An Interview with Samir Amin
Conducted by
Walter Baier in Vienna, September 2017
Walter Baier: The world always has been a dangerous place, but now it seems to have reached its most dangerous moment since WW II. Some say it has to do with Trump. Others believe that it is more structural. What is your interpretation?
Samir Amin: For me the reasons are structural. Of course Trump adds to it.
In the mid-1970s, the rates of growth of the
capitalist developed centres, the United States, Europe, and Japan, fell to
half of what they had been in the previous thirty years. And they have never
recovered since. This means that the crisis continues and is even deepening
from year to year. And the announcements that we are moving out of the crisis
because the growth rate in Germany or elsewhere, is rising from 1.2 to 1.3 is
just laughable.
This is a systemic crisis. It’s an L-crisis. A U-crisis,
which is the normal type of capitalist crisis means that the same rationality that
has led to the recession, after minor structural changes, brings back growth.
An L crisis means that the system cannot move up out of recession. It means
that the system has to be changed. It’s not only minor structural changes which
are needed. It means that we have reached the point where capitalism is moving
into decline. But decline is a very dangerous time. Because of course capitalism
will not wait quietly for its death. It will be more and more savage, in order
to maintain its position, to maintain the imperialist supremacy of the centres.
And that is at the root of the problem. I don’t know what people mean when they
say ‘dangers of war are greater than ever’? The war started in 1991,
immediately after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, with the Iraqi war. There
has also been war in Europe, with the breakdown of Yugoslavia. And now, in my
opinion, we can see that the European system itself has started imploding. And
you can see it not only in the negative results of austerity policies. Not only,
of course, negative for the people but negative even for capitalism because
they aren’t bringing back growth, capitalist imperialist growth. They are not
bringing it back at all. Simultaneously, you can see by a number of political
responses, which are not responding to the real challenges such as Brexit. You
can see it in Spain and Catalonia, and you will see more and more such. You can
see it with the ultra reactionary chauvinistic governments of Eastern Europe.
Therefore we cannot discuss how to prevent war, because war and situations
still more chaotic, are inscribed into the logic of this decaying system.
Therefore we have to shift the question to how we can start moving out of that
system.
Some years ago I published a book analysing precisely
this long-term systemic crisis; its title was provocative: Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism in Crisis,[1]
I saw then that we cannot move out of this pattern of crisis without starting to
move out of the system itself. It’s a gigantic
challenge. The solution will not be found in a few years. Nowhere. Neither in
the North, nor in the South. It will take decades and decades. But the future starts today. We cannot wait
until the system has led to a gigantic war and ecological catastrophe to react.
We have to react now.
This requires of the left, of the radical left – or, I
would say, the potential radical left, which is much broader than the actual
small number of heirs of the Third International, the communist parties and their
milieu – much broader than that – that they acquire audacity. Audacity. At
present there are resistance movements everywhere in the world, and in some
cases quite strong resistance movements. In Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in
Latin America, and perhaps even in the US. Working peoples are fighting perfectly legitimate struggles,
but they are on the defensive. That is, they are trying to defend whatever they
have gained in the past, which has gradually been eroded by so-called
neoliberalism. That is legitimate but it is not enough. It is a defensive
strategy which allows the power system of monopoly capital to maintain the
initiative. But we have to move from there to a positive strategy, that is, to
an offensive strategy and reverse the relation of power. Compel the enemy – the
power systems – to respond to you instead of you responding to them. Take their
initiative away from them. That is what the challenge is. Now, I am not
arrogant. I have no blueprint in my pocket for what a communist in Austria
should do, for what communists in China or those in Egypt – even my country – should
do. But we have to discuss it frankly, openly. We have to suggest strategies,
discuss them, test them, and correct them. This is life and struggle. We cannot
stop, and in that respect since I’m here with the European organisation Transform
– in other words, in my opinion, among the best of the European organisations –
I want to say that what we all need in the first place is audacity!
WB: What would it mean? What would audacity mean in the
case of Europe?
