Workers Power Global, Vienna: 3 August 2003
On 13 July 2003 the “Governing Council” – the administrative body installed by the US occupation forces – opened in Baghdad. It assembles a number of bourgeois and reactionary forces like the Pentagon’s chosen agents of Achmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, Washington’s long-time Kurdish allies Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani or the bourgeois Islamists of SICRI and the Al-Dahwa al-Islamiya-Party.
The task of this ‘Governing Council’ is simply to support the US occupation forces. Its members are not elected by the Iraqi people but appointed by the US pro-consul Paul Bremer. It has rarely any decision-making power except appointing ministers (which again have no power) and diplomats and to approve the budget. But even these few decisions can be vetoed by Bremer, i.e. it can not make any decision without the approval of the invaders. In short it is a colonial administration or – in other words – a Quisling government for US imperialism.
Recently the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) decided to join this colonial puppet-‘Governing Council’. In several articles published on its website http://www.iraqcp.org/ it argues that while the Council might not be the best thing it is good enough to serve the democratisation of the country! In an article “The Iraqi Communist Party and the “Governing Council” it calls the Iraqi people to support the colonial administration:
“The Council’s influence depends as well on the people’s support for its work, monitoring its activities in a critical and constructive way, so as to help it to carry out its tasks and move ahead along a correct and sensible path.” (Editorial of “Tareeq Al-Shaab” - Central Organ of the Iraqi Communist Party, 20 - 26 July 2003, http://www.iraqcp.org/framse1/0030720IRAQNEWS.htm)
Let’s be clear about the meaning of this scandalous step: A party claiming to be Communist and to serve the ideas of liberation of mankind of the yoke of capitalism and imperialism openly joins a colonial administration of US imperialism which just defeated and occupied Iraq and which is hated by the people!
For many people the recent decision of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) to join this ‘Governing Council’ might come as a surprise. A Communist Party serving in a US-colonial administration? But it is hardly a surprise for any person with some knowledge of Stalinism in general and the Iraqi Stalinists in particular and certainly not for us Marxists. The essence of Stalinism is building alliances with and subordination to bourgeois or petty-bourgeois forces. The Iraqi party has a particular distinguished tradition in this business of dirty deals with reactionary forces.
In the 1970s it collaborated – following the instructions of its masters in Moscow – with the Baath-regime and was awarded with several posts. According to the disastrous strategy of stages the Stalinists politically supported the “anti-imperialist” regime in Baghdad to “strengthen the camp of “progress” in the world. Naturally the dialectical laws of relationships between the main classes nationally and world-wide are much more complex than the simple black-white schema of Stalinism.
If the oppressed classes miss the opportunity to overthrow the bourgeoisie in time it will be suppressed. There is no static state of truce between the oppressed and the oppressor. In the end the semi-colonial bourgeoisie will submit to the stronger hand. And this is imperialism if the world proletariat fails to overthrow it.
So when the wind changed and the Soviet Union had exploited its available offers to the Baath-regime Saddam Hussein sacked the Stalinists and later turned to imperialism, mainly France and US. The Stalinists were repressed and executed.
When the Soviet Union’s leader Gorbachev introduced the Perestroika and collaborated more closely with the US, the ICP followed suit. Like their masters they supported the deadly UN embargo against Iraq in autumn 1990 which caused the silent murder of one and a half million Iraqis in the past 12 years. In the war in 1991 they were even considering siding with US imperialism.
For many years they did not openly oppose the UN embargo. Even on the eve of the war the ICP continued to call the United Nations and the “international community of states” to help them overthrow Saddam Hussein and to disarm Iraq. They called on the UN to intervene in Iraq and to hold “free elections”. In fact these were all figleaves for imperialism to intervene and invade Iraq.
In February this year – before the war started – we published a note “The Iraqi Communist Party: Quislings in waiting”. In this we not only condemned the Iraqi Communist Party for its lack of any anti-imperialist principles. We also pointed to the inner logic of its policy and made the following prediction:
“Even under the looming mass murder of the Iraqi people by the US superpower the ICP is not prepared to defend its country. Quiet the opposite they have links with the pro-US “opposition”. In fact they are hoping for a place in a post-Saddam Hussein regime based on the bajonetts of US imperialism. They are prepared to serve as colonial puppets. They are Quislinge in waiting.”
Now our prediction turns out to be correct very soon. It is not only a devastating step for the ICP which demonstrates clearer than ever that it is serving socialism only in words but the imperialist ruling class in practice. It is also an embarrassment for many reformist Communist Parties of which the ICP is their sister organisation. Just before the outbreak of the war they jointly published statements against the war and US imperialism. But we know that reformism – even those in “Marxist-Leninist” colours – is very “flexible” when it comes to form alliances with bourgeois forces. Many Communist Parties participated in the anti-war movement pretending to fight against imperialism.
But at the same time they had and have in their camp Communist Parties like the French PCF which served in the imperialist government Jospin 1997-2001 which conducted two reactionary wars against Serbia in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001. And it includes the lot of the ICP which – it should be pointed out – also plays their dirty games here in the West. In Austria e.g. the physically attacked and hospitalised an anti-imperialist activist some time ago and a few weeks ago they called their brothers and sisters of the Austrian Communist Party to ban anti-imperialists of the Austrian version of the annual “L’Humanitè”-Fete!
As an old saying is going: “Tell me who your friends are and I tell you who you are”. Stalinism is rotten. Now it is selling the various parts of its Iraqi corpse to the highest bidder.
