Syria in Brief: Leftist Views on the Syrian Civil War

By -
This is a survey of various groups around the world considered to the left of democratic socialism regarding their stances on the Syrian civil war. I have searched the websites of just over 50 left-wing and far left parties, networks, and international tendencies for any articles, blurbs, statements, etc. regarding Syria since 2011. You’ll notice that I tend to focus on American leftist groups, with which I have the most familiarity. Also note that some of the international organizations overlap with each other.
I have found that leftists have incredibly diverse attitudes toward Syria, even within ideological tendencies. All the groups profiled below support secularism and socialism (or, in the case of some anarchists, socialist-like systems) and oppose intervention by Western powers, but their attitudes towards the Assad regime, the Kurdish PYD/YPG-led Rojava, the vast and multi-colored opposition, and the so-called Islamic State vary greatly.
I will eventually follow up this article with a list of leftist groups in Syria.
The organizations are grouped by ideology. A couple of notes regarding ideological nuances:
  • I use “Leninists” to refer to communists who are pro-Lenin but neither pro-Stalin nor pro-Trotsky. “Leninists” usually call themselves Marxist-Leninists, but that same label is also used by those who support Stalin (“anti-revisionists”), so I find use of the term “Marxist-Leninist” problematic.
  • “Stalinists” seldomly use this term to describe themselves; as said above, they prefer “Marxist-Leninist”. Nevertheless, I call them “Stalinists” to distinguish them from Maoists, who branched off into their own ideology, and Hoxhaists, who support Stalinism as specifically applied under Albania’s communist leader Enver Hoxha.
  • Trotskyists are somewhat notorious for splitting and quarreling with each other over relatively small things. You’ll see that I’ve split the multitude of Trotskyist groups into three tendencies: “post-Pablo”, “anti-Pablo”, and “other”. This refers to the most prominent split in the Trotskyist movement: in 1953, the Fourth International (the original Trotskyist political international) split over the policies of its leader Michel Pablo. Many of the groups that split away, including the Socialist Workers Party in the US, eventually rejoined in 1963 after Pablo had become marginalized and expelled from the FI; the resulting “re-unified” Fourth International is sometimes known as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, or USFI. I refer to Trotskyists who support this reconciliation as “post-Pablo”. Some of the dissidents continued to see the FI as “Pabloite”; I refer to these as “anti-Pablo” (often they will refer to themselves as “orthodox Trotskyists”). Although there is very little ideological substance to the current divide between post-Pablo and anti-Pablo, relations between the two tendencies are often hostile, so I find it helpful to retain the distinction. The third major Trotskyist tendency is the Third Camp, which had split from the mainstream Trotskyist movement in 1940, having become dissatisfied with the latter’s allegedly too-sympathetic view of the USSR under Stalin. Third Camp Trotskyists, as well as mainstream Trotskyists who do not fall into either category regarding the Pablo split, are grouped under “other Trotskyists”.
Read more at https://syriainbrief.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/leftist-groups-on-the-syrian-civil-war/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"MSM Already Using Capitol Hill Riot To Call For More Internet Censorship" by Caitlin Johnstone

By -
Image
  MSM Already Using Capitol Hill Riot To Call For More Internet Censorship The United States received a very small  taste of its own medicine  today as rioting Trump fanatics temporarily  forced their way into the nation’s Capitol building , and now the whole nation is freaking out. I am being generous when I say that America was given a very small taste of its own medicine; unlike the horrific coups and violent uprisings the US routinely orchestrates in noncompliant nations around the world, this one stood exactly zero chance of seizing control of the government, and only  one person was killed . I am also being generous when I say the rioters “forced their way” in; DC  chose not to increase its police presence  in preparation for the protests despite knowing that they were planned, and there’s  footage  of what appears to be cops actively letting them through a police barricade. There was  some fighting  between police and protesters, but contrasted with the  unceasing barrage of pol
Read more

The Deforestation Process

By -
Image
  The Deforestation Process Deforestation is too often reduced to what’s most conspicuous. But deforestation is complex and a lot more than raising beef cattle or growing soybeans. To begin with, despite all the biodiversity especially of plant life, rain forest soil isn’t very fertile. Nope, it’s actually very oxalic. Oxalic soils are acidic. Acidic soils are full of iron, bauxite and other minerals.  So not only are trees in the forest chopped down for their precious hardwood, the soils these trees grow in are mined for minerals including aluminum, zinc, copper, manganese, gold and iron. Do you know where the aluminum in your water bottle came from? What’s one of most electricity intensive things to do? Convert bauxite into aluminum. It’s an electrostatic process to remove oxygen from the alumina (Al2O3). This electricity is also one of the largest costs of producing aluminum. So that’s why hydroelectricity is often used to reduce the costs of refining bauxite to alumina to aluminum.
Read more

Reporter Uncovers History-Changing Manson Family Connections to CIA and Hollywood

By -
Image
Reporter Uncovers History-Changing Manson Family Connections to CIA and Hollywood By  John Vibes The crimes of the Manson family resulted in one of the most famous murder trials in history, but new research has come to light that could totally change the history of the case. Much of what was believed to be true about the Manson murders and the cult that carried them out comes from a narrative that was spun by prosecutor Vince Bugliosi, both during the trial and in his book  Helter Skelter — the best selling true crime novel of all time. Nothing about the murders made any sense. There was a strange cult of hippies that were killing celebrities for apparently no reason, and the young people carrying out the crimes seemed to be under the spell of a charismatic lunatic and failed musician named Charles Manson. Bugliosi created a narrative that Manson and his followers had no personal motive in the killings, but were attempting to instigate a race war by framing the Black Pant
Read more