SA: I think we may or may not share this view. That does
not much matter because we have to discuss it. I think this European
construction has from the start been built with iron and cement in order not to
be changed. It cannot be reformed. Cosmetic lead to nothing but more of the
same. It has been built that way, and the treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon, have
kept it that way. Therefore I don’t see any possibility of transforming it
without first deconstructing the system, after which another one can be built. Please
understand that I am not an “anti-European”, in the sense that I don’t “hate” the
Europeans and I’m not a narrow nationalist of the South. No. Moreover I think the
European people have a history which revealed positive elements, and there is capacity to
re-animate them. In addition the fact that Europeans feel sharing some common
culture can be a positive thing. But it is not so in the present circumstances,
because now that commonality is used for Europe to be fellow travellers of the
US, through NATO basically, but also through many other arrangements including
financial ones, which reduces the role of Europe to zero. It’s the US which
makes the decisions and the European ruling class says ‘yes, sir’, and this
cannot be changed.
Now, it can start to change if the popular movements
move from resistance to an aggressive alternative. That could happen in some
countries. It has started happening but only in some countries of Europe,
Greece, Spain, Portugal… In Greece we have seen that the European system
defeated that first attempt. And the European people, even those who are very
sympathetic to the Greek movement have been unable to mobilise an opinion
strong enough to change the attitude of Europe. That is a lesson. Audacious
movements have to start, and I think they will start in different countries. I
don’t know where. I discussed this with, for instance, people from “France Insoumise”.
I did not propose blueprints but I generally pointed to strategies starting with
the renationalisation of big monopolies and specifically financial and banking
institutions. But I’m saying that renationalisation is only the first step. It
is the precondition for eventually being able to move to the socialisation of
the management of the economic system. If it stops at the level of just
nationalisation, well then you have state capitalism, which is not very
different from private capitalism. That would deceive the people. But if
conceived as a first step it opens the road.
Capitalism
has reached a level of concentration of power, economic and therefore also
political power, that is not comparable to 50 years ago. A handful, a few tens
of thousands of enormously large companies, a smaller handful – less than twenty
major banking institutions – decide alone on everything. François Morin, a financial top expert who knows this field, has said that
less than twenty financial groups control 90% of the operations of the global integrated
monetary and financial system. If you add to this some fifteen other banks you go
from 90% to some 98%. It is a mere handful of banks. That is centralisation,
concentration of power – not of property, which remains disseminated, but
that’s of less importance – the point is
how property is controlled. This has also led to control of political life. We
are now far from what was the bourgeois democracy of the nineteenth century and
the first half of the twentieth. We have now a one party system. With the
social democrats having become social liberals there is absolutely no
difference between the conventional right and the conventional left, which
means we are living in a one party system, as is the case in the US where
Democrats and the Republicans, in my opinion, have always been one party. This
was not the case in Europe and therefore capitalism in the past could be
reformed. The social democratic welfare reforms after World War II were big
reforms. In my view they were progressive reforms, even if they were associated
with the maintenance of an imperialist attitude vis-à-vis the countries of the South.
Now this is becoming impossible and you can see it in the one-party system
which is losing legitimacy. In the last French election there was more than 50%
abstention for the first time, which means people no longer believe in voting.
But this also opens up a drift – and I’ll come back to this – to fascism, to
neo-fascism, which is on the rise everywhere, in the North and the South. Which
is one of the reasons why we have to dismantle this system before
reconstructing it. I find very strong opposition to this idea of dismantling
it, particularly in Europe, and I am speaking with people who are members of Transform,
who are –as I said – the best people to talk to in Europe. They are afraid that
dismantling it will lead to worse. They think that Europe with all its
imperfections and all its disastrous aspects is better than going to back to a
situation of European nationalisms fighting one another.
