‘Ten wasted years? The anti-war movement since Iraq’

Quote:

CPGB PUBLIC MEETING

'Ten wasted years? The anti-war movement since Iraq'

The Stop the War Coalition organised a 'conference' (actually a series of self-congratulatory rallies) on February 9 to mark the decade since the mass demonstrations against war on Iraq (read Peter Manson's report here). CPGBers leafleted the meeting for our own March 9 dayschool on the same theme, but with a rather more critical take on the record of the anti-war movement since 2003.

Speakers: Mike Macnair (see his 2005 article on the politics of the StWC) and Moshé Machover (founding member of Israeli socialist organisation Matzpen).

More details and recommending reading will be available soon.

Facebook event here.

Organised by the CPGB. All welcome – plenty of time for discussion.

Location: Calthorpe Arms, 252 Grays Inn Road, London WC1. Map

Starts: 12:00, Saturday March 9 2013

Ends: 17:00, Saturday March 9 2013

Event information

Ten years after the enormous demonstration against the Iraq war on February 15 2003, the world remains a dangerous and unstable place. The invasion of Iraq, the endless bloodshed in Afghanistan, the continued barbarity of Israeli Zionism, imperialist interventions in Mali, Libya, Syria and elsewhere – today’s imperialist world order is defined by barbarism.

The millions on the street in February 2003 showed the potential to stop this carnage. But not only were we unable to prevent that war, we also failed to stop the other imperialist outrages of the past decade. Ten years on, can we seriously say we are strong enough to stop the other conflicts that are looming?

The Stop the War Coalition leadership must bear some responsibility for our present weakness. Marches and demonstrations could never, in and of themselves, stop imperialist war. What was needed was a patient argument with the movement that capitalism itself engenders war – not this or that ‘terrorist’ leader or western government. That meant not just ‘broadness’ in the movement; it meant political clarity. It meant not just demo after demo, but organising our forces into a political party that could challenge the capitalist military state machinery itself. Inevitably – given the lack of a winning strategy – the movement dwindled.

If our movement is to be rebuilt we need to ask some fundamental political and strategic questions about the way forward. The fact that the Stop the War Coalition’s recent official ‘conference’ to commemorate the ten years will feature fifteen headline speakers underlines the coalition leadership’s unwillingness to host such a serious discussion.

Our school will not, therefore, be an uncritical celebration of the anti-war movement over the past ten years, with speaker after speaker reminding the audience of what a terrible and inhuman thing war is. No, it will aim to address the ‘big questions’ of how to build an anti-war movement that can challenge war and imperialism – and win. The school will also see the official launch of a new CPGB book on imperialism: the first English translation of Karl Kautsky's 1898 text, 'Past and Recent Colonial Policy', which features a highly critical introduction by the CPGB's Mike Macnair.

Already comrade Moshé Machover has had this to say about the new book:

'This book is a must-read for every Marxist. Mike Macnair’s Introduction is a penetrating and erudite reexamination not only of Kautsky’s view of colonialism, but also of the whole tradition of Marxist thought on the imperialism, which was influenced, and partly misled, by it. Macnair provides a fresh critical reflection on the classical Marxist literature on the subject, from Hilferding to Lenin, the policies of Comintern and the Leninist tradition. And there are vital lessons for today. It is a tour de force.'