On Syria: what's the point of the left?
Pham Binh, Clay Claiborne, and to a lesser extent Louis Proyect are driving me a little crazy with their martyr-complex-within-the-left over Syria - the whole, "if you think our views are objectionable, it's because you can't stomache debate or heterodoxy" thing. Well, I am into heterodoxy. Sometimes I'm heterodox in discussions within my group more or less for the hell of it. But I'm not buying their aggrieved heterodoxy, which sounds like something out of a Monty Python routine. There: boom: blistering ad hominem attack! I suspect my blog isn't important enough for that to cause much of a stir.
Now there is a substantive issue around this which I think is worth raising, which tends to be slightly underanalyzed in these discussions; I'll take Binh and Mike Ely as the most verbose participants. (Seymour is a bit more nuanced, and IMO his analysis of what is going on in Syria seems more considered than Claiborne's, which tends to read like a tendentious fact dump.) I'm not saying that the participants in this debate are unaware of these questions; in fact, they come up regularly, but I think it's worth taking a step back from the fast-and-furious exchange of fine points about what is happening (e.g. about the nature of the Free Syrian forces, Ba'athism, what role imperialism is playing and looks to play, etc.) to look at why we're having the debate and why our groups or blogs discuss this stuff or have statements about it in the first place.
Why do we bother commenting on any of this stuff as a left, when we aren't strong enough to have a direct effect on foreign policy in major imperialist countries like the US and Britain? I can see a few possible reasons:
1) The far left is often the backbone of antiwar / anti-intervention movements, so debates over intervention on the far left play an important role in whether and how an anti-intervention movement coheres. For example, during the heyday of the 2003 antiwar movement in the US, all of the major antiwar coalitions were held together by people who were trained in far left cadre groups. (Sometimes United for Peace and Justice is cited as an exception to this, because the people who gave it cohesion didn't come out of *one, single* cadre group, but they still come out of the same broad, far-left set of traditions, even if they have a different balance sheet on Leninism, a different sense of how revolutionaries should relate to mass politics, etc.)
2) Positions we express play an educative role for people who are getting exposed to our politics. We don't have shadow governments, at least outside of a few places like Greece, but statements on major political issues are the closest thing. People who have never thought about far left politics can read these statements and debates and think about what the world would look like if it were run by people who had these kinds of principles, or, to be less authoritarian about it, if these kinds of perspectives were in the mix.
3) The discussions play an educative role for our own members, co-thinkers, sympathizers, close fellow travelers, and interlocutors. If we were less marginalized or part of a hegemonic bloc, how would we do things differently?
4) There's also an idea that a revolution abroad deserves any and all material support we can muster for it, regardless of strings attached, since any advantage could mean the difference between being massacred and winning or surviving. A slightly different idea within that same general notion is the idea that we have a duty to prevent a possible massacre of revolutionaries / Free Syrian forces. (This line of argument was perhaps slightly more prominent in the debate over Libya, where a massacre was presented as immanent, Ghaddafi as "mad" etc.)
For people who hold this view, such as Binh, it is presented as the only thing that matters. And indeed, this condition if operative, holds a lot more weight to it than the second and third. To Binh et al, the first condition is simply not relevant in Syria and, recently, Libya, and they see the application of that condition to those countries as the height of error for a "kneejerk" anti-imperialism.
To those of us on the "anti-imperialist" side*, the pretext of 4) is fairly incoherent, moralistic, and missing an analysis of how far-left ideas have any impact on current reality, which should be understood through the lens of 1-3). To be sure there's also a question of 5) direct support that we might provide to revolutionaries abroad, which might include some of what was done during the Central America solidarity movement or (looking back further in history) with the International Brigades in Spain, but let's leave that aside for now since it's not really at issue in this controversy. The issue is whether the role of imperialism is always counter-revolutionary or can be "pressured" to intervene in a progressive manner, whether the dangers of counter-revolutionary activity mean that we shouldn't call for such intervention, whether the dangers of a revolution being crushed by the likes of Assad mean that we should call for such intervention despite the dangers, etc.
