50 Years Ago: Amin, Africa and the world (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The way to stop understanding of events is to show them as resulting from personal misconduct or mismanagement by those in charge. Had Hitler not been mad and bad, the Second World War would never have happened. Stalin’s treacherousness made Russia what it is. But for a succession of weak and untrustworthy leaders, the Labour Party would have brought us all to the Promised Land. This view of history means we are perpetually invited to look at figures idiotic and corrupt, and put all the blame on them. Without doubt they are all as objectionable as stated, but that is not the answer. The high chairs in which these characters sit are provided by capitalism, and at some time of need each appeared to be the ideal occupant.

The special place of buffoon-turned-villain is held at present by President Amin of Uganda. Since his regime began it has been characterized by killings, culminating in the ‘Makerere massacre’ of over 100 students in August this year. It has included the deportation of Asians in 1972, and a series of international incidents; in July there was a confrontation with Kenya, and on the 28th July Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Uganda. There have been attempts at uprisings and to assassinate Amin. On 1st August The Observer had an editorial headed ‘Getting rid of Amin’. (…)

The balance of power in Africa is between the growing and aspiring ruling classes of the states there, their deals for aid with bigger nations, and the bigger nations’ own need for oil and minerals for commodity production.

In this balance, the grotesque Amin is entirely dependent on his sponsors. The continuation of the Kenyan oil blockade in July could have caused his downfall, and from the viewpoint of his Arab allies he is unreliable and disposable; no doubt their attitude is like Samuel Pepys’s — ‘whether it will be better for me to have him die, because he is a bad man, or live, for fear a worse should come’. Meanwhile, workers in Uganda and countless other countries live not only under tyrannical regimes but have the prospect of being fodder for wars, in which the enemies are a matter of permutation. This is the result of production for profit. It does not have to go on.

[From the article, Amin, Africa and the World, by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, September 1976.]

World View: Teetering on the brink (1995)

General Sani Abacha

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Nigeria is on the threshold. Chaos and the demons of war, of anarchy and hell are gathering imperceptibly . . . the best minds have fled. Hunger wanders the highway. Corruption has become a god. Distrust lurks everywhere and cynicism pollutes the air.”

Thus wrote Ben Okri in the Guardian last 6 September. The image is immediately one of impending doom, a nightmare scenario. Okri’s words, though, were not overly pessimistic, for in the January 1995 issue of New African, they were echoed by Pini Jason who described the situation in Nigeria as a "chillingly frightening regression into absolute despotism".

Okri and Jason were both referring to the terror now felt by tens of millions of Nigerians, a terror made all the worse by a world that watches from die sidelines, as witnessed most recently in Rwanda.

In August 1994, General Sani Abacha, Nigeria's “leader", overturned what legal rights Nigerians had enjoyed by forcing through some of the most repressive decrees ever known in Nigeria. He earned himself the title of dictator (in every sense of the word) by firstly passing a decree that places himself and his regime above the law. He went on to make anti-Abacha opinions illegal, curbed the right to free assembly and abolished several human rights associations. Were that not enough, Abacha banned three opposition newspapers. dissolved the executive bodies of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the oil-workers unions, and lengthened the period a prisoner can be detained without charge to three months.

The decrees were, of course, pathetically justified by Abacha last November. In a broadcast a year after he came to power in November 1993. he declared his intentions were "to halt the drift towards anarchy . . . to strengthen our security system, revitalise respect for law and order and to restore faith among the citizens whose confidence has been stressed by political crisis in the country" (Quoted in West Africa, 28 November/ 4 December 1994.)

Annulled election

Since independence from Britain in October 1960. Nigerians have known nothing but "political crisis". The country has witnessed coups, counter-coups and internal military coups on six occasions: January 1966. July 1966.1975. 1976. 1983 and 1985.

The June 1993 elections, supposedly the fairest ever witnessed in Nigeria, were initiated by General Ibrahim Babanginda who had ruled the country since 1985. However, when only half of the result had been declared, Babanginda had the count stopped and the election annulled. The reason? Opposition leader Chief Moshood Abiola was storming ahead, capitalising on his promises to build more schools and health centres, to provide cleaner drinking water, cheaper food and improved roads. He was detained shortly after the elections. A leaked military statement later declared that Abiola had secured 58 percent of votes cast.

Arguably, the main reason why Abiola is not president is that he is a southerner, for in Nigeria the same north/south hostilities abound that were in existence at the time of the Biafra war.

Babanginda, however, was soon chased out of office. He was replaced by a civilian, Ernest Shonekar, who went a similar way when the state court ruled his office illegal. It was then that Abacha stepped forward and took power and. with it, brought Nigeria to the brink of ruin.

Abacha is guilty of untold human rights violations. But this does not seem to bother the governments of other countries much. The EU and the US might have imposed the token sanctions, but this did not stop Britain selling tanks and other military hardware to Abacha. The fact is that Britain has always sided with such northern tyrants in times of duress. More, the British High Commission have given their blessing to the judiciary set up to try Abiola.

Oil revenues

Between May and June last year Abacha ordered his army into southeastern Nigeria to destroy the villages of and murder, the Ogoni people. The Ogoni people number some 500,000 but it is to their great misfortune that the land they occupy is also the site of 112 of Nigeria’s 138 oilfields.

For years the Ogoni have protested against the environmental pollution caused by oil production, at the smoggy atmosphere they live in. at the contaminated soil they till — they are an agricultural people — and at their rivers choked with oil run-offs. They have every reason to protest. Nigeria is the largest gas-flaring country in the world. Some 16.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared annually. The acid rain this produces is only matched by the region’s oil spills — 573 spills between January 1986 and May 1992.

The protests reached a high point in late 1992 and in reaction Shell Nigeria put a hold on oil production in Ogoniland and pulled out most of its staff.

In retaliation for this sudden loss of vital revenue, a certain Major P. Okunomo called for a “ruthless military operation” against the Ogoni. sending in 400 troops to stifle protests and opposition to oil production. Not only did the soldiers destroy dozens of villages and kill hundreds of the Ogoni people, they carried out military sabotage against various oil installations in the hope that the Ogoni would get the blame.

Oil provides Nigeria with 95 percent of its foreign exchange and has been the stake in Nigeria’s conflicts since 1966. The country makes some $6 billion a year from oil sales. During the Gulf War. the Babanginda regime made a staggering $12 billion from oil sales — money yet to be accounted for. None of it, however, seems to have benefited the people, least of all the Ogoni. At present 85 percent of the Ogoni are unemployed. They have seven doctors between them (remember they number 500000), a literacy rate of 10 percent and infant mortality stands at 40 per 1.000 births.

In the past twelve months there have been strikes by oil workers and medical workers, aimed directly at the Abacha regime, in a country already teetering on the brink of an economic calamity.

Western capitalists can only look on shrug their shoulders and tut; Nigeria, after all is still Africa — "the white man’s burden”. As one New African writer commented last October: “The international community showed with its reluctant response to Rwanda that it is tired of Africa’s problems."

Socialists, on the other hand, can only imagine how “tired" Africa is of capitalism. and how so utterly tired Nigerians must be of the cabal that rules that country in the interests of capitalism. 

John Bissett

The liberation of Africa (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might as well be made clear at once. The title of this article is black humour. In the whole of this mighty continent (Europe would fit into a corner), from Cairo to the Cape, there is hardly a square mile of liberty—even of the capitalist brand such as exists in places like Britain where the proletariat is at least able to organise itself into trade unions and political parties (and where the SPGB can publish, and you can read, this journal).

