A critique of the LIS-ISL
By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 13 December 2024, www.thecommunists.net
The Syrian Revolution which started in March 2011 and finally succeeded in bringing down the Assad dictatorship a few days ago has known supporters as well as enemies amongst self-proclaimed left-wing forces. The RCIT and a few other organisations consistently sided with the heroic struggle of the rebels since the very beginning. [1] In contrast, the Stalinists, Bolivarians and several so-called “Trotskyists” shamefully sided with the tyranny and its Russian and Iranian masters. [2]
However, there has always been also a third category of people – the bystanders. We are talking about those who, while opposing the Assad regime, refused to support the liberation struggle of the Syrian people. They simply took a neutral position and watched from the sidelines while the rebels resisted against the tyranny massacring hundreds of thousands of people. Many of these bystanders sympathized with the revolutionary masses in the first few years but stopped their support as global public opinion lost its interest in the Syrian Revolution.
In the past two and a half weeks when the rebels launched a surprise offensive and liberated Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Daraa and Damascus, most of these bystanders … stood aside. They refused to support the glorious offensive and usually did not even comment on this historic event until the rebels took power.
A characteristic example for such bystanders of the Syrian Revolution is the Latin-American-based “International Socialist League” (ISL or LIS in Spanish) with the Argentinean MST as its “mother section”. A few days after the overthrow of Assad, its leadership finally managed to publish the first statement on the Syrian Revolution since the beginning of the offensive. [3]
The LIS-ISL statement is revealing in several respects. Strangely, it characterises the SDF, led by the Kurdish YPG, as part of the rebel alliance which defeated Assad. This is, of course, nonsense and shows that the authors know about the Syrian Revolution only by hearsay. As a matter of fact, the YPG/SDF, on one hand, courageously defended Kobane and other Kurdish regions against the ultra-reactionary Daesh scum in 2014/15; on the other hand, it shamefully fought since then under the command of U.S. imperialism and, as part of this mission, occupied Eastern Syria. In any case, it was never in an alliance with the rebel forces (HTS and others) which took power a few days ago.
However, the problem with the LIS statement is not limited to factual ignorance. Far worse, it fails to take a position in support of the Syrian Revolution. It rather limits itself to describe the events as a “transcendental” or “very significant development”. While the statement recognises that there was “in 2011, as part of the Arab Spring, … a popular rebellion against the Assad dictatorship”, all this soon degenerated. For them, the Syrian civil war was solely a conflict between reactionary forces since many years.
“Among the rebel political and religious sectors—which were initially more independent—the influence of the US and Turkey has grown, and they will seek to maintain or expand it. Also, the support of other reactionary states, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and the UAE, for various factions cannot be ignored. Such is the complexity of the situation that these imperialist powers can be in alliance in one part of the country while confronting each other in another. (…) As we mentioned, the situation is influenced by imperialist forces, the expansionist Turkish and Islamist sects, including HTS, that whose strategy is a theocratic that does not guarantee the long-postponed democratic, economic and social rights.”
The popular masses – the forgotten subject of history
These “Marxists” forget the small detail that the Syrian civil war involved the popular masses and hundreds of thousand of rebel fighters. Various rebel factions therefore did not only pursue this or that petty-bourgeois nationalist or Islamist utopia but also reflected, in a distorted way, the revolutionary democratic desire of the masses to overthrow the tyranny. This is why Marxists had to side with these rebel forces without lending political support. [4]
For the LIS leadership, the Syrian Revolution is reduced to an amalgam of reactionary – external and internal – forces; for them, the masses are not a historical subject but merely an object of these forces.
It is therefor not surprising that the whole statement does not mention the need for the formation of popular councils or any similar institutions which could organise the masses in their workplaces, neighbourhoods and villages. This is not a secondary issue because there is no democratic, not to speak socialist, outcome of the revolutionary process in Syria if the masses don’t get organised in such councils and if a workers and poor-peasants’ government based on such councils does not take power.
Hence, the LIS-ISL fails to understand that the Syrian civil war – from the beginning to the end – represented a democratic revolution which Marxists had to support unconditionally and despite the non-revolutionary leadership. Unfortunately, many left-wing forces have failed to recognise this fundamental character of one of the most important revolutionary events of the first quarter of the 21st century.
