Nationalism and Federalism in the Afro-Asian Movement, 1958

Nationalism and Federalism in the Afro-Asian Movement, 1958
International Communist Party
Africa Reports
Nationalism and Federalism in the Afro‑Asian Movement
Il Programma Comunista
, no.23, 1958, 1, 1959)
It is never superfluous, when dealing with things that are happening
in former colonial countries that have recently organised themselves
into independent states, to reiterate our position on the national
question. The national revolution, of which the revolt of non-European
peoples against colonialism is the most modern aspect, is in every age
and place a historical phenomenon with a multi-class basis. Originating
from a social structure which is perpetuating the backward conditions of
the semi-feudal agrarian economy, the revolutionary-democratic movement
can only be a transitional coalition of the classes that arise, within
the backward society, from new and antagonistic forms of production.
Neither does the petty bourgeoisie, which is being formed within the old
society from the disintegration of semi-feudal relations, have enough
strength to lead the revolutionary movement alone, nor can the
proletariat take the lead and supplant the bourgeoisie, unless
historical circumstances characteristic of the October Revolution in
Russia occur.
The proletarian and socialist leadership of the anti-feudal
revolution can take place and last on the sole condition that the latter
loses its national character, i.e. on the condition that the revolution
against local semi-feudalism is intertwined with the anti-capitalist
revolution of the international proletariat. The Leninist Third
International aimed at this great historical encounter. All Marxists who
had enthusiastically supported the proletarian dictatorship that had
emerged from October knew that its programme – liquidation of tsarist
backwardness and establishment of socialism – would be implemented on
the sole condition that the communist revolution was victorious first of
all in the bourgeois metropolises of Europe and America. Events have
confirmed this scientific prediction in full. The failure of the
anti-capitalist revolution in the bourgeois West has not, it is true,
prevented the explosion of the gigantic productive energies that tsarism
had kept imprisoned, but underlying the superb Russian industrialism of
today it is not socialist, i.e. anti-mercantile, anti-salary,
anti-business, forms of production that are at work.
The Stalinist press daily extols the national revolution in the
colonies as an effect of the Russian revolution. And this cannot be
doubted. If the vast Asian space is industrialising, this is also due to
the profound repercussions of the Russian proletarian revolution. In the
dark night of Asian backwardness, October sounded like a trumpet call,
and this was clearly seen in 1920, when delegates from all the Asian
peoples oppressed by imperialism rushed to Moscow and embraced the cause
of the Communist International. Then the movement took other paths due
to the degeneration of the International, but the incontrovertible fact
remains that the events promoting renewal that have taken place in Asia
and Africa over the last four decades are the outcome of the gigantic
historical process initiated by the Russian working class.
While aware of this, Marxists must nevertheless guard against the
danger – linked to the persistence of Stalinism in the workers’ movement
– of distorting the classical Leninist positions on the national
question. As a multi-class movement, the anti-feudal revolution always
goes through a period (in Russia it was short-lived, from February to
October) in which the political forces of the radical petty-bourgeoisie
and the forces of the proletariat counterbalance each other, and which
lasts for as long as the armed struggle against the feudal-imperialist
reaction is in progress; but once the threat of an offensive return of
the
ancien régime
has vanished, the class struggle between
bourgeoisie and proletariat inevitably resumes.
As the Russian experience demonstrates, the proletariat can overthrow
the bourgeoisie and take possession of the levers of command of the
state provided it is organised into a powerful Marxist revolutionary
party that supports – another inescapable condition – its own action in
the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in the countries of
developed capitalism. Lacking these two prerequisites, the social
renewal brought about by the anti-colonial revolt can only be carried
out for the benefit of the bourgeois forces and at the expense of the
proletariat. Any illusion of an interclass regime, of which Chinese
‘communism’, to which one cannot deny great successes in the field of
industrialisation, has become the author and propagator, are therefore
utopian and defeatist. Lacking the political dictatorship of the
proletariat, lacking the revolutionary attack on the imperialist
metropolises, the Afro-Asian proletariat, for as long as the forms
proper to capitalism continue (mercantilisation of agricultural
products, separation of producers from the means of production,
wage-earning, industrial corporatism, etc.) will take upon itself the
characteristics of an exploited class. But this does not mean that the
workers’ movement, in the society that has emerged from the ruin of
colonialism, cannot decisively influence social evolution, even though
it does not have control of the state. There is no concession to
reformism in this. If in countries where capitalism has totally
conquered the field, it is utopianism and counter-revolutionary
defeatism to advocate the gradual and legalitarian overthrow of
bourgeois power, in the Afro-Asian countries, which have recently won
political independence and are only now renewing their worn-out
production structures, the historical picture that Marx and Engels found
in the type of society that emerged from the anti-feudal revolution is
repeated, in which reaction is defeated but not annihilated, new social
forms find obstacles to their development in the reactionary survivals,
the danger of a feudal restoration has not vanished, and the workers’
movement is forced, while maintaining intact its positions of criticism
and open struggle against the bourgeoisie, to support political
movements that oppose a return of reaction.
