Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the Pacific.

Today renewed imperialist rivalry, especially between the US and Japan is centred on Pacific Basin confirming Marx, Lenin and Trotsky's predictions. Despite attempts to paint the decolonisation of the Pacific States as leading towards successful independence and economic development, the downward pressure of imperialism on Asian-Pacific peoples’ brings resistance and military reaction which can only intensify. I argue that socialist internationalism leading to permanent revolution is the only way real freedom and development can be realised in the Pacific. As I argued above,  Australia and New Zealand were never more than lumpen or proxy imperialist powers getting minor rights to territory in exchange for acting as agents of Britain or the USA.1 They cannot develop into imperialist powers in their own right. They also can only complete their bourgeois revolution as a socialist revolution and join a Federation of Pacific Socialist Republics.
 
 

The South Pacific – arena of imperialist rivalry

In the 1980's, the ANZUS row, the French sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior, the struggle for Kanak independence, the Rabuka coups in Fiji, the rebellion in Bougainville, the struggle for self-determination in East Timor, were all symptoms of the heightening of imperialist tensions in the Pacific. Today the Pacific is an arena not of peace but of growing class divisions and civil war. As usual the New Zealand and Australian ‘left’ in the face of these events retreats into nationalism.

The reformist left in NZ supports the Labour governments' stands against nuclear ships and proliferation, and pushes for an anti-nuclear pacific as if that is enough to bring about genuine independence and peace in the region. Most of the Australian 'Stalinist' (which includes the Maoist) left has illusions about Australia’s benign ruling class, and limits its demands to kicking out the US bases and uranium mining companies.

The so-called Trotskyist left also has illusions in the capacity of indigenous peoples’ movements to fight imperialism and win. This ‘left’ nationalism ignores the real causes war in the Pacific – the hotting up of imperialist rivalries between the Pacific superpowers, the USA and Japan for dominance of the region and the world economy. A rivalry which inevitably sees Australia and New Zealand too competing for their ‘pickings’ of the super-profits in the Pacific basin, and employing their proxy military forces against resistance movements of workers’ and peasants.2

As we might expect in a period of growing inter-imperialist rivalry and tensions in the region, most of the ‘left’ buries proletarian internationalism for national alliances with its own bourgeoisie against the nuclear arms of the big powers. Small-power pacifism or neutrality is put up against big-power nuclear aggression. Australia and New Zealand against the US, France, Japan, the USSR and maybe China. The ‘left’ went into raptures over Lange’s rebuff of US nuclear warships, and into fits of anger when France sunk the Greenpeace Warrior. Yet, when it comes to new frigates, the left cries about militarism, and selling-out to the US, but doesn’t condemn New Zealand and Australian use of gun–boat ‘peacekeeping’ against Pacific liberation struggles.

Australasian lumpen-imperialism is no less oppressive or exploitative than the French or US brands. New Zealand and Australia always had pretentions to imperialist power in the Pacific, and these were indulged by Britain in the last century. In reality these settler capitalist states had enough trouble administering Samoa and Papua, and never made it into the big league. The national socialist ‘left’ has always gone along with colonial exploitation in the form of social imperialism; ie. state socialism at home, and an enlightened imperialism in the colonies to develop and 'civilise' the pacific states towards maturity, decolonisation and independence.

This is why the ‘left’ championed de-colonisation after the Second World War, and why it opposes any nuclear or military intervention in the Pacific. It has huge illusions about the prospects of real independence and freedom in the epoch of imperialism. This position is expressed in the slogan "a nuclear–free and independent Pacific".3  The ‘left’ cannot understand that imperialism cannot grant real independence or freedom to small neo-colonies in the Pacific. So long as the peoples of the Pacific remain under the economic dominance of imperialism, their political rights and freedoms will be denied.

But real liberation from imperialism means more than the process of 'decolonisation' which has reached different stages in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, Bougainville or East Timor. Nor is the cause of independence advanced much by banning nuclear weapons or nuclear tests. Only by overthrowing all the agents of imperialism can the workers and peasants of the Pacific form genuine popular governments and form an Federation of Pacific socialist states.
 
 

"The most important ocean in the world."

Karl Marx, writing in 1850, described the Pacific as the future centre of world capitalism. The opening up of new trade routes and communications linking California with China and Australasia, would create a vast potential for capitalist exploitation. Despite this vast bounty, Marx did not think that the opening-up of the Pacific to trade and settlement would postpone the coming crisis of world capitalism by more than a few years.

Ever the political optimist, he badly underestimated the ability of capitalism to stave off its collapse by embarking on an intense imperialist conquest of the new lands. At the same time he was premature in his hopes that India and China would move rapidly towards capitalism. Speaking of China’s impending ‘social revolution’, he looked forward to "our European reactionaries ...arriving at the Great Wall of China...to find written thereon the legend: Republique chinoise. Liberty, Egalite, Fraternite".4

Marx's impatience is understandable. The sooner capitalism arrived, destroyed the backward Asiatic societies, and matured, the sooner socialism would arrive. Marx did not live long enough to fully take account of the world market and international relations nor to see the effects of colonial super-profits on the leadership of the labour movement. It was Engels who later took note of the corruption of layers of British workers by colonialism (a fact recognised by Marx in the case of Ireland, Britain’s oldest colony). And it was Lenin who later explained in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism the widespread collapse of the workers’ movement in 1914 through the formation of a labour aristocracy bribed by high wages and social privileges extracted from the super-exploitation of colonial workers.5

Lenin highlighted what Marx already knew: that European capitalism penetrated the non-capitalist world by conquest and destruction. For Lenin, it was not just a matter of new markets to overcome a surplus of goods in Europe. Social conditions in the colonies such as low wages based on subsistence farming, and a lack of labour laws governing work practices, generated super-profits. This allowed the imperialist powers to boost profits and stave off crises, but only at the cost of future crises much more serious.