For a hundred years and more, almost the entire continent was carved up among the powers of Europe, mainly England and France but also including Portugal, Belgium, Italy and pre-1914 Germany). The European imperialists had little difficulty in ousting the native rulers who were in many cases barely out of the Stone Age—but who, like all ruling classes, had treated the subject classes with horrifying oppression and exploitation. It would be anybody’s guess whether the mass of the African peoples were subjected to more vicious exploitation under the Europeans than they were under their own native rulers (some of whom, among other delights, were always ready to sell their subjects for transportation to slavery). However, there grew up in the African countries (just as in India and South America) a movement to liberate the Africans from the European capitalists—a movement which was eagerly supported by European leftists of the Fenner Brockway ilk (it may be news to some readers that this ancient ILPer, a colleague of such as Maxton whose names sound like history lessons, is alive and well in the Lords where he occasionally pontificates about Africa without the slightest sign of realising that he spent his life helping to con the Africans from a white-ruled hell to the black-ruled hell that they have to endure now). We in the SPGB always did our best to point out that nationalism, whether in Ireland or India or Africa, was simply a trap for the working class and that those who laid down their lives for this cause were merely substituting a native ruling class for a foreign one. With the kind of "benefits” that are made so horrifyingly clear every time you open a paper or switch on the news.

It may be worthwhile to have a very brief look at a few of the dozens of countries where nationalism has won the day. In the north there is Egypt where the lot of the mass of the people is at least as degraded as it was in British days and where, only a year ago, President Sadat rewarded the poor devils who crossed the Suez Canal in the teeth of Israeli guns in the Yom Kippur War by decreeing a massive increase in the prices of the poor basic foods that they subsisted on—with no comparable increase in wages. As these workers were already only just about subsisting, there were riots in Cairo and Alexandria which were put down with at least as much brutality as was used by the British. And the "ring-leaders” (the name the ruling class always gives to workers who have the cheek to kick against the pricks) are still rotting in gaol—as though rotting in the normal poverty of Cairo’s slums is not bad enough. That should teach the Egyptian workers to fight their masters’ wars against Israel. (Sadly, there is no reason to think it will. Any more than in the case of British workers.)

Sadat recently had the impudence to hold a referendum where the voters were given the chance to say they thought there was too much political freedom! And, according to Sadat, said it. There is of course no freedom whatsoever in the land of Egyptian “Socialism”. (Almost all these countries now have the nerve to call themselves socialist.) Except the freedom of a small ruling class to get inordinately rich while the people who produce the wealth live in abject poverty.

Similar conditions obtain in the other countries of the north of the continent, in the former French colonies, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Senegal, all of which have divested themselves of European rulers since the war. In all of them the position of the working-class is one of wage slavery compounded by the opposition of the native rulers to the formation of trade unions or independent political parties. One day, the workers will no doubt succeed in getting them. But meanwhile, their fate is deplorable. And as we move south of the Sahara, conditions are even more appalling. The very names of places like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the “Central African Empire” (ruled by a murderous megalomaniac called Bokassa, formerly a soldier in the French army, another General Amin) are enough to give nightmares to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the excesses that are perpetrated there. Then we have Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo. One might have thought that the atrocities committed by King Leopold in pre-1914 days—his speciality was to cut off the hands of natives who impeded his quest for profits—would be unequalled. But the former Belgian soldier, Mobutu, who now rules in Kinshasa (formerly Leopoldville) can compare with the worst of them. And to some purpose. The fortune that he has spirited out of the country (against the day when he may have to get out in a hurry) is reputed to make him one of the richest men in the world. And this brings us to Angola with whose president, Netto, Mobutu has apparently come to terms recently after the wars and massacres that have taken place in the copper-rich province of Zaire, twice invaded recently by rebel forces stationed in Angola. Angola, like all the worst hell-holes, is now a "Marxist” state if you please. Marx repudiated Marxists in his time, but he could never have dreamt that his name would be purloined by the kind of regimes that exist in Angola and Ethiopia where mass murder and constant terror—against their own subjects, as well as against neighbouring black countries—are worthy of Genghiz Khan.

In Nigeria, the largest and potentially the richest country in the continent, once again there is not a vestige of freedom and the lot of the workers can be gauged by an item which was mentioned in the Socialist Standard some years ago but is worth repeating in the present context. The government of this rich country, which had recently finished off a war attempted secession by Biafra (and finished off around a million people by guns and starvation) had the effrontery to put an advert in that well-known liberal paper, the Guardian, calling on British capitalists to invest in factories in Nigeria where the main advantage was “the cheapest wages in Africa”—seven cents an hour. Just enough to keep a monkey in peanuts. So much for black workers in independent Africa. The black capitalists make royalty look like beggars. At the very time when Biafran workers were literally starving to death (and when all fighting had ended) the Nigerian chief, General Gowon, got married. The papers were full of the stories about planes coming in from France carrying tons of the most delectable foods—and French chefs to deal with them for the delectation of the ruling class wedding guests. Yet only a few days before this article was written, there was an article by the editor-in-chief of the Observer, Conor Cruise O’Brien, saying what a nice chap Gowon is and how graciously he accepted the coup that kicked him out—so that he could live in Hampstead on the millions he had salted away!

We can only just glance in passing at such details as the war between “Marxist” Somalia (formerly backed by “Marxist” Russia but now armed by America) and “Marxist” Ethiopia (formerly backed by America and now backed by “Marxist” Russia). Suffice it to say that thousands of poor people fight and die in places like the Danakil desert where, in temperatures that go up to 150F in the shade, life is just about on the margin even in peace time. And Kenya. Here, we have just ben regaled with the story of the funeral of M’zee, the Grand Old Man and Father of the People, Jomo Kenyatta. Some of us knew Kenyatta in the ’40s when he was in Manchester; our word for him was “four-flusher”. He played the leading rôle in getting rid of the British in Kenya so that now there is, as always, a small, exceedingly rich, black capitalist class and a mass of liberated black workers who are suffering at least as much poverty, unemployment etc. as they ever did. And let anyone who criticises the leadership beware. Even an MP who had the nerve to open his mouth in Parliament was kidnapped by Kenyatta’s guards and his body found dumped in a ravine. The Commission of Enquiry is still sitting!

Still, these poor Third World countries do get aid from places like Sweden; a herd of magnificent Swedish cattle, each beast being worth a hundred men in hard cash, was donated to improve the Kenyan stock. No doubt it improved the stock on the farm belonging to Kenyatta’s sister where the entire herd ended up. Then, a year or two later, a proud announcement was made by Tiny Rowland the chairman of Lonhro, the British firm trading mainly in Africa (the actual “unacceptable face of capitalism”—Heath): "We have appointed the first black man onto our Board”. Great news for the downtrodden proletariat. Especially when the new director was the son of the same Kenyatta’s same sister. How many African workers, conned by leftists of all colours, were made to suffer privation and even death in rebellions like the Mau Mau so that a few blacks should own the country instead of a few whites? And who will win the election to succeed Kenyatta? Nobody. No election, see.

All of which leaves us but little space to deal with the appalling state of affairs in Rhodesia which is now filling the papers (not to mention the cemeteries). The white capitalists have undoubtedly treated the black people in unspeakable fashion ever since the days of the unspeakable Rhodes. And now there are massacres of blacks and whites so as to sort out which black leaders will come out on top in the struggle for power when the whites are dethroned. Which will get the black Mercedes and which the hearses. There is no more principle involved than in the struggle between A1 Capone and Jack Diamond —or Stalin and Trotsky. At the time of writing, the favourite for the role of Stalin is a gang-leader called Mugabe, backed by Nyerere of Tanzania (another black “socialist” dictator who has an enormous number of political prisoners rotting away in his gaols). Mugabe has been most honest for a politician. He has made it perfectly clear that there will be no freedom to oppose him once he gets power. One man one vote —for Mugabe, or else. He has also made it clear that there is a grisly fate awaiting those who are now opposing him—which means huge numbers of ordinary blacks as well as leaders (and ordinary whites). And when there was a debate in the Commons about a dreadful massacre of missionaries and their families, a loud-mouthed leftie, a former actor called Faulds, blamed the massacre on those who failed to give “one man one vote”. Knowing full well Mugabe and Co have declined to take part in elections. Saying in effect: We have got the guns. We are going to take power on our terms and to hell with democracy. And if a lot of “our" blacks are going to get killed in the process, who cares?

