Are religious resistance groups in Iraq fascist?

 

Siyaves Azeri responds

 

A WPI Briefing reader has written: ‘A friend and I had an argument about the Iraqi resistance. I argued that the religious groups of the resistance are kind of religious fascists, because if they gain power, they would oppress the working class. My friend said that fascism is not possible in a country like Iraq, because it's mostly under imperialist control, and fascism is a movement based on petit-bourgeois parts in society. I am very interested in the standpoint of the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI). So what's your attitude? Are these religious groups in Iraq equal to fascist groups?’ Siyaves Azeri, the WPI correspondent responds:

 

There are a number of different points in the above debate, which need to be distinguished and clarified in order to provide a sound answer. I will try to proceed through the scheme of the discussion you have been involved in and address the issues your discussion has brought up. In this way, I hope, you might get a response.

 

The so-called resistance is a combination of political Islamists, ethnicists, residues of the Baath regime, and nationalists. It was clear - and the Worker-communist Party of Iran emphasised this from the very beginning - that the US military attack on Iraq and the occupation would dissolve the structure of Iraqi society and create a swamp, which would give rise to and empower reactionary forces, especially political Islam and ethnicism in Iraq and in the Middle East.  The more important issue is that US military intervention and the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do either with the freedom and wellbeing of the Iraqi people or with the destruction of weapons of mass destruction. The war against Iraq and the invasion was a step towards the construction and enforcement of the New World Order, a project to ensure the hegemony of the US bourgeoisie in the uni-polar world of the post-Cold War era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the balances, institutions and relations within the western world that had been formed upon the existence of a rival camp could not stay intact and had to be redefined and justified. Lacking the competing system – which was really a state capitalist camp - US hegemony and leadership could not be taken for granted nor could old institutions such as NATO nor the UN and their functions. The function of other ally regimes and the range of their influence had to be redefined too. Political Islam, for instance, was one of these forces, which formerly had been backed by the US and western governments to prevent the expansion of the territories where the USSR could become influential. And other states, such as the Baath regime in Iraq, had to either be re-formed (read this literally) to fit into this new order or, in the case that they were not actually and potentially adjustable enough, to be removed. The New World Order project has been the US bourgeoisie's answer to this "identification crisis", and the actualisation of this project is based upon the military power of the US. The terrorist attack of September 11 gave the US government the alibi it looked for to launch this "ordering" process once again -a project that had been in the agenda of the US since Bush Sr.’s presidency and the first Gulf War. It is clear that this policy is irrelevant to the security, wellbeing, and freedom of the people and has nothing to do with the enforcement of human rights or replacing oppressive regimes with "democratic" states. As a matter of fact, the invasion of Iraq and US state terrorism and militarism have made the world a less secure a place. US policies have deprived the Iraqi people of their most basic rights and freedoms and have resulted in the dissolution of Iraqi society and the emergence of a state of chaos and uncertainty - the "dark scenario". The US invasion and militarism is a main part of the dark scenario that threatens the lives of millions of people in Iraq.

 

The nature of the Iraqi "resistance" should be understood and analysed against this background. Although not homogeneous in its texture, political Islam is the other pole of the war between terrorists. Political Islam is a backward political movement that used to reside in the margins of Middle Eastern societies during the Cold War era. It was backed by the US and west against the "danger" of communism and the left. Particularly, during the 1979 Iranian revolution it emerged as the last resort for the west to encounter and defeat the revolution. The seizure of political power by political Islamist forces in Iran, backed up by the west and the US, accelerated the strengthening of this reactionary movement in other Middle Eastern countries. Afghanistan - the rise of the Mojahedin and later Taliban - is another offspring of the Cold War era US and western politics in the Middle East against the rival Soviet camp and left forces and movements. The present day regimes in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Pakistan are other examples that express the nature of the relationship between the US and west and political Islam. The heterogeneity of political Islamic forces, to which I referred to above, tends to point to this fact only. As I mentioned earlier, in the post-Cold War era, the older balances, institutions, and relations had to be redefined. Political Islam, its role, its range of influence, its function, etc. were not exempted from such a process of redefinition and re-formation. To put it more clearly, during the Cold War era, the degree of enmity to the Soviet Union was a scale to measure the desirability of a regime -for instance an Islamic regime in a particular country - for the US and the west. However, in the post-Cold War era such a scale does not function properly, because it is irrelevant. The new measure of desirability will be to function properly in accordance with the new needs and the new division of labour that US hegemony and the New World Order require. Hence, in the earlier period an anti-Soviet Union state, yet not fully cooperative with the west was tolerable; at present, only a regime that fully submits to the benefits of the NWO is acceptable. In both cases, states are representative of the interests of the bourgeoisie - international and national; however, the alteration in the forms of relations among different segments of the bourgeoisie gives way to the reorganisation of the relations that best represent the interests of the bourgeoisie. The war against Iraq is such an attempt of redefinition and reorganisation of the new hierarchy within the international bourgeoisie, where the state apparatus of the US as the representative of the US bourgeoisie is the leader. It is obvious that as a reactionary, bourgeois force some segments of the political Islamic movement would "resist" this attempt in different forms and via different means in order to acquire a larger share in this process of bargaining. And it is clear too that the US government has the tendency and the will - although not necessarily the power proper - to replace any state and regime with one that best serves its own interests. This, on the other hand, explains the positioning of different fractions of political Islamic forces, nationalists, even former Baathists in Iraq of the present day. While some participate in the process of the formation of the new government in Iraq -e.g. Sistani - some others join the "resistance" - e.g. Muqtada al-Sadr. However, no matter the position they take, it is obvious that none of these forces represent the benefits of the working class masses, of women, children, youth and elderly. All the fragments of political Islam, nationalism, ethnicism, etc. as well as the US government and invasion forces are elements of the dark scenario.