One problem with these debates is that they tend to a sort of idealism where implicitly, we're imagining ourselves legislating specific policies of an imperialist government, without reckoning around the fact that a) if some version of "us" was in power, presumably we'd be trying to dismantle imperialism, not set policies for it, and b) 1-3) above are the real-world mediations in which we can actually think through our relations to these questions. I suppose we could start protesting in favor of imperialist intervention, but unlike "hands off X" which is fairly concrete, "stop your criminal inaction in regards to Y" is incredibly vague. We might be able to imagine something we could do with the resources imperialist governments have at their command which would be restrained in its intervention, effective in stopping a massacre, and respectful of the autonomy of the people actually engaged in the fight on the ground, but it's extremely unlikely that, in responding to pressure for intervention, imperialism would intervene in that way. To the contrary, imperialist governments will intervene with their own interests in mind. (Of course I'm not saying anything here that is a surprise to anyone involved in this debate, in fact Binh says this more or less exactly in his analysis, but he seems to forget it when he talks about what the left should do.)
In the case of Syria, to my understanding the Free Syrian forces have not called for military intervention, unlike the case of Libya. Given this, it's not at all clear to me what Binh et al think the stakes of their argument is, beyond calling the rest of us dinosaurs who are hostile to debate, etc. They go out of their way to criticize outliers, e.g. people in Australia - possibly Arabs, from the pictures? - who were demonstrating in solidarity with Assad, or criticizing the unsavory associations of an email forwarded to a list. I.e. they are heaping criticisms on actions that don't actually represent the positions of most of the anti-imperialist left on Syria.
I think Binh et al are right that the far left shouldn't be trying to coalesce an antiwar movement around a "hands off Syria" slogan in the current situation. But as I've said, calling for an intervention that even the Free Syrian forces aren't requesting is not what we should be doing either. So what should we be doing? Lots of educative work and discussion, i.e. in the categories of 2) and 3) above, and perhaps direct support ( 5) ) to the extent that that is meaningful and possible.
Even if Syrian forces were to request direct military support (which of course happened in the case of Libya), I don't believe the role of the US left would be to demand that imperialism accede to this, though conversely, we shouldn't try to block it either. Instead, we should offer our analysis and be clear that this isn't a series of events which we are in a position to influence in a positive way. The rebels certainly have a right to request aid, and we aren't in a position to criticize that request, but we are in a position to criticize the machinations of our own imperialists. Some forms of that request - requests for imperialist governments to supply them with arms, as well as humanitarian support - deserve clear support, though of course those kinds of support never come without strings. The minute that US/NATO advisors, troops, and contractors start to get involved, the automatic extent of machinations increases - as well as the possibility that the US military will engage in its own massacre, a disregard for the lives of brown people we saw to such a great extent in Iraq. (Some of the current discussion about Syria, I think, is occasioned by a foreshortened historical memory; in Libya's regime change, a lot of blood was on Ghaddafi's hands, and imperialism's military role was somewhat restrained, but thinking back just as far as Iraq should make it obvious that Libya is the exception rather than the rule here.)
So why did I write this post, just to argue that we should do what we're doing, i.e. debate this matter, just dispensing with the idea that we can have much of an impact around this? While I appreciate the enthusiasm of Binh et al for the Arab Spring and for the importance of an allegiance to this social process, and agree with them a a significant extent in this, the shrill urgency of their posts reeks more of "humanitarian" moralism than serious analysis. There's almost always a moralism with which people on the part of the left who are more accomodating to imperialism approach those who are more critical, as though a stigma clings to us. In fact, though I disagree with the Marcyite line in some important ways, I think the Marcyite comrades deserve to be completely cleared of this kind of treatment, and instead deserve to be engaged in serious and substantive debate. In the current debate over Syria, it's hard to avoid the feeling that Binh, Claiborne, and Proyect are attempting to cover an even broader section of the left with this dirty stigma, and by extension, to scrub themselves clean in the light of liberal public opinion.
