Abandoning Imperialism 8816692014, 9788816692015

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HOSEA JAFFE

ABANDONING IMPERIALISM

II JacaBook II

Other publications by the same author

Published in English

Hosea Jaffe

ABANDONING IMPERIALISM

Marxian Light on Science, Cape Town 1941 Fascism in South Africa, Cape Town 1946 300 Years. A History of South Africa, New Era Fellowship, Cape Town 1952; and APDUSA, Durban 1988 Colonialism Today, London 1962; Daresalaam 1988 The Pyramid of Nations, Luxembourg 1980 A History of Africa, ZED, London 1986, 1988 European Colonial Despotism. A History of Oppression and Resistance in South Africa, Karnak House, London 1994

Published by Jaca Book, Milan Stana de! Suda/rica, 1980 Rapporti economici Europa-mondo net secondo dopoguerra, in L'Europa ne/1'orizzonte de! mondo. It secondo dopoguerra e le trasformazioni de/la vita socia!e, vol. VJTJ/2 of Ston'a d'Italia e d'Europa, directed by M. Guidetti, 1985 Progresso e nazione. Economz'a ed ecologia, 1990 Economia delt'ecosistema, 1994 La Germam'a. Verso ii nuovo disordine mondrale?, 1994 Suda/nca. Ston'a politica, 1997 La lzberazione permanente e la guerra dei mondi, 2000 La trappola coloniale oggi. Suda/rrca, Israele, rl mondo, 2003 L'imperialismo dell'auto. Auto + Petrolio = Guerra, 2004 Introduzione a/la ston'a ea/la logica dell'imperialismo, 2005 (with L. Vasapollo and H. Galarza) Davanti al colom'alismo: Engels, Marx e rl marxismo, 2007 Teon'a delt'Abbandono, in press 2008 (with English edition) Was Capitalism Necessary?, due end 2008 (with English edition) In preparation: The Antithetical Principles of Marxism: Historical maten~ alism and Euroracism

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Jaca Book

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First english edition September 2008

INDEX

©2008 Editoriale J aca Book spa, Milan Hosea Jaffe all rights reserved

On the cover © H. Silvestre/Ra ho forest, Amazon . p . d Openmg the trans-amazon road di~ro uced severe imbalance on some population's Ii£ e con t10ns and on the biological · on a Iarge scale. coverage o f Amazzorua

Preface

7

Introduction

9

Chapter one

ABANDONMENT AS CLASS AND NATIONAL LIBERATION

13

Chapter two

DELINKING AS STATE ACTION; ABANDONMENT AS STATE AND CLASS ACTION

25

Chapter three

ABANDONMENT AS FREEDOM OF ACTION OF ANTI-IMPERIALIST MARXIST-LENINISM

33

Chapter four

MARX PLUS LENIN: CAPITALISM COLONIALIST/IMPERIALIST POLITICAL-ECONOMY

ISBN 978-88-16-69201 -5

Chapter five

To obtain information about ubli h d you can address Editor1'al J p B ske and planned works e aca oo SpA - erv1Z10 Lettori . Vla 1 Frua 11 20146 Mil ano, te • 02/48561520-29 f: ' . , ax_02/48193361 e-mail: serviziolettori@jacabook. . . .It, tnternet: www.Jacabook.it

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41

PERMANENT LIBERATION: TROTSKY'S PERMANENT REVOLUTION AND ABANDONMENT

45

Chapter six

ABANDONING EURAMERICAN-CENTRIC «MARXISM» 53 5

Index

PREFACE

Chapter seven

THE ARMIES, ENEMIES AND ALLIES OF ABANDONMENT

61

Chapter eight

ANTI-IMPERIALIST ECOLOGY

71

Chapter nine

ABANDONMENT OF IMPERIALIST INVESTMENT AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

81

l'his work is an attempt to apply two basic principles of Leninism to the methodology of liberatory anti-imperialism. l'here really are many variants of anti-imperialism, from systemic reformism which does not challenge the imperialistbased capitalist system, as described first by Hobs~m and then by Lenin, to futile anarchic exhibitionism. But Leninist antiimperialism is antisystemic and revolutionary in being generated by the national-liberatory class struggles of the colonial and semicolonial workers of the «third world» against the «first world» corporations, states, settlers of all classes, the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, the United Nations and NATO, all of which racially oppress, super-exploit, divide and wage terrorist wars against their nations and peoples. This book follows hard on the heels of Davanti al coloniali.rmo. Engels, Marx e il Marxismo (Jaca Book, Milan 2007), which described and condemned the imperialism of Engels with respect to the French imperialist seizure of Algeria in I830, the USA colonialist wars of the mid-19th century against Mexico and the Italian annexation and colonization of «Eritrea» in 1890; the racism of their articles to the «New York Daily Tribune» in the 1850's on certain African and Asian 6

