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Islam & socialism
Discrimination against Muslims in Britain has increased
markedly over the last few years. The horrendous, inhuman attack in Beslan,
which outraged the world’s population including the vast majority of Muslims,
will undoubtedly increase anti-Muslim prejudice. HANNAH SELL takes a socialist
approach to how Islamaphobia can be fought, and draws out lessons from the
policies of the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Russian revolution.
BETWEEN ONE-AND-A HALF and two million Muslim people live in
Britain today. In London alone they come from 50 ethnic backgrounds. As a whole,
Muslims are one of the poorest sections of British society. One in seven of
economically active Muslims are unemployed, compared with one in 20 for the
wider population. The two biggest Muslim communities in Britain, those
originating in Pakistan and Bangladesh, are particularly impoverished. For
example, in 1999, 28% of white families lived below the poverty line compared
with 41% of Afro-Caribbean and 84% of Bangladeshi families.
The history of Muslims in Britain has been one of poverty
and discrimination. Historically, however, the discrimination against Muslims in
Britain has been one of many facets of the racism of capitalist society. In
different forms, racism has been an intrinsic part of capitalism since its
inception. Over the last decade, and particularly since the horror of 11
September 2001, there is no doubt that anti-Muslim prejudice – Islamaphobia –
has risen dramatically. While other forms of racism remain, Muslim people face
the sharpest manifestation of discrimination in Britain today. The government
sheds crocodile tears at the increase in racism against Muslims and those who
people ‘perceive’ to be Muslims. Yet it is the government’s policies that have
resulted in a 41% increase in ‘stop and search’ against Asians by the
Metropolitan police. More fundamentally, the government’s participation in
brutal wars of subjugation against Afghanistan and Iraq – both majority Muslim
countries – with all the accompanying propaganda denigrating the peoples of
those countries, has inevitably increased Islamaphobia.
The home secretary, David Blunkett, has suggested that
ethnic minorities have to make greater efforts to ‘integrate’ into British
society, effectively blaming Muslim and other communities for the increase in
racism. In reality, the converse is true. The more hostile society is towards
them, the more ethnic and religious minorities will identify solely with their
own communities. For example, it is true that the strength of many Muslims’
identification with their religion and culture has increased markedly. According
to a recent survey, 74% of British Muslims considered that their religion had a
very important influence on their daily lives – compared to 43% of Hindus and
46% of Sikhs. While there are many reasons for this, there is no doubt that the
increased prejudice against Islam has led many young Muslims to defend their
religion by increasing their identification with it.
However, it is not true that young Muslims in Britain
identify only, or primarily, with the country from which they or, more often,
their parents or grandparents came. Two thirds of all Muslims in Britain are
under 25. Having been brought up in Britain, most have a dual identity, both
part of Britain and alienated from it. These young people have grown up in a
society where they feel under constant threat of arrest because of their colour
and religion. They face increased discrimination in education and the workplace.
They have been enraged by the government’s imperialist warmongering. However,
only a tiny minority have drawn the entirely mistaken conclusion that the
barbaric mass terrorism of reactionary Islamic organisations like al-Qa’ida
offers a way forward. Contrary to tabloid propaganda, 73% of British Muslims are
strongly opposed to terrorist attacks. At the same time, the potential for a
united movement involving Muslim people is shown by the hundreds of thousands of
Muslims who took part in the anti-war movement, alongside other sections of the
population, in the biggest demonstrations ever in Britain.
How should Marxists approach the Muslim communities of
Britain? Our starting point is to stand firmly against anti-Islamic
discrimination, and in defence of the right of all Muslims, regardless of their
class or outlook, to be able to live free of Islamaphobia. Concretely, this
means fighting for the right of Muslims to practise their religion freely,
including the right to choose what they wear. Genuine Marxism has nothing in
common with those on the far-left in France who failed to oppose the ban on
young Muslim women wearing headscarves in school. We have to actively defend the
right of all to practise whatever religion they choose – or to practise none –
free from discrimination and prejudice.
This does not mean that we see the entire Muslim population
of Britain as one homogenous and progressive block. On the contrary, many
factors, such as class, ethnicity and outlook divide the Muslim population.
