I agree that some statements by Venezuelan leaders have been unhelpful. Consider Chavez, a year ago, speaking in a video: http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2012/aug/02/venezuela-hugo-chavez-syria-video. Chavez’s basic point is to oppose intervention, and he’s right. But he adds that the cause of violence in Syria is terrorists sent over the border, and that’s a one-sided statement that detracts from his main idea.

For an up-to-date and rounded presentation of Venezuela’s view, see Maduro’s September 1 open letter to Obama, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10001. It’s an effective and moving statement.

The article by Lance Selfa that you reference offers a couple of snippets from Venezuelan leaders but fails to mention the overall position they share with other ALBA countries: for non-intervention and a political solution. Most socialists agree on non-intervention. But socialist currents rarely take up the call for a political solution. It’s worth considering.

The ALBA position is based on a series of attempts in Latin America to end or to head off civil wars and to open up space for the masses to organize legally and contest for government. These efforts have been successful in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia. In El Salvador, results have been mixed. In Honduras and Guatemala, results are not good. In Colombia, the jury is still out.

The ALBA case does not deny the right to revolution. It’s based on an estimation of the specific conditions in most of Latin America today. See my review of Roberto Regalado, https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/review-latin-america-at-the-crossroads/.

By contrast, the 1979 revolutions in Nicaragua and Iran provide examples where mass movements were able to overcome or neutralize the army and break it up.

What about Syria today? Can the insurgent forces win the civil war and break up the Syrian army? I am concerned that reliance on a “win the war” policy imposes unending suffering on the Syrian people, draws in foreign intervention, and offers no clear road to a democratic outcome. There may be good cause for Syrians opposing the Assad regime to advance a perspective analogous to that of the ALBA countries.

I would appreciate a reference to discussion of this issue by those more familiar than I with the situation in Syria.

Hi John, just a couple quick responses, since I don’t think we’re very far apart on Egypt. (Also posted at http://torepeat.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/the-horse-we-rode-in-on/#comment-69.)

Re: Coups. I agree with what you’ve written here.

Re: ALBA. I thought the Cuban statement was very good. I had more in mind the stuff Venezuela has said, which has consistently gone beyond opposition to imperialist intervention (which is totally correct) into support for reactionary regimes. (See http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6198.)
Now I don’t think that left governments in an imperialist world system can be begrudged to take pragmatic decisions that may have a side-effect of strengthening reactionary regimes; eg, the Bolsheviks negotiated the Rapallo Treaty with the counter-revolutionary German government. But there’s no reason to lend political support, which is what the VZ government has unfortunately done.

The ALBA position is important, and I’m glad you discuss it, but I think it could have been discussed sympathetically but critically in an article aimed at clarifying the stance that socialists should adopt.

All that said, your piece was of course an extremely important contribution.

Opportunistic inconsistency? It’s more like contradictions.

Another example — the Saudi government backed Sisi’s bloody coup in Egypt to the tune of $12 billion while arming the secular and moderate opponents of Sisi’s equivalent in Syria, Assad.

Sometimes progressive/revolutionary governments back reactionary forces abroad and sometimes reactionary governments back progressive/revolutionary forces abroad. Life outside of abstract principles is pretty complicated, especially when we’re talking about states and state power.

Je trouve qu’Art Young nous a très bien prévenus du caractère réactionnaire du coup d’état. Mais je pense qu’il va peut-être un peu loin en anticipant une défaite majeur pour le processus de la révolution démocratique qui n’a jamais été achevé, c’est un recule certain mais peut-être pas fatal. Il reste encore des espaces démocratique, je ne pense pas par exemple que les syndicats indépendants ont été détruit bien que la nouvelle situation est sûrement plus difficiles pour eux. Ça impose une situation ou les travailleurs se retrouvent à l’avant-scène ce qui les obligera sans doute à se tourné vers les autres couches opprimées de la population pour défendre l’espace démocratique qui leur reste et peut-être même gagner un plus grand respect et reconnaissance de leur force.

Félicitation et continue se travail formidable ! André

TRANSLATION BY J.R.: I’d like to make a comment in French, if you don’t mind. My congratulations on your very educational article on the situation in Egypt and on the deepening of the debate resulting from the many comments.

I share John Riddell’s opinion on the democratic character of the mass mobilizations we have seen in Egyt and the democratic gains, such as “free elections” and independent unions. Yes, we are dealing with a reactionary coup d’etat, and the democratic gains now being dismantled must be defended.

However, I am against taking part in an alliance to restore Morsis to the presidency. The coup has created a new situation and a new relationship of forces; we cannot turn back the clock of history. The Muslim Brothers have a sectarian attitude and do not recognize the new situation. They have lost the battle for power, and that is now a fait accompli. What’s needed is simply to defend their right to exist, along with all democratic rights.

In my opinion, Art Young was right in warning of the coup’s reactionary character. But I think he is perhaps going too far in thinking that the incomplete process of democratic revolution will suffer a major defeat. It is a major setback, true, but perhaps not a fatal one. There is still democratic space.

