WORKERS WORLD PARTY CONFERENCE
'Communists stand up against their own rulers' wars'
Excerpts from a talk by John Catalinotto
Did it make you angry when you heard that at the
Socialist Scholars Conference--organized by the Democratic
Socialists of America--the DSA leader was arguing that NATO
should send ground troops into Yugoslavia?
Were you furious when you heard that The Nation magazine,
instead of opposing the U.S.-NATO war, ran a debate arguing the
pros and cons of bombing, ground troops and sanctions?
The political tendency taking these positions is known as
social democracy. In the United States they may be infuriating
to real anti-imperialists. They may sow confusion in the
movement.
But in Europe, it is much worse. This same tendency is in
office.
In most of the European NATO countries social-democratic
parties or coalitions make up the government. That means they
were carrying out a vicious imperialist war. And they were just
as vicious and brutal as any conservative or right-wing party
in pursuing that war.
But they had more credibility with the working class and
with progressives in their attempt to justify the war as
"humanitarian."
In Germany, for example, not only is there a Social
Democratic chancellor, but the foreign minister is a member of
the Green Party. This guy was an anti-war activist in the 1960s
and an anti-nuke leader in the 1970s. And he was the strongest
defender of NATO's war. It's as if Tom Hayden were Secretary of
State instead of Madeleine Albright.
In France, where millions of workers vote Communist, the
French Communist Party was part of the government that ordered
bombing strikes on Yugoslavia. The French CP criticized
Milosevic more than it did NATO.
In Italy, where other millions of workers consider
themselves communists, one of the successor parties to the old
Italian Communist Party was the biggest party in the
government. Even the mass anti-war demonstrations did not
clearly act to bring down this government.
The result of all this is that these social democrats spread
great confusion in the anti-war and progressive forces in
Europe. It was extremely difficult for the real
anti-imperialist forces to give leadership to the mass movement
and to clearly target the U.S., NATO and their own imperialist
government as the enemy.
It was all the more significant that our party, working
within the anti-war movement in the United States, was able to
keep that movement anti-U.S. imperialism and anti-NATO. And we
kept a unified movement.
We were able to build a principled coalition with immigrants
from Yugoslavia and Greece.
In addition, the courageous position Mumia Abu-Jamal took
against the war helped win forces from the Mumia movement to
also fight against the U.S.-NATO war.
This put the U.S. movement in the position that it can now
assist anti-imperialists in Europe to take the initiative in
continuing the struggle against NATO, U.S. imperialism and the
ruling class of each of the European imperialist countries. It
does this by helping spread the movement to indict U.S.-NATO
leaders for war crimes against the people of Yugoslavia.
Imperialist war is horrible for the people under attack. But
we communists can't afford to simply shrink from its horrors.
Every imperialist war also raises the possibility of
revolution.
And such a conflict calls into question the armies--the
capitalist state itself. We found out during the Vietnam War
that the soldiers can turn against their chain of command. And
we helped form the American Servicemen's Union to fight against
the war.
This recent war raised the possibility of conflicts within
NATO. Most of the NATO leaders, including Clinton, were fearful
of launching a ground war and taking casualties. They feared
this would arouse massive protest at home. They feared bringing
down the governments in Italy and Germany.
The continuing anti-war work is creating a network of
anti-imperialist activists and parties, at least within the
NATO countries. They must stay active now and be ready to move
into high gear with the next war crisis, whether it be
intervention in Colombia, Iraq, again in Eastern Europe, the
Caucasus or Central Asia.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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