WB: This is a long debate between the two of us. I believe this is based in a misunderstanding. Of course there are many people in the left who see the situation as you describe it. Maybe I can help the discussion with the following comparison. Even if we agreed that it was impossible for the European treaties to be reformed what would follows from this? In 1917, Lenin recognised that the existing Russian state could not be reformed and concluded that a revolution had first to destroy the old state and create a new, a socialist one. That is one consequence which you can draw when recognising that something cannot be reformed. The counter-example is Yeltsin who in 1990 concluded that the USSR could not be reformed; however, he decided to dismantle it, to break it apart and establish an order based on different nationalisms. One judgement, two opposing conclusions: socialism and nationalism.
WB: This is a long debate between the two of us. I believe this is based in a misunderstanding. Of course there are many people in the left who see the situation as you describe it. Maybe I can help the discussion with the following comparison. Even if we agreed that it was impossible for the European treaties to be reformed what would follows from this? In 1917, Lenin recognised that the existing Russian state could not be reformed and concluded that a revolution had first to destroy the old state and create a new, a socialist one. That is one consequence which you can draw when recognising that something cannot be reformed. The counter-example is Yeltsin who in 1990 concluded that the USSR could not be reformed; however, he decided to dismantle it, to break it apart and establish an order based on different nationalisms. One judgement, two opposing conclusions: socialism and nationalism.
The dilemma of Europe is not abstract. The
left has to choose between the two directions, and accordingly the alliances it
prefers to forge. You can of course say that we will line up with the
nationalists because they will create a big mess, a chaos, and out of this chaos
we can create something new. Or you can say that in order to revolutionise the
system we need to create alliances with those forces within the system who are defending
the idea of freedom, of human rights, and of a culture of solidarity. I regard
this as the core of the strategic problem, and we must choose between these alternatives.
SA: I have much sympathy with what you say,
but I think we should imagine alliances at different levels. What you suggest
is still on the defensive – the best defence possible with the broadest
alliance. I can understand it perfectly. But we also need some sort of
alliances looking beyond.
That
leads naturally to the Russian and the Chinese revolutions and to the lessons
of a century of history.
I
consider the Russian revolution as having started a revolutionary process, not
achieved a revolution. A process is much more and longer than any event,
whatever important this event may have been. The event made possible the beginning
of the process but not more than that. Russian society at that time consisted
80% of peasants. And therefore it faced two enormous challenges. The first was
how to integrate the majority of peasants into the process of – I’m not saying
of building socialism – but moving ahead on the long socialist road. And that is an enormous challenge. The second was
the hostility of the Western capitalist countries. The Cold War is not something that started
after World War II. It started in 1917 and never stopped. First, the
intervention of the imperialist powers in the Civil War of 1918 – 1922,
followed by the Cold War in the 1920s and 30s against the Soviet Union, then
the Second World War and then again the Cold War immediately after the victory
over fascism. Those were the two challenges. The response of the system to
those two challenges can be discussed today. But that’s another set of debates.
The Chinese Revolution went one step further. It took place in an even more
peripheral country. Until to-day, it found a correct answer to the problem of
how to integrate the majority of the peasants. It was also confronted with a
continuous Cold War and has been able to defeat it by moving into globalisation,
with all its ambiguities and dangers. We should now see the problem in that
way, that is: What is the next, the immediate next step on the road? Which
strategy do we need to adopt?
And
I think – that is my personal opinion – we need to that effect a Fifth International.
We not only need a revival of internationalism as a fundamental part of the
ideology of the future, but we also must organize it – that is try to
interconnect the struggles in different countries. Now, this international
cannot be a reproduction of the Third. Because the Third International came
after the victory of the October Revolution and a strong new state – the Soviet
Union – and therefore survived – for better or worse – as a model for the
others. We are not now in such position and therefore we must imagine another
pattern for the new Internationale. If we look at the Second and Third Internationals – the Second up to WW
I, not after – they shared the idea of “ one country – one party” – the correct
party; all the others being “deviationists” or even ‘traitors’.