Non-revolutionary forces and the united front tactic
The LIS-ISL comrades will likely object that the leadership of the rebels are petty-bourgeois nationalists and Islamists. However, this is no serious objection. Numerous liberation struggles have been led by Islamist forces – from Abd el-Krim’s forces in the Rif War 1921-26 to the resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Chechnya, Iraq, Egypt, Kashmir, etc. against foreign imperialism and domestic counterrevolution. The Marxist movement has elaborated the united front tactic exactly for such situations where just wars are led by non-revolutionary forces. This means to jointly strike the enemy while retaining full political independence. Such united front can also involve quite reactionary forces in cases in cases where they stand at the helm of objectively progressive wars.
Trotsky and the Fourth International explicitly sided with the legitimate resistance struggle of the Chinese resp. Ethiopian people. They refused to drop their support because of the reactionary character of their leaderships. In arguing against ultraleft sectarians who opposed support for the Chinese struggle, Trotsky stated: ““But Chiang Kai-shek? We need have no illusions about Chiang Kai-shek, his party, or the whole ruling class of China, just as Marx and Engels had no illusions about the ruling classes of Ireland and Poland. Chiang Kai-shek is the executioner of the Chinese workers and peasants. But today he is forced, despite himself, to struggle against Japan for the remainder of the independence of China. Tomorrow he may again betray. It is possible. It is probable. It is even inevitable. But today he is struggling. Only cowards, scoundrels, or complete imbeciles can refuse to participate in that struggle. (…) In participating in the military struggle under the orders of Chiang Kai-shek, since unfortunately it is he who has the command in the war for independence-to prepare politically the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek … that is the only revolutionary policy.“ [5]
Trotsky took the same approach in the case of the Italo-Ethiopian War in 1936. He explicitly argued that socialists must support all forms of aid – including weapons – to the Ethiopian forces. „Of course, we are for the defeat of Italy and the victory of Ethiopia, and therefore we must do everything possible to hinder by all available means support to Italian imperialism by the other imperialist powers, and at the same time facilitate the delivery of armaments, etc., to Ethiopia as best we can.“ [6]
Glorifying the early period of the Baat dictatorship
There is a methodological basis for such failure: the opportunist adaption to Stalinism and the left-liberal public opinion. The statement reveals that such opportunist influence dominates the LIS-ISL leadership. This becomes evident by their contrasting of (reactionary) late period of the dictatorship with its, supposedly “revolutionary and anti-imperialist” early period.
“It must be noted that the rule of the Baath Party in Syria started in the mid-1960s as a somewhat revolutionary, anti-imperialist project under leaders like Saleh Jaded. However, owing to the lack of a Marxist leadership, ideological confusions, zigzags and intraparty disputes, it ended up as a very corrupt crony capitalism, requiring unprecedented and endless state repression of the vast majority of the Syrian population. The degeneration of the regime accelerated after the 1990s with the adoption of pro-market, neoliberal economic policies, resulting in the loss of the popular support it once enjoyed.”
Such a view of the early period of the Baath dictatorship is bizarre to the extreme! The Baath party, which had no mass basis (its membership did not exceed 2,500 at that time), came to power in Syria via a military coup in 1963. After factional power struggles within the ruling party, General Hafez al-Assad took power in another coup in 1970 and implemented the rule of his family clan which just crumbled a few days ago.
While the Baath regime pursued a certain “socialist” and “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, in deeds it was neither one nor the other at any time. It was rather a state-capitalist military dictatorship. Irrespective of its supposed “anti-imperialist” credentials, it sent troops to Lebanon in 1976 to fight against Palestinian and left-wing forces.
The LIS statement saying that the problem of the Baath dictatorship was a “the lack of a Marxist leadership, ideological confusions, zigzags and intraparty disputes“ is ridiculous. A Bonapartist, state-capitalist regime can not be corrected by a Marxist leadership! The best leadership can not change anything if the working class is oppressed instead of dominating state and economy! Hence, authentic Marxists have always fought for a working class-led revolution against such Bonapartist, state-capitalist regimes.
