One of the things that distinguishes any revolutionary Marxist is that he/she never conceals their views; moreover, he/she is not ashamed of the views they profess. Keeping in mind these criteria, one can ask Prof. Aijaz Ahmad that why is he so ashamed of his views? One can as well ask that why is he so despondent?
Recently, Prof. Aijaz Ahmad has written an article in a distinguished English magazine ‘Frontline’ which can be regarded as a year review. In this article, Prof. Ahmad has expressed his views on the anti-capitalist people’s movements that took place last year, i.e., 2011. He has pondered over a viable alternative of capitalism, while in particular, analyzing the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. These views demand a detailed review.
In the very beginning of his article he contends that the year 2011 can be identified by two paradoxical phenomena–the irresoluble crisis of world capitalism, which unfolded itself in the most serious form since the 1930s on the one hand, and, the militant popular movements in different parts of the world against capitalism, oppressive regimes, and poverty, unemployment, rising prices and corruption, on the other. To begin with, there is nothing paradoxical in these phenomena. Clearly, these movements are different kinds of expressions of the restlessness and impatient yearning in search of an alternative of capitalist system. In the absence of any leading revolutionary force, these movements have found themselves in a blind alley. But as far as the question of Crisis and the resistance movements are concerned, there is nothing paradoxical about them. On the contrary, they are two sides of the same coin. In fact, if such movements are spreading to different parts of the world spontaneously, then it is only an expression of the fact that capitalism has reached its saturation point. Anyhow, Prof. Ahmad clarifying the objective of his article says that he intends to analyze the fate of these movements which came into existence as a fall out of the economic crisis. So lets talk about Prof. Ahmad’s interpretation of these movements and its conclusions.
Prof. Ahmad holds that, politically, this year began in the last days of 2010 when in Tunisia a graduate youth who was a vegetable vendor, immolated himself against the repression and harassment by police. This incident provided an opportunity to the boiling hatred of the people against unemployment and poverty, as well as rising prices and corruption to erupt. Following this, a countrywide movement against repressive and exploitative character of state, the corrupt bourgeois regime of Ben Ali, and the gifts of neoliberalism, namely, unemployment, homelessness, poverty and rising prices started off. This movement resulted in the fall of the regime of Ben Ali in Tunisia. A fierce upheavel ensued through out the Arab world. Further in his article, Prof. Ahmad, while stating the reasons for this, retrospects the post-colonial history of the Arab countries and explains how the national bourgeois and anti-imperialist character of the regimes of Nasserite and Ba’athist parties degenerated and how the public discontent continued to grow in these countries after the inauguration of the neo-liberal policies. Prof. Ahmad gives an authentic account of how these bourgeois regimes degenerated and grew increasingly anti-people after the defeat of Egypt in the war against Israel, and how following Gen. Nasser, during the rule of Anwar Sa’dat, Egypt became an ally of the US-Israel Axis in the Middle-East. Moreover, Prof. Ahmad is again on target, when he contends that besides the repressive and undemocratic character of the state, the factors which were acting as a broader context during the recent Arab Spring, were in fact the socio-economic problems born out of the neo-liberal policies. However, after this Prof. Ahmad begins to gradually bare his pessimism.
Expressing his disappointment, Prof. Ahmad argues that these militant popular movements notwithstanding, in the end, in all instances, the fundamentalist Islamic forces emerged victorious. Leaving the exception of Tunisia, everywhere after revolts and the fall of regimes, religious fundamentalist and Fascist forces, winning elections came to power. The Islamic fundamentalists prevailed in the elections in Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists have jointly secured majority); the regime established in Libya after the imperialist intervention, also, is religious fundamentalist; In Syria too, the religious fundamentalist forces are consolidating themselves with imperialist assistance within the popular movement against the Assad regime, though this movement is based on genuine issues. Prof. Ahmad is stupefied at the results of these popular movements based on genuine issues. The factors that he cites as the reasons for this are quite strange. He opines that the socio-economic issues like neo-liberal policies, inflation, food crisis, unemployment, poverty etc were dominant in these movements in the beginning, and the political (?) issues of undemocratic, repressive and oppressive character of the regime and barbaric and naked oppression by police and army were subordinate to it. However, as these movements progressed, these aforementioned political issues grew more significant and surprisingly, the religious fundamentalist forces began to represent the aspirations for the US-style democracy and civil liberty. Initially, the aspect of working class movement and trade union movement was prominently present in these demonstrations and in fact the origins of these protest movements can be traced in the trade union movement itself. However, later the demands for democracy and personal freedom by elite and middle class youth became predominant in the entire movement and religious fundamentalist forces, with the assistance of Imperialism (which, rightly felt the pulse of the changing times and withdrew its patronage from the repressive and degenerate bourgeois regimes) appropriated these movements while advocating democracy and civil and personal liberty etc.
