This article is reproduced from Marx Engels Lenin Institute with thanks.
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“The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.” (Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916, Chapter 10)
When it comes to the question of support for national-liberation movements the Trotskyites routinely mislead their followers. The cases of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine Ansarullah in Yemen and the Iranian revolution have all caught them out and revealed the Trotskyites’ pro-imperialist nature.
The common complaint from the Trotskyites when it comes to movements that are rooted in religious traditions is that these are “backward” or inherently reactionary and that Marxists cannot possibly support them. Currently, British Trots are wailing about how no one should support Hezbollah because they are a group inspired by the ideals of shia Islam. The Trots proclaim that it should be secular Arab nationalists leading this struggle not those inspired by Islam.
That’s a rather funny statement when you know the history of Trotskyism, because 50 years ago, when Arab nationalism was still a real force, the Trots denounced its leaders as “Stalinists”. Even as late as 2011, British Trots took an objectively pro-war position when it came to the war on Libya, calling for the overthrow of Gadaffi and echoing every single imperialist lie about the Libyan government.
The Trots are laughable, but their deceptions point to a far bigger problem in the imperialist countries, which is the total inability of sp many so-called ‘Marxists’ to analyse imperialism in a serious way. They also lack any tactical awareness when it comes to prioritising which contradictions are primary.
The question of religion is one that always catches the Euro-American left out because they take the European leftist tradition and impose it on other areas of the world with no real understanding of how national-liberation struggles alter the religions of these countries.
In Europe, the established Church hierarchy backed up the feudal remnants and then stood solidly behind the capitalist order, frequently collaborating with fascism as well. In colonised and oppressed nations, the religious question is more complex. In some cases, the religious hierarchies stood with the landlords, capitalists and reactionaries against communist parties in the last century.
But the defeat of communist and nationalist forces in the middle east has produced something of a change. The demand for national liberation in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Yemen remained even after the Arab left collapsed. The demand was so urgent that it entered into the mosques and produced nationalist movements that use Islam as their inspiration. The struggle for national liberation thus produces versions of Islam that are totally at odds with the ultra-reactionary, pro-imperialist variants propagated by the allies of US imperialism in the Gulf states.
It is crucial to understand the Iranian revolution primarily as an anti-imperialist event, with Khomeinism even containing some anti-capitalist elements. Hezbollah, too, is principally an independence force which arose from the poverty-stricken shia areas of Lebanon and which has come to play the vanguard role in the struggle for Lebanese independence.
The failure of the Euro-American left to understand any of this stems from the fact that they don’t actually understand that in nations like Palestine and Lebanon the primary contradiction is imperialism. Until they are freed from occupation and neo-colonial control then the class struggle cannot be fully realised.
Both VI Lenin and Josef Stalin both understood this very well. This is why Stalin said in 1925 that the communists of the oppressed nations should unite with all forces opposing imperialism. Mao Zedong also understood this, which is why the Communist Party of China (CPC) prioritised the defeat of Japanese imperialism over and above everything else. Mao understood that until the Japanese were defeated and ejected from the country, nothing else could be achieved.
Hezbollah is the force leading the resistance to US imperialism in Lebanon right now. In Palestine it is Hamas playing the lead role, while in Yemen it is Ansarullah. And the Islamic Republic of Iran is playing a crucial in supporting all of these. It is this Axis of Resisance that is waging the struggle for national liberation across west Asia right now.
Theirs are the fighters who are in the firing line, battling the brutal and murderous forces of US imperialism. Until US imperialism and its criminal allies are defeated, there can be no progress, in the east or the west.
Those struggling against US imperialism are our natural allies, because we have a shared interest in the defeat of the imperialist system. As Ayatollah Khamenei’s recent sermon emphasised, there is a firm anti-imperialist understanding amongst many in Iran, and this is shared in Palestine and Lebanon. In fact, they have a far better understanding of the situation than the delusional Euro-American ‘leftists’.
The failure of the Euro-American left is a reflection of its complete inability to comprehend imperialism as a system. They do not see it is the primary contradiction because they have failed to adequately analyse it and are unable to see how it is the enemy of workers domestically as well as of the nations it oppresses internationally.
These self-identifying leftists endlessly repeat slogans from the European anti-clerical struggles, when the clergy were firmly on the side of the landlords and capitalists, and try to apply them to nations in which religion has been mobilised in support of the struggles of the oppressed.
This is how slogans that were revolutionary in 19th century Europe have become utterly reactionary, not facilitating our shared struggle but instead forming a barrier between workers in the west and those who are physically fighting imperialism in the here and now.
