For Anti-Imperialist Partisanship in the CPUSA: A Response to Sam Webb By Bill Miller

For Anti-Imperialist Partisanship in the CPUSA: A Response to Sam Webb

By Bill Miller

Al-Jazeerah, August 17, 2006

Editorial Note:

On July 31st Al-Jazeerah published a commentary on developments in the middle east by Sam Webb, chairman of the CPUSA. The following article by Bill Miller is a response to Sam Webb's article.

Sam Webb's "The Middle East in Crisis" gravely misreads the current war. Worse, his article represents a sharp right turn away from the past and present positions of the CPUSA. It fails to apply elementary Marxist-Leninist principles and tools of analysis. It isolates the CPUSA from the world Communist movement. It confuses CPUSA antiwar activists and ideologically weakens the whole US antiwar movement.

Webb throws overboard the usual Communist view that the key contradiction in the Middle East is imperialism versus its opponents. For example, Gus Hall and CPUSA referred to the 1967 war as a "U.S.-Israeli aggression against the peoples of Egypt, Syria and Jordan." Hall declared: "The real issue is national independence. The forces are imperialism and anti-imperialism." Nothing fundamental has changed in the past forty years to alter this assessment of the foremost political contradiction in the region. Webb also underestimates the intentional complicity of the U.S. with Israeli ruling circles in the cruel onslaught against the Palestinians and Lebanese. Adding insult to injury, while Hezbollah and other Lebanese endure Israeli planes delivering U.S. laser-guided bombs, Webb asserts, "It is hard to conclude that Hezbollah's actions are anti-imperialist."

In essence Webb replaces a Communist, anti-imperialist analysis with a liberal, "neither side is blame-free" analysis. Webb's condemnation of "right-wing clericalism" cozies up to the current ideology of both the Republican and Democratic Parties, which have replaced anti-Communism with "anti-terrorism" to justify imperial aggression. Webb argues that Hezbollah and Hamas warrant "criticism and even condemnation" because they are not "national liberation movements as we have come to understand them" and because of their "kinship" with the political right. Untrue. Hezbollah and Hamas are popular parties represented in legislative and executive bodies and have militias whose courageous struggles against the Israeli government’s expansionism and the US imperialism on behalf of the national independence of Lebanon and the Palestinians have won them the support of their peoples.

Webb's view of the current war in Lebanon is akin to his analysis of the Iraq War where he exaggerates the role of jihadists in the Iraqi patriotic mass resistance to the US occupation. Communists have never subjected legitimate anti-imperialist movements to a narrow, political litmus test, from Marx and Engels' support of the Irish Fenians in the 19th century to the CPUSA's support of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. In 1776, the American revolutionaries led by a slave-owner named Washington might well have failed Webb's test. The world Communist movement has always supported anti-imperialist movements whether led by pacifists (Gandhi in India); petty bourgeois nationalists (Ireland, 1916); bourgeois nationalists (Sun Yat Sen in China; Nasser in Egypt); revolutionary democrats (Hugo Chavez in Venezuela), or Communists (Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam). French Communists in the anti-Nazi Resistance worked with Gaullists to liberate their country from rule by German imperialism. The list could go on for pages. Communists need not agree with all the views of such fighters to support them in their battle with imperialism.

Webb would no doubt claim the CPUSA is part of a world Communist movement, but because that world movement is not rightist enough for him, he signs a multi-party statement (see www.solidnet.org) — that displays none of his venom toward Hezbollah. But then he issues his own personal statement. He has done this before. In 2005 when the CPUSA came out with a new draft Party Program, he issued his own think piece, "Reflections on Socialism," well to the right of the draft Program. His latest opportunist think piece, "The Middle East in Crisis," has been on al-Jazeera in its full version and is now all over the Internet. There is little doubt much of the world concludes his views are ours. This practice of his, contemptuous of inner party democracy, is not unlike Bush's use of "signing statements" when Congress passes a law Bush does not like. Bush signs the bill into law, but then he issues his own statement announcing how he chooses to interpret the law and enforce it, if at all.

In the belly of the beast, the CPUSA must be a rock of anti-imperialism, not a reed shaken by the wind. The CPUSA should reaffirm its honorable and courageous record of support for anti-imperialist struggles. The Party should stand by the demands issued (at latest count) by at least 71 Communist and workers parties, including the CPUSA, on July 25:

• An immediate cessation of the attacks and withdrawal of the Israeli army,

• Respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and against any imperialist intervention under any pretext,

• The immediate release of political prisoners, and

• The complete dismantling of settlements and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the territories occupied in 1967, the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, alongside Israel, and a just solution to the refugee question, according to UN resolutions.

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Bill Miller is a contributor to Marxism-Leninism Today. This article was first published on August 8, 2006, at Marxism-Leninism Today: http://www.mltoday.com/Pages/Commentary/Miller-ForAntiImperialst.html