By expanding into the colonial world, capitalism in its imperialist epoch inflicted its contradictory character at a higher and more destructive level on the whole world. This contradiction was expressed as the uneven development of the world economy. The imperialist states developed their manufacturing industry, but at the expense of the destruction of industry in the colonies. While the working class in the imperialist states came to accept social imperialism as in its interests, in the colonies, workers and peasants found that imperialism offered only death and destruction.6

But like Marx, 60 years earlier, Lenin too saw this latest expansion of capitalism as a short-lived postponement of the socialist revolution. Imperialism was, he claimed, capitalism’s "highest" and final stage - a stage when it destroyed, more than it developed, the forces of production internationally. It had outlived its historically progressive role in Europe and the USA.

Imperialism in exploiting the colonies could only intensify the global contradiction of the overproduction of commodities in the heartlands and further impoverishment of the masses everywhere. Such a contradiction would inevitably become expressed as crises of falling profits, intensifying rivalry between imperialist states for control of colonial super-profits. It was only a matter of time before those colonies oppressed by imperialism revoluted, and along with the workers of the oppressor nations, overthrew capitalism and introduced socialism.
 
 

Lenin on the right to self-determination

Like Marx, Lenin saw the struggle of oppressed nations for self–determination to be a necessary and inevitable part of world revolution. This is why the Bolsheviks defended the absolute right of oppressed nations to fight wars of national liberation against oppressor states. But this struggle was only part of the revolutionary process. Under imperialism, national liberation would not be possible without the support of revolutionary workers in the imperialist states. Without this support, national liberation struggles would be isolated, backward, and fall short of independence from imperialism.7

The reason for this is clear: imperialism was capitalism in decline. The development of the forces of production at the centre was at the expense of the destruction of the productive forces in the colonies. In the colonies, imperialism exploited labour-power without the need to introduce modern machinery, because of the huge reserve of labour and the use of political force. The pumping out of surplus from colonial labour was based on absolute surplus–value extraction: increasing the rate of exploitation by means of extending the working day, or driving down the value of labour-power. This super exploitation was made possible by the use of formally free labour embedded in pre-capitalist social relations, or production under the control of the state.

Under these conditions, the productive forces, including that of labour-power, are not developed beyond that necessary for colonial super-exploitation. To free the forces for further development, national liberation was necessary, a struggle by peasants and workers, to overthrow the weak national bourgeoisie allied to imperialism. Lenin's famous April Theses advanced the perspective that only a socialist revolution could realise the goal of national liberation. Following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Lenin came to see the prospects for revolution being centred in the ‘East’ where the struggle of oppressed nations for independence from imperialism would continue uninterrupted as socialist revolutions. The Far East and Pacific Basin for Lenin would like Russia before it ignite the spark of class struggle that would decide the fate of the world revolution.8

Trotsky took the same view. During the period from Lenin’s death in 1924 to his own murder at the hands of a Stalinist assassin in 1940, he made this theme the centre-piece of his international socialist strategy. He argued that the second Chinese revolution of 1925–27 might have succeeded if the workers had not been forced by Stalin to ally to the national bourgeoisie. He continued to hold high hopes for revolutions in the ‘East’, and founded the Fourth International in the expectation that it would be strongest in these countries.

These hopes were partly realised after his death. Despite the liquidation of the Fourth International in Europe, in China and Vietnam, national revolutions lead by Stalinist parties, and in the absence of revolutionary aid from abroad, did under exceptional circumstances, go beyond a break with imperialism and overthrow capitalist private property to form ‘transitional’ post-capitalist states.9

Marx, Lenin and Trotsky’s perspective of permanent revolution in the Pacific has been vindicated against that of Stalin. The history of national revolutions has shown that peasant based movements led by petty bourgeois bureaucracies, in isolation from international socialist support, cannot build socialism-in-one-country. Inevitably, surrounded by capitalism, they have in China and Vietnam (even more so in Cambodia) been trapped between capitalism and socialism, and force to move back towards capitalism. Under the current imperialist crisis, in the Pacific Basin, the pressure upon these ‘transitional’ regimes, is forcing the bureaucracies to move to the right, and do deals with imperialism to restore capitalism.10
 
 

Revisionist theories of imperialism

The above summary of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky's views of the conditions which determine struggles in the Pacific Basin today is vital if we are going to understand the revisionist theories of imperialism that have sprung into existence since Marx’s day. These revisionist theories all place their faith in capitalism’s ability to reform itself, thereby making the need to overthrow it unnecessary.

The first real ‘revision’ predated Lenin. It was the social imperialism of the Second International. This theory defended imperialism because it was held to be necessary for all colonies to retrace the development of capitalism in Europe to fulfill the pre-conditions for the transition to socialism. Its social base however, was the ability of imperialism to create super–profits, some of which were passed on as higher wages of a layer of privileged wage-labour in the imperialist countries.

Lenin called this layer the labour aristocracy. It was from this layer which escaped the worst conditions of wage-labour, that the labour bureaucracy was drawn – a labour ‘elite’ which took on itself to form the leadership of the unions and the Labour parties. As we shall see, though the Second International as an organisation is a shell only, its ideological stamp remains on the Labour Government’s justifications for its anti-nuclear foreign policy in the South Pacific. For social imperialists since Kautsky, colonialism is a necessary stage of capitalist development, which when ripe for de-colonisation, allows for the emergence of fully developed bourgeois democracies. 11

Today this theory is expressed as models of decolonisation in which Pacific Peoples are no longer seen as isolated, backward and dependent upon the Western powers. Instead of being marginalised in the periphery, it is argued by a new generation of scholars such as Denoon the editor of the Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders,  that migration and development has allowed these small states to benefit from the global economy so that they can become economically as well as politically independent. Socialism is put off into the distant future since modern global capitalism is seen as able to realise the twin goals of national development -prosperity and freedom.
 
 

Stalin's Two-step theory

Social imperialism postpones the goal of socialism into the distant future – a second stage reached only after the first stage of capitalism has been attained. The most influential revisionist theory of imperialism until recently was that of the Stalinist Communist International. It adopted exactly the same position as the Second International (after all, Stalin and many of the veteran Bolsheviks always remained committed to Kautsky's Menshevik marxism, even during the period of the Bolshevik revolution) that colonies must go through a bourgeois stage before they are ripe for socialist revolution.