7

Preface

?eopl~ s ~nd their Germa nic chauvinism regarding the inter1m penahs t wars of the late 19th century in Europe . In this boo~ there was also a criticism of Marx's eulogies of the us preside nt Abraha m Lincoln , whose anti-«n egro» racist speeches in the 18~0's and early 1860's were well-pu blished and known at the tune. He called this aparthe id man «a simpl~ _s~n of the_ working class» (op. cit., p. 57). This book also cnt1c1zed the1r enthus iastic suppor t for th e (land-r obbing ' genocidal, racist) Europe an settlers. ~ ~eed to make it absolutely clear that my adhere nce to Lenm1st-Marxis_m is in no way due to any feeling for Marx (whose ~urorac1sm and Euroce ntric, Europeanist historiography I fmd as deplora ble as the iconic Marxism of the «socialists» of and from the EU and us perpetually trying, with unfort_unate success, to recolonize liberation movements in Asia Afoc~ an? their «Latin America» settlerdom). My Leninist~ Ma~~1sm I~ d~e only to the scientific correctness of 1) Lenin's ant_1-unpenalism and 2) Marx's two great contributions: histo~1cal materi ~sm (in Critique ofPolitical Econom y and Grundrzsse) and his '!'agna opera, Capita l and Theories ofSurplus Val~e. As for his theory that the «western proleta riat» is potentially revolu_tionary because of a «class struggle» between labour and capital, I have, ever since my 300 Years. A History of South Africa (Cape Town 1952) and Colonia lism Today (London 1962), proved it a wrong theory and a disaster in historical practice. Hosea Jaffe, 18th July 2008

8

INTRODUCTION

Coilins/ Sansoni Italian-English Dictionary: «Abandon: freedom of manne r; surrend er to natural impulses; being unrestrained». Winsto n Diction ary/ Encyclopaedia, Londo n, c. 1930: «Abandon: to give up; to forsake; to desert. Obsolete: to subdue, control, banish, drive out». From the 1885 Berlin confere nce to divide up Africa among th e Europe an colonial powers , Europe an Socialists abando ned Africans, Asians and Native Americans to colonialism and imperialism. By the end of the 20th century, imperialist countries and Socialists abando ned their own poorest semicolonies in Africa. Those they had reduce d to death by famine and landlessness they abando ned to racist «white» settlerdom in America, Australia and South Africa. The Second Interna tional abando ned the colonial workers from even before their betrayal of their own «bourgeois proleta riat» (Lenin), in the first interim perialis t world war. The Third Interna tional led by Stalin and USA and Europe an «Communists» abando ned the African, Caribbean and Asian peoples to full-scale imperialist exploitation, racist oppression and wars. The Fourth Interna tional betraye d its founder, 9

Abandoning imperiafam

Trotsky, by abandoning the Palestinian people to Israeli settlerdom, the Indian people to the bloody British/ Socialist/ imP:rialist partition of India in 1948, all workers to the imperialist slogan of «A Socialist Europe», the peoples and nations of Socialist Yugoslavia to the «ethnic wars» of imperialistmastered «self determination» and the very first workers' S~a~e in the world, the USSR itself, to Eurocentric Stalinophob1a 10 1990. Now the Euramerican «left» is abandoning China a~d Cuba. We were abandoned by the bourgeoisie of imperialism and to imperialism by the «first world» 1 working class and their Socialists. We followed their «unity of the working class», their «class struggle» and we abandoned our own struggle for national liberation. w_e aband~ned our nations in America, our aboriginal la~d 1n Australia, Africa, the Caribbeans and Asia to imperialist powers and settlers. We abandoned our continents and islands to them. We abandoned our ancient freedom. We were the abandonees of colonialism for five centuries and of imperialism for its first century. We know all about abandonment. Or so we thought. Or so we thought. But we did not abandon those who abandoned us to colonialism and imperialism - for six hundred years since Henry the Navigator set foot in Morocco. We will never know what abandonment means until we are not its victims but its masters. Just think what the world would be and look like if and when we abandon the imperialists. All imperialists. The imperi~list _States led by the USA, European Union and Japan. The1r mighty labour-devouring transnational and national corporations. Their racist settlers in so-called Latin America South Africa and Palestine under the Israeli Jewish heel'. 1

The States of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD).