There are 5,400 Muslim millionaires in Britain, most of whom made their fortunes
exploiting other Muslims. There are small Muslim communities that are extremely
wealthy – for example just 88 Kuwaitis, most of whom are resident in Britain,
have invested £55 billion in the British economy. While we have to defend the
right of these billionaires to practise their religion free of repression, we
also have to attempt to convince working-class Muslims that they have
diametrically opposed interests to these people, and that the road to liberation
lies in finding common cause with other sections of the working class worldwide
but, as they are living in Britain, first and foremost here.
For socialists, the programme we put forward should always
be aimed at encouraging the unity of the working class as part of the process of
raising its confidence and level of understanding. That is why our sister
organisation in Northern Ireland has always fought for unity of the Catholic and
Protestant working class. In Britain today, the reactionary policies of Tony
Blair and New Labour are fostering division – we have to attempt to cut across
that.
Historically, there are strong traditions of unity in
Britain between Muslim workers and other sections of the working class. This
stems from the important role played by the best elements of the labour movement
in fighting racism. Consequently, black and Asian workers, including Muslims,
formed a strong bond with the labour movement even though the majority did not
come from an urban background in their home countries. In the 1970s, black and
Asian workers played a key role in many industrial struggles. The Grunwicks
strike against low pay in 1976, which largely involved Asian women, was one of
the key battles of the decade.
As a result of these positive traditions, until recently,
Muslim people in Britain have tended to support the Labour Party. One survey in
1992, for example, concluded that: "Muslims are loyal to the Labour Party
because they believe it to be for the working class, and also the Labour Party
is far less racist in both attitude and practise than other parties,
particularly the Conservative Party". A Mori poll following the 1997 general
elections showed that 66% of Asian voters and 82% of black voters voted for
Labour, much higher than the national average of 44%. In comparison, the
Conservatives gained only 22% of the Asian vote.
However, New Labour today in no sense represents the
interests of the working class. On the contrary, it is now a party of the ruling
class, within which the unions are powerless. No wonder that not only Muslims,
but a majority of the working class, no longer believe that the Labour Party is
‘for them’. Disillusionment is particularly profound amongst working-class
Muslim voters. New Labour’s racist policies, despite having a more sophisticated
gloss than those of the Tories, have deeply disillusioned most Muslims. But it
is the war on Iraq that has acted to decisively break many Muslims from their
traditional support for Labour. An opinion poll before the European elections
reported that Labour’s support had fallen from 75% of Muslim voters at the last
general election to only 38%.
While the anti-war movement gave a glimpse of the potential
to win working-class Muslims disillusioned with Labour to a class alternative,
this is not automatic. A vital precondition is that, following the complete
betrayal of New Labour, the labour movement proves again and again in practise
that it is determined to fight racism and Islamaphobia. But socialists also have
to put the case for a class and socialist approach to Muslims. It is a real step
forward that Muslims and socialists marched side by side in the anti-war
movement. But we should not leave our discussions with anti-war Muslims at the
level of our common opposition to the imperialist occupation of Iraq. We should
extend the discussion into class issues here in Britain – including a programme
and strategy for fighting New Labour’s privatisation and cuts. We must also
raise the need for a political alternative to New Labour – a new mass party that
brings together the anti-war movement with trade unionists and anti-cuts
campaigners – a party that represents and organises all sections of the working
class.
In the course of these discussions it will be sometimes
necessary to raise issues on which there is not complete agreement between
socialists and some Muslims. For example, understandably given the racism that
exists, a growing number of Muslims are demanding separate Muslim schools. On
the one hand, we have to fight against racism and discrimination in schools, and
for the right of all students to have the facilities to practise their own
religion. However, this does not mean supporting separate Muslim schools, any
more than we support other religious schools. We have to patiently explain that
this road will lead to greater segregation and isolation of the Muslim
communities which, in turn, will lead to increased racism against them.
Equally, while we campaign for the right of young Muslim
women to choose to wear the veil, we also have to make it clear that we support
their right to choose not too, even when that means coming into conflict with
some other Muslims.
Respect’s mistaken approach
UNFORTUNATELY, THIS CLASS approach has not been adopted by
the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Respect, the new electoral coalition it has
formed with George Galloway MP, has had some electoral success. This has been
largely achieved by appealing to Muslims. In the European elections it produced
a specific leaflet aimed at Muslims which described Respect as "the party for
Muslims". Under the headline, George Galloway – Fighter for Muslims, it said:
"Married to a Palestinian doctor, teetotal, he has strong religious principles
about fighting injustice. He was expelled by Blair because he refused to
apologise for his anti-war stance. Our Muslim MPs stayed silent or supported the
war. Who do you want to be our voice?"