And while on that note it is apposite to mention the role of our former “socialist” Premier, Sir Harold Wilson. When sanctions were first proclaimed against the Smith regime many years ago, he boasted they would bring down the white regime “in weeks, not months". And the British navy have mounted a blockade outside Beira ever since. And now even a paper like the Observer (Sep 3) calls Wilson a hypocrite because he was at that very time conniving in supplies of oil—the heart of the matter—being pumped into Rhodesia by British government-owned BP in order to defeat those very sanctions. Still, as the paper says, some hypocrisy is essential in government; it is merely a matter of how much! Wilson went too far! And the dreadful thing is that the majority of workers, of all colours, just swallow the hypocrisy of capitalism as though no other system is possible.

L. E. Weidberg

Letter: “Democracy” in Greece (1973)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

In your April issue, commenting on Andreas Papandreou’s Democracy at Gunpoint, you said that the situation in pre-1967 Greece was different from that in other places with “a workable, though limited, political democracy” because ‘‘parliament in Greece did not control the coercive side of the state machine”. This is so, but there are one or two other points which I think should be stressed.

Mr. Papandreou's party was not a Socialist party as we understand it, and although they used the usual slogans of the Left never intended to establish Socialist Democracy in Greece. The Centre Union was very authoritarian in its structure and its policies were by far more conservative than those of the Labour Party here.

The trouble with Greece is that all those who pose now as “liberators”, “democrats” and God knows what (including Mr. Papandreou) failed to realize or did not want to realise that you cannot hope for Socialism unless you have the conscious consent of the majority.

Greek society is a non-democratic one. This is apparent not only in the structure of its political but also of its educational and religious institutions and the family.

That is not to say that I accept the colonels’ argument that they will teach the Greek people democracy(!). Their régime is a ruthless dictatorship and democratic principles can only be learnt by living in a democracy and perhaps making the inevitable mistakes. What I mean is that Greece does not need failed bourgeois opportunists, but Socialists who will work seriously for Socialism.

D. M., Swansea.

Reply: 

In general terms we would agree with the views expressed by our correspondent, providing it is understood that Socialism — a democratic society based on the common ownership of the means of life with production solely for use not sale or profit — could not be established in a single country like Greece but must be world-wide. And of course our review of Papandreou’s book did make it clear that his Centre Union party was the party for modern capitalism in Greece. We would agree that what the workers of Greece need is Socialism, not a government under such “failed bourgeois opportunists” as Papandreou.

Editorial Committee.

Marxism and Leninism in Myanmar (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sympathiser sets out the history of ‘socialism’ in Myanmar.

Myanmar is a ‘Global South’ country with long borders shared with India and China. Before its independence, it was ruled by the colonial British as a province of British India. It was also known as Burma.

The earliest record of Marxism in Myanmar is 1923, long after the death of Marx and Engels. The Second International had already been replaced by the Third International. Most of the writers who represented orthodox Marxism were no longer alive or active. It was a time when most of the most talented scholars of Marxism had lost their influence and Marxism was being dictated by Stalin under the name ‘Marxism-Leninism’. Leon Trotsky also started the left opposition to the Bolshevik government in that year.

The very first localised literature of Marxism in Myanmar was Das Kapital in a misleading translation inspired by nationalism. Since then, ‘Bolsheviks’ and ‘communism’ were the kind of keywords that could be seen in some of the publicity released. In 1930, Dr Thein Maung brought back some left-wing books from London to Myanmar. Those were the first books the radical youths in Myanmar encountered about Western communism. They influenced Thakin Nu, who later became the Prime Minister of Burma, and Thakin Soe, who founded both the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and the Red Flag Communist Party; together they founded the ‘Nagani book club’ for distributing left-wing books and articles. Dagon Taya, later a renowned writer, was one of the chairmen of the Rangoon University Student Union and once wrote a slogan on a wall claiming ‘Long Live Soviet Myanmar’ while he was travelling in 1939.

In 1939, a new chapter was opened for ‘Communism’ (‘Marxism-Leninism’) in Myanmar. Aung San (the ‘father of the nation’), Thakin Soe, a handful of Chittagong radicals and some other leftists together founded the Communist Party of Burma. The CPB managed to link with the Third International as soon as it was founded because of the link between the Chittagonian Bengali founders such as H. N. Goshal and the Indian Communist Party. At that time in 1939, the Third International had already become a tool of Russian foreign policy, under the leadership of Stalin, and had successfully sabotaged strikes under the Popular Front government in France and the social struggles of the CNT-FAI in Spain. The CPB was thus also bound to adopt disastrous tactics, including a series of mistakes that even orthodox Bolshevik leaders like Lenin and Trotsky had described as ‘ultra-left’, ie, the CPB chose not to take part in elections, but instead to wage war against the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League which was the acting government at that time. Later, the CPB didn’t stop with Stalinism; it went further to Maoism which had rejected the class struggle and advocated the alliance of four nationalist classes. It ended up killing its own founders like H. N. Goshal in 1967 during the cultural revolution era.

One Party Rule

On 2 March 1962, a coup d’état took place which heralded the commencement of one-party rule in Myanmar and the army’s political supremacy. The military who attempted the coup called themselves the Union Revolutionary Council (URC) and introduced a programme called ‘The Burmese Way to Socialism’. The CPB denied the ‘socialist’ credentials of URC, however, the URC shared a lot of similar characteristics with Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Tito’s Yugoslavia. The first of these was one-party rule with strong state power and hostility towards opposition. As Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas mentioned in his The New Class, ‘modern Communism is a modern despotism which cannot help but aspire towards totalitarianism’. In terms of Marxism, such one-party totalitarianism has nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote once, ‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only of the members of one party, however numerous they may be, is no freedom at all’. Equating one-party totalitarianism with the dictatorship of the proletariat shows a lack of understanding of Marxism. Marx and Engels identified the act of ‘raising the proletariat to a ruling class’ as ‘the conquest of democracy’.

The second characteristic was the act of strengthening the state, which confirms the claim of Milovan Djilas which states: ‘there is no doubt that a national communist bureaucracy aspires to more complete authority for itself’. Thirdly, Ne Win, chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was anti-union just like Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Tito. The BSPP faced much opposition from every side including student unions, workers’ unions, political armed groups, and the government-in-exile.

Student Uprising

The best example of this was the ‘7th July Student Uprising’ which was a series of marches, rallies, and protests against stricter campus regulations and the policies of General Ne Win’s BSPP regime. The BSPP responded to the uprising by violently attacking the students, shooting them with machine guns and using explosives to blow up the whole student union building in University of Yangon, resulting in the deaths of more than a hundred, and the arrest of more than 6,000 students. The BSPP accused the students of being counter-revolutionary and reactionary because they were protesting against the ‘socialist’ state in the BSPP’s view. After that incident, the BSPP attacked the very existence of the unions.

Furthermore, the BSPP implemented a programme like the ‘war-communism’ of Lenin’s time. The BSPP-led Socialist Economy Construction Committee introduced an economic policy aimed at nationalising all businesses across the board, similar to what Milovan Djilas had described the self-styled Communists (Marxist-Leninists) as doing. According to Djilas, the communists wanted to ban strikes because in their view the working class was already in power and owned the means of production via the state. So if there was a strike of workers or students, it meant workers were striking against themselves. Through this tyrannical self-delusion the BSPP, along with all the communist regimes who claimed to follow Marxism-Leninism, responded violently to workers’ strikes. A few international examples would include the Kronstadt rebellion against the Bolshevik government and the Georgian Mensheviks’ soviet rebellion against the Bolshevik government. The CPB argued that the BSPP didn’t represent the legacy of Marxism-Leninism, yet ironically the CPB claimed to follow Maoism while Mao Zedong himself was on excellent terms with Ne Win and his regime. The role of the CPB was ended by a series of battles with the military as well as internal coups resulting from their own inefficient revolutionary strategies and tactics.