This entire analysis raises more questions than it answers. In fact, this analysis itself is an unsolved question. What is worth deliberating is the question how these movements, in the main, from being centred on socio-economic issues, became centred on political issues (though, this use of the term ‘political’ by Prof. Aijaz Ahmad tells quite a lot about his understanding; in other words, revisionism is an expression of degenerate economism itself, as Charles Bettelheim has rightly argued, and this vulgar use of the term ‘political’ clearly demonstrates it)? What really happened that these anti-system movements born out of the trade union movement were appropriated by Islamic fundamentalist forces. Prof. Aijaz Ahmad does not deem it necessary to answer these questions. Quite apparently, the answers to these questions would lead his analysis to a peculiarly inconvenient cross-road.
In fact, the wall which Prof. Aijaz Ahmad is trying to erect between socio-economic and political issues was never even present in these movements. Right from the beginning the issues of repressive and oppressive character of the degenerate bourgeois state and those of unemployment and poverty born as a consequence of neo-liberal policies were intertwined in these movements. These regimes needed to maintain the condition of a police state, precisely for the reason that neo-liberal policies could be implemented without any impediment; in the Arab countries, the suppression of political, religious and personal civil liberties was not so much the reason behind the repression by the undemocratic bourgeois states as their will to openly implement the Washington Consensus. The ruling bourgeoisie in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Libya (though in somewhat different way), Syria was well-aware of the fact and still knows it that if they have to implement the neo-liberal policies, then they are obliged to maintain a condition of state terror to crush the popular resistance. If we do not look for the reasons and origins of the undemocratic and repressive political character of the Arab regimes in socio-economic background and their history, then we will be obliged to explain the reasons for the political character of such regimes through individual qualities of different rulers, or the different characteristics of various religions, or through the essentialization of the particular characteristics of different societies (it is noteworthy here that of late, some people in the vein of post-modernists are talking about something called ‘totalitarian communities’ which are inherently totalitarian and undemocratic!), that is to say that we will end up agreeing with Samuel Huttington on his infamous ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis! In that case, Prof. Ahmad should give up Marxism as a tool analysis (because, Marxism has never been important to him as a guide to action!), and he ought to take refuge in the patronage of Weber and Durkheim, etc! The people’s anger against the regime’s repressive character and condition of police state was inseparable from the popular discontent on the issues of quality of material life. They went hand in hand right from the beginning to the end. Prof. Ahmad concedes that he finds the task of explaining the relationship between the Arab Spring and its reactionary fallouts quite puzzling.
This is because Prof. Ahmad fails to understand that the popular revolts in two Arab countries (Egypt and Tunisia) and partial revolt combined with imperialist intervention in one Arab country (Libya) culminated into regime change (please note, not systemic change), however, if as a result of these popular revolts the regimes fall but any revolutionary alternative, revolutionary ideology and revolutionary leadership fails to organize itself then a vacuum will be created. Certainly, in the absence of any revolutionary force, this vacuum will be filled by the reactionary forces. The same has happened in the case of the Arab Spring. The spontaneous revolts of the people against repression, oppression, exploitation, poverty, unemployment, corruption and inflation brought down the regimes of Mubarak and Ben Ali! However, there was no revolutionary communist force present in these countries to take charge of this objective revolutionary situation and then take it forward in the revolutionary direction, which had come into existence spontaneously. What should the people do till such a force is organized? Will the people wait? No! Certainly, the people would choose that alternative among all the available alternatives, which appears to be anti-imperialist; which would promise democracy; which would support its hatred against the US imperialism. The same happened after the Arab Spring. It is true that fragmented Left forces were present within these movements. Especially in Egypt, such forces were present with comparatively greater strength. However, some of them were liquidationists, some anarchists and trade unionists, others Trotskyites, and still others anarcho-syndicalists. Under the leadership of such forces no countrywide leadership could have been built and neither was it built. Today the Marxist-Leninist forces are in an extremely weak condition, and whichever are present, they too are fettered by the program of New Democratic revolution; they, instead of independently and critically undertaking a study of the production relations of their societies, the level of development of the productive forces and the character of the bourgeoisie, are trying to mindlessly implement the readymade and hackneyed formula of New Democratic Revolution and protracted people’s war in their countries. The position of Trotskyites and Anarchists is far better than that of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries in the working class movement. Consequently, there does not seem to be any possibility of any revolutionary communist leadership getting organized in the near future. In such a situation, what else Prof. Ahmad could have expected? One wonders what might be the reasons for Prof. Ahmad’s bewilderment at the tragedy of reactionary forces gaining dominance. Prof. Ahmad is also sad for the Trade Union movement being upstaged from its leading position within the movement. However, this too was bound to happen because only a revolutionary party can provide a political alternative, not the trade union movement. However, these basic formulations regarding the science of revolution, too, are absent from the analysis of Prof. Ahmad. If at all there is something then it is the faint sobs of Prof.Ahmad on the dominance of the reactionary forces!
