Originally posted by Leo
[email protected] 01, 2007 10:27 am
:wacko: What? Is there a proletarian revolution going on in every capitalist country?
Of course. What other revolution could be going on in a capitalist country?
Evidently, such revolution can be in a very embrionary situation, or can be striving to recover from recent defeats. In Iraq it seems it's both.
But if Iraq is a capitalist country, then there is no place for a bourgeois revolution there. A proletarian revolution is in order. as devrim and RNK seem to agree (woo! they agree on something!)
Ex-feudal landlords and ex tradesman of each specific region.
So Iraq has a feudal past?!
No, all private as far as I know.
Most as far as I know - some are still being privatized.
Except for the oil industry, or is this private also?
I earnestly don't thin any serious industry in Iraq is owned by Iraqi ex-feudal lords or Iraqi ex-tradesmen, without heavy stocksharing by Western companies - and perhaps Russian ones too. Until we have some kind of map of such imperialist penetration of Iraq, we will be still discussing in the dark.
Well, the occupation would not really care if Iraq is split - but they don't want the Shia's independent.
And at some point they will have to decide what future they envision for Iraq, or perhaps what future is still viable for Iraq. At this moment, it seems that they must regret the decision to invade - whatever Iraq is going to be in the near future, it won't be better for American or British interests than it was under Saddam Hussein.
Yet you have to understand that the united Iraq of today is very different. In the past it was united by Sunni center, for the interests of the Sunni center. Now it is united by the alliance of the Kurdish North and the Shia South, Baghdad is simply the capital because of formalities. So the Sunni "resistance" wants things to get back to the way they were - it is not about whether Iraq is formally united or not. Materially, it is already divided.
Yes, sure. But if the Sunni "resistance" project is to get Iraq back to what it was, it is either just a dream, or they will have to calm down, lay down the guns, and try to engage the occupation - which is the only force that can actually do something to that effect.
It is the most solid because things aren't as simple as that.
Well, if devrim's sources are right about the increasing cooperation between the PKK and the US, then it will grow into a solid relationship. At the cost of permanently alienating Turkey, Iran, and the whole of the Arab world, monarchies included. It would probably put the US imperialism into a trap from which they will never be able to come out.
It is true that Kurds in the Northern Iraq would prefer a fully unified and independent Kurdistan. However Iraqi Kurdish leaders don't have good relations with the Kurdish nationalists in Turkey and in Iran. I can say that they are as distant to those groups as they are to Turkey and Iran themselves, meaning they occasionally formed alliences with them and occasionally fought against them. So their primary objective right now is not really a fully unified Kurdistan at this moment.
No, but the severing of ties with the rest of Iraq is certainly within the frame of what they envision as possible in the midterm. Whether they envision a "greater Kurdistan" at this moment becomes then almost immaterial. For Turkey at least, and quite probably to Iran and Syria too, an independent Kurdistan of any size is the trigger of a dreadful nightmare.
Sadrists are hard to classify. They have a political wing in the government, they even have several ministries but their armed wing can be counted as a part of the resistance. No, they are absolutely not allied to Sunni fundamentalism or to the remnants of the Baath, in fact they are very much against both, and especially Sunni fundamentalists don't like the Sadrists who they fight with.
Certainly, which is something that most people seem to miss.
The thing is that there isn't one "resistance", there is many.
Yes! That has been my point from the beginning. Until we understand the complex relationships, alliances and conflicts between the dozens of different "resistance" groups, we will be talking in the dark. What sence is there in asking if there is a proletarian wing within "the resistance" if we don't even know what such "resistance" is?
And when we come to realise, like you, that there isn't one "resistance", there is many, then the question becomes even extravagant.
It also does not share their methods, relying much less, if at all, in individual terrorism.
Obviously, they are an army of 160,000.
Ergo, a much serious threat than clandestine grupuscles of a dozen half-crazed gunmen moved by religious fanaticism. Those latter, however, seem to mesmerise the Western left, and perhaps even the Western right...
Well, it is not even a game of two different cards really - Sadrists are really very close to the pro-occupation Shia party (Islamic Dawa Party)
I don't think they are all that close. They have a truce now, with Maliki hoping to use them as his watchdogs, and as-Sadr counting in becoming indispensable to then raise his ante. They have streetbattled in the past, and they certainly don't trust each other.
which the current Iraqi prime minister, al-Maliki belongs to and this party in turn is known to be very close to Tehran so I would say that rather than Tehran, Islamic Dawa Party is playing two different cards.