Ultra-nationalism

After 1988, a lot of regimes had come and gone, and Myanmar was on the way back to globalisation from ‘socialism’. From 1988 to 2010, Myanmar was governed by purely repressive regimes with no ideological background. However, after the 2007 Saffron revolution, the military regime had to acknowledge the revolutionary potential of the Buddhist monks, students, workers, and the public. So they tried to create an ideological fantasy based on ultra-nationalism, Buddhist supremacy and crony capitalism. From 2010 to 2021 most of the public were under the illusion of living in a democratic nation while minority ethnic groups were being bombed and killed. The oligarchs managed to accumulate capital which was more than enough for three to five successive generations while working-class people struggled to make ends meet. That was when the public enjoyed the illusion of liberal democracy and was the least revolutionary period, until some students chose to protest with an agenda for educational reforms in 2014. During that decade, the military had successfully radicalised the majority of the Buddhist monks with their self-serving ultra-nationalism and Buddhist supremacy. As Myanmar has a unique culture of monks being important (too important) when it comes to social values, a fraction of the working class also chose to give support to the successors of the military regime, bolstered by irrational fear of minority groups and other religions. Such a political agenda recalls Daniel De Leon’s remark that ‘the capitalist class is interested in keeping the working men divided among themselves’.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) was founded by ex-communists, ex-military officers and left-leaning social democrats in 1988. Aung San Suu Kyi, the ‘democracy idol’ of Myanmar, forged a de facto alliance with the military to attain governmental status. Since then, not only did the NLD not achieve its goal of kicking the military out of politics but they also failed to protect minority ethnic groups like the Rohingya from genocide. Under the leadership of ‘the lady’ Suu Kyi, the NLD changed its political ideology from social democracy to liberalism. This was not apparent at first, but as soon as they were elected as an acting government, they failed to implement all the social democratic policies. The NLD lost their social democratic connections with the interests of the working class and with the national self-determinism of ethnic groups. Such reactionary behaviour resulted in some far-left and centre-left youths losing their trust in the NLD, and searching for a third alternative either in some social democratic reformist party or a revolutionary socialist party.

Another military coup

In February 2021, the military decided to stage another coup to restore their former golden days and to protect family members who had become oligarchs and cronies. The public at first was hesitant to react with strikes and protests. But the coup sparked enormous protests and dissent which were brutally suppressed by the military, with about 1,500 people dead, either shot in the streets, tortured and murdered in detention, or just disappeared. Even though the military managed to seize power and arrest some influential political leaders like Suu Kyi and Mya Aye, some of the NLD members escaped and formed a National Unity Government (NUG) in exile, in alliance with some ethnic leaders and other small political groups taking the role of consultative council. Even today, the NUG fails to grasp the opportunity to radicalise the public, even for reformist social democratic values. The NUG still acts like a parallel government. Yet third-party alternatives such as the Maoist CPB, Trotskyist organisations and social democratic reformists also failed to radicalise the public for a socialist revolution.

Theo Maung, who describes himself as a libertarian socialist and one of the founders of the Burmese Atheists Association, said that he was expecting a more progressive and secular society from the revolt against the coup. He was confident that people were turning away from authoritarianism and racial and religious discrimination as a result of their struggles against the junta. He pointed out that the CPB managed to recover again after the coup but that the new generation of leftists like him didn’t accept the authoritarian communists. He also said that if there was to be another communist party in Myanmar, he expected a more libertarian-leaning one with little influence from Marxism-Leninism and Maoism. Yoe Thit Aung, an anarchist, also had a view on the revolution: ‘I personally don’t see the revolution as a class struggle but rather a transformation of crony capitalism into corporate capitalism. Traditionally the NLD is a populist and conservative party. NUG is trying their best for more progressive reforms, but they will never go for radical ends’. He thinks that the old bourgeois crony class will be useful as a national bourgeois class in the post-revolutionary period.

To sum up, Myanmar has a lot of experience of Marxism-Leninism (so-called communism) and military dictatorships. It’s unfortunate that Myanmar was never influenced by the internationalist and revolutionary socialism (Marxist) tradition of Georgi Plekhanov, Julius Martov, Rosa Luxemburg and others, which represents the Marxism of Marx and Engels in seeking the democratic emancipation of the working class.

Hein Htet Kyaw

The End of Bangla Desh (1971)

From the July 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Reddened with blood, bathed in tears, the crazy world was marking its course through splice with the groans of the sick, the hungry and injured.” (Andreyev)

East Pakistan, so recently shuddering from a gigantic cyclone, was then the scene of an appalling blood-bath. The government used tanks and air-power to massacre its own people. The official story is that the Bengali autonomists had been preparing a revolt for 26 March, a revolt which was wisely and firmly put down by the loyal armed forces.

But what is really behind it all? Why should a state — already $5,000m in the red — engage in a ruinous internal war? Why is it so vitally important for Yahya Khan to “preserve the unity and integrity” of Pakistan, when 98 per cent of the East Wing supports the Awami League autonomists? And why have the Bengalis of East Pakistan been so bitter and persistent in their opposition, for at least a decade, to the existing political set-up and so vehement in their demand for autonomy? And would autonomy do them any good if they got it?

To attempt an answer to these questions, we must first go back a bit in history. At the end of the independence struggle, the Muslims of India were demanding a separate homeland to be sited in areas where they formed a majority of the population. Hence, partition: a partition which resulted in a secular India, led by Nehru and the Congress Party, confronting a Muslim Pakistan made hostile by the savage inter-communal riots and massacres all over the sub-continent, which took place at the time of Independence.

Pakistan is in the North of India. East Pakistan, with about 56 per cent of the population, is in the northeast and is part of the old province of Bengal. Its language is Bengali, its main cereal crop rice, its main exports jute and tea; it has a predominantly agricultural economy with per capita income about 200 rupees, as compared with the average for Pakistan as a whole which is 418 rupees (about £30). The land is low-lying and subject to floods, tornadoes and cyclones. In the nine years from 1960-69, there were 15 “major natural calamities”—6 floods, 7 cyclones and 2 tornadoes; in only one of these years “no major calamity occurred” but in 1968 "all the 17 districts were affected” in a single flood. In this period more than 50,000 people died in these various calamities and in 1 cyclone alone in 1965 more than 20,000 died. (Pakistan Observer, 22 November 1970).

The West Wing of Pakistan comprises four provinces: Sind, Punjab, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province. They speak Sindi, Punjabi and Pushtu, and together make up the remaining 44 per cent of the population. Its main cereal crop is wheat, it exports cotton and other manufactured goods— mainly to East Pakistan which is a protected market due to a tariff wall. Whilst the East Wing is adjacent to Burma and the sweaty jungles of the Far East, the West Wing is closer in character to the desert countries of the Middle East. The widely separated halves of Pakistan have nothing in common but their religion.

After Independence, the economy was deteriorating under a succession of incompetent and corrupt governments, until in 1958 General Ayub Khan, backed by the Army, seized power. By 1968, when threatened with civil war over his trial of the East Wing leader (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) he was forced to hand over power to General Yahya Kahn, corruption and graft had increased to remarkable proportions. Ayub’s own family had become one of the richest in the country and most of the economy was controlled and owned by a clique notorious as the "twenty families”—all closely connected with Ayub and his Punjabi generals.

It was during the ten years of Ayub’s rule that the nationalist Bengali movement for autonomy grew up. It fed greedily on such appalling statistics as the fact that defence expenditure rose in ten years from 30 per cent to about 60 per cent of total government spending; that in 1961 the East was receiving less than 15 per cent of the government’s revenue budget expenditure; that in 1959-60 the Capital Budget allocated the East Wing a little over naif what it allocated the West Wing; that more schools, hospitals, university institutions, irrigation works, plush government jobs and lush government contracts went to the Punjabis, who thanks to their control of the armed forces had got complete control of the whole administration.

Further, although East Pakistan every year had a good balance of payments—thanks to its jute and tea exports—most of the foreign exchange earned was used to finance the growing industries of the West, not to mention its soaring demand for imported cars, washing machines and fridges. The country now spends well over 50 per cent of the GNP on defence and has incurred foreign debts of over $5,000m., which use up 20 per cent of all Pakistan’s foreign exchange earnings for debt repayments. Add to all this the fact that there is an annual transfer of resources from East to West of around Rs.250m. and you can understand why the growing movement for autonomy so closely resembles that of a colony bidding for independence.

East Pakistan has 84 per cent illiteracy, 28 per cent unemployment, a population density of about 800 per sq. mile, and average peasant holdings of 3 acres with 3 head of cattle/buffaloes, 1 sheep/goat, 4 fowls and about 2.5 acres growing rice (Pakistan Observer, 25 November 1970). Its population is 40 per cent aged under 14 and has an infant and child mortality rate as high as its life expectancy is low.