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10

In troduction

Their World Bank. Their International Monetary Fund. Their World Trade Organization. Their Security Council and perhaps, with it, the USA-controlled «United Nations». Their right, centre and left political parties. The «bourgeois proletariat» of the «first world». The national bourgeoisie of the «third world». And all the enemies of States who beat imperialism in Socialist revolutions. They took back the USSR. And they want to take back Cuba and China, above all. We will not abandon them to imperialism. We have the power to abandon and the power to be loyal. We have all the power of all meanings of the word «Abandon». The abandoned have the power to abandon. It is a power only the abandoned have. Abandonment is the politic of the anti-imperialist class struggle. Abandonment banishes imperialism from our petroleum reserves, refineries and pipelines. The colonial oppressed will abandon them (drive them out) from the oil-based vehicle industry - the major capitalist industry - and pave the way for a public transport industry based on trains, tubes and trams. We'll abandon our own abandonment to imperialist corporations, settlers and «first world» populations of our mines, lands, minerals, gold, oil and raw materials. We'll abandon work that causes the essentially imperialistic «hothouse effect» which is now heating our planet and its species to destruction. We'll make OPEC abandon allowing imperialist corporations to exploit and explore our oil fields, and their car drivers and planes to use our oil. We'll abandon all classes and States that abandon our lands, seas and skies. We'll abandon our own class collaboration with «first world» bourgeois proletarians, racist settlers and «third world» national bourgeoisies (the three classes that collaborate with and enable imperialism to function). We'll abandon 11

Aban doni ng imperialism

Iraq , Palestine, (boycott a?d leave to die) the collaborators in rialism. Sou th Afn ca and othe r semicolonies of impe obsolete mean. Our struggle will be in every curr ent and e of breaking sens mg of the ~or d «Abandon», i. e. both in the e of freedom. By our colonial slave me? talit y an d in the sens onal and class free dom we _mean with out restr aint on nati struggles agamst imperialism. nking and _Our b_asic ~ean ing: non -collaboration and Deli national liberation from imperialism.

Cha pter one ABAND ON ME NT AS CLASS AN D NA TIO NA L LIBERATION

Hos ea Jaffe, Lon don 16th Jun e 2006 21st century for The cent re stage of political econ omy in the struggle beEuro cent ric «Marxists» is occu pied by the class class in Euro pe, tween the capitalist class and their working es of the «first Nor th America and Japa n (the lead ing Stat Eur oce ntrk diworld»). Socialism versus capitalism is the list stru ggle of chotemy. Imp erialism and the anti -imperia off-centre stage, «thi rd world» classes, States and peoples are urg and Wallerin the «periphery» of Brau del, Rosa Lux emb can be or not be stein. For Euro cent ric «Marxists» capitalism ontology or imperialistic; imp erial ism is not the essential ose or design; being of capitalism, let alone its leitmotiv, purp and the division only the division into classes is fundamental is secondary. of the nations, peoples and classes themselves e differently: Leninist Marxists see the capitalist wor ld quit e in Colu mbi an they see capitalism as having been born mor the class and naAmerica then in feudal Euro pe; mor e out of nations and settional struggles betw een Euro pean colonial African slaves ders on the one side an d the lndi os nations and than out of the on the othe r side in America, Africa and Asia geoisie and the class struggles in Eur ope betw een the bour into colonialist feudal classes. They see the wor ld as divided

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12

13

·

Abandoning imperialism

~d imperialist nations and classes on the one hand and colorual nations, workers and peasants on the other side. ~eninist Marxists also see that imperialism has divided the dominant Euramerican capitalists into first class imperialists ~t horn~ and se~ond class imperialists in the shape of settlers ill «La~-~enc a», South Africa and Israel. They see this prim~ry d1v1~1~~ of the global capitalist class parallelled by the pn~a~y div1S1on of the international working class into 1) impenahst and colonial proletarians and 2) first class colonial workers, namely those of Eastern Europe now in the European ?nion since 2005-2006 and the second and third class c?lomal workers in Africa, Asia, «Latin America», the Carnbeans _a~d Oce~n_ic Islands. As if this divide et impera does not suH1c1ently d1v1de the colonial working class, imperialism added ~no_ther. Alongside this international division of both the c~p1talist ~nd working classes is the further division of the working class ill the imperialist countries: the «home» «white» workers and the immigrant apartheid-style «black» «colored» and «asian» workers (some 10% of all workers 'in Eu~ope and Australasia and over 25 % Mexicans and «negroes» m the ~SA alone). These colonial workers in the imperialist count~1es exten? and divide the workers in the colonies (we use this term to illclude the predominantly semicolonial «third world» States). The colonial proletariat is thus seen as a whole_, triply divided: those in the semicolonies a~d colonies those ill t_he impe~ialist ~o~ntries and those Eastern European~ coopted ~to the 1mpenalist European Union. The global class structure ts thus many times more complicated than that seen and understood by the simplistic EU-USA-centric Socialists and Communists (?f ~ «International s» and their relics). They see the world c~p1t_alist system as «capitalists/w orking class». The c~p~tal1st system, as seen through the lens of historical matenalism by Marxist-Lenin ists, is infinitely more complex and may be represented as a multiform three dimen-

