[Peace-discuss] Diana Johnstone: on Trotskyists

Tue May 8 11:30:33 UTC 2018

Proyect may be a "former Trotskyist," but with respect to the matter at
hand, he is more "Trotskyist" than "former." He spent decades in the SWP.
People with that kind of life experience often maintain many of the same
habits of thought, the same allegiances, the same opportunism, the same
slash and burn polemical style. Her critique of Trotksyists' excessive
attachment to other people's revolutions, even if imaginary, certainly
applies to Proyect; and her critique of how this often approach often leads
to supporting Western imperialism also applies to Proyect. He has often,
not always, been careful to insist that he opposes Western military
intervention in Syria; but he has supported its predicates. If the Western
imperialists are saying, A is true, and that's why the West must bomb and
invade, Proyect will argue vigorously for A, while claiming innocence of
the implication. And, he calls everyone that he perceives to be an obstacle
to his project an Assadist, including me; he has done this for years.

I know these things because I've been reading his stuff for a long time.
He's a great writer, very smart, very compelling, if you're willing to
tolerate the slash and burn polemical style. And he's very open and
self-reflective about his history in the SWP, which is a story I find
fascinating, and which makes clear that things he critiques about the SWP
apply to his own current commitments and endeavors.

Having said that, he does concede that "the Syrian revolution," such as it
was, is now over.

Also, some of his critique of the "Assadist left" has been true. Some of
the "Assad didn't do it" stuff has verged into conspiracy theory.

Finally: I like this Diana Johnstone piece a lot. I think it's
substantially right. But there's something I wish she wouldn't do, which is
the argument for accepting the necessity of the "strong leader" in these
countries, which I think is callous when one is speaking about people who
have been responsible for huge atrocities, which exposes her unnecessarily
to opponents who see her as an apologist for authoritarian politics, and
which is inherently speculative. We're never going to know what the
alternative history was in the absence of imperialism, or even if
imperialism had taken a slightly different course. What would have happened
in Iran if the CIA had left Mossadeq alone? What would have happened in
Chile if the CIA had left Allende alone? How would the Sandinistas have
evolved if the CIA had left them alone? We're never going to know. Each of
these situations had internal contradictions that the CIA exploited but was
not the author of. How would these contradictions have been resolved if the
CIA hadn't intervened? We'll never know. So let's reserve judgment. The
more we can mitigate the Empire, the more space there will be for people to
work out their problems without the usually terrible influence of external
force.