Let us take a particular aspect of the problem: the struggle between
national particularism and plurinational associationism, between
nationalism and federalism, now underway in Iraq and Guinea.
Il Programma Comunista
, No. 1, 1959)
In the previous article we reiterated the notion that the communist
movement cannot look with ‘indifference’ at uprisings such as those of
colonial independence, which remain within the economic, social and
therefore bourgeois political orbit, but which have revolutionary
effects both in that they create a ‘coloured’ proletariat where only
‘tribesmen’ existed, and in that they have repercussions on the entire
world order of imperialism, increasing its instability, and therefore
the potential for crisis. A particular aspect of this objectively
revolutionary process is the tendency towards federation between
ex-colonial states, which we now examine in its ups and downs in the
light of the evolution of Iraq on the one hand, and ex-French Guinea on
the other.
What is happening in these countries shows that the seething
political world that has emerged from the victory over colonialism is
divided over the question of the ethnic and racial basis of the state:
nation-state? Federation of states of equal nationality and language?
Continental union of different peoples and races, on the model of the
great modern states? Now, it is clear that while the federation projects
in Europe are pitifully utopian, and must be mercilessly unmasked by us,
the proletarian armies that the communists are expecting to see rise up
and fight in the former colonies can only see the light of day on the
condition that the economic and social backwardness of the new states is
defeated, and this is only possible by overcoming the state
fractionation artfully wished for by colonialism, the ‘balkanisation’ of
the countries that have become independent.
The Case of Iraq
The formation of nation states does not in fact interest communism as
the end point of a historical process, but as the starting point for the
development of the social energies compressed by semi-feudalism.
Revolutionary communism has an interest in the growth of the forces of
the wage-earning proletariat everywhere; therefore, while unmasking the
class content of the industrialisation plans of the new Afro-Asian
states, it is important that the semi-feudal agrarian reaction – still
strong in countries like India, Pakistan, Persia, Iraq, Sudan, etc. – or
even economic forms linked to primitive social structures (as in West
and Central Africa) should not prevail over local regimes that tend to
introduce modern, albeit capitalist, forms of production. In saying
this, are we taking a stand in favour of non-proletarian political
alignments? This is what scandalises the false Marxists anchored in
uncritical indifferentism. But it is clear that it is not a question of
supporting the parties of the bourgeois democratic camp in power in the
former colonies. What matters is that the movement to liquidate the
semi-feudalism and tribal survivals that bar the way to any leap forward
in the economy as well as in the social structure is not blocked.
Communists struggle against all forms of reaction; but reaction has
in western countries only one subject, the capitalist bourgeoisie, while
in the former colonies it is embodied in pre-colonial social strata, and
Marxism cannot remain indifferent to the fact that there is a real
movement tending to destroy it. Of course, it must guard against
confusing its programme and organisation with that of the democratic
political camp, in the manner of the Stalinists who, in order to obey
Moscow’s foreign policy, make and break alliances with Afro-Asian
regimes passing over their class nature.
What we have said allows us to take a stand against certain political
tendencies that manifest themselves in Afro-Asian countries without
fearing that we might therefore pass for ‘allies’ of other tendencies
that oppose the former.
Let us begin, for example, with Iraq. We greeted with satisfaction,
last July, the popular uprising that put an end to the corrupt Hashemite
dynasty, the traditional tool of British imperialism and agent of local
big landlordism. In Iraq, in spite of the super-modern oases of
industrialisation (oil fields) the absolute power of the landed
aristocracy reigns in its most squalid and ferocious forms. Cultivable
land is in the hands of a few large landowners who extract exorbitant
rents from the peasants and, since the meagre produce left for the
peasant family is insufficient, it is forced to resort to the usury
exercised by the same large landowners. Hence the terrible misery that
plagues the countryside. Worse still is the case in neighbouring Persia
where private landowners, together with the Crown and religious
brotherhoods, own 70% of the arable land, and the peasant is forced to
give the owner 5/6 of the product.