When Yahya Khan came into power in 1968, there was a possibility of civil war due partly to the unrest in the East Wing which centred on the trial for “treason” of Mujibur Rahman and his associates. Yahya bowed to the storm, dropped the trials and made speeches about restoring a democratic framework, holding elections and establishing a Constitution. Political parties were allowed to form. In the West, Z. A. Bhutto—a former Cabinet Minister under Ayub—emerged as a front-runner with his People’s Democratic Party, while in the East Wing Mujibur Rahman’s nationalist Awami League (a city-based organisation with support from most moderate business and professional people) and Maulana Bashani’s (Maoist) Awami Party (supported by students and having a strong village grassroots-level support); both demanded autonomy. In the end the Awami Party much splintered by dissenting groups, decided to boycott the elections.

The first one-man, one-vote elections ever to be held in Pakistan were postponed last year from September to December, due to floods in the East Wing in the summer. Then, three weeks before the December date, the cyclone struck. No very accurate figure has emerged (or ever will now) of just how many lost their lives in and after that appalling night of 12 November. Probably more than 900,000 men, women and, above all, children will have died in the disaster area of only about 4 million people: this amounts to a casualty rate of nearly 23 per cent. (The worst ever recorded cyclones in Bengal, those of 1737 and 1876, only caused casualties of about 300,000 each).

After the cyclone, it became obvious, as miserable days and weeks dragged by, that the administration was not exactly exerting itself to get aid to the survivors. Even a fortnight after the disaster only one cargo aircraft and one helicopter were in action to drop supplies over a total land area of 9,300 square miles.

There is also considerable evidence that the Administration could have prevented many of the casualties by broadcasting an evacuation warning and by not concealing what it knew of. the size, speed and proximity of the impending cyclone. A fortnight before the disaster, meteorological warnings were reaching the (Punjabi) Governor of East Pakistan and continued in a crescendo until, 8 hours before the cyclone struck, the new radar station at Cox’s Bazar announced that the unprecedented pressure had burst its instruments. Yet no warning to evacuate went out on the radio and still the Governor did not take any steps to prepare for relief work. Probably only a quarter of the casualties were unavoidable, another quarter died as a result of the tardiness and ineffectiveness of the relief operation and 50 per cent of those who died perished within reach of shelters and safe places which would have protected them in the cyclone had they received a radio evacuation signal. The Met officers and Radio Pakistan could not broadcast a general evacuation order without sanction from the Govemor.

Yet the election was not postponed. Bengalis seething with bitterness backed the Awami League 98 per cent and thereby gave Mujib’s party a clear majority in the National Assembly to be held to create a constitution. The Assembly was not held. Yahya Kahn talked to Mujib, privately, for weeks while the Army prepared its plan and brought from the West Wing immense reinforcements, especially of tanks trucks and aircraft. Yahya also brought over Bhutto—a man much detested in the East—possibly in the hope of provoking riots, which the Army would then have to quell. Finally having completed his preparations, he broke off his talks with Mujib and flew back to Rawalpindi. The Army then moved in, massacring students, Awami Leaguers, Hindus, men, women and children—anything that moved. Bengalis in panic fled the city and with primitive Second War rifles and bamboo sticks fought the Army in pathetic local stands. Millions of refugees have crossed the border to the refugee camps of India. Paddy fields are not being planted out, the jute crop is a write-off, and jute-mills and tea-plantations have suffered badly. There is at present no prospect of things getting really back to normal and the armed forces are still being reinforced. For the Bengalis the prospect is one of a quick death by napalm or a slow one by starvation.

This war, if any, is one that is being fought over plunder. The power to grab the profits of the jute and tea trades, the power to use East Bengal as a captive market for the industries of West Pakistan, the power to import cheaply the agricultural produce of the East: these are the reasons why Yahya Kahn is determined to “preserve the unity and integrity of Pakistan”.

And for what would the Bengalis be fighting, if they are fighting indeed and not just dying? Why, for the ineffable right to be exploited by Mr. Big Business Bhuiya or Choudhury or Haque, instead of by General Khan or one of General Khan's many friends and relatives.

Charmian Skelton

Guns and coffee in El Salvador (1981)

From the June 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the defeat of the American-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, the American ruling class has been concerned that the testing-ground for the “domino” theory would shift from Southeast Asia to its own backyard, Central America. Would Guatemala and El Salvador be the next countries to instal new rulers who were less well-disposed towards the US? In El Salvador, in particular, massive American military aid is being used to maintain in power a ferociously repressive junta.

Since the late nineteenth century, El Salvador has been a leading coffee grower and exporter. In the 1880s, with the help of conveniently passed laws, Indian communities were uprooted from their land and large coffee plantations were formed. Many former peasants became seasonal workers on the coffee estates, able to find employment only between November and March. Since 1930, there has been much urban industrial development, largely in the form of capital-intensive export industries owned by US corporations such as Exxon, Texaco and Westinghouse Electric. But El Salvador remains a predominantly agricultural country.

It is also a land of great poverty and inequality. The entire economy — agriculture, finance, industry — is dominated by a tiny elite of fourteen families. Two per cent of the population controls over sixty per cent of the cultivable land. At the other extreme, only one peasant family in twenty owns enough land to support themselves, while on 1974 figures over forty per cent of urban wage-workers were earning less than the legal minimum of around five pounds a week. About half of El Salvador’s infants die of malnutrition or related ailments before their first birthday. Such is the status quo the American government is defending, to the tune of ten million dollars in 1980-1.

For half a century El Salvador has been ruled by one military dictatorship after another. In 1930, in the midst of the world depression, the candidate of the reformist Labour Party was elected President, only to be overthrown by the army in the following year. In 1932, after the so-called Communist Party had won some local elections, the generals refused to recognise the result and a large-scale peasant uprising took place. It was put down brutally: between twenty and thirty thousand people were killed (equal to between one and two per cent of the total population!). Since then, the government has been in the possession of a series of different factions of the army and the fourteen families, with some mock elections but no political democracy. Since 1960, many peasants have been won to support of the the regime in power by means of a rural paramilitary body known as the National Democratic Organisation, or ORDEN. Its members were helped to avoid the worst poverty by means of such “favours” as special credit terms, preference in employment, or extra health care. ORDEN members acted as informers against suspected subversives in the villages. Thus many potential opponents were recruited as bulwarks of the government.

The Christian Democrat Party was founded in I960. In 1972 their presidential candidate was deprived of electoral victory by yet another army coup. By this time, guerrilla organisations were being formed in the countryside, aimed at resisting ORDEN and, in the long run, at taking over the government themselves. Besides ORDEN, there are other pro-regime terrorist groups ranged against the guerrillas. In addition, there is a veritable plethora of “left-wing” opposition groupings of various kinds, religious, political, trade-union, student. Since April 1980, these have come together in the Revolutinary Democratic Front (FDR).

The current Salvadoran government came to power in a coup in October 1979, when the Christian Democrats and a section of the army overthrew the existing military regime. The new junta promised “radical reforms”, and set up a cabinet involving civilian ministers. However, it immediately proclaimed a state of emergency and banned meetings of more than three people. Clearly the junta was not even superficially different from—let alone better than—the outright military dictatorships that preceded it. By the end of 1979, the junta w.as openly backing its own terrorist organisations. In 1980 El Salvador entered a period of civil war. On the one side were the army and the other state-run terrorists (supported and trained by the Americans) and on the other the guerrillas, backed by opposition movements and, supposedly, supplied with arms by Cuba. In the first nine months of 1980 alone, five thousand Salvadorans were killed in the fighting.

What are the two sides fighting for? The government and the army are defending the existing order and the interests of the present ruling élite, the Salvadoran capitalist class, and the American companies who own much of Salvadoran industry. The American military aid is designed to protect the massive profits of these US companies, and to defend America’s strategic interests in Central America. The guerrillas are a nationalist movement, fighting against United States control of the Salvadoran economy and government, and aiming to establish Salvadoran state capitalism. This is apparent from an examination of the “Programmatic Platform of the Revolutionary Democratic Government”, issued in February 1980 by the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses, the umbrella grouping of guerrilla organisations.