It is no accident that LIS pursues such glorifying views of the early period of the Baath dictatorship. Its second-largest section – the Pakistani “Struggle” group of the late Lal Khan – was part of the international tendency led by Ted Grant and Alan Woods for decades until it split on organisational and tactical questions a few years ago. [7] Grant elaborated the theory of “proletarian Bonapartism” [8] and wrongly considered Syria under Assad (like Yemen, [9] or Ethiopia) as a “deformed workers’ state” similar to the USSR. [10] This Stalinophile method has also been an important reason why Lal Khan’s “Struggle” group (like Alan Woods’ IMT) supported the military coup of General Sisi in Egypt in July 2013. [11]
In conclusion, we can state that the failure of LIS to support an authentic revolution like the popular uprising in Syria stems from their “lack of a Marxist leadership“. It is high time to change this!
[1] The RCIT has published a number of booklets, statements and articles on the Syrian Revolution since its inception in March 2011 which can be read on a special sub-section on this website: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/collection-of-articles-on-the-syrian-revolution/.
[2] On our assessment of the downfall of Assad see e.g. Michael Pröbsting: Syria: The People Brought Down the Assad Tyranny! The Glorious Syrian Revolution has won but it is only a first step! 8 December 2024, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/syria-the-people-brought-down-the-assad-tyranny/; Juan Giglio: Syria: No peaceful or orderly transition, the Baathist regime must be demolished and local councils must be rebuilt so that the people can take charge of the revolutionary process! 12.12.2024, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/for-a-revolutionary-transition-in-syria/
[3] ISL: Syria: One bloody dictator less and an uncertain future, 12 December 2024, https://lis-isl.org/en/2024/12/12/siria-un-dictador-sangriento-menos-un-futuro-incierto/. All quotes are from this statement if not indicated otherwise.
[4] See on this e.g. the following two pamphlets by Michael Pröbsting: Syria and Great Power Rivalry: The Failure of the „Left“. The bleeding Syrian Revolution and the recent Escalation of Inter-Imperialist Rivalry between the US and Russia – A Marxist Critique of Social Democracy, Stalinism and Centrism, 21 April 2018, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/syria-great-power-rivalry-and-the-failure-of-the-left/; Is the Syrian Revolution at its End? Is Third Camp Abstentionism Justified? An essay on the organs of popular power in the liberated area of Syria, on the character of the different sectors of the Syrian rebels, and on the failure of those leftists who deserted the Syrian Revolution, 5 April 2017, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/syrian-revolution-not-dead/.
[5] Leon Trotsky: On the Sino-Japanese War (1937), in: Leon Trotsky on China, Pathfinder Press, New York 1976, p. 723 resp. 726
[6] Leon Trotsky: The Italo-Ethiopian Conflict (1935), in: Writings of Leon Trotsky (1935-36), Pathfinder Press, New York 1970, p. 41
[7] On Lal Khan’s “Struggle” group see e.g. Michael Pröbsting: The Pro-Bourgeois Opportunism of LIS/MST. On the Pakistani section of LIS/MST and its praise for the capitalist dictator Z. A. Bhutto and his PPP, 15 June 2023, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/the-pro-bourgeois-opportunism-of-lis-mst/#anker_1; on the tradition of Ted Grant and Alan Woods see e.g. our pamphlet by Michael Pröbsting: The Poverty of Neo-Imperialist Economism. Imperialism and the national question – a critique of Ted Grant and his school (CWI, ISA, IMT), January 2023, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/grantism-imperialism-and-national-question/.
[8] Ted Grant: The Unbroken Thread, Fortress Books, London 1989, p. 350
[9] See on this e.g. By Yossi Schwartz: Was the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen a Deformed Workers State? August 2015, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/south-yemen/.
[10] On the Stalinist bureaucratic workers states see e.g. Michael Pröbsting: China: On Stalinism, Capitalist Restoration and the Marxist State Theory. Notes on the transformation of social property relations under one and the same party regime, 15 September 2024, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/china-on-stalinism-capitalist-restoration-and-marxist-state-theory/
[11] See on this e.g. Michael Pröbsting: The Coup d’État in Egypt and the Bankruptcy of the Left’s “Army Socialism”, 8.8.2013, https://rcitarchive.wordpress.com/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/egypt-and-left-army-socialism/