Over the past few months I have been reading on your website and in daily newspapers information about anti-war demos around the world. On the evening that war broke out I also went to a local meeting here in Coventry against the war that was organised by the Stop the War Committee.
To see millions of people, especially the young, being drawn into activity through such meetings and demonstrations is truly breathtaking me and is definitely a shot in the arm for older comrades like myself. The anger against Bush and Blair is palpable, as is the tremendous enthusiasm on the part of participants that they can make a difference.
Yet it is precisely here that my worries begin. Tens of millions demonstrated across the world in the hope that the war would not begin, yet it did. Millions will be disappointed that their passion and commitment to stop the war has not borne fruit. From disappointment can flow disillusionment and then passivity, ending in inactivity. Two questions therefore arise. The first is whether demonstrations in and of themselves can stop wars starting or end wars that have begun. The second is how can people brought into activity be prevented from dropping by the wayside? I ask these questions because the many thousands of serious and committed people organised around the Stop the War Committees seem to believe two things. Firstly that organising more and more demos on a rolling programme will pressurise the Labour Government into stopping the war. Secondly that an alternative to Blair's policies must be built politically and organisationally. In other words an alternative political party, peace and freedom parties, must be built.
I am fortunate enough to have participated in the massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Eventually the USA was forced out of Vietnam. Why did this happen and can we learn any lessons from that experience? I believe that we can.
Firstly there was the determination of the Vietnamese, mainly organised around the Viet Cong, to resist the "foreign invaders", to fight for national independence and for a party, a leadership and a future that they had faith in. Despite many misgivings about the policies of Ho Chi Minh amongst many socialists, including myself, the overwhelming masses in Vietnam supported him and his party. In Iraq there have not been the expected mass desertions to the side of the coalition but neither has there been overwhelming support for Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party. In Vietnam the fighters were like fish in water, as the old Maoist saying goes, meaning that they had the support of the non-combatant population. For the most part this has not been the case in Iraq where coalition soldiers have often been told by local people where the "enemy" is.
Secondly the Vietnamese, like the Iraqis, were faced with superior and overwhelming firepower from the USA, yet they were able to use local geophysical conditions to adopt guerrilla tactics to defeat the USA. Similar conditions do not exist in the countryside in Iraq so the aim seems to be to turn the cities into jungles where guerrilla tactics can be fought. Just as the USA used agent orange in Vietnam to destroy the foliage and thus remove cover from the Viet Cong, the Israelis too are now advising the coalition to use bulldozers to destroy houses in the cities to take cover away from potential guerrilla fighters or "suicide bombers". In conventional warfare terms the Iraqis are no match for the USA/UK so alternative tactics will have to be adopted if they want to be successful.
Thirdly during the Vietnam War the anti-war sentiment in the USA began to increase in proportion to the increase in the number of body bags arriving home in the USA. Almost 57,000 young Americans gave their lives for an Imperialist venture and many hundreds of thousands more were injured, to say nothing of the millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians who perished. So far in Iraq deaths among coalition forces amount to dozens although the real figure could be higher due to the propaganda battle, the "fog of war", that is raging. Amongst Iraqis, both civil and military, deaths are already in the thousands. The only positive scenario, if in war there are positives, is that the anti-war sentiment world wide is far greater at the start of this conflict is far greater than it was at the start of the Vietnam War.
Fourthly the economic prize in Vietnam at that time was not as glittering as the one in Iraq. The economic costs of the Vietnam War were higher than the potential economic benefits, so the USA cut its losses and ran. In the first phase of the Iraq war the USA will spend some $70bn, which it will want to recoup from Iraqi oil. With 4% of the world's population in the USA consuming 25% of the world's oil, and with USA oil set to run out in 15 years time, the USA needs Iraqi oil. It said as much in April 2001, six months before the barbarity of September 11th, when the US government approved a political/military strategy document to invade Iraq to secure the oil fields and thus prevent Saddam Hussein from manipulating international oil prices by periodically interrupting the flow of oil on to world markets. As long as the potential economic benefits to the USA from the war are greater than the costs they will continue to fight.
Finally the developments inside the Labour Party and the trade unions during the Vietnam War were also very important. Labour leadership support for the USA was gradually turned into its opposite as public anger amongst the rank and file of the industrial and political wings of the movement brought about a change of policy.
So what lessons can we draw for those who have been brought into activity today through anti-war demonstrations? Firstly that demonstrating, although important to give participants a feeling of solidarity and comradeship, and as a barometer of feeling, will not in and of itself put and end to the war.