So it is no accident that this theory draws on the experience of the Soviet Union which Stalin theorised in the doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’. In this doctrine Stalin rationalised the New Economic Policy (NEP) and the market as a necessary state capitalist stage, preparing the forces of production for socialism which was achieved in 1936. In this he departs from Lenin and Trotsky who saw the need for the NEP only as a temporary expendient resulting from the failure of the European revolution.

Instead of recognising that the USSR was trapped as a transitional state by world capitalism, Stalin made a virtue of necessity and turned this predicament into a model for all socialist revolution, a model which the Communist International (Comintern), under the Stalinist bureaucracy’s influence, adopted in China, Albania, Cuba, Vietnam, and even Nicaragua.

The class base of these so-called ‘socialist’ revolutions is the petty bourgeoisie, ie. the peasantry and the bureaucracy. The peasantry kept their private property and the bureaucracy gained state power in these so-called ‘socialist’ regimes. In the imperialist states, the Stalinist labour bureaucracy retains its position of influence as agents of the bourgeoisie in the capitalist state apparatus by containing the working class inside the reformist ‘national roads to socialism’. 12

The Stalinist theory breaks with Marxism in attacking the theory of permanent revolution.13 It claims that in backward countries, the national revolution can release the forces of production sufficiently to make the second stage, socialism-in-one-country possible. But as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky explained, such national revolutions under the leadership of the national bourgeoisie cannot succeed, because they are weak and dependent on imperialism.

Thus, inevitably, the national bourgeoisie will side with imperialism against its own working class, as in Russia during 1917 and China in 1927 national democratic revolutions will succeed only if led by revolutionary workers, supported by the peasantry, who in recognising the necessity in breaking with imperialism, go on immediately to socialism, in one, permanent, not two-step revolution.14

In the South Pacific, as elsewhere, the petty bourgeoisie of the advanced semi-colonies, Australia and New Zealand, join with the petty bourgeoisie of the neo-colonial and colonial island states, to put forward the revisionist conception of the national stage leading to socialism-in-one country under their leadership. In this they favour ‘peaceful’, ‘democratic’ Australasian lumpen-imperialism against oppressive, warlike, US, French and Japanese imperialism, championing a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific.

Betraying the interests of workers and peasants of the region, the social imperialists dance the two-step with the national bourgeoisie and the most democratic imperialists, to create the pre-conditions for the next stage -national socialism.
 
 

Australasian lumpen-imperialism?

The penetration of capitalism in the South Pacific vindicates the theories of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on Permanent Revolution. The creation of national bourgeois or comprador classes as agents to politically administer the decolonisation process on behalf of imperialism has allowed it to continue dominating these island states behind a facade of political independence.

The history of the two largest South Pacific states which ‘won’ their ‘independence’, de-colonised early, and yet remained locked into imperialism, is proof that only a socialist revolution can win real independence from imperialism. Australia and New Zealand were settled by European migrants in the period before the period of intensified imperialist rivalry from the 1880's on. In both cases the British state used force to smash the resistance of the indigenous people and created the conditions for capitalist production – ‘modern landed property’ (private property as a commodity and means of production) and wage labour.

The granting of ‘self–government’ was not won in a war of national independence by a revolutionary bourgeoisie. In fact, in New Zealand the local bourgeoisie did not want independence if that meant paying for the campaign to defeat the Maori so long as the proceeds - confiscated land - fell into their hands. ‘Independence’ when it finally came was thrust upon them by an imperial state which did not want the financial burden of colonial rule when it could extract super-profits less expensively through self-governing dominions. Similarly, in Australia, right up to the Second World War Australian politicians saw themselves as administering Pacific Territories on behalf of Britain. 15

The price of political ‘independence’ and the right to indulge in lumpen-imperialist adventures in the South Pacific, would be continuing economic dependence: the local state’s first obligation would be that of repaying the national debt. Imperial finance capital thus retained ultimate control over the Australian and New Zealand semi-colonies. Whatever imperialist pretentions the semi-colonies indulged in, these were the to act as lumpen-imperialist proxies for the real imperialist powers.

Australia and New Zealand were ‘developed’ as capitalist settler colonies specialising in agriculture and mining. Since self-government brought with it bourgeois property rights and a domestic market, a political citizenry was established and the nation state took on a bourgeois democratic form. At the time of Federation and the lib-lab 'new settlements' the dominion capital states of Australia and New Zealand were born.

Now a state which reproduces class rule by claiming to represent the popular will, must base itself to some extent on a popular suffrage. This meant that the representative government was open to the electoral demands of the working-class and manufacturers for protection of the local market from foreign imports. As a weak national bourgeoisie of capitalist farmers and small manufacturers emerged, it began to take its formal independence at its face value and embark on grandiose plans for imperialist expansion in the South Pacific.16

During the climactic period of imperialist rivalry from the 1880’s to the first Imperialist War in 1914, Australasian traders and politicians furthered their ambition to control the resources of South Pacific economies, and annexed or seized the colonial territories of Germany - Samoa etc. Supporting these adventures in the South Seas was a labour aristocracy bought off by privileges gained from super-exploitation of unfree migrant labour and a whites-only citizenship policy. Maori, Aboriginals, and Pacific Islanders, were tolerated as migrant workers so long as they did not become fully free wage labour with citizenship rights competing with Europeans.17

Since pastoral production and mineral extraction for export remained profitable in Australia and New Zealand, import substitution and full employment was possible too, and the basis for national class alliances, and its ideology, social imperialism, persisted. But the limits to this profitability were reached by the end of the post-war boom in the middle 1960's. The limits to dependent dominion capitalism had been reached. The protection of the EEC markets and the saturation of local domestic markets, brought with it the need to massively restructure production to make it internationally competitive and fit into the global division-of-labour in the Pacific Rim countries.