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14

Abandonment as class and national liberation

sional pyramid at the apex of which there is not one class but four, and at the base of which there are six sets of workers:

EFGHIJ Here A is the capitalist imperialist class, B the settler imperialist class, c the imperialist petit bourgeoisie and D the imperialist working class; E the anti-imperialist workers States, Cuba, China and North Korea, F the semicolonial ex workers' States Vietnam, Cambodia, the ex USSR and Serbia, G the semicolonies in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceanic Is~ands, II the racially exploited non-European s inside the imperialist dominated States, I the «Indies» and ex Africans in «Latin America» and J the neocolonial States Poland, Latvia, Lithuania Estonia and the Balkans, which were corrupted by Euro- ' )

pean Union. A holds some 150 million, B some 250 million, including imperialistic settler workers, C some 400 million and D some 400 million, totalling an effective «first world» of about 1.2 billion people. These classes exploit and oppress E of some 1.4 billion nationally liberated people, F of some 300 million, G of over 3 billion super-exploite d and exploited semicolonial people, H over 100 million in the imperialist States, I over 200 million in > and > = «better than»: SA > NA and AS > AN imply that S > N (Socialism better than nationalism) (A) SA > HA and AS > AH imply that S > H (Socialism better than humanism) (B) AS> NS and SA> SN imply that A> N (anti-imperialism better than nationalism) (C) AS> DS and SA > SD imply that A> D (anti-imperialism better than «democracy») (D). All of which mean SA= AS (Socialist anti-imperialism= anti-imperialist Socialism) (E). The reversible equation (E) is the outcome of all the inequalities and the cause of Abandonment.

Chapter three ABANDONMENT AS FREEDOM OF ACTION OF ANTI-IMPERIALIST MARXIST-LENINISM

The modern meanings of «Abandon» are not only to «give up, forsake, desert» the imperialist capitalism which needs the abandoner who, in turn, has no need for the «aid», «democracy» and of capitalism, but also «freedom of manner, surrender to natural impulses, being unrestrained» with respect to autarkic independent anti-imperialist behaviour. This freedom, which does not always follow expected «linear movement», is Marxist inasmuch as it is implied by Marx's doctoral thesis' on atoms and their motion presented when he was still in his early twenties, Marx's fur-' thering of Hegelian dialectical materialism in his philosophy and Marx's rejection of Comtian determinism and of the theory of a fixed sequence or series of successive modes of production under his historical materialism. In all three cases Marx made and had time for the abnormal, unusual, exceptional, paradoxical «curve» in the motions of atoms, matter in ll'neral and the history of modes of production. AbandonK: Marx, Democritus and Epicurus, Doctoral Dissertation, Jena 15th April 8-11 (m Italy: Alfredo Sabetti, Sulla /ondazione del materialismo storico, La Nuova 111.1, Firenze 1962, pp. 339-416). In this thesis Marx declared his belief in «abl111 c freedom» (ibid., p. 365).

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33

Abandoning imperialism

ment is quite different in purpose, aim and scope from what has for over 50 years been the conventional «master and servant» relationship between «first world» and «third world» classes, States and peoples and, more generally (including workers and activists in «first world») between anti-imperialism and imperialism. Abandonment, as we have already indicated, differs even from Delinking in that it is, in a way, a generalisation of Delinking in the context of both class and national liberation from capitalist-imperialism. In this exceptionality Abandonment follows the apparently paradoxical concepts of Marx in his view of the atoms of physics, dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Furhermore, Abandonment is dialectical and not mechanical inasmuch as it is a policy based upon Marx's seldomquoted statements regarding the colonialist genesis of capitalism. The Eurocentric Socialists/Communists still firmly believe in the hoary idea that Marx saw the class struggle between a rising bourgeois (capitalist) class and the feudal estates in France and other European nation-States as the genesis of capitalism. The documents of and on Marx's actual written statements, including those in Capital, tell a quite different story. In 1846, 18 years before Lincoln abolished slavery in the USA, Marx wrote to a Russian Socialist: «Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit etc. Without slavery» - which in a letter he wrote in 1845 he called «the slavery of the Blacks in Suriname, in Brazil, in the Southern regions of North America» - «there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is colonies which have created world trade» - our emphasis -