organised working people.
The fight for such a political alternative will involve the creation of myriad organisations of popular mobilisation, self-organisation and local control. Through such a self-organised movement, social relations at a local level can begin to be changed. But to be consolidated, to effect a real and permanent change in social relations, capitalism has to be defeated and replaced.
This is the Achilles heel of New Internationalist-type theory, which has its origins in the 'autonomia" currents in Italy, and is theorised by Negri and Tronti, of whom, despite minor differences, John Holloway is a second-generation student.
The idea of withdrawing from the world of labour and creating our own autonomous spaces, into which capitalism cannot penetrate and where we can create our own alternatives, ignores and underrates the power of capital and the capitalist state, especially the enormous coercive and ideological power which it wields today.
Katharine Ainger claims the power of the state is declining, that "the nation state is less able to deliver than ever." To substantiate this, she quotes the way Brazilian president Lula has capitulated to the power of international capital.
The myth of the powerlessness of the
national state is used by the radical
right to justify the idea that "you Venezuela's Chavez (right, with Fidel Castro) has been the target of right-wing mobilisation cess - mass mobilisation and internationalisation. A radical government of any sort can only survive the anger of local and international reaction if it puts its fate in the hands of the self-organised and mobilised masses That, indeed, is precisely what saved Hugo Chavez during the two attempted right-wing coups. Ultimately, a besiegeun Adicap goveRnment needs to fight forefatton and support as well.
Finally Katharine Ainger can 6 Pesist the wholesale caricature of moderin Marxism based on its descent from Leninis evizom
"Lenin was fixated on the centralized hierarchy as the means of revolution. He wrote about the difficulty intellectual revolutionary vanguards faced in raising the consciousness of the masses without being 'degraded' to their level, as he put it.
"Neither approach shows any faith in the value and intelligence of ordinary people. This is the crucial failure of the Left in the last cen....
HAVEZ Marx leads directly to the Gulag. overthrowing capitation John Holloway's book: ty and capitalist power. • • • • coalitions. In six months they discover a hunand decide to hold a conference.
Palmer tury, yet it still has its adherents today. Political parties, whether Left or Right, see the homogeneous mass as raw material to legitimise their own power." This could only be written by someone who has never read Lenin and doesn't know anything about modern revolutionary Marxist movements. It swallows hook, line and sinker liberal theories about the 'totalitarian' character of others. Lenin's thought, pushed further by the Parisian nouvelles philosophes, for whom Karl And of course it is in liberal political theory that the theories we discuss here have their origin. As such they can never be useful for Marxists base themselves on self-organisa- change' in Iraq. tion and mass mobilisation, but the political party remains a crucial instrument in that process. As I wrote at. the end of a review of "Imagine, in a party-less world, five or six friends in different parts of any country, involved in anti-war coalitions, get together and discuss politics. They find they agree on many things - not just war, but racism, pover"They decide to hold regular meetings and invite others. Next, they produce a small newsletter to sell to comrades in the anti-war Bush in Babylon: the recolonisation of Iraq, by Tariq Ali (Verso, £16), Reviewed by Alix
gariq Ali's Bush in Babylon: the I recoistion of to gives a timely
reminder of the hypocrisies of war rhetoric and the inglorious history of imperialist interventions in the middle east. Ali traces the history of interventions in Iraq and the resistance of the Iraqi people. Some of the most moving sections of the book reproduce the resistance poetry of Saadi Youssef and
Ali is vicious in his condemnation of "born-again Christian fundamentalist" George W Bush. The reality of the war as "a crude attempt to impose US hegemony on a strategically important region" is highlighted as is the US's own past admissions of the farcical nature of the idea of 'regime
Ali quotes Colin Powell in 1992, condemning Saddam Hussein's treatment of his own people but also ridiculing the "romantic notion that if Saddam Hussein got hit by a bus tomorrow some Jeffersonian democrat is waiting in the wings to hold popular elections".
We are reminded that there is nothing new in the current rhetoric of 'liberation; that in 1914 the British claimed to be 'liberators, not conquerors' in Iraq and that the League of Nations, created by the victors of the First World War, gave Britain the right to run the country.
He traces past western support for Hussein and the lack of outcry about Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds until such time as Hussein was positioned as an enemy of
Ali is very strong in his analysis of the hypocrisy of sanctions, highlighting their effect in strengthening Hussein's hold on
He demonstrates how damaging sanctions were for the country's infrastructure, saying that the Defense Intelligence Agency was well aware that sanctions would lead to a water purification crisis and increase the country's death rate
Ali charts US aggression from the nuclear weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, through atrocities in North Korea and Indonesia to sanctions and war against Iraq. He highlights the use of aggression during the Cold War, not just against communist opponents but also nationalist leaders who refused to take sides in the Cold War conflict.
America has now established global hegemony, the reality behind the idea of an 'international community'. For the first time in history "a single Empire has become hegemonic"
How, then, can we respond to US global hegemony? Ali highlights the importance of anti-war protests in Western Europe and their role in inspiring similar mass protest in the Arab world.
Awareness of the falseness of WMD claims, together with revulsion at imperial ist invasion has radicalised a new generation. It is popular rather than governmenta opposition (he is scathing of the lack of resistance from left governments in Brazil and Chile) that has made an impact.
Ali talks about the Anti-Imperialist League, established in Chicago in 1899, which within 2 years had a membership of over half a million - and sees this as a model for the future.
"global Anti-Imperialist League" should be established, with the US component of this being vital because "it is when their own citizens finally lose faith in the virtue of infinite war and permanent occupations that the system enters into retreat."
The World Social Forum also has a key role to play. The multinational corporations and neo-liberal institutions that have been its focus so far rest on the foundations of imperial force. There is, therefore, no contradiction in an extension of its agenda - it could campaign, for example, for the shutting ofall US military bases abroad.
The anti-imperialist movement should support Iraqi resistance to the occupation and oppose every scheme for the UN to enter Iraq to provide an "after-sales service for Washington and London".
Ali is very strong in his arguments against UN intervention as a solution to the current crisis in Iraq. He sees the United Nations as having been an instrument of US policy since the end of the Cold War. The UN either does what the US wants at the time - or rubber-stamps US actions at a later date.