Multinational branch plants and local monopolies, like Fletcher Challenge and BHP, have been forced to rationalise their operations and cuts their costs of production to restore profitability. The deregulation of the Australian and New Zealand capital and labour markets, has encouraged a concentration of capital in Australasian firms which can now compete with and invest in a range of Pacific/Asian markets.

Today some Australasian based firms are competing with US, Japanese, British and European firms for shares of South Pacific resources, and have taken a major stake in direct investment in North America and Chile. But this fact does not make Australia or New Zealand imperialist as the internationalisation of these firms did not result form surplus profits but from the stagnation of protected markets. Nor is the foreign earnings generated and repatriated to Australia and New Zealand more than a small fraction extracted from these semi-colonies by imperialist powers.18

As inter-imperialist competition intensifies and the world economy remains stagnant, rivalry between imperialist states seeking to gain the advantage for their ‘national’ firms will intensify and lead to mounting trade wars and military interventions. Australasian lumpen-imperialist pretensions today amount to no more than playing a lackey role as US and Japanese client states.19
 
 

Class forces in the South Pacific

In all the South Pacific states, with the exception of the white-settler colonies, Australia and New Zealand, capitalist penetration took the form of incorporating or articulating existing pre-capitalist modes of production into the capitalist market, rather than destroying them. Production was converted from subsistence agriculture to cash cropping for exports, with migrant labour imported to work the mines and plantations. Even in the case of migrant labour, workers remained indentured or dependent upon their traditional land for subsistence, and comprised a ‘floating’ reserve army of labour, rather than a formally free labour force.

This type of imperialist penetration demonstrates the law of uneven development, which in the imperialist epoch develops the forces of production in the imperialist states at the cost of destroying, or retarding, the development of the forces of production in the colonies and semi-colonies. Where imperialist super-exploitation does not require a formally free wage labour force, the local comprador class controls the state and rules by force rather than on the basis of an electoral alliance with the working class. This in turn allows exploitation to remain labour-intensive as there is no legal labour movement capable of pressuring imperialism into putting limits on the working day, of introducing modern machinery, improving the productivity of labour, and so developing the forces of production.

The consequences of this form of imperialist rule can be seen in New Caledonia in Fiji, Bougainville and East Timor. In all cases has not, or will not, bring an end to imperialist exploitation. The political forms of imperialism range from French direct rule with no sign of autnomy; Bourgainville about to negotiate some level of autnomy with PNG; East Timor occupied by Indonesia but under pressure to grant a level of autnomy, and Fiji, decolonised and politically 'independent' since 1975.

Despite such variations in the form of imperialist rule, all of these South Pacific Island territories are based upon the colonisation of a pre-capitalist mode of production which is not destroyed but incorporated into the form of colonial rule. The surplus-value is extracted from importing migrant labour to work plantations and/or extract minerals. In New Caledonia French imperialism has deliberately used migrant wage-labour from Vietnam, Wallis and Tahiti, in preference to Kanak labour who have always resisted being turned into wage-labourers so long as they have land on which to subsist. Similarly, in Fiji, the survival of Fijian society and its customs limited the degree to which British imperialism could exploit Fijian wage-labour, forcing the introduction of Indian indentured labour to work the sugar plantations. In Bougainville and East Timor imperialist rule was also based on plantation agriculture and mineral extraction. In these cases local labour was also used.

In all of these island states the economies are wholly dominated by imperialist firms that extract super-profits and impoverish the local populations. Therefore, despite varying measures of decolonisation, the struggle for self-determination is far from won. These four cases will serve as examples of the fact that imperialism, whether French, or British, or the proxy imperialism of the Indonesian or Australasian kind, is forced to abandon all pretence of bourgeois democracy. Instead it must resort to the direct use of state force to maintain control of its colonies and neo-colonies in order to pump up its surplus-value extraction.20
 
 

France's Pacific strategy

France leads the way in showing the true repressive face of decadent imperialism in the Pacific. France is a weak imperialism in crisis. Its ruling class is divided. The failure of the ‘right’ to unite and dislodge the socialists decisively from power since 1981, has encouraged the fascists to mobilise. But the ‘left’ is also weak and disorganised by its social patriotic, reformist leadership. Both left and right are therefore incapable of asserting unquestioned political authority, leaving the field to the socialist centre coalition, uniting the nation around appeals to racism, to patriotism ie. France’s ‘national prestige’.

Symbolic of France's standing in the world, is its independent nuclear capability. The Pacific has become the key to France's nuclear power and so to its overall imperialist strategy. Its credibility as an independent nuclear power depends upon its ability to withstand a first strike. This means ensuring that its nuclear weapons are constantly upgraded and deployed in such a way as to make them difficult targets. The Pacific, therefore, is the most strategically important region for France militarily as both a site for testing, and an ocean in which its nuclear submarines can escape detection more easily than in the Atlantic.

Ultimately, the political consensus at the centre in France can hold only as long as it can play-off both right and left on the basis of renewed economic growth and social stability. This is unlikely to be successful in the present crisis conditions. And as the crisis worsens and spontaneous worker militancy develops, so the polarisation of left and right will deepen. The way out for the French bourgeoisie, as always in any period of growing imperialist rivalry, lies in regenerating capital accumulation, and this forces it into direct rivalry with the other imperialist powers for an economic stake in the Pacific Basin.

The French ruling class therefore has over-riding political and economic interest in pursuing a military strategy in the Pacific. The stability of the metropolitan state depends upon France retaining a significant stake in the Pacific Basin as the centre of capitalist rejuvenation in the world economy. As yet France's economic stake in the region is slight. But its overseas territories in Melanesia and Polynesia are important forward military bases and launching platforms for its expansionist plans. France seeks to increase its investments in the region, in the Cook Islands, in Fiji, and Vanuatu, as part of its ambitions to extend its influence and markets in the region in competition with Japanese, U.S. imperialism and their Australasian junior partners.21
 
 

Nuclear-Free Independence

The prominence of France's military presence, its notorious nuclear testing programme at Mururoa, and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1986, casts France in the role of an aggressive, militaristic power in the South Pacific. France appears as something of a hardline colonial power in the age of decolonisation. It is the one power that still enforces direct colonial rule by flying in crack troops to put down rebellions. All the other powers have met the nationalist aspirations of Pacific peoples by granting forms of independence, or full citizenship rights.22

The assassination of the leaders of the Ouvea rebellion in July 1988, put France "outside civilisation" according to MELSOL.23 Such a response to France’s methods equates imperialism with militarism and leads to reformist illusions about gaining freedom by means of decolonisation along the lines of former colonies such as the Philippines, Vanuatu, Fiji and PNG.