Moreover when we look at the Second
International we discover that there was indeed one party in Germany – but this
Party was half-Marxian and half-Lasallean. There was one party in France, but it
really associated three currents. There was one party in Britain, but it was a
mix of trade-unionism and Fabianism. So they were different one from another,
but they all had in common their pro-imperialist colonialist attitudes and – as was proven in 1914 – they worked with
their bourgeoisies, against one another. The Third International recognized
only “one country one Party” - the 21
conditions – all the others being traitors and revisionists.
Today we are in a different situation; we
have potentially radical, pro-socialist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist,
forces – different in each country. We have to bring them together. We have to
understand that what we share in common is more important than the differences
among us. We have to discuss the differences and discuss them freely, without
arrogance by proclaiming ‘I am right and you are wrong’. Here are my arguments,
here are yours, but what we have in common is more important and that should be
the basis for re-constructing internationalism. I am saying that for the North
and the South as well. Each has its specific conditions, and conditions are
different from one country to another. The general view is similar but
conditions different. At any rate, that is my vision on how to start the
process.
WB: One question in this regard: Generally
speaking I share this analysis, with some reservations. However, there is one
argument about which I have a strong doubt. Is it really realistic to establish
‘system change’ as a precondition for addressing the huge and global problems
we are facing today? In theory, yes! But in practice: Can we accept that in the
era of the threat of a nuclear war we hold that peace only be achieved if the
capitalist system was overthrown? What about climate change? Can we afford to
say ‘either worldwide system change or ecological disaster’?
SA: I have no answer to that question, only
intuitions or feelings. I am not able to argue with what appears to me to be
convincing arguments.
I
don’t think we are going towards a global nuclear war. Instead I think we have
already moved into more and more “small
wars”, which are disastrous for the territories where they occur. Syria is an
example. See also the war-mongering of Trump vis-à-vis North Korea – I am
afraid Kim appears much more rational than Trump. This is an intuition. I don’t
think even that the establishment ruling the United States will let Trump do
the worse. They would assassinate him as they’ve done through history.
Climate:
There is climate change, and it’s extremely dangerous, but I don’t think that
it can be stopped within capitalism and through the Paris Agreement, for
instance. This is a zero agreement. Because to make it effective we need a
gigantic transfer of finance from North to South, which is against the very
logic of the system. So this will not happen, and therefore the Paris Agreement
is just wishful thinking, nothing more. Even if public opinion doesn’t believe that
and thinks it’s a good step forward. I don’t think so. And therefore I see the
question of starting to exit the system as urgent. It’s the precondition. The
precondition for everything. From stopping small wars – which are very destructive
– to launching an alternative ecological-global policy and also for making
possible a shift towards the socialisation of management.
WB: Does that mean that we accept a certain
ambiguity of our strategy because implementing changes proposed by diverse,
because for us the shared strategy means entering into system change, while the
other forces see it as saving the existing system.
SA: Yes. There are these ambiguities and we
cannot avoid them. We shall have broad alliances with people who have never
thought that socialism should be the answer to the crisis of capitalism. They
will still think that capitalism can be reformed. So what? If we can work
together against this capitalism as it is to-day , it would be a first step.
But I think we have to think ahead about
how to create a Fifth International. I don’t have a blueprint for this. It is
not about establishing a secretariat or organisational leadership bodies. First,
the comrades have to be convinced of the idea, which is not always the case. Second
the Europeans have abandoned anti-imperialist solidarity and internationalism in
favour of accepting so-called aid and humanitarian interventions – including bombing
people! That is not internationalism.
I think that national policies – we use
this word because there is no other word – are still the result of struggles within
the borders of countries. Whether these countries are indeed a nation-state or a
rather a multinational state, they struggle within defined borders. Yes, this fact
also creates problems, sometime important ones as we see in Spain. However,
borders still exist. But these existing problems do not refute the idea that
change has to start from the base and not from the top. And the base is the
nation. Don’t expect a UN conference with all the governments of this world
deciding anything good and effective. That will never happen. Don’t expect that
even with respect to the European Union. It has to start from bellow. It is
changing the balance of forces within countries, which then also starts
changing the balance of forces at the international level. Therefore the task
for internationalist solidarity, that of a Fifth International should be to minimise
the conflictual eventual aspects of these
changes, and make them complementary to
one another. This is true internationalism.
