Hamas and IRA bombings
An April 1 Militant editorial polemicizes against those who
tail after Washington's hypocritical "anti-terror" campaign and
singles out for criticism the view that Hamas is a group of
"right-wing extremists." In an accompanying article Naomi Craine
defends the view that the IRA's bombing of London's Canary Wharf
was "a shot across the bow" at the British government.
The rulers often apply the term "extremist" to anyone who fights oppression in an uncompromising fashion. However, it does not seem so long ago that the Militant characterized Hamas and its politics as right-wing. What accounts for the apparent change in your thinking? Should all armed actions by Hamas be defended uncritically because it speaks in the name of the oppressed?
When the IRA suspended its bombing campaign in 1994, articles in the Militant argued persuasively that those bombings had been politically counter-productive. Why view the Canary Wharf attack differently?
In defending the "shot across the bow" notion, Craine quotes from an inspiring article written by Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky defending the political character of Herschel Grynszpan, a young Polish Jew who assassinated a Nazi official in Paris in 1938. A sentence that Craine did not choose to quote reads: "Our open moral solidarity with Grynszpan gives us an added right to say to all other would-be Grynszpans, to all those capable of self-sacrifice in the struggle against despotism and bestiality: Seek another road!"
Grynszpan killed a Nazi. Though his "mode of action" (as Trotsky refers to it) was wrong his target was clearer than a public building or bus.
Trotsky did not "critique" Grynszpan. Yet his article reads as an effective example of how a revolutionary voice can stand clearly against the chorus of capitalist reaction while expressing a communist point of view on how to advance the struggle of the oppressed. The Militant's approach seems different and less persuasive.
Geoff Mirelowitz
Seattle, Washington
P.S.: In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela writes about the choices made by Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) when, under his leadership, it launched armed actions against South Africás apartheid regime.
Mandela explains, "Our strategy was to make selective forays against military installations, power plants, telephone lines and transportation links..." Mandela repeatedly emphasizes the ANC leadership's insistence on minimizing the loss of human life in these actions.
Eastern Germany
I sympathize with reader Mirelowitz's query [in a letter printed in the March 18 Militant] on what is meant by the "social relations" that the Militant reports have not been destroyed in eastern Europe. Before visiting eastern Germany last summer, I too found the term abstract.
The chance to talk to people in that area, however, gave me a somewhat better idea of what is meant. One anecdote will perhaps help illustrate this. One of the places I visited was the island of Rugen, off the northeast coast of Germany. Shortly after Germany was reunified in 1990, Prince Franz zu Putbus filed a claim to recover over 37,000 acres, as well as 78 agricultural concerns, chalk quarries, harbors, church grounds, hotels, houses, a brickworks, and at least one of his former castles. (He no doubt thought his request modest, as before the 1945 land reform, his father before him had owned fully three-fourths of the 185,000-acre island (pop. 83,600).
As I walked through the massive park in the small town of Putbus, I asked our hosts if the prince had tried to reclaim the park as well (I knew from the guidebook that it had formerly been the castle grounds). The contempt with which our friend snorted, "He wouldn't dare!" gave an idea what these people think of the claims of former capitalists and landowners to "their" property, as did the tone - a combination of incredulity and pride - with our hosts described how they pushed back this unlanded nobleman's attempted land grab. Some 1,500 Rugen farmers and their supporters had rallied in Putbus in July 1993 to successfully oppose the prince's claim.
Our host was laid off shortly after unification. Although he is working now, many of his friends are not, and they clearly feel that they are losing much more than they are gaining. What they miss most is "the sense of community. The market economy is pulling people apart," he said, and "money corrupts."
The deep discontent we found in Rugen was repeated in different ways among many who we talked to in eastern Germany. Despite 40 years of Stalinist, bureaucratic misrule, only 19 percent of people in the east think that socialism is "a system doomed to failure," according to a poll conducted by the Spiegel newsmagazine last summer; 79 percent, however, agreed with the statement that "the idea of socialism is good, but the politicians were incapable of accomplishing it."
Soon after reunification, 80 percent of all industrial jobs in the east disappeared; over 80 percent of those working in agriculture have lost their jobs; average apartment rent has soared nearly 800 percent; and unemployment, officially over 16 percent, with the real figure estimated at double that - is rising rapidly.
And the crisis in deepening, as is reflected in recent spectacular failures - despite massive subsidies - in the Bonn government's attempts to privatize industry in the east -
including the recent bankruptcy of the Bremer Vulkan shipyards, threatening 23,000 jobs.
In my opinion, "social relations" is in part simply the attitudes people have toward the land, the factories, their co- workers, their children's right to day care and education. People in east Germany have not been won away from these attitudes by the taste of capitalism, and its deepening crisis, that they have gotten - quite the contrary. And these intangible "attitudes" have become the biggest concrete obstacle to reimposing capitalist relations in the area.
Robert Dees
Menlo Park, California
Why defend Cuba?
I was very interested in your article "Cuba Rebuts Lies in
U.S. Press" (April 1, 1996, Vol. 60/No 13, no author listed),
which I found while exploring the internet. I cannot understand
why your author would argue over where the shooting of two
American-owned aircraft took place, and not the morality of the
issue itself. I assure you, I am not familiar with one American
concerned with whether the planes were over international waters
or not. Instead, the fact that the Cuban government would
knowingly shoot down peaceful planes appears to be the common
topic of discussion.
It would not have made a difference if the planes flew directly over Havana. In other words, the issue is not where the planes were shot down, but why they were shot down at all. Perhaps your reporters should tackle questions that Americans seem more to care about. It might help to bolster the Militant's apparently low circulation.
Chad Oakley
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