In reality, direct colonial rule or decolonisation makes little or no difference to real independence and the extraction of surplus-profits.24 Drawn into the capitalist world economy relatively late, there was only a partial transformation of Pacific societies to capitalist social relations. Economic exploitation remained intensive and based on the extraction of absolute surplus-value, and no strong bourgeois national movements emerged to oppose imperialist rule.

Rather, local authority remained in hands of imperialism through its agents, the comprador elites, usually formed of traditional elders or ‘strong men’ bribed by a share of the super-profits.

Therefore, decolonisation in the South Pacific was nothing more than a legal fiction designed to appease mild nationalist aspirations. The transition to political independence and the trappings of western style democracy could not disguise the fact that the compradors remained in control on behalf of imperialism. As soon as the rule of imperialism was in any way challenged by emerging workers’ and peasants movements, the democratic facade gave way to puppet military regimes, or corrupt comprador dictatorships. I examine the case of Fiji below.

France never had the economic power nor national self-assurance to willingly concede self-government. It held onto its colonies calling them overseas territories as if they were integral parts of metropolitan France. Large numbers of French settlers and the build-up of the military presence, reinforced this national delusion.

France, therefore, is less the exception in the Pacific than the rule. Far from being a militarist 'aberration' in the minds of the social imperialists, France clearly demonstrates the need for all imperialist powers to retain the right to direct political or military intervention in order to secure their ‘national interests’. That is, all imperialists reserve the right to military intervention to secure their investments and future super–profits. Today, this is no less the case when economic intervention in the form of "free trade" is backed by the threat of force.25
 
 

Political responses

Direct rule in the French Territories has created a mixed political response. The strong settler and military presence creates a metropolitan enclave dependent upon state spending. This has divided the population along income and ethnic lines. For example, Wallis Island migrants were deliberately brought to New Caledonia in preference to Kanak labour, and set-up as a protected, privileged group in opposition to the Kanaks who largely remain a reserve army living on tribal land.

Such divisions established in the relatively small working class are reinforced by patronage and small-scale development of industry, giving expression to weak political movements dominated by the educated petty bourgeoisie. Political movements such as the FLNKS in New Caledonia and the Ia Mana to Nunaa in Tahiti can be characterised as national independence movements with predominantly peasant and worker support. They cannot hope, given their weak political forces, to win more than token political concessions towards political independence.

This reality was demonstrated by the May 1988 events in New Caledonia. FLNKS militants chose the metropolitan elections in May to draw attention to their opposition to the plan to allow the non-Kanak majority to dominate the New Caledonian assembly. They did this by taking French soldiers hostage on Ouvea. But instead of concessions, Chirac met the FLNKS demands by despatching crack troops who overran and captured the rebels, releasing the hostages unharmed, and then assassinated the leading rebels in cold blood.26

In Tahiti, in the 1970's when the territorial assembly stepped up its opposition to France’s nuclear testing programme, it was able to convince France that the testing threatened its wider Pacific interests. Over the years since the Foreign Legion first arrived in 1963 to establish the base at Mururoa, local opposition to testing has grown. In 1974, international protests, including a NZ frigate, forced France to put the tests underground. The result has been a build up of radiation escaping from the more than 100 tests performed under the coral reef, though the authorities have tried to suppress health statistics since 1966. 27

After 1968 the number of personnel employed by the testing programme fell from 10,000 to 2,000 out of a total labour force of 100,000. This followed pressure on the military to pull out of Tahiti, following the transfer of the testing to Mururoa and the military base to Hao. As Tahiti’s economy s became less reliant on the military, the environmental and health hazards from radiation have become the focus of increasing concern.28

Under the Socialist administration in France, minor concessions to the independence movements in Polynesia and Melanesia are likely, but they will fall far short of real political and economic independence.29

The military installations at Hao and Noumea continue to be upgraded to provide the facilities for nuclear missile submarines and their logistic and surveillance support. During the 1980's testing went ahead despite mounting international protests. The link to domestic politics is clear when during the 1990s national elections there were at least four nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa. Not until France had fully tested it weapons and could afford to halt underground testing was the testing site abandoned.
 
 

Limits to French rule

Despite the high costs of France’s Pacific strategy, it is committed to increasing its military, political and economic stake in the Pacific. Further ‘deals’ may placate and moderate independent currents, and isolate and weaken militants. In the event of a resurgence of rebel activity in New Caledonia, or any upsurge in Polynesia, under the Socialists, the RPR, or even the Front National, the rebels will face the elite assassins of the French military.

The limits to popular resistance to French imperialist rule in the Pacific territories are therefore those of imperialist intersts in maintaining economic super-exploitation and social and political domination. These can only be overcome by the development of proletarian internationalism, linking the struggles in the South Pacific with those of the more advanced working class in the imperialist states.

In this way, the parochial, economically backward, and geographically isolated ‘national’ or ‘indigenous’ movements of the Pacific can be united into a Pan-Pacific socialist movement, strongly supported by revolutionary parties in the key imperialist and sub-imperialist states.

In particular, revolutionary workers' parties in France, Australia and New Zealand must play a leading role in mobilising workers with imperialist or lumpen-imperialist privileges to defeat their own ruling classes. Only such a development can realise the prospect for a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Pacific.
 