 

Hence, coming to your point - the so-called resistance forces, if they come to power, will definitely oppress the working class. They will not hesitate to launch the bloodiest attacks against the most basic workers', women's, and children's rights and against anything that is humane. They have already been practicing these attacks and measures wherever they could. They have kidnapped and murdered worker activists, women’s rights defenders; they have forced women out of the society, veiled them, silenced them and threatened them to death. They have taken every fascistic measure to silence working class leaders and communists. So have their counterparts, which participate in the government. Bombing innocents and killing people, causing bloodshed, and terrorising the masses is their daily practice, just as it is the US invaders'.

 

I personally would not discourage a historical study of the class bases of fascism and Nazism. However, from my point of view, the vision that mechanically tries to discover/invent a one-to-one relationship between a particular fragment of the bourgeoisie and a political movement in a particular historical era (such as is the case of the emergence of fascism in 1930's Germany) misses the larger picture and represents economist reductionism. Such a view reduces the analysis of the relations of production and the mode of production into an analysis of the fragmentation of the bourgeois class in particular and classes in general. On the other hand, it does not see the forms that the (bourgeois) state machinery can be clothed with and the drastic measures it can take at dramatic turning points - such as revolutionary periods or times of crisis - in order to protect the capitalist relations of production and the profit of the bourgeois class. Moreover, such reductionism, ironically, is the consequence of a "petit-bourgeois" political standpoint that advocates the existence of different revolutionary eras toward socialism and different stages in revolution as a principle. It views history as a mechanically ordered stage where every class and every segment of a class lines up in queue of history waiting until its turn to seize political power arrives. This is the viewpoint that postpones the fight for a socialist revolution and the task of the construction of socialism. This is the viewpoint that does not find urgency in the call for socialism due to different alibis. It is, in one word, Menshevism. 

 

Socialism is possible now in every single part of the world, and also in Iraq. Particularly speaking for Iraq, a genuine struggle for freedom, equality, for human rights, for secularism cannot be separated for the struggle to build a workers’ state, i.e., a socialist state. Such struggle requires fighting against the two poles of the international terrorism, namely USA state terrorism and Islamic terrorism (the so-called resistance is representative of the latter). Postponing the fight against any of these two poles of terrorism, no matter the justification, in practice means participating in the continuation of, and cooperation with the forces of, the dark scenario. The binary opposition that "radical" left organisations and groups base their arguments on in order to justify their support for political Islam and the "resistance" - the opposition between imperialism (the evil alien bourgeoisie) and "anti-imperialist" forces (including segments of the native bourgeoisie and the most anti-human and anti-Communist forces such as political Islam) - is evidence of their real class standpoint. It is representative of their political position. At best, they belong to the tradition of the nationalist bourgeois left movements.

 

Only a socialist state in Iraq can guarantee the welfare and freedom of the masses; only a socialist state can guarantee the widest liberties and unconditioned freedom. Only the worker-communism movement acts within such a horizon and it is the only force that can mobilise large masses to this end. I call upon all radicals, socialists and working class activists to support the cause of the working-communist movement and to support the struggle of the Left Worker-communist Party of Iraq towards building a bright, humane, equal, free, and socialist society in Iraq.