Everybody seems to be playing so many different cards there, that I wonder when they will become unable to understand what they are in fact doing. If such moment hasn't already come.
To be fair, Nuri al-Said did try very hard to gain Iraqi independence, for instance and in his time Iraq declared war to Israel for example. All those were done primarily in their own interests. They were allied with the West, but this didn't mean they didn't have their own interests.
Evidently. Their analysis of their own interests, however, was that an alliance with the UK and the US was central for their interests.
Because Karīm Qāsim was just as "compradora" as Nuri al-Said in the sense of being allied with a different imperialist camp.
This different imperialism camp being that of the SU, I suppose? What exactly were the "imperialist" interests of the SU in Iraq (and I mean "imperialist" in the Leninist sence, not in the common sence redstar2000 preferred, in which everybody that covets their neighbour's garden is imperialist)?
Being a part of an imperialist camp doesn't prevent different factions of the bourgeoisie in chasing their own imperialist interests as well, regardless of the fact that they occasionally work against their own imperialist camp or members of their own imperialist camp.
Ah, yes, but that usually requires factional conflict within the bourgeoisie. A really comprador sector is too much tied to the imperialist interests it is involved with to make spectacular spins.
For example in 1974, the pro-Western Army, supported by the pro-Western industrial bourgeoisie of the country occupied Cyprus and what's more, they almost occupied Greece, a NATO country, a pro-Western country!
But then you are talking of Turkey, a country with a long tradition as a world power.
I don't think that they had a fundamentally different project for the internal development of Iraq however they did follow a more populist path, organizing an agrarian reform (in 58 if I am not mistaken) and also built houses. Internationally they quit the Baghdad Pact, rejected uniting with Jordan, supported the Algerian and Palestinian nationalists against France and Israel. They had close relations with Nasser's Egypt for a while but later pro-Egypt bureaucrats were purged because of the struggle between them and Qasim.
So, if they had not a fundamentally different project, why had them to be forcibly removed?
Why did the coup happen? Why did the Iraqi bourgeoisie ended up turning it's face to the Russian block? In my opinion, the main reason was the Baghdad Pact, which put Iraq in the same place with Turkey and Iran. Out of the three, Iraq was clearly the "weakest link" and they were afraid of Iran increasing the influence in the South and Turkey increasing influence in the North - especially the fact that Turkey had claimed Mosul and Kirkuk should be it's was seen dangerous and the fact that Turkey actually had gotten a city, Hatay from the French in 38 which it claimed to be it's made Iraq even more restless. And of course, lastly the British influence over the oil was ever-increasing and all those reasons combined lead to the coup and lead to Iraq turning it's face to the East.
It's possible, but why couldn't they rely on British influence over Teheran and Ankara to block such moves? The fact is, Karim Qasim directly dented British interests in Iraq by nationalising the oil fields, and the Russians, whatever their intentions, obviously settled for a different arrangement, that did not include private ownership of Iraqi oil by Russian companies.
Of course it was - but that's not the point. We could see a government's relation to the USSR in the middle east in relation to it's attitude towards the CP in that country. It was, more or less, something symbolic.
Was it? Saddam's regime has approached and distanced from Moscow, apparently without the cells of Iraqi Stalinist becoming even less uncomfortable...
The Russian and the Western ones.
The Russian camp was an autonomous imperialist camp?!
Well, they basically said that they had no opinion on the conflicts between Arabs and that they didn't plan to start an economic war against Iraq. I think they were planning to support the losing side in any case.
Had Iraq lost, US would lend them money to repay their debt to Kuwait. Had Kuwait lost, US would have "liberate" Kuwait. In any case, it would have been in their interests.
So it seems, but they perfectly knew which side was going to lose. Kuwait military wasn't able to offer any earnest resistance to the Iraqi.
Neither... I think the age of bourgeois revolutions are over and we live in the epoch of proletarian revolutions but I don't think we are in a revolutionary period anywhere right now.
We agree in both counts. Which brings forth the autonomy of the political sphere: the fact that the economical conditions for a revolution are set doesn't mean that the political conditions are present.
There is however class struggle in Iraq which is being brutally suppressed by the local governments.
Eh, I certainly wouldn't put it like that. There is class struggle in Iraq; at this moment, the bourgeoisie and its internal and international allies have the high hand, and are attacking the Iraqi working class.
Luís Henrique