Issue 257 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published November 2001 Copyright © Socialist Review

The anti-capitalist movement is now feeding into the anti-war movement, as has been seen in the many demonstrations that have taken place throughout the world

At its foundation, the Communist International named the 20th century an epoch of wars and revolutions. Exactly the same description can be applied to the 21st century. Far from marking the end of history, the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in 1989-91 ushered in a new era of political and economic instability--11 September and its aftermath have exposed the enormous fissures just beneath the apparently prosperous and contented surface of liberal capitalist societies.

The war currently being waged by the US and Britain in Afghanistan is the third such conflict since 1991 whose main objective has been the assertion of US imperial power. US imperialism was deeply humiliated on 11 September. In order to restore its credibility it must exact a public and savage revenge for the attacks on New York and Washington.

But in attacking Afghanistan the US and its allies have entered the vast zone of instability in central Asia that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is an area where huge energy reserves are to be found, but which is also seething with conflicts between powers great and small, with bitter national and ethnic struggles, with armed groups seeking to advance their own political and material interests. It would be a bitter historical irony if the US, whose leaders boasted of luring the Russian army into an Afghan trap in 1979, finds itself bogged down in the same central Asian quagmire.

More seriously still, the war in Afghanistan threatens to destabilise the entire chain of pro-western regimes in the Middle East. As Robert Fisk puts it, 'Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan lie on the most dangerous political tectonic plate in the world' (Independent, 8 October). US support for Israel's war against the Palestinians and the Anglo-American blockade of Iraq have created immense hostility throughout the Arab world. Hardly any Arab rulers have publicly supported the war against Afghanistan. The Saudi regime, whose very survival rests on American arms, refused to allow Washington use of its bases in Saudi Arabia to attack Afghanistan, and even blocked a visit by Tony Blair. The Pakistani military dictatorship pockets the huge bribes the west is giving it for its support but is desperate for a short war. An escalation of the war--for example, the attack on Iraq demanded by Pentagon hawks--could detonate a revolutionary crisis somewhere in the Arab world.

At the same time, the attack on Afghanistan is stimulating the development of a mass anti-war movement in the west. On 13 October demonstrations of 50,000 took place in both London and Berlin, while 300,000 participated in a peace march in Italy. The London demonstration was greater than the combined size of all the marches against the 1999 Kosovo war. It embraced a wide diversity of people--young and old, trade unionists and anti-capitalist activists, Asians both Muslim and non-Muslim, peace campaigners and socialists.

The political context of this war is quite different from that of its predecessors. The Gulf War of 1991 came immediately after the East European revolutions, when the disarray and demoralisation of the left were at their greatest. Nato's campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 split the left wide open, with large sections (in North America and northern Europe, at least) siding with the cause of humanitarian imperialism.

This war, however, comes after the emergence of a worldwide anti-capitalist movement that, through the succession of demonstrations--Seattle, Melbourne, Prague, Quebec City, Gothenburg, Genoa--was experiencing a process of political radicalisation. All the evidence is that this is now feeding into the anti-war movement--1,500 people crowded into an Attac conference in Oslo on 11-13 October that proved to be as much against the war as against globalisation.

On the big anti-war demonstration in London it felt as if the spirit of Seattle and Genoa had reached town. The Financial Times report on the Italian peace march stated, 'Many leading figures in the centre-left who back US military action started to take part in the march. But they were forced to abandon the event at the halfway stage after being heckled and abused by far left activists and anti-globalisation protesters' (17 October).

The anti-capitalist movement is in the process of transforming itself into an anti-war movement. Moreover, because many of those involved in anti-war activity already share a critique of global capitalism--and because the Al-Aqsa Intifada placed Palestine firmly in the headlines for almost a year before 11 September--the anti-war movement has a definitely anti-imperialist dynamic.

A militant, anti-imperialist demonstration

The problem is that the leading figures in the anti-war movement are often well to the right of their supporters. Large sections of the left, including the far left, have adopted a 'no to terrorism/no to war' position that makes it appear as if the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden are as big a problem as US imperialism. The danger is that this stance then leads to a passive and defensive approach in practice. It is striking that anti-war activity is comparatively weak in France, where, until Genoa, the anti-capitalist movement was the furthest advanced in Europe, and where a Trotskyist candidate may well beat the Communist Party in the first round of next year's presidential elections.

The stance taken by the left makes a big difference to the character of the anti-war movement. The role played by the Socialist Workers Party in building the Stop the War Coalition in Britain helped to ensure that the London demonstration had a militant anti-imperialist character. The Scottish Socialist Party had a similar impact on the 6,000-strong march in Glasgow the same day. Rifondazione Comunista in Italy has also taken a firm anti-imperialist position. But all too often the left has not given a clear lead. Revolutionary socialists have a very important responsibility in this situation. We have to build a mass anti-war movement on the basis of the widest possible unity. This means unity on the basis of opposition to the war alone, without the addition of other planks (for example, condemnations of terrorism) that may exclude some important potential allies and imply that the main enemy is anyone but western imperialism.

The IS Tendency took the same approach during the Kosovo war. But this is a different situation. The opposition to the Nato bombing campaign was (outside Greece and a few other countries) confined largely to a section of the left that had to fight a bitter defensive struggle against the pro-war offensive launched by the liberal media. But opposition to the war in Afghanistan is much more broadly based, and it is developing in the context of a wider political radicalisation. This means that, at the same time as building the movement, revolutionaries have to build a consistent anti-imperialist left within it.

The war indeed offers a tremendous opportunity to build revolutionary socialist organisation. Marxists have an analysis that grasps the systematic connections between capitalism and imperialism. This sets us apart from pacifists, who tend to approach the problem of militarism in isolation, and many campaigners against corporate globalisation, who have attacked mainly the economic manifestations of capitalism. We have an understanding of the system as a totality. We are building organisations that fight all the different aspects of the system. We can now help shape the future of the left.

Socialist Workers Party, Britain