Ali: It's somehow as if history has become too subversive. The past has
too much knowledge embedded in it, and therefore it's best to forget it
and start anew. But as everyone is discovering, you can't do this to
history; it refuses to go away. If you try to suppress it, re-emerges in
horrific fashion. That's essentially what's been going on.

Karl Carlile: Tariq Ali, in his position on Afghanistan as  demonstrates
the limitations faced by the politics of reformism.

He suggests that history is an objective process that exists
independently of humanity. For him it is not people that make history
but history that makes people. This is how he can claim that with
history if "you try to suppress it, it re-emerges in horrific fashion.
That's essentially what's been going on."

In the next breath he zig zags from the above crass objectivism to an
equally crass subjectivism in which he suggests that history can be
ignored by classes: "But the reason they can get away with it is that
history has been totally downplayed." Adding to this subjectivism is his
view that it is the US media that has been the cause of the Gulf and
Afghanistan wars.

Tariq Ali: If you see what passes as the news on the networks in
the United States, there's virtually no coverage of the rest of the
world, not even of neighbouring countries like Mexico or neighbouring
continents like Latin America. It's essentially a very provincial
culture, and that breeds ignorance. This ignorance is very useful in
times of war because you can whip up a rapid rage in ill-informed
populations and go to war against almost any country. That is a very
frightening process.

Karl Carlile: Now according to Tariq history  and class consciousness
have been
negated by the power of television. The subjective actions of the US
bourgeoisie can wipe out both history and class consciousness. What
Tariq cannot understand is that the absence of class consciousness of
the US working class together with Washington's  ability to successfully
attack Afghanistan has its cause in a much more complicated set of
conditions. These conditions entail both objective and subjective
ingredients.

Ali: ...previous wars were genuinely fought by coalition. The United
States was the dominant power in these coalitions, but it had to get
other people on its side. In both the Gulf War and in Kosovo, the U.S.
had to get the agreement of other people in these alliances before it
moved forward. The war in Afghanistan, the first war of the twenty-first
century, shows the United States doing what it wants to do, not caring
about who it antagonizes, not caring about the effects on neighbouring
regions."

Karl Calile: So what! It makes no essential difference whether US
imperialism fights wars in or out of coalition. They are still
imperialist wars. They still constitute a form of brutal oppression.
They are still violently oppressive events. The implication on Tariq's
part is that, in some way, the wars fought by the US in genuine
coalition with other imperialist powers are in some way less nasty than
US go it alone policy. This view ties in with the political environment
found in Tariq's previous home in the Pabloite International Marxist
Group. Anyway even here is facts are wrong. The Vietnam war was
primarily fought by US imperialism independently of any other
imperialist power.

Tariq Ali: U.S. is telling the Northern Alliance to kill Taliban
prisoners.
It's totally a breach of all the known conventions of war. Western
television networks aren't showing this, but Arab networks are showing
how prisoners are being killed and what's being done to them. Instead,
we're shown scenes that are deliberately created for the West!ern media:
a few women without the veil, a woman reading the news on Kabul
television, and 150 people cheering.

Karl Carlile: There is nothing unusual about this. Imperialism has
always engaged in these practices. The bourgeois media is designed to
deceive the masses. Again says this as if there was some pristine time
under imperialism when there was more nobility displayed by good old
fashioned imperialism. Again Tariq Pabloist reformism imprisons his
conception of imperialist reality. He cannot see that it  imperialism's
nature to be nasty towards the masses. If it wasn't it would not be
imperialism. It is almost as if Tariq wants to nostalgically live in the
world of the sixties with its flower power and its many other utopian
illusions.

Tariq Ali: All these wars are similar in the way ideology is being used.
It's
the ideology of so-called humanitarian intervention. We don't want to do
this, but we're doing this for the sake of the people who live there.
This is, of course, a terrible sleight of hand because all sorts of
people live there, and, by and large, they do it to help one faction and
not the other. In the case of Afghanistan, they didn't even make that
pretence. It was essentially a crude war of revenge designed largely to
appease the U.S. public. And the United States has perfected the
manipulation. The media plays a very big, big role.

Karl Carlile: Tariq does not understand that these features are common
to imperialist society. There is nothing new in the about the ideology
of humanitarian intervention. When 19th century British imperialism was
colonising Africa it was done, it claimed, to civilise the "niggers".
Humanitarian interventionist ideology is a mainstay of imperialism.

Tariq Ali: During the Gulf War, journalists used to challenge government
news
managers and insisted they wouldn't just accept the official version of
events. It seems that with the war in the Balkans and now this,
journalists have accepted the official version. Journalists go to press
briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in
Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a
news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by
governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists
too much.

Karl: Totally untrue. In some ways journalism has displayed less obvious
jingoism than during the Gulf war. However in both cases professional
journalism in general has played the same reactionary role. At most the
bourgeois role is played in superficially different ways. This is
because each war possesses its own specific characteristics. Tariq
suggestion that journalism in the days of the Gulf war was more
progressive than journalism today is plain old Pabloist reformism with
its nostalgia for the good old days.


Tariq Ali: Blair does it to get attention. He does it to posture and
prance
around on the world stage, pretending that he is the leader of a big
imperial power when, in fact, he's the leader of a medium-sized country
in Northern Europe.

I think Clinton certainly liked using him. But the Bush Administration
doesn't take him that seriously.

