Recostructing Internationalism
against every Myth and every Illusion

q Arms have spoken in the Gulf - as it always happens in war. This time they have done it so quickly as never before. This unprecedented fact is bound to weigh in the future relations between the powers.
Now the “peace” of imperialism is holding again the stage, although many of these questions are still open to dispute. Of course, this “peace” is conditioned by the clear ruling of the battlefield.
Wielding victoriously the Iraqi card, Washington is set to negotiate with Asia and Europe from more solid positions of force – which was its goal. The one-way anti-imperialism, that which points the finger only against the wars of others at command, is a stale expedient. We reject it even today and it doesn’t matter that it is Washington and London which carried out a preventive war planned for months – a political war: America feels time slipping away and seeks to check its decline with missiles and bombings, targeting the oil lords of the Iraqi bourgeoisie. But Europe, Russia and China are made of the same stuff. They are in anger with the United States like bandits plotting to topple the chief thug, but while they leaved it to Washington to manage the terror of war they are already bargaining for the postwar affairs.
It is no coincidence that already in these immediate postwar days the other capitals are clearly repositioning themselves. For many of them it is time for assessments and inevitable corrections – in Paris as in Moscow and Berlin. The reality of the relations of forces imposes it, even though nobody has kowtowed. London expects to reap some fat reward from its direct participation in the war, but would also like to mend fences with Germany and France, in order not to lose influence in Europe.
At any rate, it was an unprecedented match, which created a sort of watershed in the dynamic of international relations, and of the relationship between the two shores of the Atlantic in particular. For this reason – as in earlier occurrences – the afterwards will be unlike it has been heretofore.
New matches will follow, in a fight that has just begun. All the several contenders will try to wage them from the most favorable conditions, turning past experiences to good account.

q This is especially true for European imperialism. Surprised once again by the conflict in the middle of its way and determined as never before to exploit the event to speed up decisively on the road of the construction of Power Europe.
“If Europe wants to matter – writes ‘Le Nouvel Observateur’, a weekly of the French Left – it must prevent its military and economic gap with the U.S. from widening further… Independence and weakness are incompatible. In one word, saying no to this war means preparing other ones – economic, technological and also military wars… The refusal of the American war is anything but pacifist”.
We never had any doubt about it, as we have denounced the imperialist Europeanism concealed behind the mask of an even more artful than powerless pacifism. But denouncing, though necessary, certainly does not suffice.

q For our class, too, it is time to take stock. Our political stock is revolutionary Marxism, we have no motherland and our motto is the Communist Manifesto’s appeal for proletarians of all countries to unite. Only a world party uniting Arab, American, Israeli, Asian and European workers would be able to break the chains of ideology and fanaticism, and redeem the price, which today is being chiefly paid by the Iraqi proletariat.
In the Gulf, in Irak and in Baghdad there is a modern proletariat by the millions. An internationalist battle would have found in it a real force and the only true concrete perspective. The lack of its voice is the measure of the historical delay of a worldwide communist consciousness, and of the necessity of the practical duty of rebuilding, step by step, an internationalist position.
This is a difficult job, but it has no alternative. It is a demanding, but not impossible duty. May Day, with all of its history, stands to witness how that consciousness has already been the patrimony of broad masses of people. Reproducing it and disseminating it among the masses, which in the meantime have multiplied their numbers, is the most urgent duty on the agenda.
Our aim is that the internationalist opposition to the present Gulf war may go beyond mere principles in Europe’s future wars.

On these subjects Utopia News organize a public meeting:
Friday 2nd May
7.00-10.00 pm
Hastings Community Learning Centre
49/51 Cambridge Road
Hastings
For more information :  openmeeting@utopia-art.co.uk Or telephone : 07811962462