A month ago, British premier John Major and other capitalist politicians floated proposals for economic and trade sanctions against Nigeria, after the military regime there executed nine political activists. Recently, several members of the U.S. Congress have joined the chorus. South African president Nelson Mandela has also called for an oil ban.
Many activists around the world, rightfully organizing picket lines to boycott Shell Oil - the huge imperialist monopoly in the most populous African country - have echoed such demands. We disagree. Asking Major and Clinton to impose sanctions on Nigeria is like trusting Dracula to head up the blood bank.
Class-struggle-minded workers and youth should reject any approach that disarms fighters by relying on the imperialists to deliver salvation. London, in particular, and other capitalist powers are concerned about instability that threatens the profits of Shell Oil - not about a lack of democracy in Nigeria. There is a long and bloody record on this front.
Nigeria was a direct colony of the British crown for a century (1861-1962). Shell Oil has been one of the main companies sucking the wealth produced by the workers there into its coffers abroad. London has repeatedly intervened in conflicts in Nigeria when its interests were threatened, often backing a series of dictators. This has been the case from the bloody assaults on the anticolonial movement in the 1940s; to the 1968-70 Biafra war, when a secessionist movement was brutally suppressed with British military officers directing operations; and backing the Abacha regime during the oil workers strike in 1994.
Communists and other class-conscious workers and youth in imperialist countries generally oppose trade and other sanctions, recognizing that they are part of the capitalist rulers' economic and military pressures against their rivals, or preparation for armed aggression against colonial peoples and governments that are not subservient enough to finance capital, or both. One such case is the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq.
Exceptions to this general course are rare. In response to the call by the leadership of the African National Congress, a mass revolutionary democratic movement, for example, the Militant for many years joined millions of others around the world in campaigning actively for trade and other international sanctions against South Africa.
We did so to a large degree because the ANC leadership explained that sanctions would serve as a tool in the struggle to topple the racist regime. In this case, the ANC's call was correct from the standpoint of the strategic line of march of the working class worldwide. We joined that campaign because the leadership of the democratic movement made a convincing case that the sanctions could be used to strengthen the fight of the toilers themselves in their fight to overthrow the white racist regime, not because of the heinous nature of apartheid.
The only other such exception in recent history was the call for sanctions against Haiti for a brief period of time. In September 1991, the elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in a military coup.
While there was no revolutionary democratic leadership in Haiti that advanced the interests of the toilers, such as the ANC leadership in South Africa, all reports from inside Haiti at that time indicated that the overwhelming majority of politically conscious workers and peasants supported international trade sanctions as a weapon to strengthen their hand in opposing the military regime. In doing so, they took the moral high ground, since the effects of the embargo were felt directly by themselves and other toilers in Haiti.
In the immediate aftermath of the coup large mobilizations took place in Haiti, as well as the United States and Canada, demanding restoration of the elected government, reinforcement of the sanctions, opposition to military intervention, and asylum for Haitian refugees. The call for sanctions at that juncture was again a tool in the hand of the toilers themselves in their struggle to topple the dictatorship.
This changed quickly in the next two years, however, as Haitian toilers were pushed back. Bourgeois figures such as Aristide disarmed Haitian working people by relying on hoped- for salvation by the U.S. government and by actively opposing efforts at independent organization and resistance by Haitian workers, peasants, and youth. The earlier overwhelming support for sanctions abated. By 1993, in fact, Washington began using the embargo to prepare for its military invasion of the island next year. At that point the Militant changed its position, and opposed sanctions.
There is not a demand for sanctions coming from within a mass democratic movement in Nigeria today. Calls for an oil ban or other such measures now can only throw fighters into the arms of the imperialist exploiters.
Actions like the general strike of oil workers in 1994 are examples of the "fires of resistance" the masses in Nigeria are capable of igniting. Battles like those and the struggles of the Ogoni people will open the space to organize and forge a leadership that can chart a course forward in the struggle against both military rule and imperialist domination. Working people can aid that struggle by joining protests against Shell Oil and against the regime, demanding an end to the repression of Ogoni activists and others fighting for their rights in Nigeria.