Secondly that the battle has to be taken into the mass organisations of the labour movement to bring about a change of policy internally, to remove the basis of support for Blairism. Such a policy change will not happen overnight but requires patient work with ideas and arguments to counter the lies and distortions of the Labour leadership. To give but two examples from yesterday. Alistair Campbell, spin doctor extraordinaire, stated that in democracies they could not tell lies to the public yet in dictatorships they could. He then went on to lament the fact that reporters "embedded" with coalition forces had direct access to the public before he and his ilk had time to "contextualise" the reports, that is to manipulate, distort, adulterate and lie. He also cites the example of the fiction peddled by the Iraqis that Iraqi POWs had been executed by coalition forces. He forgets to mention that last week both Bush and Blair claimed that two coalition soldiers had been executed by Iraqis. That too was a fiction!
So much energy will be wasted by very committed, well-meaning comrades in trying to build an alternative political movement/party to oppose the war. Yet the channels for work, for protest, for fighting for change, already exist. When a flea sits on an elephant's back and they are both walking along the same path, which one determines the direction they will take?
A Coventry Labour Party member with 39 years membership.
April 2, 2003.
Comment on Coventry Labour Party member's letter
We welcome this comment from a Coventry Labour Party member, most of which we wholeheartedly agree with. What is happening locally in Coventry (UK) is a reflection of a more general process taking place not only in Britain, but all across the world.
The war has brought to the surface a process that had been digging a way, like the old mole that Karl Marx referred to. The anger and frustration that has been expressed over this war is not caused solely by the war. It is a coming together of the anger caused by many big and small events over the past twenty or so years. Conditions at work have worsened. The general infrastructure that makes for a civilised existence (hospitals, schools, transport, etc.) has been worsening over a long period. People have been promised things would get better; instead they have been steadily getting worse.
The workers and youth have had to suffer attack after attack on their standard of living and on their rights. Now they are beginning to react and fight back.
Our reader is enthused by the awakening of a new generation, but is worried about how things will develop. He says:
"Tens of millions demonstrated across the world in the hope that the war would not begin, yet it did. Millions will be disappointed that their passion and commitment to stop the war has not borne fruit. From disappointment can flow disillusionment and then passivity, ending in inactivity."
This can be true for a layer of those who took part in the antiwar movement, but not for all of them. A layer of youth and workers will be drawing conclusion from what they have experienced over the past few months. They will begin to understand that it is not enough to demonstrate. They will begin to question the very system that spawns war and oppression.
This can already be seen on the demonstrations around the world. There is a thirst for ideas and we have found that when clear Marxist views are expressed a significant layer of the movement, especially the youth, is prepared to listen. This means a window of opportunity has opened up. It is the duty of Marxists to intervene and offer the movement a scientific explanation of what is happening, why it is happening, and what can be done about it. If we do this systematically then we will be preparing a new generation of Marxists that will be able to intervene in the movements that will inevitably unfold in the coming period. In our day to day activities that is our most urgent task!
On the situation in Iraq, we pointed out in a previous article that the Saddam Hussein regime could not be compared to Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, so we agree with most of what is raised in this letter. The US/UK forces can destroy Iraq many times over if they want to. They will eventually take Iraq. But that won't be the end of their problems. On the contrary! They are promising the Iraqi people "democracy" and many other nice things. In reality they will not get "democracy"; they won't even get an Iraqi government. They will be ruled directly by the USA, at least for a period, then maybe at a later stage they will get some kind of Iraqi administration, but it will remain a puppet in the hands of imperialism.
But for the people of Iraq democracy will mean nothing if it does not mean an improvement in their general living conditions. Even if initially, among some of the population there may be some illusions about this, these will very quickly change into bitterness and resentment at what they have had to suffer at the hands of imperialism. Therefore Iraq will become a source of problems for the imperialists that they will not be able to solve. The fact that they are already planning to leave sizeable military force in Iraq is testimony to this.
Finally we could not agree more with our reader's comments about the need to take the struggle into the mass organisations of the working class. It is our task to explain this perspective to the new generation that is coming onto the scene. We have to patiently explain, on the basis of historical experience, how the working class moves and how this affects the mass organisations. Given the position of Blair it is understandable that a layer of youth would be disgusted by his policies.
However, the road to change is not to be found by turning one's back on the Labour Party or the Trade Unions. The biggest threat to Blair's policies have in fact come from within the Labour Party itself. That means the process of change within the party has begun. It will be deepened further in the coming period. If we want to make sure that the energy of " very committed, well-meaning comrades in trying to build an alternative political movement/party" will not be wasted, then it is up to us, the Marxists, to give an alternative perspective. We have to tell them "what is" and patiently win them over over a period of time.