Then Prof. Ahmad steers his ship of analysis from the coast of Africa, via the Pacific, to that of American protest movement. He rightly points out that at present the people in entire American continent are on streets against the anarchy and uncertainties of capitalism. People have rejected the neo-liberal policies of bailing out the banks, forsaking welfarist policies and disinvesting from education and health. The same is true for Europe. The centre of gravity of the crisis has shifted from the US to Europe for the time being and its fall outs can be seen in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and France and even in Germany. He opines that how the “social Europe” had been at the centre of the dream of European Union, however, owing to the implementation of neo-liberal policies right from its inception, the “banker Europe” or “financial Europe” has become its centre today, and, now when neo-liberalism has reached its point crisis, the people has rejected it. Here too, Prof. Ahmad is arguing like a classical revisionist and social democrat. To take his point about “social Europe” seriously is rank foolishness or revisionist chicanery! All of us know that the dream of European Union was, in fact, nurtured by liberal bourgeois thinkers and particularly Social Democrats, in a specific phase, for equitable expansion of welfarist policies in the whole of Europe. At that time too the dream of United Europe was not a dream of Socialist United Europe; that time too, it was the dream of a “Welfarist State Capitalist United Europe”! One can easily understand as to why Prof. Aijaz Ahmad is remembering with such nostalgia this airy-fairy Keynesian dream and mourning his heart out on its corpse! Anyhow, Prof. Ahmad proceeds to the Occupy Wall Street movement after he is done with his bereavement on the destruction of “social Europe”.
Prof. Ahmad is in raptures on Occupy Wall Street Movement. Presently, he blames weather for the fact that this movement has gone into deep slumber! And then goes onto say that, “they are hibernating for the winter, but they will have their spring.” The sentiments of Prof. Ahmad can be comprehended by this literary ornamentalism. He contends further that the common thread in all these movements is that they are all anti-neoliberalism. This too is quite amusing. All these movements are either referred to as “anti-finance capital”, “anti-bank monopoly”, or “anti-neoliberalism”; everyone refrains from calling them simply anti-capitalist. The above-mentioned adjective suggest that people are not anti-capitalist, but they are just against the present form of capitalism! That is to say, if the “golden era” of the 1960s is back which was characterized by “welfarist” bourgeois state, then there would be no problem; if the dictatorship of banks and financial institutions ceases to be, if the state takes up the responsibility of providing employment or unemployment allowance, and that of education and health then everything is alright. We can conveniently forget about Socialism, equality, workers’ state, etc! Prof. Ahmad too seems to be ready for that. Time and again he has criticized neoliberalism and talked about the socio-economic problems arising as a consequence of neoliberalism. However, we cannot see him discussing Socialism and Socialist experiments of the past as its alternative, anywhere! At one instance he does take the name of Socialism, but, he pours in all the strength at his disposal for doing so! And having taken the name of this accursed phrase with lot of exertion and perspiration, he is terribly embarrassed! He opines that people are experimenting with new forms of resistance after the fall of the Soviet system, and they have not yet found the form of resistance which is appropriate for the emancipatory project in the Twenty-First century. He, straining his lungs, somehow says that lets, for the time being, provisionally call this alternative “Socialism”.
