Communists and compared neostalinisti
scenario of civil war in Libya, the interference imperialist, the extreme uncertainty information on the events in progress, have become the inspiration of the occasion in some circles of the left to question the very existence of the Libyan revolution and beautify the reality of the Gaddafi regime.
"It 'a civil war, not a revolt, let alone a revolution." "It 's been organized by imperialism, there is nothing spontaneous in contrast to Tunisia and Egypt," "There are claims in the social movement against Gaddafi, but political." "Gaddafi has held an anti-imperialist regime, so you want to drive it." "A Benghazi waves the flag of the old monarchy of King Idris, Is this the revolution? ". And so on ... These positions
-expressed in forms other rooms of the old guard of Il Manifesto, from the Stalinist Fed, and the Network of Communists-are emblematic of the utter confusion as to substance and method in the theoretical knowledge of the Stalinist tradition. And most of the political implications of this baggage counter. And 'well then try to make things clear. Especially in a historical moment in which the 'rise of the Arab revolution is shaking the entire international order and puts the workers' movement and communist revolutionaries a new frontier of policy and strategic battle.
THE Gaddafi's regime to its roots: A Bonaparte "anti-imperialist"
The first consideration is of historical nature.
The Free Officers' coup in Libya in 1969 was certainly a feature "anti-imperialist", as distorted by its military character. But you can not ignore the real nature of the regime and, moreover, its dynamic historical regression in the last 20 years?
The overthrow of the old military Libyan monarchy of King Idris in 69 took place in the more general movement of decolonization developed after World War II: a movement that found a gap in the existence of the USSR and international expansion of its area of \u200b\u200binfluence to 'inside of the same Arab nation.
Like the regime of Ben Bella and Boumedienne in Algeria then, and Nasser in Egypt (which, however, Gaddafi was inspired), the new power of Libyan officials realized undoubtedly progressive social measures: erased the traces of Italian colonialism, the bases closed foreign military, partly nationalized foreign banks (with the acquisition of majority stakes), took possession of the oil resources of the country, launched social protection measures. It was more than sufficient for the condemnation of Gaddafi by imperialism. But it was not the "socialism" - as claimed by the Stalinist parties justify their capitulation to Arab nationalism nor- of workers' power and popular. On the contrary. On the ground
Gaddafi preserved a social market economy, albeit with a strong presence of public control: moreover, the "third universal theory" as Gaddafi called her social doctrine-the traditional modesty-openly acknowledged the principle of private property ( "enshrined in the Koran") at odds with the "totalitarian communism". On the political terrain
erected on the ruins of the old monarchy and despotic military regime in its own, based on the mystique of the Cape, on the denial of elementary democratic rights of workers and the masses (no freedom of association, no freedom of strike, no free exchange of political views in the same field-imperialist ..), bring it on active Libyan society through specific structures of social control and crime (the so-called "popular committees" strictly subordinated to Gaddafi as a sort of his private militia) , with the balance (and between) the clans (such as never put into question, but rather taken as the power system interface), the systematic annihilation of every military form, including larvae or potential opposition to absolutism ( Islamic clerics from traditional Ulema, the weak components of the political opposition inside) The same "new constitution" solemnly Gaddafi promised at the time of the overthrow of the monarchy, remained a dead letter in 40 years: and replaced by the creed of Yamahiriyya (1976) and the messianic religion of the Green Paper, of course, written by the head with a fist.
E 'therefore quite clear that already in the 70 and 80 the communist revolutionaries were certainly defend Libya's Gaddafi (as Nasser's Egypt, as Boumedienne of Algeria ..) from the threats of imperialism, but not could in any way identified in the scope of petit-bourgeois Bonapartist military or embellish the reality of those regimes. On the contrary, they had to act as opposition to the proletarian Bonapartist around a program of anti-capitalist social revolution and workers' democracy and popular: the only perspective that can consolidate and bring up the bottom of the same anti-imperialist democratic revolution. This was indeed the policy of strict independence of the class that Marx claimed against the petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy and a possible government (see address to the League of Communists in 1850) and the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky applied towards nationalism "anti-imperialist" or semi-colonial countries (v.il 2nd Congress of the 3rd International Symposium on the colonial question, 1920). The Stalinist bureaucracy would reverse this setting.