I do not thing, for example, that the independent trade unions have been defeated, even though the present situation is surely more challenging for them.

This creates conditions where the workers are in the foreground and need to turn to other oppressed layers of the population to defend the remaining democratic space and perhaps even gain increased respect and recognition of their power.

Congratulations and keep up the good work! André

ON COUPS, RIGHT AND LEFT: You are right that military dictatorships sometimes carry out progressive measures. You mention the coup in Portugal that overturned fascism, and the coup in Egypt that chased out the British imperialists. I could mention a few more. And yes, that is why I wrote of “rightist” coups.

But what concerns us most is promoting conditions favourable to the free development of workers’ and popular struggles. And here there is no doubt that bourgeois democracy – even when as restricted, dishonest, and repressive as in the U.S. – offers better conditions for our struggle than an outright military dictatorship. Moreover, even though bourgeois democracy is ultimately simply a form of capitalist dictatorship, it institutionalizes many democratic rights that workers have fought to achieve. Example: the right of U.S. blacks to vote, which is today under attack by 21st century Jim Crow.

An interesting case in point is Hugo Chávez, an admirer of Juan Peron who once attempted to carry out a progressive military coup. He then turned away from that path and sought to use bourgeois democratic electoralism to help build a militant people’s movement. Interesting here is the role of Cuban leaders, who strongly advised Chávez and others to utilize democratic openings as a tool in revolutionary struggle.

ON THE ALBA POSITION: Your comment raises again what some consider opportunistic inconsistency by the ALBA governments, whose positions I cited in my original article. I believe you have Syria in mind. A statement on Syria made today by Cuba provides a good test. Bear in mind that this is a statement not of a small revolutionary group but of a state with significant influence, operating in the terrain of United Nations politics. I think the statement sounds the right notes and its consistent with Cuba’s stand on Egypt.

Here is a translation by the Cuban government:

Havana, Aug 28 (acn) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba issued the following statement regarding the growing threats against Syria, which we reproduce below.

The recent pronouncements of the U.S. government and several NATO allies urging military action in Syria, ignoring the efforts of some states to reach a political solution to the conflict that is bleeding that Arab nation, are alarming.

It is necessary to remember that those who today advocate military action against Syria are the same that launched bloody wars without a mandate from the Security Council of the United Nations, under the deliberate lie about the existence of weapons of mass destruction or the pretext of civil protection, which caused substantial deaths of innocent people including children, who they qualify as “collateral damage”.

There is a call to attack Syria, just as [its] government has authorized the UN Research Mission into the alleged use of chemical weapons in the country and this has begun work on the ground.

Cuba condemns any use of chemical and other weapons of mass destruction and is firmly committed to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction and with the strict compliance of its provisions.

The available information on the crisis in Syria is fragmented, imprecise and subject to frequent manipulation.

An aggression against Syria would cause serious consequences for the already troubled region of the Middle East, would be a flagrant violation of the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law and increase the dangers to international peace and security.

Cuba reiterates its conviction that it is necessary to find a political solution and expresses its strong opposition to any attempt to undermine the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria and the self-determination of its people.

Right. The problem is S.N. Joseph seems to be 1) ruling out such united struggle with or alongside the Muslim Brotherhood on the grounds that the Brotherhood in office betrayed the hopes of the people who voted for it or because they’ve supposedly committed “grave crimes” 2) acceding to the coup’s victory instead of struggling against it, hence the call for getting ready to operate in underground/illegal conditions instead of utilizing the admittedly limited legal means to fight the counter-revolution.

Hi John, thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree that the Egyptian comrades who hailed the coup as a progressive step made a terrible mistake; I also agree that the “we condemn both sides equally” line ignores the “small fact” that one side controls the state power. These are important points, and I’m glad you’ve written about them so forthrightly.

But coups, even military coups, are not inherently reactionary; eg, the Portuguese military coup of 1974 and indeed the Egyptian military coup of 1952 were both progressive. This is, I think, why you use the formulation “rightist coups” in your comment: it’s a question primarily of social content and not political form (which are linked but not in one-to-one correspondence). Hence the problem with July 3 coup isn’t that all coups are bad, but rather that this coup was clearly put all power in the hands of the most dangerous counter-revolutionaries. (The MB government was also counter-revolutionary, but with many more contradictions that prevented it from pursuing the all-out assault that we’re seeing today.)

We likely agree on all this, but my criticism of your piece is that you seem to amalgamate the Marxist approach to these questions with the approach of the left governments in LatAm, which I think use a different framework, based on trying to build networks of international relations independent of/opposed to US imperialism–itself a worthy goal–yet willing to disregard the social character of governments opposed to the US. In my view these different approaches ought to be clearly distinguished (from a standpoint of critical support for the left governments).

(Reposted from http://torepeat.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/the-horse-we-rode-in-on/#comment-64)

Even more abstract is the idea that a mass movement capable of overthrowing the military will emerge without engaging with the rank and file of the MB-F&JP
(Given the mass arrest of its leadership, we are largely talking about lower level leaders and the rank & file) With some justification (!), they see Morsi as the rightful President of Egypt & al Sisi as a criminal.

