We suppose a good argument could have been made for the view that Spartacus, the leader of the famous slave insurrection in ancient times, should not have attempted to march on Rome in his struggle to liberate the legions of slaves under Roman subjugation.
Yet Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the stalwart leaders of the revolutionary communists in Germany at the time of the First World War, thought so well of him that they named their party the Spartacus League.
Perhaps many of the generals and advisers in Spartacus's army thought it wasn't wise to attempt to go to Rome. But those differences of opinion were within the camp of the rebellious slaves themselves. They should be sharply demarcated from the arguments and debates in the Roman senate concerning Spartacus, who was as much demonized, hated and vilified in his time as Saddam Hussein is today.
Spartacus fought a war of liberation against slavery. In the Roman senate, composed exclusively of landlords and slave owners, he was accused of atrocities. But all modern historians now agree that the atrocities were committed by the Roman legions against the slave army. In fact, nearly a century before Jesus was supposed to have been crucified, the Roman legions nailed 1,000 rebel slaves to posts, one each mile on the long road from Cairo to Damascus.
We can argue strategy and tactics, we can ask ourselves whether the tactic of John Brown was correct, storming Harper's Ferry with a handful of people. We can ask if Nat Turner should have relied upon a conspiracy (which lasted an astonishingly long time before it was discovered by the slave owners).
There were many after the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 who said that the uprising only led to the massacre of tens of thousands of Communards. But Karl Marx drew the correct lesson from it — that it was an electrifying preview of how the proletariat was capable of rising up, overthrowing the old state apparatus and establishing its own state on new class lines.
Georgi Plekhanov, after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution in Russia, said that the workers should not have taken up arms in the first place. Lenin, in answer to Plekhanov, found most relevant Marx's analysis of the Commune. A defeat after having fought out a struggle to the end, he said, is preferable to a rotten compromise or a surrender which results in the demoralization of the working class.
Marxists in any age would do best not to bemoan such defeats but learn the relevant lessons. Marxists, instead of cursing the temporary darkness, instead must light even one small candle to illuminate the path ahead.
What do we say to those in the imperialist camp now giddy with success?
That we know how you vilify leaders of the oppressed and glorify your puppets. We remember how, back in 1960, the UN was a screen behind which Patrice Lumumba, the first president of the newly independent Congo, was murdered in very similar circumstances to today. We know how you tried to raise to heroic stature your puppets — Tshombe, Kasavubu and Mobutu. This will be remembered by the revolutionaries who overturn the Zaire regime.
We know how you plotted the overthrow of Salvador Allende. We know the circumstances of his murder. We know you glorified the butcher Pinochet and his fascist dictatorship. Even now, you still have a soft heart for him as head of the military forces in a democratic Chilean regime entirely suitable to your tastes and wants.
We know how you rated Malcolm X as a leader and the circumstances under which you undid him. We're not impressed by your efforts to coopt Martin Luther King while unleashing a war of drugs and police brutality against the oppressed communities.
It is sad, of course, to see that so many progressives, including much of the working class at the moment, have been taken in by the vilification of Saddam Hussein. How neatly the imperialist bourgeoisie is covering up its robbery of the fabulous wealth in the Arabian peninsula!
Of course, we should not expect the capitalist press to do less than its chauvinist worst at a time when it is engaged in a supreme effort to promote a most predatory war. Nor should we expect that august, most deliberative parliamentary body, the U.S. Senate, to be more objective than the landlords and slave owners of the Roman senate. The U.S. senators are far more wealthy; 96 of the 100 are white men, most of them millionaires. Even the Roman senate had some plebeians in it. Here we have totalitarianism in its most shameful aspect.
What is the real issue in this war? Newsweek dated March 4 put it frankly and brutally: "Bush's battle plan target: total victory," they exulted.
This has been the aim from the very beginning, to take total possession of the peninsula. Kuwait was the pretext, but the target was Iraq. Now the imperialists are boasting about it as France, Britain and the U.S. are in the process of invading deep into Iraq itself, which they had promised not to do! They have gone far beyond the 12 resolutions they themselves imposed upon the UN Security Council.
But what have UN Security Council resolutions meant in all the years of its existence? Can anyone name a significant, independent step which resolved a military struggle?
The UN has been the setting for a collective conspiracy of all the imperialists. For a period of time, the three permanent imperialist members on the UN Security Council — the U.S., Britain and France — skillfully maneuvered to get the entire council's blessings, roping in a number of subordinate capitalist powers, dependent states and outright puppet regimes — and of course the USSR and China.