Adaptation of Stalinism during the Second World War, Arab nationalism of petty bourgeois military sectors in the Middle East, was a crime against the Arab revolution and his own anti-imperialist aspirations. All Bonapartist regimes' anti-imperialist "backed by Moscow, and made possible by the very existence of the USSR, they finished one after the other with back nell'alveo imperialism and Zionism with the subordinate. A process already begun in the 70 and 80 (conducted by Sadat and then Mubarak in Egypt), and completed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Stalinism internationally.
the parable of Gaddafi: FROM BONAPARTE "ANTINMPERIALISTA" A business partner (and crimes)
The Imperial regime Gaddafi was no exception. Subject still imperialist military aggression in 1986 (with the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi on the American side), and even internationally isolated in the early 90 (with the heavy international sanctions of 92-93), the regime has worked to integrate its own in the new international order, until his "rehabilitation" official in 2003. The end
protective umbrella of the Kremlin, the imperialist aggression against Iraq by 91, increasing the pressure of Islamic fundamentalism threatening the borders (Algeria) with a risk of penetration in Libya, Gaddafi urged in a short time a radical relocation policy.
It undertook a liberalization plan interior, reopened its doors to foreign banks, offered lavish concessions to imperialism in the same oil field, he gave lavish contracts in the field of infrastructure capital to Italian and French, took on the role of ruthless policeman xenophobic policies of the EU, opened détente with Egypt and the Zionist state. Asking in return not only the renunciation of imperialism to overthrow the regime, but an area of \u200b\u200bactive involvement in the financial capital of the West: Libya, the first Italian bank's main shareholder (Unicredit) states in this context.
This change has had important consequences in Libya. At the oppressive nature of the dictatorship has been added to the considerable growth social inequalities, against wages still have to be twenty years. On the one hand, liberalization and privatization, coupled with the growing communion business with the capitalists of Europe, have increased the social privilege of the caste system from the family (wide) Gadhafi's, making the political abuse of power even more obnoxious. For another, the maintenance of social assistance could not prevent the significant increase in youth unemployment (especially intellectual), a feature common to all countries of the Maghreb.: The per capita income in Libya is certainly higher than in Tunisia and Egypt, but only through the traditional media of chicken. Finally, the mixing triggered by increasing integration with social capital alien has eroded the old tribal and territorial balance, atavistic multiplying contradictions and tensions (particularly between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania), to the detriment of the stability of the regime and the unity of the army.
The truth is that Libya's history and its parable is a further lesson for all the supporters, more or less uncritically, the military regimes of the "progressive" (at Chavez, for instance).
Not only do these schemes do not achieve or can achieve, by definition, the power of workers and the masses, but their own autonomy from imperialism is inevitably partial, fragile, transient, sooner or later exposed to the ebb of normalization. This is the reality of the current regime of Gaddafi. Do not see it, and continue to repeat 40 years later, albeit with understandable caution, the old mythology of the Lion of the desert, do not mean any stock of past mistakes and to disarm the revolutionary politics in front of the new situation of the Arab revolution.
popular uprising in Libya: "CIVIL WAR" O "REVOLUTION"? SO MUCH CONFUSION IN THE SKY
But there's more. After removing
in the "logic" of the material basis of a possible revolution in Libya (If Gaddafi is anti-imperialism and the masses have a good life thanks to the subsidies, why should they make a revolution? ) Neostaliniani intellectuals deny the empirical evidence in the same revolution in progress: it would be at best a "civil war", and intended hatched behind the scenes, and in each case as may be called "revolution" the raising of the flag Monarchy?