WB: The world is transforming itself
rapidly. China is becoming more and more the main protagonist of the 21st
century. People who are becoming aware of this are starting to ask what this
might mean for the world. What is your take on the current developments in
China?
SA: We have to start from the Chinese Revolution.
We had in China what I call a great revolution. There have been three great revolutions
in modern history –the French
Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution – along with some in
another countries like Vietnam and Cuba. But let’s take the three major ones.
What
I mean is that the project target of great revolutions looks far ahead of the
agenda of what is immediately possible. The French Revolution said liberty and
equality. The so-called American Revolution did not project this target. The
word ‘democracy’ does not appear in US constitution. And democracy was
considered a danger. The system was invented to avoid this danger. The system did
not change the relations of production. Slavery remained a decisive part of the system; George Washington was an
owner of slaves! Instead the French
Revolution tried to connect conflicting values of liberty and equality. In the
US it was liberty and competition, that is, liberty under the condition of
inequality. The Russian Revolution proclaimed ‘Proletarians of all countries
unite’. As Lenin said, ‘the revolution started in the weak link but should
expand quickly’ – that is, in a short historic time. He expected it would
happen in Germany. History proved that he was wrong. It could have happened but
it didn’t. Internationalism was not on the agenda of real history. The Chinese Revolution
invented the slogan ‘Oppressed peoples unite’, which means internationalism at
a global level including the peasant nations of the South. Which is a step
ahead. Widening internationalism. This also was not on the agenda of what could
be achieved immediately. Bandung in 1955, which was an echo of the Chinese Revolution, was
very timid. It didn’t achieve much. It was watered-down by nationalistic forces
and to a large extent remained in the frame of a bourgeois national project.
Precisely
because the great revolutions were ahead of their time they have been followed
by thermidors and restorations. Thermidor is not restoration; it means a step back
in order to keep the long-term target but manage it in time, with concessions.
When was thermidor in the Soviet Union? Maybe it was the year 1924 with te Nep,
although Trotsky said it was 1927. The Chinese say it happened as of Khrushchev.
There are good arguments for this, but other people think it occurred later
with Brezhnev. However, restoration of capitalism really came with Yeltsin and
Gorbachev. At that point the target of socialism was abandoned.
In
China, we had a thermidor from the start – from 1950. When Mao Zedong was asked
‘Is China socialist ?’ he said ‘No,
China is a People’s Republic’ and building socialism is a long road – he used
the Chinese expression ‘A thousand years’. So thermidor was there from the
start. There were two attempts to go
beyond that thermidor. The first one was the Great Leap Forward, the second the Cultural
Revolution. Then we had a second thermidor with Deng Xiaoping. We still don’t
have a restoration up to now. Not just because formally the Communist Party has
the monopoly of political power, but because some basic aspects of what has been
achieved by the Chinese revolutionary process, has been maintained. And this is
very fundamental. I refer here specifically to the state ownership of land and its
use by families in the frame of the revival of peasant agriculture, associated
with the construction of a modern
industrial system. These are the two legs on which China stands and moves. It
defines a kind of state capitalism. Simultaneously
the Chinese project does not reject the idea of its participating to
globalization, which is dominated by capitalist/imperialist major powers. For
sure globalization comes into conflict with the “ two legs’ Chinese strategy”.
They are not complementary; they are in conflict. China has entered into the globalisation of
trade, and the globalisation of investments, but with state control, at least
to a certain effective extent. In addition China is not operating within
globalization just like those countries
which accept the conditionality imposed through free trade, free investment,
and financial globalisation. China has not moved into financial globalisation.
It has maintained its independent financial system, which is operated by the
state. Not only formally but in substance.
