderous military onslaught against the communist-led mass movement in 1965.
Japan intervened unilaterally in Korea and China. Germany got Namibia and tried to take north Africa. Portugal got Brazil; Spain most of the rest of South America. Belgium held the Congo for 80 years or so. And there are many, many more.
What's the difference between then and now?
This war against Iraq is a collective intervention. All these imperialist powers are in it together. It is not an individual undertaking. It's like the war in Korea but much more so. The so-called UN intervention there was really a cover for the U.S. But this time all the imperialists are deeply in it.
It's a premeditated conspiracy, not by a few individuals but by an agglomeration of the world ruling classes, who have gotten together to reshape world relationships. It's not just for oil, although that's crucial, but is an attempt to redivide the world to give more power to the imperialist ruling classes in their extraction of super-profits.
Of course, there are contradictions within the imperialist camp. But we can't rely on their contradictions and rivalries with each other to solve the problem of the war for us. We do not want to promote passivity. We have to show first that the imperialists are united in grabbing all of the resources in the Third World and in subduing the working class in the metropolitan imperialist countries. We have to rely on the masses to overthrow them.
Two swift changes in the world situation have made all this happen.
First, the productive forces of capitalist society, driven by the scientific-technological revolution, have outgrown the existing market relations, which are restricted by the growth of the independence movements and the struggles for sovereignty. Every day there are rebellions by oppressed people against the rule of monopoly. The imperialists have to reorganize, contain these struggles, and if necessary crush them.
Second is the absence of the USSR and China from the anti-imperialist struggle. Their presence restrained the imperialists, who felt threatened not merely by their military might but by their political power to stimulate progressive, anti-imperialist struggles and give the imperialists cause to think twice.
When the Iraqi Revolution broke out in 1958, the Eisenhower administration was ready to send a carrier to the Gulf and intervene. But what happened? It was of course the revolutionary struggle there first and foremost that stopped them. But also, the socialist countries came to the assistance of the national liberation movements with anti-imperialist solidarity. The governments of the USSR and China — in addition to India under Nehru and Indonesia under Sukarno — issued powerful warnings to the Eisenhower administration that they were playing with fire.
The Eisenhower administration huffed and puffed, but did not intervene militarily. This made a difference in Iraqi politics, too, and moved society to the left, although since then it has undergone several shifts back and forth.
A progressive meeting on the war like this should not leave out the developments in the USSR, China and elsewhere and how they affect the Middle East. We are all involved in the fight for El Salvador, for the Palestinians, and so on. But we must not forget what the imperialists have on their mind at all times.
The imperialists calculated that the Gorbachev regime and the Chinese leadership would support their military venture in Iraq. While the imperialists would divide the booty among themselves, their inducement to the socialist countries was that they would be rewarded with peace, no more nuclear threats. We'll give you the freedom to trade with us as freely as we trade among ourselves, they said. We'll give you loans and credits, just as we did to Germany and Japan. Forget the anti-imperialist struggle. Reshape your socialist economies so we can coordinate with each other.
For many decades the principal struggle on the international arena was between the socialist countries and imperialism. Now there has been a collapse in Eastern Europe, and the leadership in the USSR has given way to collaboration with imperialism. This has made the imperialists giddy and reckless to the point of miscalculation in a most profound sense.
They think they've got the world in their hands and can manipulate all the small nations around them. They can use military force without resistance from the rest of the world.
It's a miscalculation. It won't happen.
The workers and peasants of the oppressed countries won't give the imperialists rest, no matter what government's in charge. From Karachi to Tunis, from Beirut to Cairo, rebellions are in the making.
So far we've seen magnificent demonstrations in all the oppressed countries. U.S. embassy staffs everywhere live in fear, not daring to go out in the streets. They have to be reassured daily that the steps taken by Washington won't result in their being burned down.
The role of the masses is always underestimated by the ruling classes. They don't think of mass insurrections until they happen.
When the imperialists embark upon an adventure, it always seems to be a limited operation, but before long they have to use unlimited means in order to achieve their objective.
I want to come back to the USSR, China and Eastern Europe, because that is neglected in our discussions, our rallies, except in a negative way. All we hear is the boasting of the ruling class that all has gone their way and they need not worry. That's not true.
Gorbachev has been in power for nearly six years now, pushing capitalist reforms in the hope they would bring a wave of prosperity to rival that of the United States. Such rash and unverified predictions, so uncustomary of a communist political leader! Yet the gullible can easily be taken in by promises which forecast a better life, especially one without sacrifice.
But the fact of the matter is that after a period of time, the capitalist reforms introduced by the Gorbachev administration — and in reality supported and in part financed by the CIA — are collapsing and the masses of people are turning away from them.
This bad news for the imperialist ruling class is coming in small articles. It's not in the headlines.
Gone are the heady days when they were flattering Gorbachev. The handouts they were going to give in billions of dollars to the USSR are being pulled back.
The statements made in this country that the Soviet military would support the Gulf struggle — which would be an immeasurable crime coming from a socialist country — they're not coming true. That's in our favor. It's a dream the capitalists had which would have been a nightmare for the world's oppressed. But it's not happening.
All those people writing for the capitalist press who have opinions a few hours after a big event overlooked something. That was when the Bush administration invited the Chief of Staff of the USSR to come over here and talk to the U.S. Chief of Staff. This was done over the head of Gorbachev. But when General Mikhail Moiseyev came over here and said point-blank that no, the USSR would not send military forces to aid an offensive in the Middle East, he was not believed. It was brushed off as just another incident. And yet it had enormous implications.