This building is nonsense. How much money in it the absolute lack of understanding of the historical reality of revolution, with the absolute lack of understanding of the concreteness of unfolding events. Let us reflect on both aspects.
do not know how fellow Burgio, Carara Dinucci or imagine a revolution. Seems to imagine that as a straight path, marked by the mass consciousness, enlightened a clear plan, supported by a uniform social bloc. (And for this .. put off the mists of time). Unfortunately, such a revolution is unknown to human history. Revolutions real, not imagined ones, are highly complex processes. They are not driven by conscience but by the needs and hatred against oppression. Just because mobilize large masses (otherwise not be revolutions) dragged into the arena of struggle the most diverse social strata, the most diverse cultures and traditions, reasons and deeply conflicting interests. This has always been. And more so when the revolution raised against decades of dictatorial regimes, which by their nature have blocked for long time any form of public dialectic and selection of political representatives, uniting against him a vague democratic movement for "freedom." E 'hardly necessary to recall that the first Russian revolution of 1905 against tsarism began under the banner of Gapon priest (later revealed agent of the Tsar) ... The task of communists is not to deny the revolution because it does not correspond to a pure ideal (nonexistent), but to intervene in the real revolutions to develop their consciousness, to counter the hegemony of political or cultural conditions (inevitable in the first phase ), due to the progressive social and political aspirations of the masses at the mouth of a capitalist class.
revolutions against Arab regimes in the course twenty years (Tunisia), thirty years (Egypt), forty years (Libya), the Communists pose exactly this problem.
the processes have different characteristics in different national contexts. In particular, different channels and political organizers of the uprising, and the dynamics of social forces. But wherever the true unifying banner of revolutionary movements immediately was not social but political: the overthrow of regimes, the overthrow of the oppressors. That is why the policy has aggregated flag around himself deeply contradictory names, which tend to capture the scene immediately after the overthrow of tyrants. The great rise of workers' strikes in Egypt, after the fall of Mubarak in the open collision with the "new" provisional military power (and the Egyptian bourgeoisie which supports it) is emblematic in this regard.
The Libyan revolution falls, with its specificity, in this framework. The flag
unifying a large part of the Libyan society is facing in the fall of Gaddafi, the punishment of his crimes, the launch of a constitution, free elections. These are the traditional claims of a democratic revolution.
The flag "monarchy"? It 's just the Libyan flag as opposed to the green flag of the dictatorship. Gaddafi that before there was a monarchy in Libya ( rightly reversed in 69) is a fact. But the flag now under appeal by the masses against Gaddafi does not express the demand for the return of the family Idris. Besides, the royalist opposition is almost non-existent in Libya, and weak in emigration, as documented by the same old Del Boca. That flag represents in symbolic terms, in the desert of political and cultural references, the point of identification and aggregation available after 40 years of the regime against the regime. In the perception of mass is the symbol of a national democratic revolution, not a counter-revolution monarchy. You can not see it?
a fact "pre-ordained and organized, unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, and therefore the long arm of "foreign forces"?. It 's a conspiracy nonsense is typical of the Stalinist mentality that ignores the facts. The chronicle of the uprising in Benghazi, leader of the revolution, is now public domain, even in detail, however, confirmed by the most desperate documentary sources and witnesses. The first anti-regime demonstrations of 15 February, convened on the Internet, based mainly youth and students, were attacked and shot by mercenary forces Karmis directly driven by the son of Gaddafi, who ordered the army to participate in the repression. The horror of the carnage carried out in a city already hit repeatedly by criminal violence the regime, has produced the popular uprising. The same commands are then deserted the army orders Gaddafi, have mutinied, and opened the barracks and arms depots, allowing the arming of the people. The Benghazi 20 days was liberated and its liberation has produced a domino effect throughout the east of Libya, with similar dynamics (uprising, mutiny of troops, armament popular). Where is all this the director of a devil mysterious occult? How can you not see that the revolution is the daughter of the Libyan Arab revolution, driven by the events in Tunisia and Egypt, animated by the same desire for freedom and redemption that is going through, in different forms, all the Arab peoples? After describing the collapse of Stalinism in 89 as an international conspiracy of imperialism, as we want to represent the same plot of imperialism Arab revolution (against regimes allied imperialism ..)?