The platform calls for widespread nationalisation of the banking and finance system, of foreign trade, of electricity distribution, of petroleum refining. It is stated, though, that “None of this will affect small or medium-sized private businesses, which will be given all kinds of stimulus and support in the various branches of the national economy”. There will be an agrarian reform, and the tax system will supposedly be transformed “so that tax payments no longer fall upon the workers”. (As taxes are a burden only on the capitalist class anyway, this transformation is difficult to envisage.) There will be wage regulation, price controls, increased social services, no unemployment . . . It all sounds quite impressive, till you realise that you’ve heard it all before from politicians elsewhere, and that the supposed benefits of nationalisation never quite permeate to the workers. State-run enterprises will still be concerned with making a profit and the platform admits as much: “the state will receive substantial income from the activity of the nationalised sector of the economy”. They will still be subject to the ups and downs of the world markets, in coffee for instance. As elsewhere, nationalised industries will be concerned to keep profits up by keeping wages down, and to discharge workers when what they produce cannot be sold profitably.

The workers and peasants of HI Salvador have nothing to gain by supporting the opposition groups or guerrillas, who will simply become their new rulers and exploiters. The platform we have discussed aims at no radical transformation of society: it envisages the continuation and further development of capitalism in El Salvador, a society of haves and have-nots. The change will be in the personnel of the ruling class, and a change from private to predominantly state capitalism. And that makes no difference to anyone but the capitalists themselves.

Paul Bennett

Not Peru's failure (1985)

Book Review from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peru: Paths to Poverty by Michael Reid  (Latin American Bureau, London, 1984).

Peru’s prominence in the modern world began with a period of boom in the nineteenth century based on the export of guano. Its economy has always struggled and as early as 1879, after attempting to pay off foreign loans by printing money, it declared itself bankrupt. The pattern that gradually emerged was one in which power came increasingly to be held by a small proportion of the population with interests in sugar and mining. It was also dominated by foreign capital, particularly American, and this trend continued until General Velasco took power in 1968.

The Velasco government, a military regime, expanded the role of the state in the economy through a series of nationalisations and takeovers of foreign and oligarchic enterprises. This was done partly out of fear that the poverty of the population might lead to insurrection, but more importantly represented a transfer of economic power from one section of capitalists to another. Reid sees this as radical and contrary to "capitalist orthodoxy” but does not explain how either process would have been beneficial or detrimental to the interests of workers. In the event, the interests of private capital were rejected in favour of a state controlled economy, although there were those who criticised the government "under the banner of anti-communism” (p.54). Such propaganda merely feeds the confusion over what is essentially a conflict between state and private capitalism and it is a fault of this work that it tends to be descriptive rather than analytical.

By 1974 the Peruvian economy was suffering the effects of economic stagnation and the government responded by printing money and taking on board foreign loans. In 1975 it began cutting wages to reduce the budget deficit, restricted public investment and devalued the currency. Reid provides a clear picture of the increasing poverty of most of the population as government spending on health and education was cut but arms purchases from abroad were increased. Popular protest continued to be met with repression.

Under Fernando Beluande in 1980 there was a transfer of resources to private ownership and a series of mini-devaluations to maintain the international competitiveness of Peruvian exports. Peru continued to fund state spending by foreign loans and printing money but by 1983 the former had dried up and the country was entrenched in a deep recession. As usual, those who suffered most were the impoverished majority. The government equated strikes with the subversion of democracy and the failure of the system to satisfy human needs was covered up by blaming those who suffer its consequences the most. Within Peru the unions have become ineffectual and this pinpoints the weakness of trade unionism as a means of coming to terms with capitalism.

The book does not explain why capitalism has failed to fulfil the Peruvian people's needs or even offer a practical alternative. The main response described by Reid is Sendero Luminoso, which seeks violent insurrection and a "rejection of the capitalist money economy in favour of barter” (p. 109). It also rejects modern technology as a tool of imperialist penetration and desires a return to some "golden age” before the advent of capitalism. What is really needed is a strategy of revolutionary transformation of society. Peru has failed to generate internal sources of capital development and this has exacerbated its problems at a time of world recession. It is not Peru’s failure, however, but that of world capitalism.

Philip Bentley

World View: Death and destruction in Dili (2000)

From the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1996 (Socialist Standard, March) we reported, and commented upon, Indonesian repression in East Timor and Australian interest in, and control of, the vast oil deposits under the sea between Australia and East and West Timor. Much has happened since then.

East Timor is now “independent”. The Indonesians have gone. But not before they had killed thousands of Timorese and largely reduced the capital, Dili, to a burned-out ruin. Much of this has been levelled against Eurico Gutterres, a former Indonesian militia leader, now living under an assumed name in Jakarta. According to the West Australian (18 December), “the Indonesian military recruited and trained Guterres who commanded a paramilitary group called Aitarak, or Thorn, which was given the responsibility for security in Dili”. He ordered the destruction of East Timor, “carrying out his threat to turn East Timor into a wasteland if the Timorese voted to rejected Jakarta’s rule”. He now says that he does not feel guilty. He was only carrying out orders, he said.

In what the West Australian (15 January) calls “the razed capital” of Dili, “thousands of the deeply religious East Timorese Catholics turn out for Mass to thank god for delivering them from the horror of 24 years of Indonesian occupation”. But just outside Dili there are hundreds of children starving. Of the situation, reports the West Australian of the same date:

“Stagnant pools of sewage lay nearby, mixing with the regular afternoon rains, virtually ensuring that all open wounds would become infected. A girl, aged about five, stands half-naked except for a skin of massive, infected lesions which stretch from under her jaw to her waist.”

Yet,

“A blackmarket for food and goods has sprouted in Dili, with tonnes of rice and noodles being imported and held under guard in warehouses in the razed capital.”

Meanwhile, thousands of Timorese are starving in West Timor refugee camps. President Clinton is said to be concerned about a possible military coup, and the spread of religious violence in Indonesia; and Richard Holbrooke, the US Ambassador to the UN, “accused pro-Jakarta militias of blocking the return of about 125,000 East Timorese remaining in camps in West Timor. Responsibility for this lies primarily with the Indonesian military who continues to support the militia in the camps, he said” (West Australian, 17 January).

By last September, 75 percent of East Timor’s population had been displaced, and 70 percent of its houses, public buildings and essential utilities had been destroyed by the Indonesian-backed militias and military (West Australian, 8 January). However, Australian companies “have a chance to grab a slice of the $800 million which will be spent on rebuilding on East Timor over the next three years”. Indeed, more than £300 million will have been pumped into reconstruction by June this year.

There are, of course, problems for Australian capitalists, if not exactly the same as for Timorese workers and peasants. Land ownership was a problem, as records had been destroyed; and it was impossible to know who owned what. ” Conditions in Dili were tough, but foreign businesses were working there,” said Malcolm Murray, the international projects team leader with the Australian Department of Trade and Commerce. Nevertheless, Australian construction businesses have moved into Dili “with gusto”. There were many unemployed Timorese workers; but “the Australian Council for Overseas Aid also warned that pay rates for local workers could lead to gross inequality in wealth” (West Australian, 17 January).

Meanwhile, reported Agence France-Press (17 January), Australian, international and East Timorese officials held a conference to discuss a new Timor Gap oil treaty to replace the “illegal” treaty signed in December 1989, between Australia and Indonesia over the oil-rich waters between northern Australia and East Timor (see Socialist Standard, March 1996). However, Indonesia said that it would “accept a review or a cancellation of the treaty with Australia”, presumably as it now has little choice.

The UN made it clear in 1979 that the Indonesian invasion of the former Portuguese colony, and its subsequent occupation, was illegal and that therefore so was the so-called oil treaty. But “the Australian government has always maintained that the treaty is legal”, reports the West Australian of 18 December. As of December last year, Australian companies BHP, Santos and Petroz had already extracted 32,500 barrels of oil daily from three wells in the zone jointly controlled by Australia and Indonesia. BHP, however, have since sold its assets to the US company, Phillips Petroleum. There have been, it would seem, disputes over a number of as yet unstarted fields, including the Woodside’s Laminaria field and BHP’s Buffalo field which “would fall into an area which might be claimed by East Timor as well as Australia” (West Australian, 18 December).