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 8:20 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>
> No one says it better than Diana Johnstone. Though I would not blame it on
> "Trotskyists." She is clear, to eliminate those writing for the WSWS.ORG
> <http://wsws.org>. In this case she refers to the ISO, "International
> Socialist Organization," and one of their many articles, supporting US
> imperialism, by labeling anti-war leftists as Assadists, or supporters of
> Dictatorship. While they maybe Trotskyists, Louis Proyect the "Unrepentant
> Markxist is a former Trotskyist, and takes every opportunity to criticize
> them, he like the anarchist group "Black Rose," all have maintained the
> same position as that of the ISO, that of labeling anti-war activists as
> Assadists and supporters of a Dictator, that Diana's analysis presents. In
> the meantime, the killing continues, and the destruction of one more nation
> in the middle east by the US imperialists.
> K. Aram
>
>
>
> Trotskyist Delusions: Obsessed with Stalin, They See Betrayed Revolutions
> Everywhere
> May 4, 2018 • 192 Comments
> <https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/04/trotskyist-delusions-obsessed-with-stalin-they-see-betrayed-revolutions-everywhere/#comments>
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>
> The trouble with some Trotskyists is they’re always “supporting” other
> peoples’ revolutions, says Diana Johnstone. Their obsession with permanent
> revolution in the end provides an alibi for permanent war.
>
> *By Diana Johnstone  **Special to Consortium News*
>
>
> <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/edited-Diana-Johnstone.jpg>I
> first encountered Trotskyists in Minnesota half a century ago during the
> movement against the Vietnam War. I appreciated their skill in organizing
> anti-war demonstrations and their courage in daring to call themselves
> “communists” in the United States of America – a profession of faith that
> did not groom them for the successful careers enjoyed by their intellectual
> counterparts in France. So I started my political activism with sympathy
> toward the movement. In those days it was in clear opposition to U.S.
> imperialism, but that has changed.
>
> The first thing one learns about Trotskyism is that it is split into rival
> tendencies. Some remain consistent critics of imperialist war, notably
> those who write for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).
>
> Others, however, have translated the Trotskyist slogan of “permanent
> revolution” (turning a bourgeois revolution into a working class one) into
> the hope that every minority uprising in the world must be a sign of the
> long awaited world revolution – especially those that catch the approving
> eye of mainstream media. More often than deploring U.S. intervention, they
> join in reproaching Washington for not intervening sooner on behalf of the
> alleged revolution.
>
> A recent article in the International Socialist Review (issue #108, March
> 1, 2018) entitled “Revolution and counterrevolution in Syria” indicates so
> thoroughly how Trotskyism can go wrong that it is worthy of a critique.
> Since the author, Tony McKenna, writes well and with evident conviction,
> this is a strong not a weak example of the Trotskyist mindset.
>
> McKenna starts out with a passionate denunciation of the regime of Bashar
> al Assad, which, he says, responded to a group of children who simply wrote
> some graffiti on a wall by “beating them, burning them, pulling their
> fingernails out.” The source of this grisly information is not given. There
> could be no eye witnesses to such sadism, and the very extremism sounds
> very much like war propaganda – Germans carving up Belgian babies in the
> First World War.
>
> *The Issue of Sources*
> <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Trotsky-1.jpg>
>
> Trotsky: His permanent revolution turned into permanent war.
>
> It raises the issue of sources. There are many sources of accusations
> against the Assad regime, on which McKenna liberally draws, indicating
> that he is writing not from personal observation, any more than I am.
> Clearly, he is strongly disposed to believe the worst, and even to
> embroider it somewhat. He accepts and develops without the shadow of a
> doubt the theory that Assad himself is responsible for spoiling the good
> revolution by releasing Islamist prisoners who went on to poison it with
> their extremism. The notion that Assad himself infected the rebellion with
> Islamist fanaticism is at best a hypothesis concerning not facts but
> *intentions*, which are invisible. But it is presented as unchallengeable
> evidence of Assad’s perverse wickedness.
>
> This interpretation of events happens to dovetail neatly with the current
> Western doctrine on Syria, so that it is impossible to tell them apart. In
> both versions, the West is no more than a passive onlooker, whereas Assad
> enjoys the backing of Iran and Russia.
>
> “Much has been made of Western imperial support for the rebels in the
> early years of the revolution. This has, in fact, been an ideological
> lynchpin of first the Iranian and then the Russian military interventions
> as they took the side of the Assad government. Such interventions were
> framed in the spirit of anti-colonial rhetoric in which Iran and Russia
> purported to come to the aid of a beleaguered state very much at the mercy
> of a rapacious Western imperialism that was seeking to carve the country up
> according to the appetites of the US government and the International
> Monetary Fund”, according to McKenna.
>
> Whose “ideological lynchpin?” Not that of Russia, certainly, whose line in
> the early stages of its intervention was not to denounce Western
> imperialism but to appeal to the West and especially to the United States
> to join in the fight against Islamist extremism.
>
> Neither Russia nor Iran “framed their interventions in the spirit of
> anti-colonial rhetoric” but in terms of the fight against Islamist
> extremism with Wahhabi roots.
>
> *Organic U.S.-Israel Alliance*
>
> In reality, a much more pertinent “framing” of Western intervention, taboo
> in the mainstream and even in Moscow, is that Western support for armed
> rebels in Syria was being carried out to help Israel destroy its regional
> enemies. The Middle East nations attacked by the West – Iraq, Libya and
> Syria – all just happen to be, or have been, the last strongholds of
> secular Arab nationalism and support for Palestinian rights. There are a
> few alternative hypotheses to Western motives – oil pipelines, imperialist
> atavism, desire to arouse Islamist extremism to weaken Russia (the
> Brzezinski gambit) – but none are as coherent as the organic alliance
> between Israel and the United States, and its NATO sidekicks.
>
> It is remarkable that McKenna’s long article (some 12 thousand words)
> about the war in Syria mentions Israel only once (aside from a footnote
> citing Israeli national news as a source). And this mention actually