But Libya is "a civil war, not a revolution," it said. But why, perhaps a revolution can not drag with it a civil war? The great revolutions in history were not even civil war? The English Revolution of 1640, the French Revolution of 1789-93, the same Russian revolution of October 17 are not resolved in civil wars? The same war of liberation in Italy in the 43-45 (betrayed in his revolutionary aspirations of the PCI Togliatti) Did not twisted popular uprising and civil war? One could go on. It 's true in Tunisia and Egypt, the first step of the revolution, with the fall of Ben Ali and Mubarak, did not lead to civil war, despite the hundreds of victims murdered, for the simple fact that in both cases the popular force paralyzed the army, the police has collapsed, the same imperialism has pressed on outside military forces and influenced by self-funded because they avoid a bloodbath, with unforeseeable consequences, and trying to regain political control of the situation (something like we see no easy or in Cairo or Tunis).
Libya is different, for a set of specific reasons: the family Gaddafi did not escape the space available for Ben Ali and Mubarak and the regime has, in the capital, an area of \u200b\u200bdefensive military and held higher; Gaddafi controls consisting of mercenary forces ; the area of \u200b\u200binfluence and political conditions in the 'up Gaddafi imperialism and its military is, for historical reasons, much less than that carried on the Egyptian regime. In this context, the will to resist Gaddafi in Tripoli can drag a civil war (imperialism by offering an area of \u200b\u200bpossible intervention, just a lever in the absence of domestic policy). But why this would eliminate the civil war the line between revolution and counterrevolution? Or you want to suggest, by implication, a policy of defending the revolution against the Gaddafi regime in Libya, in perfect harmony with the position taken by the regime of Chavez and Fidel Castro? In this case you gain clarity, and would have the courage to take responsibility. Certainly very challenging and revealing.
anticapitalist DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
course the full support of the Libyan revolution can not possibly lead to a naive expectation to events. The revolutionary overthrow of the Gaddafi regime is definitely a good thing but will not finish the revolution: open on the contrary its new phase, full of uncertainties and contradictions, and therefore a new agenda of problems and tasks.
Also in Libya, as in Tunisia and Egypt - albeit with a much greater weakness and dispersion-affected different forces are at work to make the Libyan revolution to end a limited and partial or full reconciliation with the historic ' imperialism. The danger today is not by pan-Islamism, whose presence in the Arab revolution is now whole, very limited, and that is very marginal in the same Libya (Cyrenaica Senussia tradition is not fundamentalist). It is rather the work of the tribal areas who are interested in regaining control of the situation after that the revolution-especially among young people, has shaken the dominion of the clan going beyond their borders. It comes from the military areas of the old regime who have abandoned the sinking ship, but they are not willing to give up their privileges and their social status. It comes from the enriched environment of the new Libyan grown up in the opening decade of imperialism, and often intertwined with the Western business world. These forces do not now have an axis of unification and a unique project, also because of their conflicting interests. But they have a common goal: secure the people's revolution, impede the full realization of its own democratic demands, however, prevent its trascrescenza in social revolution, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. These are the same forces that may be interested intervention of imperialism in Libya, as a factor of political stabilization and restoration of order: an order without Gaddafi now-factor of civil war with all its risks-but certainly marked by the full restoration dominant hierarchies.
masses Libyan insurgents have an interest in the exact opposite, like the Tunisian and Egyptian masses: to prevent the betrayal of the revolution. From here, a program of action in response: to develop to the end its calls for democracy, since the demand for a truly free and sovereign Constituent Assembly that shirk clan leaders, generals, businessmen, the definition of new political order, and development of the free people's committees who were born in Benghazi and Tabruk, broaden their social base, giving them an elective nature, progressive coordination at local and national, has already been freed from Libya: to make the tools of ' democratic self-organization of workers and the people, refuse to surrender their weapons to the new general, as claimed by the military commanders in Benghazi: popular arming and indeed extend, integrate parallel military representatives elected by the soldiers in the structures of the popular committees, organized its everywhere independent force. At the same time, in social terms, it is asserting a standalone program and complementary reject any opening the market liberalization, deregulation revoke already made nationalization under workers' control and without compensation all the levers of the economy of the country, cancel all agreements made by the regime subordinates with imperialism (from the immediate closure of concentration camps of migrants in Africa).
The fight for this program will not only enshrine the political autonomy of the labor movement and popular of all the Libyan forces of the bourgeoisie, but would make an important contribution to the forward deployment of revolution, Egyptian and Tunisian, a crucial step.