But back to Iraq. The revolution of 13 July had raised many hopes. It
seemed then that the Qasim regime wanted on the one hand to be part of
the Arab unification movement, following Syria’s example, and on the
other hand to transform the internal social structures by initiating a
process of economic modernisation. Instead, apart from the abolition of
certain mediaeval vestiges, the agrarian reform, which only provided for
the limitation of property to 250 hectares and the allocation of land to
poor peasants, remained a dead letter. It was a liberal-type reform. As
far as foreign policy is concerned, despite the de facto abrogation of
the Baghdad Pact (which the government, however, did not have the
courage to officially proclaim as having lapsed), the regime has
entrenched itself in nationalist positions. The local Nasserist
movement, headed by Colonel Arif, has been persecuted; Arif himself, on
his return from Bonn, was arrested awaiting trial, and rumours that have
not yet been checked suggest that he has already been shot. The funny
thing is that the current government seems to be supported by
pro-Russian elements and by the Kremlin itself: thus landlordism and
nationalism would have the blessing of Khrushchev, who would very...
progressively support the anti-federalist tendencies present in
Islam.
According to the false Marxists posing as super-Orthodox, whether the
current regime continues to rule in Baghdad or whether it is overthrown
by the opposition forces demanding the modernisation of the country and
its incorporation into a unitary Arab state on the model of the UAR, is
a matter of perfect indifference. But does reasoning in this way not
break the weapon of the dialectic? Marxists cannot confuse themselves
with Nasserists, as the Muscovites have done (only to then support Qasim
on Iraqi soil), but neither can they fail to recognise that the
Nasserian programme of a unitary Arab state, which would put an end to
the ‘Balkanisation’ of the Middle East, from which only imperialism
benefits, responds to a real historical need. A great unitary Arab state
would aggravate imperialism’s permanent crisis, while it would not be
able to resist, due to its age, a workers’ revolutionary wave sweeping
through imperialism’s metropolises.
This has nothing to do with the political physiognomy of Nasserism or
the intentions of the Egyptian colonel. Nor are we to be scandalised by
his dictatorial tendencies: did the European bourgeoisie in destroying
the last feudal survivals use milder and less dictatorial methods?
On the other hand, today in the absence of Bolshevik-type parties
that could take over the proletarian leadership of the movement in the
former colonies, and in the absence of the revolutionary struggle of the
proletariat in the metropolises, it is ridiculous to expect Afro-Asian
regimes struggling against economic and social backwardness to use
methods other than those of forced capitalist industrialisation. If the
ex-colonies are forced to climb the harsh Calvary of wage labour, for
this we, the proletariat of the capitalist metropolises, are mainly
responsible, who are unable to free ourselves from opportunist
influences and put an end to capitalism. If the Chinese are forced to
resort to pre-industrial steel-making systems, this is mainly because
the western proletariat is unable to wrest the blast furnaces from the
hands of capitalism, establish anti-mercantile socialist production and
suppress the market. One cannot expect from backward peoples the
socialism that the high civilisations of the West have not yet managed
to attain.
But one can be satisfied if, thanks to the renewal efforts of those
peoples, the obstacles placed in the way of history by landlordist
reaction gradually fall away. When this happens, one is not ‘building’
socialism – not even if the object of the discourse is ‘communist’ China
– but laying, willingly or unwillingly, the foundations of a revolution
that can only be socialist, i.e. having as its object associated labour,
the elimination of production on small parcels of land, the
concentration of the means of production, mass consumption.
The case of Guinea
Therefore, we greet with satisfaction events that contrast with the
reactionary tendencies emerging, under the influence of imperialism, in
some of the Afro-Asian countries. Recent and most interesting of all is
the decision of Ghana and former French Guinea to merge into a unitary
state. It does justice to all prejudices about African peoples. While
bourgeois Europe is falling apart, in the distant Gulf of Guinea, which
was once the great emporium of the slave trade, the forces of unity and
brotherhood of peoples are making their voices heard. Already on other
occasions we have expressed our sympathy for African federalism, which
alone can redeem peoples with an ancient history from the backwardness
in which they find themselves today, and create, even if unconsciously,
the conditions for the emergence of a black proletariat. The initiative
of Ghana and Guinea opens up interesting prospects. A great African
federation embracing the states that are already independent and those
struggling to become so (Nigeria and Togo will be independent in 1960;
the other territories subject to France will sooner or later break free)
would undoubtedly represent a great historical turning point.
It is a pity that the tyranny of space does not allow us to deal with
the subject in more depth, which we will return to in a future article.
The purpose of this one was merely to reiterate our position against the
indifferentism that still hampers the revolutionary movement, and to
show how, while not yielding a single comma of Marxist and Leninist
theory on the national question and the programme laid down by the
Second Congress of the Communist International, one can participate,
albeit not physically, in the great movement for renewal that the end of
colonialism has set in motion in the last pre-capitalist areas of the
planet.