The situation is roughly as follows:-
The big industrialists and urban Middle Class are supportive of the Army crackdown.
The Copts feel it is protecting them from sectarian attacks (which weren’t all perpetrated by MB supporters)
Elements of the union leadership which have previously worked with the left, have been won over by promises of social-unionism.
e.g. the leaders of the Tax collectors union.

The MB still has majority support in the countryside and amongst the poorer, least westernised elements in traditional Egyptian society.
The task of the left is to detach the working class from its collaborationist leaders and win over the mass base of the MB by providing it with effective political arguments.
This is made harder by the economic aid Egypt is receiving from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
But this can only alleviate the economic situation for about a year at best.
So the socialist left has to put forward an emergency economic plan to revive the economy as an urgent task.

Socialists also need to engage with the disillusion with the Military amongst MB supporters.
As the Christian Science Monitor of August 23rd reported, the protests by the MB have become smaller and more localised but “grown more broadly anti-military since Aug. 14, when security forces attacked two protest camps full of Morsi supporters, killing hundreds.”

This is an important observation. It shows not only a higher level of politicisation, but also that the repression hasn’t been totally succesful. Pinochet had to kill at least 20,000 to crush all oppostion in Chile – that would be equivalent to around 200,000 in today’s Egypt. This hasn’t happened, so
there are still possibilities for open, mass work.

Those who fear restoring the “status quo ante” by supporting the demand to free of Morsi, or even return him to the Presidency just aren’t thinking dialectically. Were it to happen in a situation in which the military had been defeated, everything would have changed. If the socialist left were part of an alliance against the coup which achieved that, their arguments would be hugely strengthened.
The MB leadership & Morsi, (assuming he survived such an event would be politically weakened.)
This is one “stages theory” I like! But of course, it means that socialists have to operate as a movement, independent of the MB.

Here is S.N. Joseph’s comment on my Egypt article, reprinted from his blog (http://torepeat.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/the-horse-we-rode-in-on/), plus a brief response:

S.N. JOSEPH: ‘Operating at an incomparably higher political level is John Riddell’s article of August 20, which really should be read in full. I think that the critique of [Revolutionary Socialists) is (unfortunately) largely correct, although Riddell’s defense of Egypt’s formal democracy strikes me as improperly abstract. As Gilbert Achcar points out, this tends to suggest that “elected officials have carte blanche to do whatever they want during their term of office, even if they blatantly betray the expectations of their constituents.” And if you want the real truth, almost every government in the modern world, regardless of how dictatorial it actually is, will be more formally democratic than the revolution that overthrows it, for the simple reason that it will have always/already used the state power to organize some “election-show”–superficially encompassing the whole nation–in order to legitimize itself. Since movements and revolutionary parties can never avail themselves of such methods before taking state power, modern revolutions always have a formally anti-democratic moment, even if their substance must be profoundly democratic in order to progress.

“I suspect that Riddell is tracking too closely the position of left-leaning governments in Latin America, particularly Venezuela. As sympathetic as I am to these governments, they have not been entirely principled in their international relations, which often have a highly instrumental character. Venezuela, for instance, supported the Ahmadinejad regime against the Green Movement; and backs the Assad regime against the Syrian opposition. Even if one thinks that progressive governments under imperialist capitalism have to make such unsavory alliances–personally I consider it short-sighted even as a “matter of state”–there’s no reason that grassroots activists have to follow the same line.

“So again: what is to be done? In Egypt, I think the immediate task is not to get killed (seriously) and to prepare to operate illegally. Internationally, solidarity activists should demand an end to international “aid” to Egypt’s military (and demand that the Saudis not replace it, on pain of losing their own assistance). Everyone should demand an end to the “state of emergency” and the witch-hunt against the Muslim Brotherhood (which covers for a much wider campaign of social repression). The issue of the Brotherhood leadership is, to my mind, trickier: they’ve committed grave crimes, but they shouldn’t be prosecuted by people committing equally bad or worse crimes. The demand to restore the governmental status quo ante strikes me as totally abstract and disconnected from anything that might conceivably actually occur.

RESPONSE BY JOHN RIDDELL: Shawn, you are quite right that we have to differentiate between defending capitalist democratic institutions against a rightist coup and defending workers’ power against a counterrevolution dressed up in “democratic” costume.

We don’t support bourgeois democracy; we support the democratic rights that working people have been able to conquer within the capitalist framework. But when rightists try to overturn bourgeois democracy so as better to repress the workers’ and popular movement, we favour united struggle against the coupsters.

This statement of principle is abstract. A position on Egypt must be developed out of Egyptian conditions, not by copying out of a textbook.

Still, as I am sure you will agree, those who hailed the Egyptian coup as the culmination of a great revolutionary advance or who now favor even-handed opposition in Egypt to both the military dictatorship and the political movement it is suppressing should explain how they square these approaches with longstanding socialist principle on responding to rightist coups.