 

The Fijian Coups

In contrast with French direct rule is the case of Fiji – since 1975 an 'independent' South Pacific state or a neo-colony. Yet imperialist crisis means military clampdowns on liberation movements in neo-colonies too.30 Imperialist super-exploitation (which takes the form of extracting super-profits from low wages and low export prices, while imposing high import prices) drives such economies into extreme balance of payment debt and declining living standards to pay for the debt. This downward pressure is transmitted to all forms of labour exploited by imperialism, domestic, petty commodity and wage-labour. Popular resistance to mounting exploitation is directed not only at the foreign imperialist, but also at the local agents - the comprador bourgeoisie, such as Ratu Mara's clique in Fiji.

In Fiji, it was no accident that organised labour should be concentrated on skilled workers whose market scarcity allowed them higher wages and separated them from the unskilled ‘floating’ reserve army of workers and peasants. Nor was it an accident that the rising petty bourgeoisie should form the Labour Party with the object, not of fighting imperialism root and branch, but of fighting only those most ‘oppressive’ aspects of it – namely, MNCs, IMF control, and nuclear ships. Even so, this mild, reformist, 'democratic socialist' programme to moderate the the effects of economic crisis on Fiji, proved to be an intolerable threat to imperialism and its local lackeys.31

As the Labour Party became more popular, and gained sufficient support from both native Fijian and Indo-Fijian workers and peasants to win an electoral majority and form a government, the local comprador ruling class then stepped in with the army to dispense with the Constitution and all pretence of ‘democracy’. There has been some documentation that the US new in advance, if they were not actively part of planning, of the first coup. The Rabuka coups were Ratu Mara's and imperialism's answer to this growing class opposition, dressed up as a defence of Fijian land and cultural rights.

The classic racist divide and rule strategy which allowed the Fijians to dominate politics had been challenged by the multiracial nature of the Labour Party which drew on both Fijian and Indians in the labour movement.  This had  the potential to undermine the ruling class hegemony based upon the 'traditional' appeals of the chiefs ruling council to speak for ALL native Fijians. This tradition in fact masked a class division where the rents from  ‘commodified’ common land now excluded most Fijian commoners and when to the ruling chiefs and compradors. Any awakening to the class interests hidden behind the appeals to the authority of the chiefs would threaten their ability gain the consent of their commoners. 32

Similarly the Labour Party also had the potential to undermine the defensive unity of the Indo-Fijians by revealing the class divisions between peasant farmers, urban workers, and the Indo-Fijian bourgeoisie. The class interests of the peasant farmers who pay high rents is opposed the compradors, but not to the Fijian commoners who do not see the benefits of those rents. The class interests of the urban Indo-Fijian workers is not different to the landless and jobless native Fijian commoner.  The class interest of the Indo-Fijian bourgeoisie that controls much of Fijian commerce and trade is in oppposition to all of these other classes.

What was occuring in Fiji before the coup and is continuning today is the class differentiation of a neo-colonial population as the economy becomes further integrated into the global capitalist economy. It throws together peoples from different national and ethnic backround into a worker or poor peasant alliance against a small minority of compradors and national bourgeois who exploit them directly or oversee their super-exploitation by imperialism. The same scenario is being acted out, and will become increasingly common elsewhere in the Pacific as popular anti–imperialist movements develop in response to growing poverty such as those in PNG and Bougainville.
 

Australia, PNG and Bougainville

The dramatic events of 1997 in Papua New Guinea (PNG) brought the problems of Bougainville to world attention again. At issue for the government was how the nation should fight and win the nine-year war against the Bougainville rebels. Exposed were the imperialists, and its local lackeys, behind the dirty tactics of what is known as a `nasty little war'. The question of the government's plan to hire foreign mercenaries to fight in Bougainville, caused popular unrest within PNG to the extent that some claimed that the political system was on the verge of collapse. It drew disapproval from international allies and finally forced the resignation of Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan.

At issue was the future of Conzinc Riotinto's copper mine in Bougainville. The Bougainville struggle for independence erupted over the devastating impact that copper mining was having on the local environment. The mining company Conzinc Riotinto Australia, part of a giant multinational, took the land by force. Waste from the mine polluted rivers, destroying local fishing. Land was contaminated and crops destroyed. For over two decades the locals failed to get compensation. The PNG government relied on massive foreign earnings from the copper and colluded with Conzinc and the Australian government to protect the mining operations.

Bougainvilleans began a campaign of sabotage that closed the mine in 1989. PNG forces attacked the island, backed by Australian military hardware. Despite continued fighting the mine has not reopened and the nationalist Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) remains undefeated an economic and political embarrassment to the PNG government.

What is the relationship between the PNG, Australia and Imperialism? The PNG ‘nation-state’ is a colonial invention, with many diverse communities and languages that have not traditionally had common interests. Politics is tribally based and different groups compete for resources from the government. There have been attempts by other regions in Papua, in the Gazelle Peninsula and the Highlands, to secede like Bougainville.

Apart from the central issue of control of the mine, Bougainville is politically separated from the rest of PNG. Its traditional community of interests is with the rest of the Solomons archipelago. One motive for secession is to reestablish their traditional way of life based on communal land tenure. Human rights groups support this aim. But their moral claim for independence cuts no ice with Conzinc and the PNG state who want to regain control of the island's rich mineral reserves and restore their profits. This is what makes the outcome of the Bougainville war so important –either the BRA would win, and PNG lose its mine, or PNG would win and continue to exploit and oppress the Island.

It is a critical fight against the forces of imperialism. For Chan, the viability of his government was undermined by the war continuing. His scheme to hire mercenaries meant all-out war in Bougainville, defeat for the rebels and restoration of a key sector of the economy. Victory in Bougainville would also secure his own position in the upcoming June elections.
 

Mercenary proposal

Channel 9 in Australia broadcast a copy of mercenary company Sandline's proposal to the PNG government. The mercenaries spelt out the benefits of their involvement to persuade Chan and his government to take them on. The blueprint for the deal takes a political line and appeals to economic self-interest. Sandline suggests that Australia and New Zealand had deliberately prolonged the Bougainville crisis.

