[Essays] Interventionism and the left, by NewerLabour - 5 comments

Tom from NewerLabour has agreed to submit the following post (also available here), to our series of contributed posts (or "essays").

It represents the first contribution (this year) to what I hope will be a regular series. Two other bloggers are currently considering topics/finding space in their diaries, but do get in touch if you also fancy producing something interesting for us. See the earlier post for full details, and the Essays page for a list of all past contributions (2005-date). Tom's piece now follows:

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Interventionism and the left: a reply/polemic to Anna-Helga Horrox

With regard to interventionism being right wing, I'm not sure I'm getting my point across. I see the right kind of interventionism as a logical extension to the internationalism that has always been a value of the left, as opposed to isolationism, which has always been a value of the right. I don't believe that there are certain cultures that do not want democracy, because I do not believe that there are certain people that do not want their own voices heard. I can think of only two reasons why any person, regardless of religion or creed, would not want to choose how they are ruled, or would like a state based on coercion without consent. The two reasons are:

1. There are personal advantages to the person concerned, or those close to them: either they are afraid of the majority rule that democracy brings because it infringes their minority 'rights', and they thus fear elections, i.e. they fear that there will be no more Islam if the government of Iran is totally elected, or...
2. There are personal advantages to the person concerned, or those close to them. The system of material relations they live under is fairer (more just, in their opinion), or advantages them more than a 'democratic' system would.

As the Manic Street Preachers sang, 'freedom of speech won't feed my children'.

This has often been an argument in favour of Stalinism, but I don't think Stalinism is particularly of the left. Real Marxist socialism would include a much more extensive system of democracy than current liberal states, but the maintenance of property relations in the USSR by a bureaucratic elite was the opposite of that. It actually took control out of the hands of workers and into the hands of a new bureaucratic class, and a dictatorship (incidentally, though you need no reminding, a brutal and oppressive one).

I think both of those arguments are trumped by others.

In the first case, utilitarian ethics, which I adhere to, to a degree, suggest that we are better of serving majorities. This does not mean that the fundamental rights of minorities (Baathists etc) are not to be protected. If you have a liberal democracy, you can have your cake and eat it, though people don't believe that, because cultural relativism as a philosophy is so effectively employed by dictators who, in truth, have little interest other than protecting their own power, for their material gain or particular ideology (no matter how oppressive or irrational).

In the second case, I have already explained somewhat. Democracy is often treated with suspicion, as a tool for capitalism, but a newly born democracy is an excellent chance to set up a liberal democracy heavily weighted towards the least advantaged. In this respect, the left should push democracy as a weapon for the left, rather than treat it with such suspicion. If the left does not claim democracy as a weapon for it's own ends, those nasty pigdog capitalists get to set up all the democracies which the left no longer has a stake in… then you end up with a country like Iraq, riven by privatisations and social injustice.

Interventionism of the kind I espouse is of the left because it is focused, unlike interventionism of the right, not on 'cultures' (an inherently conservative term anyway...) but on the aspirations individuals have for control of themselves, their own lives, and the ability to have the choice to make collective actions, like form trade unions, redistribute wealth etc; that all dictators, even pseudo-leftists like Stalin, like to knock out of their people.

Without any checks on them, dictators are then able to convince their people, in a quite unjust and heavily biased mode of persuasion, that actually, the reason this wholly oppressive state of affairs continues is that the dictatorship is based on their culture.

I do not advocate force for the spreading of liberal democracy. Force spreads more death and despair than happiness. But I advocate 'intervention' nonetheless. I do advocate force if the force is less destructive than the alternative, i.e. I would be in favour of WWII.

For that reason, I vociferously opposed the war in Iraq; just check out my blog.

People in Iraq never wanted force anyway. No amount of mind-bending propaganda towards me, or the victims themselves, will ever convince anyone that people want a bomb through their roof, or dead kids. Over 650,000 have died in the disgraceful goings on in Iraq. This misunderstood application of force has resulted in 'the war on terror' being a totally failed, though originally populist endeavour. I do believe however that the war should be fought. I'd just much prefer it to be done in a more figurative (but more effective!) sense.

The way things are going has only backed up the claims of oppressive dictators that democracy is a bad thing: the exact opposite of where the entire left, and the neocon right, also want to be.

I also disagree with the way that the neocons have used this violence of their own creation to engineer unjust societies based on neoliberalism and social division. But the left has, so far, been impotent to stop them, because we are weak, and put no emphasis on fighting the anti-worker philosophy of terrorist tactics; thus they win all of the elections. In principle, we should do. But we must fight terrorists from the left, rather than the right, as the neocons do. The economic exploitation of these target societies has only served to present the gloss of imperialism to the left.¹ The evidence is there for such an outlook, and there is a real temptation to find it conclusive, especially among those who are never directly accountable to the view of others, and thus never lose a debate (I'm thinking the SWP here).

Remember that Al-Qaeda are themselves of the extreme right.

Getting back then, while I do find the argument ''people in Iraq... the Iraqi culture... etc' do not want to be bombed'' compelling (as I believe people want control of their own lives, not for them to end!), I do not hold with the argument that 'people in Iraq have no wish for democracy', because alienation and exploitation are things that all humans, saving exploiters and alienators, are against. They are universal hatreds that exist regardless of one's religion, race or background. Sometimes unjust rulers will attempt to convince people that these beliefs are 'western'. But in the past, dictators have told their people that social democracy was 'dangerous bolshevism', or 'a Jewish conspiracy'. Does the fact that this is enforced by propaganda and coercion upon a newly compliant public mean that this is what the public actually believe, or hold dear? No. It is simply a temporary perversion. That is, as long as the left fights back and wins. That is what must happen in Iran, and Iraq, through China and North Korea... in Egypt to sub-Saharan Africa.