East Timor has now replaced Indonesia as Australia’s partner in the Timor Gap oil treaty, according to the West Australian (12 February). The official ceremony was held in Dili at the beginning of the month, James Batley, Australia’s resident consul in East Timor, who signed the new treaty, said that “there are important investment prospects here, and this has smoothed the path for those to go ahead”. Of course! And the United Nations secretary-general, who recently visited Dili, said how pleased he was at Australia’s quick response to the UN’s call for troops to go to East Timor. Yes; of course, of course!

Meanwhile, the poverty-stricken, propertyless, often starving workers and peasants of East (and West) Timor watch, sometimes pray, and hope that things will get no worse.

Peter E. Newell

The Haitian Tragedy (2010)

From the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Haiti spent more, in 2008 servicing the country’s debts than it did on health, education and the environment.

In our February issue (Haiti—an un-natural disaster) we noted that the earthquake in Haiti, and similar disasters, are presented as unavoidable disasters; and that, to some extent, this is true. But we stated that it is not a coincidence that the number of victims is clearly related to the degree of their poverty. This was true regarding the Asian tsunami and the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans.

Seumas Milne also says (Guardian, 21 January) that “It is uncontested that poverty is the main cause of the horrific death toll: the product of teeming shacks, and the absence of health and public infrastructure.” In his view, this is the direct consequence of an uniquely brutal relationship with the outside world—notably the US, France and Britain, stretching back centuries. There is some truth in this, although not all Haitians were, or are, poor.

Says Milne:

  Punished for the success of its uprising against slavery and self-proclaimed first black republic of 1804 with invasion, blockade and a crushing burden of debt reparations, only finally paid off in 1947, Haiti was occupied by the US between the wars and squeezed mercilessly by multiple creditors.

For decades, the US backed the dictatorships of the Duvaliers. Just 30 years ago Haiti was self-sufficient in its staple of rice. In the mid-1990s, however, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced it to slash tariffs, and the US dumped its subsidised surpluses on Haiti. Most of the peasant farmers were forced out of business, squatted in Port-au-Prince, and many will have died in the earthquake. The United States also imposed lending conditions on the country, forcing the government to privatise the already minimal health, education and public services, and cut back the minimum wage.

The Duvalier Dictatorships and the CIA

From 1957 to 1971 Haiti was ruled by François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and, following his death, by his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”, both “anointed” “President for Life”. The US trained and armed Haiti’s counter-insurgency force, although much American military aid was covertly channelled through Israel.

After “Baby Doc” was forced into exile to France in February 1986 (in a US Air Force jet), the United States continued, now quite openly, military aid, supplying the Haitian Army with trucks, communications gear etc. in order “to maintain order”. Between the departure of “Baby Doc” and the date scheduled for elections in November 1987, the administrations were responsible for the deaths of more civilians than “Baby Doc” managed in 15 years of dictatorship. Meanwhile, the CIA managed to “spring” from prison two of Duvalier’s notorious police chiefs, and send them into exile, saving them from certain execution.

Haiti has never had a mass, reformist working-class party. In 1930 two “intellectuals”, Max Hudicourt and Jacques Roumain, attempted to form a communist party, but it was largely stillborn. In 1946 a clergyman by the name of Félix d’Orléans Juste Constant, founded the Parti Communiste d’Haiti (PCH). It too disbanded the following year. Shortly after a rival quasi-communist party, the Parti Socialiste Populaire (PSP), was founded. It disintegrated rapidly by 1949. But in 1959 Roger Gaillard, a former member of the PSP, founded the Parti Populaire de Libération Nationale (PPLN), which claimed to be a mass, nationwide organisation; it was badly weakened by police harassment and repression by 1965. It was basically reformist, with much in common with Fidel Castro’s 26 July movement.

Aristide the Priest

At the time of “Baby Doc”’s flight to France, there was one man who did have a mass following, particularly in Port-au-Prince. He was Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest and advocate of “liberation theology”; but looked upon by opponents, both in Haiti and in America, as a revolutionary, but in fact a populist reformer. He denounced the upcoming military-dominated elections, and urged his followers to boycott the elections, saying “The army is our first enemy.” He was condemned by the Vatican.

The elections were scheduled for the 29 November 1987—the CIA funded a number of candidates. In the event, the elections were postponed ostensibly because of unrest and violence in the country. According to William Blum in Killing Hope, “…the candidate favored by the military government was declared the winner in balloting widely perceived as rigged”. Writing in 1994, Blum continued:

  There followed more than two years of regular political violence, coup attempts and repression, casting off the vestiges of the Duvalier dictatorship, and establishing a new one, until, in March 1990, the current military dictator, General Prosper April, was forced by widespread protests to abdicate, and was forced by a civilian government of sorts, but with the military still calling the shots. (p. 371)

Pressured by the United States, the Haitian government called an election later in the year. Reluctantly, Aristide became a candidate of a coalition of reformist organisations. Despite intimidation, Aristide was victorious with 67.5 percent of the vote. He took office in February 1991, after a coup attempt against him failed in January.

And so Jean-Bertrand Aristide became President of Haiti.

But he did not even get any reformist legislation enacted by Parliament. Nevertheless, the military was much concerned by the arrest of a number of para-military thugs, his policies against drug smuggling, and his attempts to depoliticise the army. Aristide was, however, not anti-business. He encouraged American capitalists, and to please the IMF, he fired 2,000 government workers.

It was all to no avail. In less than 8 months, on 29 September 1991, Aristide was successfully deposed by a military coup, in which hundreds of his supporters were massacred and thousands fled to the Dominican Republic. He was saved from being murdered by the French ambassador. The new military dictatorship was largely supported by the local bourgeoisie. And the Vatican immediately recognised the government. The Bush Sr administration unofficially gave its blessing. Haiti was back to “normal”.

Aristide’s Return

In the summer of 1993 the United Nations mediated talks between Aristide, living in exile in Washington, and the Haitian military government; the leader of the junta, General Cédras, would step down by October, and Aristide would return as president. But October came and went without the military permitting Aristide to return. Indeed, they stepped up their repression of his supporters, including the assassination of his justice minister, Guy Malary. Meanwhile, the CIA spread rumours in Haiti that Aristide was mentally ill. It was not true.

An organisation of American States (OAS) human rights team accused the Haitian military regime of “murder, rape, kidnapping, detention and torture in a systematic campaign” to terrorise all those Haitians wanting a return to democracy. Amnesty International reported the same. The Clinton administration in Washington wanted the military out of power, but without actually having to do anything, including invading the country. Nevertheless, changing tactics, the CIA, with numerous agents in Haiti, launched a major covert operation to topple the military regime. It was not a success. But change was a’coming.

In September 1994, the Clinton administration told the Haitian military leaders they had just four weeks to resign. The US would have to take control. Yet again. So, on 19 September US forces began to arrive in Haiti. Initially, they were welcomed by the majority of the population; they first arrested, disarmed and also shot many of the former Haitian military; and permitted some of the leaders to escape into exile. And they sealed off, and protected the homes of many of the local capitalist élite, “Washington’s natural allies” (Los Angeles Times, 1 October 1994).

Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti in mid-October, courtesy of the US army. He received, in the words of William Blum, a reception of “joyous celebration”. But, unbeknown to a majority of his supporters, he was somewhat different Aristide who had, three years previously, been disposed and exiled to Washington. In the words of the Los Angeles Times (1 October 1994):

Almost every aspect of Aristide’s plans for resuming power—from taxing the rich to disarming the military—has been examined by the US officials with whom the Haitian President meets daily, and by officials of World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other aid organisations. The finished package clearly reflects their priorities. Aristide has obviously toned down the liberation theology and class-struggle rhetoric that was his signature before he was exiled to Washington.

