May
2, 2003, 10:00 a.m. Mayday
Mayday
May
Day demonstrators at a sad sight.
LONDON
— Karl Marx would have been sad, I suspect, to see the May Day demonstration
in London. The demonstration brought to mind Trotsky's
letter to Diego Riviera: "we are concerned here with either real
traitors or complete imbeciles. But imbecility, raised to this degree,
is equal to treason."
The
demonstration filled about half of Trafalgar Square, and consisted of
a few thousand people. To some degree, the speakers addressed concerns
that Marx would likely have applauded, such as support for firefighters
in their wage negotiations with the government, or opposition to cuts
in government old-age welfare pensions.
Yet on foreign policy, the demonstration was affirmatively on the side
of fascism and the suppression of the working class. Earlier in the week,
a few "asylum seekers" from Afghanistan had been deported from
Britain back to their native land, on the grounds that there was no longer
a need to grant them political asylum. A May Day speaker denounced the
deportation, and condemned the Blair administration for "destabilizing"
Afghanistan. In other words, the ostensibly "revolutionary"
so-called "Marxists" of London May Day 2003 were complaining
about the destabilizing removal of a feudal regime which exterminated
Communists, which subordinated women in every way possible, and which
kept itself in power through foreign (Arab) soldiers utterly hostile to
the will of the people. Marx wanted to destabilize such tyrannies by overthrowing
them. He was for revolution, not the perpetuation of oppression.
At the side of the stage, next to the immense red flag with a hammer and
sickle, flew a flag with the face of Saddam Hussein. Now Engels might
have denounced the Anglo-American war in Iraq as a form of colonialism.
But it is possible to criticize the Anglo-American policy without honoring
Saddam Hussein. Hussein's regime was only nominally socialist; in practice
it was worse than the worst capitalist regimes denounced by Marx and Engels.
Saddam lived in palaces built on wealth stolen from the starving people
of Iraq. The bounty from the natural resources of Iraq was plundered by
a regime allied with a rapacious multinational corporation (TotalFinaElf).
Various foreign entities (France, Germany, Russia, and the U.N. oil-for-graft
bureaucrats) were, to various degrees, bought and paid for by the expropriation
of the surplus value of the labor of the working people of Iraq.
It is now perfectly obvious, even to a reader of the Guardian,
that the people of Iraq loathed Saddam, and are glad to see him gone.
Some Iraqis want the Anglo-Americans gone too, but that does not change
their abhorrence of Saddam. The May Day demonstrators in London, were
bemoaning the removal of a tyrant whose rule was completely contrary to
Marx's utopian vision.
Therefore, people who genuinely support a "free and democratic Palestine"
(as many of the May Day demonstrators claimed they did) should recognize
that the May Day demonstrators and their type are of no use to the cause
of a truly free Palestine. Saddam Hussein permitted no freedom and no
democracy, yet the May Day crowd extolled him. Saddam Hussein killed immeasurably
more Muslims than the Israelis ever have, and the May Day crowd flew his
banner. A Palestinian regime which murderers Palestinians by the millions
will enjoy the applause of the May Day crowd, so long as the regime is
hostile to the Anglo-Americans.
Hitler was accurately described by Stalin as "the bloody assassin
of the workers." On May Day 2003, the face of another bloody assassin
of the workers waved over Trafalgar Square, even as his wicked face was
being eradicated all over Iraq. Long, long ago, British communists and
socialists had some reason to believe that they were progressives on the
right side of history. Today, their parties have become the worst sort
of reactionaries, siding with the most backward, thieving, and oppressive
tyrannies.
There are still many people in this world who find in the writings of
Karl Marx an inspiring vision of fairness and social justice. May Day
in Trafalgar Square suggests that if those readers are genuinely concerned
with social justice, they are going to have to find political movements
other than the Socialist Alliance and the British Communists — other
than parties who are so consumed with hatred of their own nation that
they have become allies of the bloody assassins of the workers of other
nations.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