The next thing that happened was that the Foreign Minister of the USSR, Eduard Shevardnadze, was forced by the progressive military leaders to resign. It was big headlines. The imperialists knew that they had trouble on their hands. For one reason or another, they delayed the military offensive in the Gulf, always hoping they could get even a small number of Soviet army people to participate in the combat. This sign of the two superpowers getting together would be sufficient to browbeat the rest of the globe into submission.
It hasn't happened. And in our view, which we hope is correct, it will not happen.
Because the foundation of socialist construction in the USSR, no matter how badly it has been deformed, cannot be overturned. The drive is towards reconstructing and improving socialism, and away from the capitalist system.
The imperialists thought they had the greatest opportunity in 70 years, since the Russian Revolution, to work together — instead of against each other, as they have in two world wars at the cost of tens of millions of lives. And now they would be able to control a great part of the globe, beginning with the Middle East.
The destruction of OPEC was one of their principal objectives, second only to their attempt to save Israel as a bastion against not only the Palestinian people but all of the Arab and Iranian people in the Middle East. It was William Buckley, the ultra-rightwing leader in the literary community of the bourgeoisie, who first revealed that the destruction of OPEC was one of the objectives of the realignment of imperialist forces.
There has been a great deal of prejudice against Arab people because of the prominence which oil has in the economic community. Despite OPEC, the imperialists have been able to garner hundreds of billions of petrodollars. But now for the first time they think it is possible to destroy the entire edifice of OPEC, which was built up to resist imperialist control even though so many of the oil-producing countries are vassal states of imperialism.
The destruction of OPEC comes at a time when there is oil overproduction, a glut of oil. And a capitalist crisis is underway. To undertake such an important development in the form of a conspiracy and to bolster it up with military forces is a sign of sheer madness.
It cannot succeed. The rebellion of the masses on a world scale will not permit it. It was mass rebellions which stopped the first World War, we must remember — first and foremost in the land of the old czarist regime.
And in this connection I think it would be important to draw an analogy. The imperialists are giddy because they believe their technology is decisive in the struggle, that since they have the superior technology they can win any battle, even if somehow their casualties run very high. The whole thrust of the military confrontation in Iraq is based upon the conception that they have the scientific-technological know how and that the mass struggle of necessity has to succumb to it.
Let us look at history. Is it true that technology is decisive in the struggle against national liberation movements and proletarian revolution? Is it true that all that is necessary for the imperialist power is to develop its weapons of war and if they are superior and more destructive they can win? Has this been validated by historical experience?
No. On the contrary, the very opposite is true.
Take the Civil War in the Soviet Union. These same cutthroat imperialist powers that are now combined in a conspiracy against the people of the Middle East intervened to aid the counter-revolution, to make sure the outcome of the Civil War would be in favor of capitalism and against socialism.
Is it not a fact that the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, Belgium, all of them, the 14 powers with the highest technology of the time, thought they could subdue a revolution which did not have the technology of the Western imperialist powers? And what was the outcome of that very monumental struggle? Who came out the victor? The Soviet working class and government threw the imperialists out, a glorious development.
It used to be said that the Russians had rusty rifles and couldn't organize themselves enough to mount a machine gun on a truck. Yet the war was won. That should give pause to the mad people in the Pentagon, the White House, Congress and elsewhere. There are many other examples.
Technology may be decisive where there is not the involvement of a national liberation movement or a proletarian revolution. Where two ruling classes are involved, like when Spain fought England in the 16th century, the one with the superior technology had the advantage. But it was a war between similar oppressing classes.
We don't have to go far to prove that technology is not decisive in a struggle against a national liberation struggle or a proletarian revolution. Look at China. Is it not a fact that China was considered the most backward country in Asia, certainly as regards technology? But the collaboration of China with Korea proved superior in the Korean War, despite all the horrible weapons the U.S. had. In Vietnam the U.S. had missiles, B-52 bombers, the same kind that are carrying out the sorties in Iraq. How many times did they bomb Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia? But the technology did not do it.
So why do they think it will do it in Iraq, which is more advanced than China was, than Korea was, than the USSR in the early days of the revolution? Yes, you can have a lot of Patriot missiles, a lot of smart bombs, but the people are smarter.
That is the lesson of history.
A progressive, revolutionary struggle fought by oppressed people against an oppressor will ultimately be decisive against all the devilish weapons the ruling class invents. In fact, these inventions will be taken over by the oppressed in the ultimate struggle of the socialist revolution against capitalism and imperialism on a world scale.
This is what we have got to work for. The anti-war movement is an inseparable part of the anti-capitalist struggle. It is capitalism that is the fundamental cause of the struggle.
Their conspiracy is in the interests of sordid, extortionate profit. And it is the aim of the socialist movement, the resuscitated Marxist movement, to bring this to the fore, to give consciousness to the masses that it is not just a mistake of the imperialists. We must go to the root cause. Capitalist administrations change, parliamentary institutions undergo an evolution, but the property system, the relation of owner to worker, the exploiter to the exploited, that must be gotten rid of.
There would never be an intervention in Iraq if it were not for profit. This is the driving force, and this is what must be uprooted and replaced with cooperation, the cooperation first and foremost of all the anti-imperialist forces, all the proletarian forces on a world scale in the interest of revolutionary socialism.
Last updated: 19 February 2018