Indeed, Aristide embraced market economics with zeal and enthusiasm. He also agreed to publicly announce that he would not attempt to stay in office to make up the time he had lost in exile. So much for the firebrand priest—even as a reformer.

Haiti—a Client State

In Killing Hope William Blum claimed that Haiti’s international function will be to serve “transnational corporations” by opening the country up to further investment and commerce, with minimum tariffs and other restrictions; and offering itself, primarily in assembly industries, and as a source of export labour. He added: “What appears to be certain is that the rich will grow richer, and the poor will remain at the very bottom of Latin America’s heap.” Under Aristide’s successor, it can only get worse. As Seumas Milne observed, new IMF loans require Haiti to raise electricity prices, and to freeze all public sector pay, where the majority exist on less than two dollars a day.

Infant mortality rate is about 80 per 1,000 (neighbouring Cuba’s rate is 5.8). Around 50 percent of Haiti’s adults remain illiterate. Former president Bill Clinton wants to build up Haiti’s export-processing zones,. But, as Milne comments, “… more sweatshop assembly of products neither made nor sold in Haiti won’t develop its economy nor provide a regular income for the majority”. Haiti currently owes the IMF around a billion dollars. Gary Young, writing in the Guardian (1 February), reported that Haiti spent more, in 2008, servicing the country’s debts than it did on health, education and the environment.

Meanwhile, the United States pours thousand of heavily-armed troops into the country (yet again). and “The Street”, a US investment website, says that the earthquake provides such American corporations as General Electric, Jacobs Engineering and Flour, with the opportunity and potential to benefit. Of course.

Following the earthquake, a commentator on French television advised his viewers and listeners that “Haiti is not a suitable place to take a vacation.” He can say that again.

Peter E. Newell

Material World: Crackdown or Backdown?

The Material World column from the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

While there are many unsettling questions posed by Aung Sang Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD)’s complicity in the persecution of ethnic minorities, the World Socialist Movement expresses its solidarity with our Myanmar fellow-workers in their present struggle. Having had a taste of liberty, no matter how limited, the people of Myanmar have shown that they will not passively submit to the return of the army dictatorship. The pro-democracy movement has taken on a life of its own in rejecting the rule of an authoritarian military junta. There is now a new generation of young people accustomed to accessing social media. The defiant three-fingered salute of the Hunger Games movies, adopted by pro-democracy activists in Thailand and Hong Kong has now become the gesture of resistance in Myanmar.

‘This movement is leaderless — people are getting on the streets in their own way and at their own will,’ said activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi to AP Press.

Peaceful public demonstrations and spontaneous unofficial strikes have become widespread, actions which are full of personal risk as this army has not hesitated in the past to brutally suppress opposition.

There is much speculation about why the army re-imposed full control but we do know that it was not because of any concern about fraud in the November’s election. The only way to counter the coup is non-violent civil disobedience of one kind or another to win over the state’s forces of coercion, which our fellow workers are now engaged in. This cannot be a fight between the NLD and the generals. It has to be to deprive the junta of legitimacy and recognition and hinder it from functioning by strikes in the hope that this type of mass participation tactic will disable the dictatorship’s ability to rule and disrupt the vast business empire of the Tatmadaw (the armed forces). In addition is the anticipation of possible mass defections from the police and army. Nearly fifty police departments in Loikaw, the capital of eastern Kayah state, crossed lines and joined the protest march where the banner read, ‘No military dictatorship.’ Importantly, without mutinies within the armed forces and police, the ruling clique is likely to win, at least, temporarily.

As the major actor in the Myanmar economy, owning substantial investments, the Tatmadaw has been reluctant to yield meaningful political power. The coup could have been a business decision made in the boardroom rather than the war-room by the upper echelons of the military who feel threatened by Suu Kyi’s continued popularity which could potentially lead to a campaign against corruption and further constitutional change. Suu Kyi and her NLD have tried to re-model the military-dominated economy by implementing the ‘Myanmar Sustainable Economic Development Plan’ which welcomes foreign investment but could bring the hegemony of the military clique to an end.

Who knows what might happen? Information still remains mainly limited to hearsay and guesswork. What we do know is that the NLD collaboration with the Tatmadaw led to garment workers on strike being attacked in 2018 and union activists in May 2020 being arrested. Suu Kyi calculated that Burmese Buddhist nationalism was a winning electoral strategy. Ethnic minorities represent around 40 percent of Myanmar’s total 54 million population. But around 2.5 million ethnic minority citizens were unable to vote in last year’s election – including 1.5 million voters in conflict-affected areas due to security concerns and one million Rohingya who are denied citizenship and voting rights. Political democracy in its current shape has not served Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, but it’s still better, even in an illiberal form, than Tatmadaw rule, a hybrid civil–military system which protects military dominance. The previous political reforms were orchestrated by the country’s military in ways that safeguard its own power interests. This explains the persistence of authoritarian rule and military dominance in contemporary Myanmar politics.

And because the global economic system was interested in profiting from Myanmar’s economic potentials, its largely untapped natural riches – including minerals, natural gas, and hydropower and an undeveloped market – it presented ideal commercial opportunities and so the looming shadows of the generals in the background were conveniently ignored.

Many commentators have excused Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s complicity in the oppression of the Rohingya as a sign that she and her party were never really in charge and that she was obliged to compromise her own democratic ideals in a Faustian pact with the army. If true, the lesson is very clear for all to see now – that those who sup with the devil should have a very long spoon.

Critics of socialism say that what has arisen in Myanmar will happen if there is a socialist victory at the polls — those in control of state power won’t concede their power. Our answer is that if there exists a majority for socialism the socialist movement will eventually prevail one way or another, sooner or later. The immediate reaction would be strikes and demonstrations and mass disaffection, the same disobedience which we witness happening in Myanmar.

ALJO

Editorial: Resistance is not enough (2021)

Editorial from the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

A decade has passed since a tidal wave of revolt swept across the Middle East and North Africa washing away autocratic regimes in its wake. That this happened seemed to have not only taken the local dictators by surprise, but also the rest of the world. And yet it should not have done. After years of state repression combined with economic hardship that had been made worse by the 2008 financial crisis, working people had had enough and rose up to fight for political democracy. High unemployment, especially among young workers, and poor economic prospects were the tinderbox. The suicide of a street seller in Tunisia was the spark.

We can see similar dynamics recently working themselves out in Russia and Myanmar. In January, Alexey Navalny, a long-time opponent of Putin, returned to Russia after being treated for nerve agent poisoning in Berlin. He was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of violating his parole conditions relating to a suspended sentence he received in 2014 for embezzlement. This sparked rallies and protests across Russia. Some have descended into violence as the police cracked down heavily on the demonstrators.

On 1st February in Myanmar, the military, after alleging that voter fraud had helped the National League of Democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi’s party) to secure a landslide victory in the November 2020 general election, deposed and detained the elected civilian rulers, including Suu Kyi, and declared direct military rule for one year. In response mass protests have erupted, which have elicited a severe crackdown by the police and the military. Public servants, health workers, teachers and other workers have gone on strike in an attempt to end military rule and restore civilian government.

What is common to these protests is the deteriorating living standards suffered by workers which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and popular disenchantment with the corrupt capitalist rulers who have been accumulating greater amounts of wealth. We can only sympathise with these workers struggling to obtain democratic rights. However, we believe it would be a mistake for them to put their trust in political leaders such Navalny and Aung San Suu Kyi. Notwithstanding their particular flaws – Navalny is a Russian nationalist and harbours anti-immigrant positions, and Suu Kyi, while in power, has defended the state persecution of the Rohingya Muslims – they are both committed to upholding the capitalist system which is the source of workers’ social problems. They would be overseeing the exploitation of the working class.

Sadly, the uprising of the Arab Spring ten years ago did not bring about democracy for the workers. With the possible exception of Tunisia, autocratic dictatorships still prevail in the region. This does not mean that workers should give up the political fight. On the contrary, we urge workers to fight not just for political democracy but for a fundamental change in how we organise society. What is needed is a class-conscious working class to organise globally to capture political power democratically to rid the planet of capitalism and establish genuine socialism, a worldwide society without national borders, money or social classes, where everyone can participate equally and enjoy free access to social wealth.