Here the Prof. Aijaz Ahmad’s entire thought process as a social democrat has been exposed. First of all, he is spreading an illusion. If you are talking about the fall of the Soviet System, and you are not clarifying whether you regard this fall in 1956, when revisionism consolidated its power decisively in the Soviet Party within the three years Stalin’s demise; or, in 1990, when the state monopoly capitalism of the Soviet Union, which had become social fascist internally and social imperialist for the rest of the world, fell down due to its internal contradictions; then you are spreading a misunderstanding. You talk about the fall of the Soviet System in general terms, in passing. This creates a situation of terrible confusion. If you accept that the capitalist restoration began in 1956 itself, then you can also analyze the contradictions of the state monopoly capitalism which continued in the name of Socialism during the next 35 years, and also can analyze those factors and mistakes which occurred in the period of Stalin due to which revisionism and social democracy succeeded in consolidating their power within the party and the Soviet Union, from a Socialist country and workers’ state (certainly, with various bourgeois distortions and bureaucratic deformities) transformed into a capitalist country and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Needless to say that classical private property capitalism was not restored in 1956 itself in the Soviet Union and it was a compulsion of the bourgeoisie to function as a state monopoly capitalist, because, in the view of the sentiments that the people had for Socialism, it was impossible to establish open naked capitalist relations immediately. However, under state monopoly capitalism, the institutions and values of Socialism were destroyed one by one in the Soviet Union. Civil liberties and democratic rights were snatched away one by one. The generation that had been a witness to the positives of Socialism was slowly grasping the things going around. The generation which matured during revisionism began to hate Socialism itself. When the wave of Perestroika and Glasnost gained momentum, the sickest values of western capitalism penetrated in the Soviet Union in the name of openness and liberalism. In the name of the US-style freedom and democracy, nudity, vulgarity, obscenity swept the entire cultural scene. After 1956, Socialist institutions were systematically erased and destroyed from economy, society and culture in the Soviet Union.
Without the description of this entire process, if you casually talk about finding new forms of resistance after the fall of the Soviet System, in the terminology and style of New Left, post-Marxist, vagabond philosophers of myriad kinds, then how would it be interpreted as? Certainly, you too, in the vein of axisless thinkers like Badiou, Žižek, Halloway, Butler, Mouffe, Laclau, Negri, Hardt are proclaiming the present day world to be a post-Communist world. Your words amount to mean that you consider the Socialist experiments of the Twentieth century to be mistakes that ended in catastrophé and disaster, though they did looked promising at a certain moment. Then why don’t you profess it openly? Why are you saying this the other way round? A true Marxist is afraid of the conclusions of his analysis! Neither does he conceal them! Nor is he ashamed of them! However, the truth is that these are, in fact, not the conclusions of your own analysis! This is simply an expression of your belief. If your own despondency, pessimism and opportunism do not allow you to reach any revolutionary conclusion, only then you utter such things. Today, it is quite fashionable to pronounce judgement on the Marxist Communism of the Twentieth century without analyzing the successes and failures of the Socialist experiments of the Soviet Union and China, due to the so-called new vagabond philosophers. It seems that Prof.Aijaz Ahmad too has become an advocate of this fashion! He is blending his own social democracy, Keynesianism and pessimism with the axisless thinking of these new philosophers. That is the reason why one cannot decide what Prof. Aijaz Ahmad ultimately intends to say, even after reading his article completely and repeatedly? However, you do take an impression on your mind. And that is that in the age of neoliberalism and Globalization, there is no viable alternative of capitalism at present! He rejects the Socialist experiments of the Twentieth century without any critical analysis; though, he still wants to call the entire emancipatory project “Socialism” (with great sorrow and a lot of reservations!)! However, according to him we need to find “new forms” of Socialism! There is no denying the fact that in view of the important changes in the modus operandi of capitalism, there can be a need to make some changes in the strategies and general tactics of the working class movements; nor can anyone deny the fact that after a critical analysis of the socialist experiments of the Twentieth century, their negative aspects should be done away with and positive aspects be adopted. But, first of all, you deem the entire experience of the Twentieth century as worthy of abandoning, rejecting it, and without establishing any critical relation with it, you talk of moving ahead and looking for the so-called “new forms”! Needless to say, that you cannot organize any kind of redemptive activity of the working class. You can only rhetoricize, lament, beat your breast about this.
(To be continued…)