While it is right to advertise Galloway’s anti-war
credentials and to attack Muslim MPs for failing to oppose the war, the rest of
this statement is a highly opportunist attempt to appeal to Muslims on the basis
of their religion. Instead, socialists should be attempting to convince those
Muslims we can reach of socialist ideas – especially the young working-class
Muslims who make up a majority of Britain’s Muslim population.
If Respect was taking advantage of this situation to step in
and win Muslims, alongside other sections of the working-class, to genuine
socialism, it would be commendable. Instead, it is appealing to Muslims as a
bloc in the hope of making short-term electoral gains. In fact, the history of
Muslim engagement in politics has shown that this approach does not work. No
doubt some Muslim New Labour politicians went into politics with the intention
of helping their communities. However, unless they have taken a socialist
approach they have failed to do so. It is entirely wrong, for example, for
Galloway to explain that he will not stand against Mohammed Sawar, MP for
Glasgow Govan, because he is a Muslim. Sawar has consistently voted with New
Labour on every issue. Although he broke the whip to vote against the war, even
on Iraq he has since voted with the government on every occasion. The fact that
he is a Muslim does not mean he stands in the interests of ordinary Muslims. At
local level, Muslim councillors have tended to come from the small Muslim elites
rather than from the working class. More importantly, the majority has
persistently carried through New Labour’s Blairite policies.
At the same time as failing to raise class consciousness
amongst Muslims, Respect, if it continues down this path, could foster dangerous
divisions within the working class between Muslim and other communities. If
Respect gains by being seen as a Muslim party which does not address the needs
of other sections of the working class, it could push other sections away and
reinforce racist and divisive ideas.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the road Respect is on. In
the recent Leicester South by-election, Respect received a creditable vote. Its
candidate was Yvonne Ridley, the journalist who converted to Islam after being
captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Once again, Respect appealed to the
Muslim community on a purely religious basis. The special leaflet it aimed at
the Muslim community quoted a local community leader saying that Ridley was "…
the only MUSLIM [capitals in original] candidate", and that "Muslims will play a
pivotal role in the election". The leaflet gave no other reason for voting for
Respect.
Russian revolution as justification
IN ORDER TO justify its political opportunism in Britain
today, the SWP has been rifling through history to try and find an example which
backs its approach. It is clear from a recent article in Socialist Review by
Dave Crouch that the SWP believes that the attitude of the Bolsheviks in the
aftermath of the Russian revolution can be used to back its stance.
While Crouch’s article gives an interesting account of the
events that took place it is completely one-sided – with its emphasis clearly
tailored to justify the SWP’s attitude to Respect – and, in being so,
miseducates its readers. In a much longer article on the same subject, published
in the SWP’s theoretical journal, International Socialism, in 2002, Crouch shows
he is capable of taking a somewhat more balanced approach. Ironically, in that
article he criticises another author on the subject for discussing the "national
policy [of the Bolsheviks] in almost hermetic isolation from pre-revolutionary
society, 1917, and the Stalinist counter-revolution". But in Socialist Review he
makes exactly that mistake because he completely fails to point out the vast
differences between the situation of Marxists in Britain today and in Russia in
the years immediately after the revolution, merely stating that "we can learn
from and be inspired by [the Bolsheviks’] achievements".
For example, the Red Army did take part in a number of
military alliances with pan-Islamic forces. However, this was in a situation of
civil war. Numerous capitalist armies were attacking and attempting to crush the
first successful workers’ revolution in collaboration with local ruling classes,
dominated by the big landlords. The civil war was particularly desperately
fought in the predominantly Muslim areas of Central Asia. Direct comparisons
with Britain today are obviously severely limited.
This does not mean that there are not valuable lessons we
can learn from the pioneering work of the Bolsheviks. But Crouch’s article only
tells half a tale. It concentrates almost exclusively on the points of unity
between Muslim leaders and the Bolsheviks, without explaining the political
differences, conflicts and complications that existed or how the Bolsheviks
attempted to win the Muslim masses to a Marxist programme. Without saying so
explicitly, the article also gives the completely incorrect impression that
Islam was an intrinsically more progressive religion than others because it was
primarily the religion of oppressed and colonised peoples, and that the
Bolsheviks therefore treated Muslims in a fundamentally different way to others.