The thrust of the document was to argue that Sandline would annihilate the rebels - only they could overcome the series of military defeats and economic burden to the government. The rewards would include the recapture of the Pangua copper mine. The deal should be a secret. Details of the deal were a secret for a while, but the news that the PNG government was hiring mercenaries to assist them in the Bougainville war was public knowledge from January, and caused a furore in PNG and abroad. The PNG army commander, Brigadier-General Singirok was among those publicly objecting to the scheme. Chan's response was to claim that Singirok was trying to topple him.

Chan's version of events was that the army caused the trouble in Port Moresby. He claimed the army mutinied. But there was popular protest against the mercenary deal long before army leader General Singirok called on Chan to resign and got the sack for it. Frustration over government corruption was evident in the upsurge of street demonstrations and some looting by protestors from the poorest areas of Port Moresby. Sir Michael Somare, PNG's first PM and the 'father of the nation', called on Chan to resign 10 days before Singirok did.

The Australian and New Zealand governments and their compliant media were prepared to accept Chan's scapegoating of the army. The PNG population was not. Singirok's upfront criticisms of Chan reflected general concerns. In the face of public scepticism of his claims, Chan backed down. Within a few days, Chan changed from accusing Singirok of treason, to respecting his restraint.

Singirok showed his restraint. He called on soldiers to support his replacement, Colonel Aikung, while continuing to challenge Chan to resign. And when Chan's police surrounded Port Moresby's Murray Barracks on 20 March and began firing tear gas and automatics at civilians and soldiers, the troops showed remarkable restraint in not retaliating. Officers were able to hold back the troops who wanted to break open the barrack's arsenal and return fire. The police road blocks remained around the barracks for several days, but were not able to provoke a fight with soldiers. A confrontation with the army would have given Chan the excuse to call on the Australian government for support. Australian troops were poised on alert, ready to respond.

Chan played up the possibility of a threat from an army supporting a deposed general, who was openly critical of his policy. But there was no army seizure of power. The army did not try to push Chan out by force. Singirok took a political, not a military stance. Ordinary soldiers were politicised over the issue of mercenaries and publicly opposed Chan. They signed a petition calling on Chan to resign about the same time as the Governor General of PNG asked Chan to resign. When Chan resigned the thousands of civilians and soldiers surrounding Parliament sang the national anthem. They saw themselves as acting for the nation and within the constitution while Chan was outside it.
 
 

Mercenary deal exposed33

There were widespread suspicions of mercenaries' role from the outset despite Chan's assurances they would have no frontline fighting role. For example, a PNG human rights group prepared a legal challenge to the government's right to employ mercenaries. Outside PNG, the New Zealand Defence Minister hinted he thought mercenaries would be used directly in Bougainville. Singirok acted as a catalyst for general unrest by blowing the lid on the mercenary deal. He showed that Chan lied about the contract he made with the mercenaries.

The peoples' fears were justified. Chan said the mercenaries would provide sophisticated military equipment and special operations training to combat the BRA. They would not be fighting in Bougainville. Singirok revealed that the high tech weaponry included two Mi-24 attack helicopters armed with rockets and machine guns.

He strongly objected to going to Bougainville with Sandline `to blow Bougainville off the face of the earth'. He also objected to Chan paying mercenaries millions of dollars while PNG troops went without food, pay and supplies. He stood for the role of a national army fighting for country, against employing foreign mercenaries fighting as business with no interest in the future of PNG. He was defending the Constitution.

The PNG Constitution forbids the raising of a private army. The mercenaries' contract shows they were not just hired as trainers but as fighters. Sandline undertook to "conduct offensive operations in Bougainville in conjunction with PNG defence forces to render the BRA military ineffective and repossess the Pangua mine; and provide follow-up operational support...". The BRA claimed that after a helicopter reconnaissance early in March, mercenaries landed in Bougainville. This was denied in Port Moresby.

Media commentators linked the British mercenary company Sandline, employed by Chan, and South African based mercenary group, Executive Outcomes. Executive Outcomes had fought in Angola for oil oncessions and in Sierra Leone for diamond mine rights. When Chan announced he would buy back the Bougainville copper mine from the Australian company Conzinc, many suspected that the mercenaries were in for their usual mine shares. BRA, like Singirok, did not trust Chan over the purchase of the copper mine. The mercenary boss, Tim Spicer, denied he was offered shares.

Spicer claimed the two mercenary companies were separate entities and he had subcontracted Executive Outcomes to provide equipment and training. As these functions were the basis of the operation announced publicly, the South African firm provided the substance while the British Sandlines provided the front man and the name. When Spicer's mercenary soldiers were kicked out of PNG, they all flew back home to Johannesburg. The strength of the connection with Executive Outcomes points to the possibility of the deal including mine shares.34
 
 

Australia and New Zealand interest

Australia and New Zealand are in difficult positions. They want a compliant PNG to safeguard their interests in the region. At the same time they want to appear aloof and not esponsible for PNG's civil war. PNG must appear as a sovereign independent state. Both Prime Ministers supported Chan against Singirok, upholding the `constitution'. After all, this line is the basis of theirown claims to political power.

But both Prime Ministers condemned the use of mercenaries. Using mercenaries undercut their own relationships with PNG as well as offending their voting publics. Both governments pressured PNG to change tack by threatening to end what is euphemistically called their 'defence cooperation programmes', their military support which is the backbone of the PNG defence force. Howard met Chan in early March in Sydney, to demand he abandon the plan. Chan refused in spite of threats to withdraw $243m annual aid package from Australia. Chan accused Australia of not providing enough military support.

Australia does not want to appear to be directly involved, so allows PNG to solve the crisis without Australian intervention. Yet the Australian military went on the alert in anticipation of a real army coup. Ten navy frigates on exercises in the Coral Sea remained there instead of returning to port. Australian media reported that an army battalion in Australia was at the ready. Come to the crunch, a PNG collapse would weaken regional stability and most importantly, Australian investments. The official excuse for a possible invasion was that the military would have gone in to rescue Australian citizens.