> equates Israelis and Palestinians as co-victims of Assad propaganda: the
> Syrian government “used the mass media to slander the protestors, to
> present the revolution as the chaos orchestrated by subversive
> international interests (the Israelis and the Palestinians were both
> implicated in the role of foreign infiltrators).”
>
> No other mention of Israel, which occupies Syrian territory (the Golan
> Heights) and bombs Syria whenever it wants to.
>
> Only one, innocuous mention of Israel. But this article by a Trotskyist
> mentions Stalin, Stalinists, Stalinism no less than *twenty-two times.*
>
> <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stalin_in_July_1941-Atomic-Heritage-Foundation.jpg>
>
> Stalin: Bolshevik Revolution ended in him.
>
> And what about Saudi Arabia, Israel’s de facto ally in the effort to
> destroy Syria in order to weaken Iran? Two mentions, both implicitly
> denying that notorious fact. The only negative mention is blaming the Saudi
> family enterprise for investing billions in the Syrian economy in its
> neoliberal phase. But far from blaming Saudi Arabia for supporting Islamist
> groups, McKenna portrays the House of Saud as a victim of ISIS hostility.
>
> Clearly, this Trotskyist delusion is to see the Russian Revolution
> everywhere, forever being repressed by a new Stalin. Assad is likened to
> Stalin several times.
>
> *More About Stalin Than Syria*
>
> This article is more about the Trotskyist case against Stalin than it is
> about Syria.
>
> This repetitive obsession does not lead to a clear grasp of events, which
> are *not*the Russian revolution. And even on this pet subject, something
> is wrong.
>
> The Trotskyists keep yearning for a new revolution, just like the
> Bolshevik revolution. Yes, but the Bolshevik revolution ended in Stalinism.
> Doesn’t that tell them something? Isn’t it quite possible that their
> much-desired “revolution” might turn out just as badly in Syria, if not
> much worse (jihadists taking over the country)?
>
> Throughout history, revolts, uprisings, rebellions happen all the time,
> and usually end in repression. Revolution is very rare. It is more a myth
> than a reality, especially as some Trotskyists tend to imagine it: the
> people all rising up in one great general strike, chasing their oppressors
> from power and instituting people’s democracy. Has this *ever *happened?
>
> For these Trotskyists, this seem to be the natural way things should
> happen and is stopped only by bad guys who spoil it out of meanness.
>
> In our era, the most successful revolutions have been in Third World
> countries, where national liberation from Western powers was a powerful
> emotional engine. Successful revolutions have a program that unifies people
> and leaders who personify the aspirations of broad sectors of the
> population. Socialism or communism was above all a rallying cry meaning
> independence and “modernization” – which is indeed what the Bolshevik
> revolution turned out to be. If the Bolshevik revolution turned Stalinist,
> maybe it was in part because a strong repressive leader was the only way to
> save “the revolution” from its internal and external enemies. There is no
> evidence that, had he defeated Stalin, Trotsky would have been more
> tender-hearted.
>
> Countries that are deeply divided ideologically and ethnically, such as
> Syria, are not likely to be “modernized” without a strong ruler.
>
> McKenna acknowledges that the beginning of the Assad regime somewhat
> redeemed its repressive nature by modernization and social reforms. This
> modernization benefited from Russian aid and trade, which was lost when the
> Soviet Union collapsed. Yes, there was a Soviet bloc, which despite its
> failure to carry out world revolution as Trotsky advocated, did support the
> progressive development of newly independent countries.
>
> *No Excuse for Bashar*
> <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Edited-Assads.jpeg>
>
> The Assads: Son succumbed to neo-liberalism.
>
> If Bashar’s father Hafez al Assad had some revolutionary legitimacy in
> McKenna’s eyes, there is no excuse for Bashar. “In the context of a
> global neoliberalism, where governments across the board were enacting the
> most pronounced forms of deregulation and overseeing the carving up of
> state industries by private capital, the Assad government responded to the
> heightening contradictions in the Syrian economy by following suit—by
> showing the ability to march to the tempo of foreign investment while
> evincing a willingness to cut subsidies for workers and farmers.”
>
> The neoliberal turn impoverished people in the countryside, therefore
> creating a situation that justified “revolution”.
>
> This is rather amazing, if one thinks about it. Without the alternative
> Soviet bloc, virtually the whole world has been obliged to conform to
> anti-social neoliberal policies. Syria included. Does this make Bashar al
> Assad so much more a villain than every other leader conforming to U.S.-led
> globalization?
>
> McKenna concludes by quoting Louis Proyect: “If we line up on the wrong
> side of the barricades in a struggle between the rural poor and oligarchs
> in Syria, how can we possibly begin to provide a class-struggle leadership
> in the USA, Britain, or any other advanced capitalist country?”
>
> One could turn that around. Shouldn’t such a Marxist revolutionary be
> saying: “If we can’t defeat the oligarchs in the West, who are responsible
> for the neoliberal policies imposed on the rest of the world, how can we
> possibly begin to provide class-struggle leadership in Syria?”
>
> The trouble with these Trotskyists is that they are always “supporting”
> other people’s more or less imaginary revolutions. They are always telling
> others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal
> agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.
> The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological
> alibi for permanent war.
>
> For the sake of world peace and progress, both the United States and its
> inadvertent Trotskyist apologists should go home and mind their own
> business.
>
> *Diana Johnstone is a political writer, focusing primarily on European
> politics and Western foreign policy. She received a Ph.D. at the University
> of Minnesota and was active in the movement against the Vietnam War.
> Johnstone was European editor of the U.S. weekly **In These Times*
> <http://www.inthesetimes.com/>* from 1979 to 1990, and continues to be a
> correspondent for the publication. She was press officer of the Green group
> in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. Her books include **Queen
> of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton
> <http://www.lausti.com/articles/books/johnstone.html>, **CounterPunch
> Books (2016) and **Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions
> <http://www.lausti.com/articles/balkan/johnstone.html>, **Pluto Press
> (2002).*
>
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