In fact, while Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky correctly
treated the religious rights of all oppressed minorities with extreme
sensitivity, this was part and parcel of their approach to the national question
– where their aim was at every stage to minimise division and differences
between different sections of the working class. They understood that to achieve
this it was necessary to demonstrate again and again that Soviet power was the
only road to national liberation for the oppressed nationalities of what had
been the tsarist Russian empire, what Lenin called a "prison house of nations".
They did this, however, without lowering the banner of international
working-class unity. Where concessions to nationalist forces were made it was
openly and honestly explained why the concessions were necessary, at the same
time as the Bolsheviks continued to clearly argue for a Marxist programme
amongst the masses of the oppressed territories.
This has to be viewed in its context. The Bolsheviks were
operating in phenomenally difficult circumstances. Despite the potential for
successful revolutions in other countries, they did not come to pass and so the
first workers’ state was left isolated in an economically backward,
predominantly peasant country. Ultimately, these factors led to the rise of
Stalinism and the crushing of workers’ democracy by a hideous bureaucracy.
These extreme conditions – where the survival of the
revolution literally hung by a thread – forced the workers’ state to make
concessions in all spheres. In 1921, when it was clear that a successful
revolution in another country could not be relied on in the short term, against
the background of mass starvation Lenin was forced to propose the New Economic
Policy, which involved concessions to the market. These overwhelming material
difficulties inevitably had an effect on the ability of the workers’ state to
implement its policies in a whole number of fields.
Nonetheless, the approach to national, religious and ethnic
rights of Lenin and Trotsky, in particular, was a model in the way it combined
sensitivity to national aspirations with a principled approach. This has nothing
in common with either the opportunism of the SWP or the narrow, rigid approach
of some others on the left.
Right of nations to self-determination
THE APPROACH OF the Bolsheviks towards the Muslim population
did not flow primarily from the question of religion in itself, but rather how
religion related to the right of nations to self-determination. The unification
of countries and the solution of the national question is one of the key tasks
of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, along with the elimination of feudal and
semi-feudal relations on the land and the introduction of bourgeois democracy.
These tasks had never been completed in tsarist Russia, which was a semi-feudal
absolute monarchy. The Bolsheviks understood that, given the belated development
of the bourgeoisie as a class in Russia and its mortal fear of revolutionary
movements of the working class, the Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of
carrying out the tasks of its own revolution.
It was Trotsky who, in his theory of permanent revolution,
was the first to fully draw the conclusion that this task would fall on the
shoulders of the working class, drawing behind it the peasant masses. Trotsky
explained that, important as the role of the peasantry was, because of its
heterogeneous and scattered character it was incapable of acting independently,
but would always be pulled behind either the ruling class or the working class.
Trotsky went on to explain that the working class would not
stop at the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution but would pass on to
the tasks of the socialist revolution in an ‘uninterrupted’ fashion. Lenin drew
the same conclusions later, in his April Theses of 1917. In the revolution of
October 1917, the working class did indeed move straight from the tasks of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution to the beginnings of the socialist revolution.
These tasks were far greater in the territories of the
Russian empire than in Russia itself. While different regions had different
characteristics, the general picture was of extremely undeveloped economies and
populations made up overwhelmingly of poor peasants. If the liberal bourgeoisie
was weak and cowardly in Russia, it was virtually non-existent in most of these
territories. What working class existed was often overwhelmingly made up of
Russian émigrés, and the small membership of the Bolsheviks that existed before
the revolution mostly came from this strata. All of these factors were
particularly acute in Central Asia, which was predominantly Muslim. But it would
be wrong to conclude that the backward features of Central Asia – such as the
universality of kalym (bride price) – had any connection to it being
predominantly Muslim. These features were a result of the feudal economic and
social relations that existed, and the situation was little different in
similarly underdeveloped regions that were predominantly Christian.
Lenin and Trotsky clearly understood the enormous
difficulties the new workers’ state faced in beginning to solve the national
question in these regions. The imperialist domination by Russian tsarism had
been felt deeply and there had been determined and bloody struggles against that
oppression as recently as 1916. It was therefore vital to demonstrate again and
again to the nationalities that had been oppressed by tsarism that Soviet power
was not a new form of imperialism but the only route by which they could achieve
national liberation.