AGAINST ALL WORK OF 'IMPERIALISM IN LIBYA. BUT NOT IN THE NAME OF THE REVOLUTION Gaddafi
E 'from this point of view, revolutionary, and not the opposite pro-Gaddafi, who is denounced and rejected any notion most clearly of imperialist intervention in Libya. If
imperialism today is studying a possible intervention in Libya, Gaddafi is not because he wants to remove (also already given up). But because he wants to stop the Libyan revolution and the further extension of the Arab revolution. This is his problem.
Imperialism has never had qualms democratic and humanitarian purposes. Throughout its history has militated against democracy and against humanity. His sole vocation is the domain and control over the peoples on the planet. Today are not the cruelty Qaddafi's regime to offend the sensitivities of those who bombed Afghanistan and supports the barbarity of Zionism. But rather the political instability of Libya, the endangering of its oil reserves, the possibility of a further expansion of the revolutionary contagion in the Middle East to the detriment of the strategic interests of imperialism and the Zionist state, in a crucial arena of equilibria world, present and future. Intervening in Libya, behind the hypocritical pretext of humanitarian relief, it could mean regaining a lever in the whole Maghreb, developments and opportunities influence the political processes underway in the region, to weigh all the way its deterrent force. Moreover the same contradictions inter-imperialist push in the same direction. United States and Great Britain are the most active in supporting the view action, because they think to replace the imperialist interests most affected European (Italy and France), and open a wider channel of direct intervention in Africa according anticinese. France would like to avoid this maneuver, in defense of its old sphere of influence in Africa. But I do not know how. The Italian imperialism, the main victim of the fall of Gaddafi (and not just for the refugee issue) seek to recover estremis the delay to avoid being cut off from any division of spheres of influence. What is the only real unifying element of imperialism, in this elbowing of all against all? The settlement of the Arab revolution. For this same reason, the defense and development of the Arab revolution, not rare, should be the unifying element of all the consistent anti-imperialist forces.
"Both the Libyan people arose to settle accounts with Gaddafi, not the old colonial powers against the Libyan people and the Arab"
This word is even more important in Italy, old power dominatrix on Libya, which today celebrates the exact anniversary of the invasion of the Italian colonial government by the liberal "progressive" of Giolitti (1911), under the pressure of the Banco di Roma. "Hands off from Libya, full support for the Libyan revolution against Gaddafi and Italian imperialism "is the rightful claim of the labor movement in our country. In keeping with the opposition that the invasion of Libya Italian Socialist Party, argued in 1911. And as a true act of reparation against the barbaric oppression Italian on the Libyan people for nearly half a century (the extermination of the Libyan resistance, use of poison gas, the launch of the concentration camps .., already at the time of the "democratic" Giolitti).
But this position makes sense if progressive moves by the support the revolution, not to counter (or untenable neutrality between the Libyan regime and the insurgent people).
COMMUNISTS IN THE FACE OF LIBYA AND STALIN: A REVEALING DISCUSSION
In conclusion. This confrontation on the issue between the Libyan revolutionary forces neostaliste, by no means simply a manifestation of a divergence occasional, albeit important, of "foreign policy." On the contrary: it represents, from a particular angle, the litmus test of opposing orientations.
A revolutionary party that assumes the ideological communism as a label, but as a blueprint for the conquest of power by workers and the masses-as in Italy at the international level-is led by this same program to recognize the revolutionary processes wherever they gets to defend them, to intervene on their inevitable contradictions, trying to develop their own alternative policy direction in the perspective of the government of workers and poor masses.
groups or parties who instead refer to communism as the ideological legacy of Stalinism, not revolutionary program, without a real fight for power, are inclined to take as an international reference center is not the real dynamics of class struggle and revolution, but the diplomatic and political positioning of its "field" reference state: once the Soviet Union, even when in the name of the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy they were betraying the revolution in English or Italian resistance, and today, more modestly, China or Venezuela's Chavez, even when it means betraying (in this case, fortunately without consequences, direct) the Libyan revolution and Arabic.
And 'the proof, once again, the break with Stalinism and his school is the condition necessary to guide the revolutionary politics in the transition period we are living.
February 27, 2011 - Marco Ferrando