***
I wrote the first section, above, on August 17, and it's now Sept. 1. I meant to tighten up the argument quite a bit. Instead, I've just added some links and cleaned up a couple of unclear phrases, but I'll have to leave it in this kind of speculative, fragmentary, recursive and questioning state.
The following is a recapitulation and a coda:
A few days ago, Binh posted a new piece which engages directly with this whole line of questioning, which does in fact advocate finding a positive valence for 4): "how can Western (or in my case, American) activists concretely aid and abet the Syrian revolution?" It quickly becomes clear that Binh is not talking about a new version of the International Brigades in Spain, which would certainly be concrete - and might allow some real examination of the debate over the nature of the Free Syrian forces. Instead, he's talking about allying with "revolutionary Syrians" in the West, particularly going to a rally organized for tomorrow by the Syrian American Council and other Syrian ex-pat groups. Saying that this is a gathering of "revolutionary Syrians" rather than, say, Syrians who find themselves aligned with US foreign policy objectives is of course an interpretation that's dependent on Binh's rather suspect premise, that the emancipatory impulse of the Arab Spring continues unalloyed in the Libyan and Syrian uprisings. The reality seems to be more "variegated and discordant," as Seymour puts it. And certainly this is as true if not moreso when it comes to international support.
The slogans of this march deserve a little discussion. "World Silence Is Killing Syria." Well, even if we think that on balance the variegated, discordant, contradictory process of Syrian revolution deserves what Trots used to call "military but not political" support in the fight with Assad - which I take it meant, cheering for one side to win even though their politics have some contradictory and even reactionary elements, not, again, providing actual arms or fighting bodies - the materiality of this claim is worth examining. Assad's military is killing Syrians involved in the uprising, with weapons supplied by Iran and Russia. World silence is not killing anybody; in fact the ideal situation would probably be for world governments of all stripes to stop intervening and leave things to the Syrians, in Syria. Under such a situation I suspect that Assad's regime would topple, though I'm far, far from Syria and am really just offering a half-informed guess. When the organizers of this rally talk about "world silence" they are clearly not tallking about Russian or Iranian silence, but global, liberal public opinion, in this case to be hegemonized by US and Western European governments, though called into action by their people. So, what exactly is the rally calling for global public opinion, in this case aligned with a possibility of action by the US and Western European governments, to do?
Can we pressure our own imperialism to take progressive stances in the world, much as we would try to pressure our government at home to enact reforms, even understanding that a capitalist state will always enact those reforms least objectionable to the global leading social groups (the global 1%, ruling class, etc.)? Or do we think that the nature of imperialism is such that it can never take a progressive stance in the world, except in very accidental, short-term ways, and therefore leftists in the west are obligated to do one of two things in regard to our own imperialism: 1) call for it to keep its hands off; 2) refrain from energetically calling for 1)?
I tend towards this latter view, though I suppose someone holding Binh's view could reply that in the case where our own imperialist government's aims momentarily coincide with the material needs of a progressive uprising, we should call for our government to intervene, since even though that is problematic, it is a lesser evil to wholesale slaughter of freedom fighters under a Ghaddafi or an Assad. Sort of a global lesser evilism argument. The problem is that our own imperialist government's aims and interests can shift very quickly back to a situation in which they will impose their straightjacket of hegemony over a region. In such a situation, it's understandable that freedom fighters of whatever heterogenous stripes might still reluctantly call for limited intervention, prefering that to being slaughtered. And if that's the case, US revolutionaries do face contradictory principles. There are certain times when we should desist from an energetic denunciation of imperialism's every move, and for me, the intervention in Libya was one of those times. We should still offer a critical, public perspective on what imperialism is doing, but, during the Libyan uprising, I would not have participated in a "hands off Libya" rally, because Libyan freedom fighters, however heterogenous, were calling for Western aid and intervention.