Hence the constitution, adopted in July 1918, made it clear
that regional soviets (councils) based on ‘a particular way of life and national
composition’ could come together to decide whether, and on what basis, they
would enter the Russian Socialist Federative Republic (RSFSR). However,
constitutions alone were insufficient. The carrying through of the tasks of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution meant assisting in the development of a national
culture which had never been allowed to flower before. For example, after
decades of ‘Russification’, the use of local languages was encouraged, including
in several cases the development of a written form for the first time.
There was no contradiction between this approach and the
internationalism of the Bolsheviks. Only by being the best fighters for the
national liberation of the oppressed could Soviet Russia show that the road to
liberation lay with the world’s working class and specifically with the working
class of Russia. However, this approach was not understood by all of the
Bolsheviks, a layer of whom tended to see the support of nations to
self-determination as in contradiction to their internationalism – an approach
which, in reality, played into the hands of Great Russian nationalism. By
contrast, it was Lenin’s extremely skilled and sensitive approach which meant
that the RSFSR included many of the nationalities that had been oppressed by
tsarism – on a free and voluntary basis.
The Bolshevik approach to Islam
AS ISLAM HAD been repressed by tsarism – and was also
oppressed by British and French imperialism worldwide – it was inevitable that
the right to practise their own religion would form a central part of the
demands of the Muslim masses. This was a right that the Bolsheviks recognised
and were, correctly, extremely sensitive towards, just as they were towards
other oppressed religions, including Buddhism and non-Orthodox Christianity.
However, Dave Crouch goes too far when he says that "the
Bolsheviks took a very different attitude to Orthodox Christianity [as compared
to Islam], the religion of the brutal Russian colonists and missionaries". He
adds to this impression by stating that "1,500 Russians were kicked out of the
Turkestani Communist Party because of their religious convictions, but not a
single Turkestani". This is a vast over-simplification. The Russians were
expelled for continuing the colonial oppression of imperial Russia under the
name of the revolution, rather than simply because of their religion.
Of course, the Bolsheviks understood that in the imperial
territories of the tsarist empire Orthodox Christianity played a deeply
reactionary role as one of the major tools of Great Russian oppression.
Nonetheless, particularly in Russia itself, Orthodox Christianity had a dual
nature – it was the oppressive religion of the tsars but it was also what Karl
Marx called the ‘sigh of the oppressed’ Russian masses. Lenin included the
millions of Russian workers, and particularly peasants, who were still believers
in Orthodox Christianity when he said that "we are absolutely opposed to giving
offence to religious conviction".
The genuine Marxism of Lenin and the Bolsheviks bore no
resemblance to the later crimes of Joseph Stalin. While starting from a
materialist, and therefore atheist, standpoint, the Bolsheviks correctly stood
for the right for all to follow whatever religion they wished, or to follow
none. They understood that this meant the complete separation of church from
state. State religion formed one of the major pillars of oppression in feudal
society, and capitalism continues to use it as such in a modified form. In
semi-feudal Russia the apparatus of Orthodox Christianity – the state religion –
was a potentially strong force for reaction. But in a different way that was
true of Islam in the Muslim-dominated republics. While Orthodox Christianity had
been the religion of colonial oppression, and Islam an oppressed religion with
the overwhelming support of the poor masses, the indigenous elite nonetheless
attempted to use support for Islam as a tool for the counter-revolution.
Clearly, the separation of church from state in Central Asia applied not only to
Orthodox Christianity but also to Islam. The Bolsheviks adopted this approach
even though it meant conflict with a section of Muslims. For example, as a
result of this policy, Muslim parents in some areas refused to send their
children to school.
But while they argued for the separation of religion from
the state, the Bolsheviks were very careful to avoid giving the impression that
they were imposing ‘Russian’ society on Central Asia from above. So, where the
population was in favour of sharia (Islamic law) courts they understood that it
would have been seen as Russian imperialism to oppose their existence. This does
not mean that the Bolsheviks accepted the reactionary feudal policies sometimes
pursued by sharia courts, any more than they accepted the reactionary feudal
attitudes that existed in different aspects of society throughout what had been
the Russian empire. However, they understood that reactionary attitudes could
not be abolished but had to be changed over time. That is why they established a
parallel Soviet legal system in Central Asia, to attempt to prove in practise
that the Soviets could offer justice. To safeguard the rights of women, in
particular, use of the sharia courts was only permitted where both parties
involved agreed to it. If one party was unhappy with the outcome, they could
appeal to a higher Soviet court.