My
qualification is that China is not socialist but it is also not capitalist. It contains
conflicting tendencies. Moving toward socialism or capitalism? For sure most of
the reforms that have been introduced particularly after Deng Xiaoping, have
been rightist. Making room, and expanding room, for capitalist mode of production and the emergence of a bourgeois class. But, so far, the other
dynamic -that identified by the “two
legs strategy” -has been maintained, and this conflicts with the logics of
capitalism. That is how I situate China today.
WB: And what is the role of China in a
global perspective?
SA: China should and could play a positive
role, initiating a multi-centred global system, which Chinese leadership calls ‘anti-hegemonic’.
For the sake of diplomacy, they prefer not to call it ‘anti-imperialist’, which
in fact they have in mind. To move in that direction, there are some good signs
and some bad signs. The good signs are at the political level. The Silk Road is
not a trade agreement; it is a political way to make a rapprochement – a
serious one – with Russia, with the Central-Asian republics and Iran – and
therefore holds the door open for Middle-Eastern and Arab countries. It is
positive. But it can remain wishful thinking on paper if it is not followed by
complementary policies at the economic level. It is wrong to reduce the target
of that strategy to ensure for China the access to oil. China can help Russia to reconstruct its industrial capacity, can
help Iran and eventually other Middle East countries to construct it. The other
part of the Chinese global geo-strategy - I refer here to the transport route
through South East Asia – by rail from China to Singapore and to Rangoon –
bears different objectives: merely facilitate commercial penetration, or again
helping the countries involved to industrialize and move partly away from
imperialist control?
WB: Would you say that the influence of
China on Africa is helpful for the respective countries?
SA: It could be. Until now it is mainly
wishful thinking and an ambition to have commercial penetration. It is less bad
than trading with the West, because trading with the West is accompanied by
conditionality, and trading with China has no conditionality, but it is not the
solution to the problems of African societies.
I’ll
give you a concrete example. In Zambia, after Kaunda was replaced by terribly ugly,
pro-Western corrupt leaders, a new government was elected, not a revolutionary
one. Three months after the election they invited me and asked me directly: We
will soon receive a Chinese delegation. What do you think we can get out of
this relation with China? I frankly said : the Chinese know what they want.
They want copper. They do not mind if they invest in a private or in a state
company, provided they also get an agreement that the copper gets to China and about
a system of pricing. They know what they want. But you, what do you want? You
have to know what you want. Do you want infrastructure? They can do it. Do you
want industry? They can help. Do you want a revival of the peasantry? They have
experience. You have to know what you want and you will probably get it. If you
don’t know what you want, the Chinese will get what they want with no
counterpart to your benefit. You can get from them what you cannot get from the
West. The West is imperialist. You have to know that. And my interlocutor told
me: ‘my administration doesn’t know it.’
.
WB: In a conversation with you it would be unthinkable
not to discuss with you the contradictions in the Arab world – all the more so
that they have an impact on European societies. Would you say that one of the
main problems in the Arab world lies in the defeat of the political and secular
left?
SA: The US was surprised by the explosion in
Tunisia and Egypt. They did not expect it. The CIA thought that Ben Ali and
Mubarak were strong, like their police forces. The French also believed this
with respect to Tunisia. But these gigantic, chaotic movements in Tunisia and
Egypt lacked a strategy, and that allowed them to be contained in the old
structures and decapitated. But then,
just immediately after these two explosions, the Western governments understood
that similar movements could also happen elsewhere in the Arab countries for
the same reasons. They decided to “pre-empt” the “revolutions” by organizing
themselves “coloured” movements controlled by them. They selected to that
effect supporting Islamic reactionary movements financed and controlled by
their allies, the Gulf countries. The Western strategy was successful in Libya;
but failed in Syria.
In
Libya there was no “popular” mass protest against the regime. Those who started
the movement were small Islamic armed groups who immediately attacked the army
and the police, and the next day, called NATO, the French and the British to
rescue them! And indeed Nato responded and moved in. Finally the Western powers
have reached their goal, which was destroying Libya. The propaganda said it was
about destroying the dictatorship of Ghaddafi in order to establish democracy! Today
Libya is much worse off than it was then. But that was the target. It was not a
surprise. The target was to destroy the country.