The Free Syrian forces are not calling for this kind of direct intervention, at this point, but neither does a "hands off Syria" rally seem quite timely, either. Of course in a general sense, we can always demand, "imperialism: hands off the world!" But the specifics of this context demand attention.
Against the ethics of demanding speeech by world public opinion, to coincide with possible (but undefined) action by the most dominant imperialist powers of the US and NATO, it seems to me that the present moment calls precisely for silence in a Wittgenstinian sense: whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. Of course we can speak and are speaking volumes, analytically and critically, but this is a kind of speech which is irreducible to slogans, demands, or pressure politics. I realize some people will be critical of the idea of a Left that doesn't always strive to be vigorously active, always pressing a concrete demand or program or direct action in every situation. But the murkiness of this situation calls for reserve. If "we" were in charge - not the frail Left as it is, but a hegemony of the world's subordinate social groups that we might imagine - the whole terms of the conflict would be very different. Such a situation calls for critical reflection and deepening our understanding of the specific social processes in play in Syria, not sloganeering and demands.
---
*I'm using this phrase in Binh's sense, though it should be observed that this side includes a really broad range, from those like the ISO who have no love whatsoever for Assad's regime and hope it is overthrown by pretty much any social force to those like the Marcyites who might see the Free Syria forces as imperialist puppets and see the Assad regime as still in some way progressive or at least representative of legitimate national autonomy. My own sketch of a view is that Ba'athism in Syria was responsible for real corruption, cronyism, and crimes, but that it also may have protected some social gains of previous social processes, around the time of pan-Arab independence movements, from neoliberal reversal. In the face of the Arab Spring, I don't think it's coherent to defend the deformed, degenerated, what have you remainders of a previous social process that was itself never "revolutionary" in a fully consummated sense. Even if imperialism is bound to intervene and try to contain what's happening in the Arab World / North Africa and Southwest Asia within a neoliberal framework that can't escape the current world system, revolutionaries have to take a risk to align themselves with a process that is pro-democracy and anti-austerity, with elements that would threaten a fundamental realignment of power in the region and the world if realized. But this is just a sketch of a view that would need more development, in a post where I'm trying to engage this discussion from a different level of abstraction.
Now there is a substantive issue around this which I think is worth raising, which tends to be slightly underanalyzed in these discussions; I'll take Binh and Mike Ely as the most verbose participants. (Seymour is a bit more nuanced, and IMO his analysis of what is going on in Syria seems more considered than Claiborne's, which tends to read like a tendentious fact dump.) I'm not saying that the participants in this debate are unaware of these questions; in fact, they come up regularly, but I think it's worth taking a step back from the fast-and-furious exchange of fine points about what is happening (e.g. about the nature of the Free Syrian forces, Ba'athism, what role imperialism is playing and looks to play, etc.) to look at why we're having the debate and why our groups or blogs discuss this stuff or have statements about it in the first place.
Why do we bother commenting on any of this stuff as a left, when we aren't strong enough to have a direct effect on foreign policy in major imperialist countries like the US and Britain? I can see a few possible reasons:
1) The far left is often the backbone of antiwar / anti-intervention movements, so debates over intervention on the far left play an important role in whether and how an anti-intervention movement coheres. For example, during the heyday of the 2003 antiwar movement in the US, all of the major antiwar coalitions were held together by people who were trained in far left cadre groups. (Sometimes United for Peace and Justice is cited as an exception to this, because the people who gave it cohesion didn't come out of *one, single* cadre group, but they still come out of the same broad, far-left set of traditions, even if they have a different balance sheet on Leninism, a different sense of how revolutionaries should relate to mass politics, etc.)
2) Positions we express play an educative role for people who are getting exposed to our politics. We don't have shadow governments, at least outside of a few places like Greece, but statements on major political issues are the closest thing. People who have never thought about far left politics can read these statements and debates and think about what the world would look like if it were run by people who had these kinds of principles, or, to be less authoritarian about it, if these kinds of perspectives were in the mix.