Islam divided
ON THIS AND other issues, Crouch gives a one-sided
impression. Reading his article one would imagine that virtually the entire
Muslim population of Central Asia was progressive and allied with the
Bolsheviks. In a two-page article containing numerous examples of the positive
relationship between Muslim forces and the Bolsheviks, only two brief references
are made to the fact that this was not the case in every circumstance. The first
is in passing, in the second paragraph, where Crouch says, "at the same time,
conservative Muslim leaders were hostile to revolutionary change", but no
further explanation of the role of these ‘conservative Muslim leaders’ is given.
The second reference is to state that "the Basmachi movement – an armed Islamic
revolt – broke out". However, the blame for this counter-revolutionary revolt is
laid solely at the feet of the undoubtedly colonial policies of the Tashkent
Soviet in the period of the civil war.
It is true that during the civil war, when large parts of
the East were cut off from Russia, some Russian chauvinist émigrés supported the
revolution because they saw it as the best means of ensuring the continuation of
Russian domination. The policies they enacted in the name of the revolution
continued the tsarist oppression of Muslims. In Tashkent, which was over 90%
Muslim, the soviet – under the leadership of the Social Revolutionary and
Menshevik parties – conducted all its proceedings in the Russian language and
excluded native leaders in an unprincipled and chauvinist fashion. These
reactionary policies played a major role in pushing bands of Islamic guerrillas
to found the Basmachi movement. But by October 1919, the Bolshevik leadership
had re-established contact with Tashkent and from there moved to reverse the
policies of the Tashkent Soviet. As early as April 1918, 40% of the delegates to
the Tashkent Soviet were Muslim.
While Great Russian prejudice undoubtedly remained, the
Bolsheviks went to considerable lengths to show that Soviet power meant national
and cultural freedom. As Crouch describes, "sacred Islamic monuments, books and
objects looted by the tsars were returned to the mosques. Friday – the day of
Muslim celebration – was declared to be the legal day of rest throughout Central
Asia". But none of these measures prevented the Turkish nationalist, Enver
Pasha, from arriving in Central Asia in the autumn of 1921 and immediately
joining the Basmachi revolt, thereby turning disparate tribal factions into a
unified fighting force for Islamic reaction. This was because a section of
Muslims had joined the counter-revolution, not simply because of the crimes of
the Tashkent Soviet, but to win land and territory on which they could exploit
other Muslims. In other words, to further their own class interests.
The Bolsheviks always understood that their task was to
establish the maximum possible unity of the working class and to draw behind
them the peasant masses. This meant convincing the poor Muslim masses that their
cause lay with the revolution, not with reactionary Islamic leaders. Unlike the
SWP today, they consistently attempted to do this.
Indigenous leaders
DAVE CROUCH REFERS to how the Bolsheviks went to great
lengths to try and develop indigenous national leaderships of the soviets in the
newly-formed autonomous states. Policies included establishing the Muslim
Commissariat (Muskom), the leadership of which was largely made up of
non-Bolshevik Muslims. At the same time, there was a policy of recruiting
indigenous peoples to the Communist Party (CP – the new name for the
Bolsheviks), which led to a dramatic increase in the number of Muslim members.
Crouch goes on to say: "There was serious discussion among
Muslims of the similarity of Islamic values to socialist principles. Popular
slogans of the time included: ‘Long live Soviet Power, long live the sharia!’;
‘Religion, freedom and national independence!’ Supporters of ‘Islamic socialism’
appealed to Muslims to set up soviets".
Once again, this glosses over a more complicated reality –
no mention is made of what attitude the Bolsheviks took to ‘Islamic socialism’.
It is, of course, true that, while the CP was Marxist and therefore atheist,
religious belief was in itself no obstacle to joining the party, and many
Muslims were recruited. However, this did not mean that a party would be
admitted to the CP simply because it was Islamic and had pledged its support for
the revolution. Although short-term military alliances were formed with all
kinds of forces, there was only one Muslim organisation on Soviet territory that
the Bolsheviks recognised (on the basis of its programme) as a genuine socialist
party – Azerbaijani Hummet, which later became the nucleus of the CP of
Azerbaijan. Others, like the liberal nationalist Kazakh party, Alash Orda, were
turned down despite their claim to support the revolution because of their
programme and class basis.