The
same with Syria. In Syria, there was a growing civilian democratic popular
movement against the regime, because the regime had moved towards accepting
neoliberalism in order to remain in power. But the West, the US in particular,
did not wait. The next day, they had the Islamic movements moving in and, with
the same scenario, attacking the army and the police and calling the West in to
help. But the regime was able to defend itself. The dissolution of the army
expected by the US did not happen. The so-called Syrian Free Army is a bluff.
These were only a small number of people who were immediately absorbed by the
Islamists. And now the Western powers, including the US, have to recognise that
they have lost the war, which does not mean that the Syrian people have won it.
But it means that the target to destroy the country, through civil war and
intervention, failed. The imperialist powers have not been able to destroy the
unity or the potential unity of the country. That is what they wanted to do,
with of course the approval of Israel - to
repeat what happened in Yugoslavia. And they failed.
In
Egypt, the US – backed by the Europeans who simply follow the US – chose the
Moslem Brotherhood as the alternative. Initially, on 25 January 2011,
the Moslem Brotherhood, lined up with Mubarak against the movement. Only one
week later, they changed sides and joined the revolution. That was an order
from Washington. On the other side the radical left was surprised by the
popular movement and unprepared, the youth was divided into many organisations,
resulting in a lot of illusions and the lack of analytical and strategic
capacity. Finally the movement resulted in what the US wanted: the elections.
In those elections, Sabahi, supported by the left, got as many votes as Morsi.
That is around 5 million votes. It was the US embassy, not the Egyptian
electoral commission, who declared Morsi the winner!
The mistake
of the Moslem Brotherhood was to think that they had achieved a final and total
victory and that they could exercise their power alone. So they entered into conflict
with everybody including the army. If they had been smarter and had found an
agreement with the army they would still be in office and sharing power with
the army. That they wanted all the power for themselves and used it in such an ugly
and stupid way, just a few weeks after their victory, turned everybody against
them.
This led to the 30th of June
2013: 30 million people demonstrating in the streets of all the country against
the Moslem Brotherhood ! The figure is correct but nobody in the West says it.
At that point in time, the US Embassy asked the leadership of the army to
support the Moslem Brotherhood despite the people. The army did not follow and
decided instead to arrest Morsi and disband
to the so-called parliament – a non elected body made up exclusively of people
chosen by the MB! Yes , as a result of these initiatives the leadership of the
army acquired gigantic popularity. And it is understandable. But the new regime
is simply continuing the same neoliberal policy. “Tout changer afin que rien ne change”!
WB:
Middle East? Is
it possible to improve the situation in Syria and Iraq without finding a
solution to the Kurdish question?
SA :
The Kurds must be recognised and accepted
as a nation. They have a language, a territory, and I don’t see why they should
not be considered as such. But in alliance with other peoples of the region and
against imperialism. Not in alliance with imperialism against the others. Nationalism
is progressive in the South as long as it is anti-imperialist. But nationalism that
just seeks the support of imperialism against neighbours is not progressive at
all. The leaderships of the Kurds have
unfortunately chosen the second option. In alliance with the US and Israel
against the Arabs. This is a wrong choice whatever had been the unacceptable
inability of the Arab leadership that to manage a pluri-national state. Iraq is not the only state which is
pluri-national; after all, communist Yugoslavia was able to manage pluri-nationalism
very successfully for a long time. The Soviet Union also. But the Arab
leadership is of a narrow-minded bourgeois kind, and therefore unable to manage
the question. Yet that is not a reason to go and play as a card in the hands of
the US. In addition the choice of the Kurds led them into conflict with Turkey,
because Turkish regime is also unable to manage a pluri-national state, is unwilling
to accept that Turkey is one state but two nations : the Turks and the Kurds.
Conclusion : we are in a situation where
we shall have more continuous armed conflicts in the Middle East. Which is also
a tool for the US to maintain its presence in the region.
Samir Amin
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