reactionary
revolutionaries and revolutionary reactionaries
by Saleh Waziruddin
These
days we're seeing the labour, leftist, and socialist/communist
movements confused bewildered and confused around the question of the
rights of countries facing colonization and occupation. there is
really no need to be confused, the issue is very simply that
imperialism is objectively bad for all of us and fighting imperialism
is good for all. but the successful propaganda against those who
resist imperialism as being reactionary and violent, which is based
on fact yet also a denial of the most fundamental fact of what a
violation of rights imperialism is, as well as the argument for
defending the imperialist countries when in fact the wars are
destroying the imperialist countries and their people, has fooled a
lot of people on the left. we find leftist repeating the imperialists
propaganda against those who are resisting imperialism as fascists
and reactionaries.
this is not a new problem, socialists
during world war i saw their parties fall into the same trap. it was
inevitable that reality would make these ideas unsustainable, and
everything came crashing down.
here are some quotes from lenin
and stalin on this problem
Lenin in the discussion on
self-determination summed-up
It described the Irish rebellion
as being nothing more nor less than a "putsch", for, as the
author argued, "the Irish question was an agrarian one",
the peasants had been pacified by reforms, and the nationalist
movement remained
only a "purely urban, petty-bourgeois
movement, which, notwithstanding the sensation it caused, had not
much social backing". ...
It is to be hoped that, in
accordance with the adage, "it's an ill wind that blows nobody
any good", many comrades, who were not aware of the morass they
were sinking into by repudiating "self-determination" and
by treating the national movements of small nations with disdain,
will have their eyes opened by the "accidental" coincidence
of opinion held by a Social-Democrat and a representative of the
imperialist bourgeoisie!! ...
The term "putsch", in
its scientific sense, may be employed only when the attempt at
insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of conspirators or
stupid maniacs, and has aroused no sympathy among the masses. The
centuries-old Irish national movement, having passed through various
stages and combinations of class interest, manifested itself, in
particular, in a mass Irish National Congress in America
(Vorwärts, March 20, 1916) which called for Irish
independence; it also manifested itself in street fighting conducted
by a section of the urban petty bourgeoisie and a section of the
workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations,
suppression of newspapers, etc. Whoever calls such a rebellion a
"putsch" is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire
hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living
phenomenon.
To imagine that social revolution is conceivable
without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe,
without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie
with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically
non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against
oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against
national oppression, etc. -- to imagine all this is to repudiate
social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, "We
are for socialism", and another, somewhere else and says, "We
are for imperialism", and that will be a social revolution! Only
those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the
Irish rebellion by calling it a "putsch".
Whoever
expects a "pure" social revolution will never live to see
it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without
understanding what revolution is. ...
We would be very poor
revolutionaries if, in the proletariat's great war of liberation for
socialism, we did not know how to utilise every popular movement
against every single disaster imperialism brings in order to
intensify and extend the crisis. If we were, on the one hand, to
repeat in a thousand keys the declaration that we are "opposed"
to all national oppression and, on the other, to describe the heroic
revolt of the most mobile and enlightened section of certain classes
in an oppressed nation against its oppressors as a "putsch",
we should be sinking to the same level of stupidity as the
Kautskyites.
Stalin in foundations of leninism
The
revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions
of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the
existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a
revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the
existence of a democratic basis of the movement. The struggle that
the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan
is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views
of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and
undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such
"desperate" democrats and "socialists,"
"revolutionaries" and republicans as, for example, Kerensky
and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson
and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle,
for its result was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory,
of imperialism. For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptian
merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence
of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the
bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of the Egyptian
national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to
socialism; whereas the struggle that the British "Labour"
government is waging to preserve Egypt's dependent position is for
the same reasons a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian
origin and the proletarian title of the members of that government,
despite the fact that they are "for" socialism. There is no
need to mention the national movement in other, larger, colonial and
dependent countries, such as India and China, every step of which
along the road to liberation, even if it runs counter to the demands
of formal democracy, is a steam-hammer blow at imperialism, i.e., is
undoubtedly a revolutionary step.
Lenin was right in saying
that the national movement of the oppressed countries should be
appraised not from the point of view of formal democracy, but from
the point of view of the actual results, as shown by the general
balance sheet of the struggle against imperialism, that is to say,
"not in isolation, but on a world scale." (See Vol. XIX, p.
257)[1]