Nonetheless, such was the importance of trying to develop
indigenous leaderships of the CP that individuals who had a markedly different
approach to Lenin and Trotsky were allowed to join. One such was Mirsaid
Sultangaliev, who became chairman of the Central Muslim Commissariat after
joining the CP in November 1917. He argued that: "All Muslim colonised peoples
are proletarian peoples and as almost all classes in Muslim society have been
oppressed by the colonialists, all classes have the right to be called
‘proletarians’."
On this basis, he argued that there could be no class
struggle within oppressed nations. In reality, his ideas were a cover for the
interests of the local ruling elite. However, his ideas were consistently and
publicly argued against by the leadership of the CP. For example, the Theses on
the National and Colonial Question, agreed by the second congress of the
Comintern, says clearly: "A struggle is necessary against Panislamism, the
Panasiatic movement and similar currents which tie the liberation struggle
against European and American imperialism to the strengthening of the power of
Turkish and Japanese imperialism, the nobility, the big landlords, the clergy
etc".
It adds: "A determined fight is necessary against the
attempt to put a communist cloak around revolutionary liberation movements that
are not really communist in the [economically] backward countries. The Communist
International has the duty to support the revolutionary movement in the colonies
only for the purpose of gathering the components of the future proletarian
parties – communist in fact and not just in name – in all the backward countries
and training them to be conscious of their special tasks, the special tasks,
that is to say, of fighting against bourgeois-democratic tendencies in their own
nation".
This example shows how utterly different the approach of the
Bolsheviks was to that of the SWP today. It is true that the Manifesto of the
Congress of the Peoples of the East did, as Crouch quotes, call for a holy war,
which today Marxists would not do given its implications. Nonetheless, what was
actually said had a clear class content: "You have often heard the call to holy
war, from your governments, you have marched under the green banner of the
Prophet, but all those holy wars were fraudulent, serving only the interests of
your self-seeking rulers, and you, the peasants and the workers, remained in
slavery and want after these wars… Now we summon you to the first real holy war
for your own well-being, for your own freedom, for your own life!"
And throughout the congress, the points were made again and
again that a struggle had to be conducted against "the reactionary mullahs in
our own midst", and that the interests of the poor in the East lay with the
working class in the West.
The revolution of 1917 inspired millions around the globe.
Huge swathes of poor people from the oppressed nations flocked to the banner of
the first workers’ state, including many Muslims. Lenin and Trotsky’s approach
was to correctly emphasise that to join with Soviet power would mean national
liberation and religious freedom. This was all the more crucial given the
disgusting history of the social-democratic Second International in supporting
colonial rule. However, in doing so they did not lower their socialist
programme. Instead, it was emphasised that the road to freedom did not lie in
uniting with the national bourgeoisie but with the world’s working class in a
struggle against imperialism, and also against their ‘own’ feudal landowners and
those reactionary mullahs who propped them up.
What lessons for today?
IN CENTRAL ASIA, Lenin and Trotsky were attempting to win a
predominantly Muslim peasant population, who were fighting for their national
rights, to the banner of world revolution, against a background of the desperate
struggle for survival of the first workers’ state. In Britain today, we are
attempting to win an oppressed minority of the working class to the banner of
socialism.
In most senses, ours is a far easier task. The vast majority
of Muslims in Britain are part of the working class, and many work in
ethnically-mixed workplaces, especially in the public sector. The mass anti-war
movement gave a glimpse of the potential for a united movement of the working
class, with Muslims playing an integral role. The formation of a new mass
workers’ party, campaigning in a class way on both the general issues and
against racism and Islamaphobia, would act as an enormous pole of attraction to
working-class Muslims at the same time as beginning to cut across racism and
prejudice.
However, the lack of such a party at the present time
encapsulates the difficulties that we face. In the 1990s, the collapse of the
regimes that existed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union provided world
capitalism with the opportunity to dismiss socialism as a failure (they falsely
equated socialism with these Stalinist regimes). This allowed the ruling classes
to conduct an ideological onslaught against the ideas of socialism. The
rightwing of the Labour Party, and of social democracy worldwide, used this
opportunity to abandon any vestiges of socialism in their programme, and to
become clearly capitalist parties.
Over a decade after the collapse of Stalinism, a new
generation is drawing the conclusion that capitalism is incapable of meeting the
needs of humanity – a minority is beginning to draw socialist conclusions.
Nonetheless, consciousness still lags behind objective reality – and socialism
has not yet become a mass force.
Given the vacuum that therefore exists, radical young people
are searching for a political alternative. A small minority of young Muslims in
Britain are looking towards right-wing political Islamic organisations like Al-Muhajiroun.