3) The discussions play an educative role for our own members, co-thinkers, sympathizers, close fellow travelers, and interlocutors. If we were less marginalized or part of a hegemonic bloc, how would we do things differently?
4) There's also an idea that a revolution abroad deserves any and all material support we can muster for it, regardless of strings attached, since any advantage could mean the difference between being massacred and winning or surviving. A slightly different idea within that same general notion is the idea that we have a duty to prevent a possible massacre of revolutionaries / Free Syrian forces. (This line of argument was perhaps slightly more prominent in the debate over Libya, where a massacre was presented as immanent, Ghaddafi as "mad" etc.)
For people who hold this view, such as Binh, it is presented as the only thing that matters. And indeed, this condition if operative, holds a lot more weight to it than the second and third. To Binh et al, the first condition is simply not relevant in Syria and, recently, Libya, and they see the application of that condition to those countries as the height of error for a "kneejerk" anti-imperialism.
To those of us on the "anti-imperialist" side*, the pretext of 4) is fairly incoherent, moralistic, and missing an analysis of how far-left ideas have any impact on current reality, which should be understood through the lens of 1-3). To be sure there's also a question of 5) direct support that we might provide to revolutionaries abroad, which might include some of what was done during the Central America solidarity movement or (looking back further in history) with the International Brigades in Spain, but let's leave that aside for now since it's not really at issue in this controversy. The issue is whether the role of imperialism is always counter-revolutionary or can be "pressured" to intervene in a progressive manner, whether the dangers of counter-revolutionary activity mean that we shouldn't call for such intervention, whether the dangers of a revolution being crushed by the likes of Assad mean that we should call for such intervention despite the dangers, etc.
One problem with these debates is that they tend to a sort of idealism where implicitly, we're imagining ourselves legislating specific policies of an imperialist government, without reckoning around the fact that a) if some version of "us" was in power, presumably we'd be trying to dismantle imperialism, not set policies for it, and b) 1-3) above are the real-world mediations in which we can actually think through our relations to these questions. I suppose we could start protesting in favor of imperialist intervention, but unlike "hands off X" which is fairly concrete, "stop your criminal inaction in regards to Y" is incredibly vague. We might be able to imagine something we could do with the resources imperialist governments have at their command which would be restrained in its intervention, effective in stopping a massacre, and respectful of the autonomy of the people actually engaged in the fight on the ground, but it's extremely unlikely that, in responding to pressure for intervention, imperialism would intervene in that way. To the contrary, imperialist governments will intervene with their own interests in mind. (Of course I'm not saying anything here that is a surprise to anyone involved in this debate, in fact Binh says this more or less exactly in his analysis, but he seems to forget it when he talks about what the left should do.)
In the case of Syria, to my understanding the Free Syrian forces have not called for military intervention, unlike the case of Libya. Given this, it's not at all clear to me what Binh et al think the stakes of their argument is, beyond calling the rest of us dinosaurs who are hostile to debate, etc. They go out of their way to criticize outliers, e.g. people in Australia - possibly Arabs, from the pictures? - who were demonstrating in solidarity with Assad, or criticizing the unsavory associations of an email forwarded to a list. I.e. they are heaping criticisms on actions that don't actually represent the positions of most of the anti-imperialist left on Syria.
I think Binh et al are right that the far left shouldn't be trying to coalesce an antiwar movement around a "hands off Syria" slogan in the current situation. But as I've said, calling for an intervention that even the Free Syrian forces aren't requesting is not what we should be doing either. So what should we be doing? Lots of educative work and discussion, i.e. in the categories of 2) and 3) above, and perhaps direct support ( 5) ) to the extent that that is meaningful and possible.