It is true that Iraqi's did not vote to be invaded. In fact, were I an Iraqi that did get to vote on it, I would vote against! But we must remember, when we are deciding whether to intervene in 'someone else's culture', that they didn't get asked if they would like regime change either! They did not choose to be bombed, but does that mean that the bulk of the population was against Saddam going? I bet he would say that they all wanted him to stay, that they thought him a lovely bloke... But would the population, in a situation where they did not have to be afraid of being abducted and tortured by his secret police?

Is this the view of a 'culture'? I would suggest that there is a view of a dictator, a view of the general population, and a view of the individual, aggregated. the first is oppressive, the second undemocratic (hence the secret ballot).

Without an absence of oppression and democracy, how do you know what a culture really thinks? Hegemonic ideas need not be representative.

Also, how come in the west we credit people with individual views, but in eastern countries, we see people as a cultural bloc? Does a subconscious prejudice not underlie our assumptions? We should treat them in our thoughts the same way we treat each other here. Culture doesn't matter. What matters for freedom is desire and desirability.

Socialists on the Marxist left have always been in favour of absolute personal autonomy, emancipation from exploitation, most of the time from capitalism. That point of view is correct. But people have to remember that feudalism is even more exploitative, as is the 'master-save' societal configuration. Anti-interventionists on the Stalinist left have gone overboard on 'anti-imperialism', backed up with crude cultural relativism, to justify exactly these feudalistic and master-slave confederations that exist in other countries. Liberal capitalism is crap... but it's better than feudalistic capitalism in these economically transitional dictatorships.

So leftists of all stripes, from the reddest, to the pinkest social democrats, must take up the argument for human emancipation, as they have always done. The more democracy, the more emancipation... for there is no better weapon available to progress. You can take democracy in the Marxist sense ('Worker's democracy') or the conventional bourgeois liberal (at least people get to vote, and a bill of rights to protect minorities). The former is, in my view, simply an extension of the latter. It's all democracy.

Neither democracy, nor emancipation or equality, are provided by dictators such as Saddam Hussein or the Ayatollahs... or our friend Kim Jong Il. If you are a Marxist, and want worker's control, and 'democratised means of production', neither are they. The left seeks, and always has, to provide them all. Saddam is not the answer to these problems.

All of this is true, regardless of what dictators may have forced upon their populations and subservient cultures in terms of political views. All wish, as part of their humanity, to act without constraint (although in social contract terms, many agree, for the common good, to place constraints upon their own freedom).

But social contracts are not made by third parties, not least those who seize and maintain power through lies and coercion.

What a culture thinks is exactly that: not what the dictator in their part of the world tells them, and everyone else, what to think (though, in very rare circumstances, dictators represent over 50% of the population: a whole separate argument!). This is true in all places. Thus, a further truth flows from this; that cultural relativism, is by far and away, for the most part, used to:

• Oppress, convince and coerce,
• Defend the unjust privilege of the local ruling class or person,
• Exaggerate, internally and externally, national and religious differences between people, that in previously shades of reality, where nowhere near as pronounced,
• For the purposes of point one and two

Democracy is the best weapon to end this. So how do people so heavily oppressed by armed dictators get the democracy that they so badly need and want? Sacrifice the total of the lives of their movement for it?

Sometimes people need help. And we can provide it. We must intervene. That doesn't mean that we have to kill and destroy, in almost all of the circumstances where intervention is necessary. Indigenous people are much more efficient at finding the fascist to blame!

So, I believe that democracy, freedom for people from exploitation and oppression, and the furtherance of egalitarianism are values and aims of the left. Exploitation, social division, inequality and a lack of democracy are aims of the right, usually through opposition to change, i.e. conservatism.

To intervene to produce the former is leftist (producing mass death for little gain is certainly rightist). To intervene for the latter is rightist. I think it's a shame that while we let the rightists get away with their interventions, we become so polarised against all interventions that we fail to perform our own. We're literally letting them get away with murder!

Perhaps it is because we have seen actors, particularly the US, use intervention against us so often, and also so much intervention in the rightist sense, that we have become emotionally repelled from the idea of intervening for the progressive cause in the affairs of dictatorial governments. It is a shame though, is it not?

I thought I'd finish with a quote from a hero of mine, Nye Bevan:

The function of parliamentary democracy, under universal suffrage, historically considered, is to expose wealth-privilege to the attack of the people. It is a sword pointed at the heart of property power.

Is democracy a bad thing for the left? Nah - the more the better. Thus, by extension, spreading it is good (as is furthering it, at home, and abroad), unless the spreading of it undermines left values and aims, most importantly those that I have detailed above. We can, in my view, competently do that, subject to popularity. I believe that a 'left' interventionism is far more popular than isolationism, but also 'right' interventionism. If we are victorious in bloodless liberation, all will benefit but the oppressive, provided we do it right. So let us seize the agenda, for the prize is ours to win, comrade!

Footnotes

¹ It does not help that the neocons are allowed by the left to use 'spreading democracy' to undermine progressive democratic governments such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or the government of Hugo Chavez. But then, they say, 'you don't care about democracy anyway, that's our issue'. We commit a grave sin by ceding it to them so easily.

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Any comments?