Karl Carlile: Tariq displays more of his vulgar subjectivism. To reduce
the role of Blair to the subjective superficial one is to misleadingly
trivialise the significance of British imperialism. To collapse the
politics of Blair to the level of theatre is to idealise British
imperialist politics in a crassly subjective way. It is to suggest that
the politics of Blair does not represent the class interests of the
bourgeoisie. Britain is not, as Tariq claims, merely a medium-sized
country in Northern Europe. Britain is an imperialist country that
exerts a significant influence on global politics and economics. Its
strategy for advancing its class interests is internationally somewhat
different to the strategy of other European imperialist powers. However
this does not make its international politics and diplomacy any more or
less serious than that other European powers.

Tariq Ali: ... Britain isn't an imperial power and the United States is.
The
United States is now The Empire. There isn't an empire; there's The
Empire, and that empire is the United States. It's very interesting that
this war is not being fought by the NATO high command. NATO has been
totally marginalized. The "coalition against terrorism" means the United
States. It does not wish anyone else to interfere with its strategy.
When the Germans offered 2,000 soldiers, Rumsfeld said we never asked
for them. Quite amazing to say this in public.

Karl: It is clear from the above observations that Tariq misunderstands
the role of NATO. Tariq views NATO as some kind of collectivist club
designed to democratically represent the interests of all members. It is
almost as if he views NATO as a progressive institution that serve to
restrain the actions of Washington. NATO is and has been the primarily a
US institution. As a US institution Washington uses it to advance its
class interests. Consequently it uses it in different ways under
different conditions. Concerning the war against Afghanistan NATO was
used. However it was used in a way that suited the specific needs of US
capital in relation to Central Asia.

The essential point is that it of no real interest to communists as to
whether NATO is used or not used by US imperialism. What is of interest
is that US imperialism engaged in brutally oppressive attack on
Afghanistan. What is of importance is that the working class organise
itself against imperialism by transforming itself into a communist
working class.

Tariq Ali:  The question is, will the weak be able to organize
themselves to
bring about changes or not? Will the weak develop an internal strength
and a political strength to ever challenge the rulers that  be? These
are the questions posed by the world in which we live. People are
increasingly beginning to feel that  democracy itself is being destroyed
by this latest phase of globalization and that politics doesn't matter
because it changes nothing. This is a very dangerous situation on the
global level, because when this happens, then you also see acts of
terrorism. Terrorism emanates from weakness, no! t strength. It is the
sign of despair.

Karl: It is not a question of the weak being able to organise
themselves. It is a question of the working class organising itself in
such a way that it succeeds in effectively challenging and overthrowing
capitalism. It is a class question not some abstract Nietschean
conception of the weak versus the strong.

Tariq Ali: People are increasingly beginning to feel that democracy
itself is
being destroyed by this latest phase of globalization and that politics
doesn't matter because it changes nothing.

Karl Carlile: It is not a question of people. The category "people"
includes capitalist people. Instead it is a question of class. Tariq has
illusions in democracy. He is of the view that it has been some kind of
permanent fixture on the political landscape. He does not understand
that in so far as democracy has existed it has existed as a response to
the growing challenge of the working class. From about 1917  the
political development of the working class and the growing capitalist
contradictions forced the bourgeoisie to grant concessions to the
working class. This was a strategy meant to disarm the proletariat and
prevent the establishment of communism in a period when capitalism was
experiencing great difficulties. Now that  the Western working class has
been comatose a new strategy has been developed by the bourgeoisie.
There is nothing extraordinary about this. It is history in process.
There is no suppressed history. History cannot be suppressed as Tariq
suggests. To suppress history means to dissolve humanity.

Tariq Ali: The main implication is a remapping of the world in line with
American policy and American interests. Natural resources are limited,
and the United States wants to make sure that its own population is kept
supplied. The principle effect of this will be for the United States to
control large parts of the oil which the world possesses. There are some
people who say this war was fought because of oil. I honestly don't
believe it. But that doesn't mean once they have sorted out the first
phase of it, the war won't be used to assert or reassert U.S. economic
hegemony in the region. They want to do it in the Middle East, as well.

Karl Carlile: To reduce the actions of Washington to one of scarce
resources is to miss the entire character of imperialism. The actions of
Washington are a product of the growing contradictions of capitalism.
They are a response to the growing difficulties in maintaining
conditions of profitability. The problem is not scarcity but its very
opposite --surplus. It is the overproduction of capital that explains
Washington's global strategy. It is the growing problem of the
overproduction of capital with regard to the given rate of exploitation
of labour power by capital that is the underlying cause of the general
pattern observed by imperialist capital.

Tariq Ali in his comments and forecasts concerning developments with
regard to Afghanistan has been way off the mark. This defect has been
one common to much of the left. It overestimated the strength of the
Taliban state and underestimated the power of US imperialism. Tariq also
overestimated the relationship between the Pakistan state and the
Taliban state. Instead of seeking to learn from their serious
theoretical and political shortcomings they fall silent on the subject
acting as if history had not highlighted their limitations. Consequently
it is this left that is seeking to suppress history. This left acts as
if it had never misunderstand the nature of the war in Afghanistan.

Karl Carlile
Be free to visit the web site of the Communist Global Group at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/

(Ali's comments are from an interview published in The Progressive)