Even if Syrian forces were to request direct military support (which of course happened in the case of Libya), I don't believe the role of the US left would be to demand that imperialism accede to this, though conversely, we shouldn't try to block it either. Instead, we should offer our analysis and be clear that this isn't a series of events which we are in a position to influence in a positive way. The rebels certainly have a right to request aid, and we aren't in a position to criticize that request, but we are in a position to criticize the machinations of our own imperialists. Some forms of that request - requests for imperialist governments to supply them with arms, as well as humanitarian support - deserve clear support, though of course those kinds of support never come without strings. The minute that US/NATO advisors, troops, and contractors start to get involved, the automatic extent of machinations increases - as well as the possibility that the US military will engage in its own massacre, a disregard for the lives of brown people we saw to such a great extent in Iraq. (Some of the current discussion about Syria, I think, is occasioned by a foreshortened historical memory; in Libya's regime change, a lot of blood was on Ghaddafi's hands, and imperialism's military role was somewhat restrained, but thinking back just as far as Iraq should make it obvious that Libya is the exception rather than the rule here.)
So why did I write this post, just to argue that we should do what we're doing, i.e. debate this matter, just dispensing with the idea that we can have much of an impact around this? While I appreciate the enthusiasm of Binh et al for the Arab Spring and for the importance of an allegiance to this social process, and agree with them a a significant extent in this, the shrill urgency of their posts reeks more of "humanitarian" moralism than serious analysis. There's almost always a moralism with which people on the part of the left who are more accomodating to imperialism approach those who are more critical, as though a stigma clings to us. In fact, though I disagree with the Marcyite line in some important ways, I think the Marcyite comrades deserve to be completely cleared of this kind of treatment, and instead deserve to be engaged in serious and substantive debate. In the current debate over Syria, it's hard to avoid the feeling that Binh, Claiborne, and Proyect are attempting to cover an even broader section of the left with this dirty stigma, and by extension, to scrub themselves clean in the light of liberal public opinion.
***
I wrote the first section, above, on August 17, and it's now Sept. 1. I meant to tighten up the argument quite a bit. Instead, I've just added some links and cleaned up a couple of unclear phrases, but I'll have to leave it in this kind of speculative, fragmentary, recursive and questioning state.
The following is a recapitulation and a coda:
A few days ago, Binh posted a new piece which engages directly with this whole line of questioning, which does in fact advocate finding a positive valence for 4): "how can Western (or in my case, American) activists concretely aid and abet the Syrian revolution?" It quickly becomes clear that Binh is not talking about a new version of the International Brigades in Spain, which would certainly be concrete - and might allow some real examination of the debate over the nature of the Free Syrian forces. Instead, he's talking about allying with "revolutionary Syrians" in the West, particularly going to a rally organized for tomorrow by the Syrian American Council and other Syrian ex-pat groups. Saying that this is a gathering of "revolutionary Syrians" rather than, say, Syrians who find themselves aligned with US foreign policy objectives is of course an interpretation that's dependent on Binh's rather suspect premise, that the emancipatory impulse of the Arab Spring continues unalloyed in the Libyan and Syrian uprisings. The reality seems to be more "variegated and discordant," as Seymour puts it. And certainly this is as true if not moreso when it comes to international support.
The slogans of this march deserve a little discussion. "World Silence Is Killing Syria." Well, even if we think that on balance the variegated, discordant, contradictory process of Syrian revolution deserves what Trots used to call "military but not political" support in the fight with Assad - which I take it meant, cheering for one side to win even though their politics have some contradictory and even reactionary elements, not, again, providing actual arms or fighting bodies - the materiality of this claim is worth examining. Assad's military is killing Syrians involved in the uprising, with weapons supplied by Iran and Russia. World silence is not killing anybody; in fact the ideal situation would probably be for world governments of all stripes to stop intervening and leave things to the Syrians, in Syria. Under such a situation I suspect that Assad's regime would topple, though I'm far, far from Syria and am really just offering a half-informed guess. When the organizers of this rally talk about "world silence" they are clearly not tallking about Russian or Iranian silence, but global, liberal public opinion, in this case to be hegemonized by US and Western European governments, though called into action by their people. So, what exactly is the rally calling for global public opinion, in this case aligned with a possibility of action by the US and Western European governments, to do?