The lack of alternative offered by such organisations is summed up by their
opposition to the anti-war movement because it involved demonstrating alongside
non-Muslims. The majority of young radical Muslims were repelled by Al-Muhajiroun
and company, and understood the need for a united anti-war movement. The
potential to build a strong base for socialists amongst Muslims undoubtedly
exists – but only if we both engage and argue the case for socialism.
Worldwide there are greater parallels with the situation the
Bolsheviks faced, although the differences remain large. In Iraq today, for
example, socialists face the difficult task of rebuilding independent workers’
organisations and mobilising the workers and poor masses in defence of their
rights – including their right to organise independently of the Islamic
organisations, whose programmes do not offer a way forward for the masses of
Iraq. The lessons of the 20th century highlight the dangers for socialists if we
give up our independent programme. In the Middle East, in particular, it was the
failure of mass CPs to lead the working class to power which allowed right-wing
political Islam to gain. In the Iranian revolution in 1978-79, the working-class
led a movement which overthrew the vicious, imperialist-backed monarchy. The
Communist Tudeh Party was the largest left force in Iran, but did not pursue an
independent working-class policy. Instead, it sought to link up with Ayatollah
Khomeini in spite of the clergy’s attempts to suffocate the independent workers’
movement. The result was the coming to power of the Khomeini regime that crushed
the Tudeh and murdered the most class-conscious workers.
On the other side, despite the enormous difficulties they
faced, the Bolsheviks gave a glimpse of the only road to liberation – including
national and religious freedom – with the world’s working class united around a
socialist programme.
The 80 years since have been a nightmare of national
oppression for the same minorities that tasted liberation in the years after the
revolution. First Stalinism and now capitalism have meant the brutal oppression
of national minorities in the region. Following the horror of Beslan, the danger
of a new Caucasian war is even posed. Quite rightly, the barbarity of the
hostage-takers in Beslan has shocked the world – no cause could justify such
inhuman actions. Nonetheless, the roots of the current situation lie in
successive Russian governments’ horrendous subjugation of the Chechen people –
with 250,000 killed and the capital, Grozny, flattened. It is the utter
inability of capitalism in the 21st century to solve the national question that
will lead to a new generation rediscovering the genuine legacy of the
Bolsheviks.
Box: The Bolsheviks and Muslim women
THE ZHENOTDEL – the Department of Working Women and Peasant
Women – conducted a campaign to reach oppressed peasant women throughout the
Soviet world, often at great personal risk. In Central Asia, Zhenotdol activists
organised ‘Red Yertas’ (tents) where local women were offered instruction in
different crafts, literacy, political education and so on.
However, while the revolution remained isolated, this
approach could not fully succeed – in Muslim areas or in the rest of the Soviet
Union – in essence because the revolution was unable to provide the economic and
cultural means to liberate women. Trotsky describes how the new society planned
to provide free, high-quality "maternity houses, crèches, kindergartens,
schools, social dining rooms, social laundries, first-aid stations, hospitals,
sanatoria, athletic organisations, moving-picture theatres" to give "woman, and
thereby to the loving couple, a real liberation from the thousand-year-old
fetters".
But he goes on to explain that: "It proved impossible to
take the old family by storm – not because the will was lacking, or because the
family was so firmly rooted in men’s hearts. On the contrary, after a short
period of distrust of the government and its crèches, kindergartens and like
institutions, the working women, and after them the more advanced peasants,
appreciated the immeasurable advantages of the collective care of children as
well as the socialisation of the whole family economy. Unfortunately society
proved too poor and little cultured. The real resources of the state did not
correspond to the plans and intentions of the Communist Party. You cannot
‘abolish’ the family; you have to replace it. The actual liberation of women is
unrealisable on a basis of ‘generalised want’. Experience soon proved this
austere truth which Marx had formulated eighty years before". (The Revolution
Betrayed)
‘Generalised want’ was particularly acute in Central Asia.
Practically, this meant that women who broke out of repressive family situations
faced starvation as they had literally no alternative means of support. Even if
the economic means had existed to lift the domestic burden from women and to
allow them an independent economic role, there is no doubt that the new workers’
state would still have faced resistance, particularly in the economically
backward areas where the working class did not yet exist. However, as Trotsky
describes, over a period of time, on the basis of the resources being provided,
the overwhelming majority would have come to understand the advantages of
women’s liberation.
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