What has made this war possible in the first place? It is the "new world order" which Gorbachev and the Bush administration palmed off on the world scene as early as December 1988, when Gorbachev came to the UN and spoke about a new age of "universal human values." Now we see what that means.
Could any of this have happened if the Soviet Union and China, or even just one of them, had vetoed the original resolution putting an embargo on Iraq?
Can governments which call themselves nonaligned or independent, and in truth are oppressed by imperialism, ally themselves with the imperialists against another oppressed country under the false insignia of a "war of liberation"?
How did they all get themselves inveigled by such a monstrous falsehood in the first place? How could the U.S. become the leader of such an important bloc as to get unanimous resolutions passed in the Security Council, especially after Panama and Grenada? After Chile, Nicaragua, the Philippines, the hypocritical position on South Africa — the list could go on and on.
And let's not forget Britain. Who made Kuwait "independent"? Who carved it out of the territorial area of what had always been ancient Iraq, going back to the days of Mesopotamia? And didn't the Soviet Union itself oppose admitting Kuwait to the UN in 1962 on the ground that it was impossible to call it an independent nation for while the British Army had finally left Kuwait, it retained all the strings of domination?
But Kuwait was admitted anyway. Yet China at that time was not! Even though the Chinese government represented the most populous country on earth, and the people had liberated themselves from feudalism and foreign capitalism in one of the most profound revolutions in contemporary history, it was not allowed in the UN. Instead the Chiang Kai-shek counter-revolutionary forces in the pay of U.S. imperialism, which had been driven off the mainland by the Red Army, occupied China's seat on the Security Council and in the General Assembly.
Once Kuwait was admitted to the UN, its false stance as an independent nation gained currency in the rest of the world. It didn't matter to the oil companies that it played the role of an independent country and joined the nonaligned movement. The fabulous wealth they were extracting was all that counted.
What accounts for the euphoria of the imperialists now? The U.S. is in control of all the oil in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Bush proclaims the rule of law as the guiding line in this genocidal assault. But possession is nine-tenths of the law. That's the sine qua non of imperialist politics.
There is the usual bickering in the UN Security Council, which is holding closed-door sessions. But this doesn't disturb the Pentagon one iota. The banks, the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon now hold the prize possession in their own hands.
What about the "victors" in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia? They are now, in the name of Prince Al-Waleed, shelling out their cash, or what is left of it, to Citicorp under the shameless cover of becoming a principal stockholder of this giant international bank (Wall St. Journal, Feb. 25). But in truth they are handing over $590 million to strengthen the crumbling reserves of this giant financial behemoth.
So even before the military victory is completed, Saudi Arabia has gone to the financial markets to borrow money. It used to be a lender.(New York Times, Feb. 25). How could such a transformation take place in such a record time? The answer lies in the legions of the allied military forces, most of all the U.S., who go in as "liberators" and will remain as occupiers.
How interesting that a New York Times piece (Feb. 22) tries to pass off the prince as a self-made man! He earned a billion all by himself. The prince is one of 20,000 royal family members and 4,000 princes and princesses. This is the remains of an ancient tribe now turned into a decadent bourgeois cabal at the beck and call of its imperialist master.
Now that Kuwait has been liberated, you would expect a rush of international construction companies vying to repair the damage, contracts which could last for years. But if you don't see a rush, and only some polite bidding, be aware that all of this was figured out in advance between the U.S., the British and the French. We wonder what share the junior partners who didn't contribute militarily, Japan and Germany, will get out of the deal.
Reparations is the name given to this form of banditry. It hasn't been decided who the nominal paymaster will be, but we know in advance who pays the paymaster.
One would think that the mere possession of all the fabulous wealth now in the hands of the imperialists would solve the inexorable crisis of the system of exploitation and oppression which has provoked this conflict in the first place. Yet the irony is that not all the underground oceans of wealth in all of Arabia can solve the fundamental problem of the capitalist system.
Why is that?
Scarcity was the curse of all previous social systems. It was scarcity that caused endless rebellions of peasants and changes of political regimes.
But it is super-abundance which is the Achilles heel of the capitalist system.
Just look at the gyrations of the stock markets in New York, Tokyo, Paris, London, Frankfurt. What do they show?
They fear the end of the war. The glut of oil which has been slightly alleviated by the war will become even worse and will speed on the economic crisis, which no amount of financial trickery and no amount of military prowess can long stave off. Military expenditures are like a narcotic which at first provides a temporary stimulus, but when given in large, continuous doses turns into a depressant. This is precisely what is unfolding before the eyes of the whole world.
Last updated: 19 February 2018