Can we pressure our own imperialism to take progressive stances in the world, much as we would try to pressure our government at home to enact reforms, even understanding that a capitalist state will always enact those reforms least objectionable to the global leading social groups (the global 1%, ruling class, etc.)? Or do we think that the nature of imperialism is such that it can never take a progressive stance in the world, except in very accidental, short-term ways, and therefore leftists in the west are obligated to do one of two things in regard to our own imperialism: 1) call for it to keep its hands off; 2) refrain from energetically calling for 1)?
I tend towards this latter view, though I suppose someone holding Binh's view could reply that in the case where our own imperialist government's aims momentarily coincide with the material needs of a progressive uprising, we should call for our government to intervene, since even though that is problematic, it is a lesser evil to wholesale slaughter of freedom fighters under a Ghaddafi or an Assad. Sort of a global lesser evilism argument. The problem is that our own imperialist government's aims and interests can shift very quickly back to a situation in which they will impose their straightjacket of hegemony over a region. In such a situation, it's understandable that freedom fighters of whatever heterogenous stripes might still reluctantly call for limited intervention, prefering that to being slaughtered. And if that's the case, US revolutionaries do face contradictory principles. There are certain times when we should desist from an energetic denunciation of imperialism's every move, and for me, the intervention in Libya was one of those times. We should still offer a critical, public perspective on what imperialism is doing, but, during the Libyan uprising, I would not have participated in a "hands off Libya" rally, because Libyan freedom fighters, however heterogenous, were calling for Western aid and intervention.
The Free Syrian forces are not calling for this kind of direct intervention, at this point, but neither does a "hands off Syria" rally seem quite timely, either. Of course in a general sense, we can always demand, "imperialism: hands off the world!" But the specifics of this context demand attention.
Against the ethics of demanding speeech by world public opinion, to coincide with possible (but undefined) action by the most dominant imperialist powers of the US and NATO, it seems to me that the present moment calls precisely for silence in a Wittgenstinian sense: whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. Of course we can speak and are speaking volumes, analytically and critically, but this is a kind of speech which is irreducible to slogans, demands, or pressure politics. I realize some people will be critical of the idea of a Left that doesn't always strive to be vigorously active, always pressing a concrete demand or program or direct action in every situation. But the murkiness of this situation calls for reserve. If "we" were in charge - not the frail Left as it is, but a hegemony of the world's subordinate social groups that we might imagine - the whole terms of the conflict would be very different. Such a situation calls for critical reflection and deepening our understanding of the specific social processes in play in Syria, not sloganeering and demands.
---
*I'm using this phrase in Binh's sense, though it should be observed that this side includes a really broad range, from those like the ISO who have no love whatsoever for Assad's regime and hope it is overthrown by pretty much any social force to those like the Marcyites who might see the Free Syria forces as imperialist puppets and see the Assad regime as still in some way progressive or at least representative of legitimate national autonomy. My own sketch of a view is that Ba'athism in Syria was responsible for real corruption, cronyism, and crimes, but that it also may have protected some social gains of previous social processes, around the time of pan-Arab independence movements, from neoliberal reversal. In the face of the Arab Spring, I don't think it's coherent to defend the deformed, degenerated, what have you remainders of a previous social process that was itself never "revolutionary" in a fully consummated sense. Even if imperialism is bound to intervene and try to contain what's happening in the Arab World / North Africa and Southwest Asia within a neoliberal framework that can't escape the current world system, revolutionaries have to take a risk to align themselves with a process that is pro-democracy and anti-austerity, with elements that would threaten a fundamental realignment of power in the region and the world if realized. But this is just a sketch of a view that would need more development, in a post where I'm trying to engage this discussion from a different level of abstraction.