When the crisis blew up, the Australian government diverted a Russian aircraft carrying arms to PNG. The shipment had been organised by Sandline and negotiated by the PNG Defence Minister Matthias Ijape, up until his resignation. The mercenaries high tech equipment is now stored in the Northern Territory. By its none to covert actions, Australia has shown its hand as the imperialist power directly dominating PNG by acting in 'consultation' with the PNG government and others (unnamed).
 
 

PNG State power under threat?

The tactics over the war against the BRA and the way these were decided in secret were the burning issues, not the war itself. Yet there are similarities in the two fights against the PNG government. The popular uprising in PNG demonstrated the emerging politicisation of workers, farmers and soldiers. They were prepared to mobilise to represent their own interests in conflict with a government that was lying to them and selling out their country's resources. Their opposition has in common with opposition of independence fighters in Bougainville, the desire to control their lives and challenge a government that works against the interests of the people.

They both confronted state power. The PNG army, as part of the state apparatus, saw themselves as defending the legitimate state against Prime Minister Chan. The PNG opposition constantly referred to itself as remaining within the Constitution.

The BRA leader Frances Ona, also has illusions in the PNG constitution. He thinks the rights of the rebels are protected by the Constitution. He wants to negotiate a settlement of the war with the new PM. He wants talks to be held in Bougainville, and claims the BRA have "the right and freedom to speak under the PNG Constitution".

Why should BRA look to the PNG government for a solution that is the cause of their problems? The BRA trusted the PNG 'Constitution' in the past and yet was betrayed. Bougainville declared its independence before PNG. But PM Somare of the new PNG government convinced the Bougainvilleans that they were at risk from the mining giant Conzinc by going it alone. PNG would protect Bougainville. But it didn't. Somare misled Bougainville. He worked for international capital, Conzinc and the Australian government, against Bougainville. But despite this betrayal and the war of independence, the BRA still had expectations that the PNG Constitution can fulfil their demands for autonomy and control over the mine.

So both groups opposed Chan's plan to destroy the BRA and limited the power of capital to dictate how it will rip out resources and super-exploit Bougainville and PNG. However, both the BRA and the PNG armed forces have illusions in being able to reach negotiated democratic solutions with international capitalism. The BRA hopes for a negotiated peace that will win their political independence. The PNG army hopes for a new government that will reflect the popular desire of the people for national sovereignty and economic control of their own resources.
 
 

For a Constituent Assembly!

Both fail to understand that the giant multinationals like Conzinc and their imperialist backers don't give a damn about the democratic rights of indigenous or semi-colonial peoples. But as yet they still believe in a democratic solution. That is why they want to replace a government that openly acts as a tool of foreign capitalists, with a democratic government. 35

However, as we saw in the case of Fiji, machinations over a Constitution are just a way of throwing sand into the eyes of the people. The Fiji Constitution was 'doctored' by setting up an international commisson headed by ex-Bishop and ex-Governor-General of New Zealand, Sir Paul Reeves. The result does not express the will of the majority, but the will of the international bourgeoisie hiding behind the legalistic trappings of a Constitution. The only way to give expression to the genuine aspirations if the masses is to call for a Constituent Assembly of all adult members of society.

Yet popular support for a Constituent Assembly would jeopardise the imperialist's economic interests in PNG and Bougainville, just as it would in Fiji, and set a precedent for other oppressed states to follow. And it would bring about a Fiji type response - a right-wing coup backed by foreign capital and foreign governments.

It is clear that both Australia and New Zealand were prepared to back Chan against the Army. Any popular uprising that threatened to oust the neo-colonial regime would bring a Fiji-type armed intervention in support of a coup. The fact that the two lumpen-imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand are involved does not mean that their actions on behalf of US, Japanese and EU imperialism are any the less repressive. The case of East Timor demonstrates this beyond doubt.
 
 

East Timor

In the case of East Timor we have a blatant military occupation of an independent country immediately after it had been decolonised by Portugal in 1974. The occupation was clearly against the wishes of the people, Portugal, and the UN. Yet the US, and Australia and New Zealand supported Indonesia's occupation and annexation of East Timor for 'strategic reasons 36

This case in an example of the US encouraging Indonesia under its client Suhato to prevent East Timor becoming a 'Cuba' of the Pacific. Suharto had already proven his loyalty to the US by overthrowinig Sukarno and purging a million communists and left-wingers in 1965.

The US gained because East Timor did not 'fall' into the hands of the "Fretilin" whom the US and its allies saw as communists. It gained free passage for its unclear submarines through its waters. Indonesia gained new territory with rich resources, especially offshore oil fields. Australia got a share of the Timor Gap in oil rights. New Zealand got 'paid off' by developing its trade interests in the region. The US hypocrisy of this action is well documented by commentators like Chomsky.37

Australia's hypocrisy in voting against invasion, while endorsing it privately became an issue especially in the Labor Party that pushed for Australia to campaign for self-determination. Hawke got this policy changed and Australia formally endorsed the annexation in 1979. The result of this was a successful negotiation of the Timor Gap agreement in 1988 that gave Australia a large share of the oil rich sea bed between its continental shelf and the Timor Trench.38

New Zealand's role was even more craven. It had no direct economic stake in the region, yet it prostituted its 'reputation' as a defender of human rights to go along with the US line. So much so that Indonesia could exploit New Zealand's complicity in winning support for the acceptance of its annexation. New Zealand's 'reputation' as an advocate of small nations' rights, provided a cover for Indonesia.

This duplicity and hypocrisy reached its depths with the role of David Lange, the Prime Minister in the Fourth Labour Government from 1984. Lange's personal charisma as a pacifist and internationally recognised opponent of nuclear arms provided Indonesia with the sort of moral authority it needed to gain support for its genocidal regime.39

It was not until the black out on information about the brutality of the regime was blow apart after the Sant Cruz massacre in 1991 and the Pilger documentary about it in 1994 that public indigation in New Zealand made the government reconsider its "irreversible' position on East Tiimor. However as we have seen in Australia, public opinion in itself was not be enough to push Australia and New Zealand to break with the US line on the region. This had to wait to the crisis in Indonesia and a change of line from the US.40

As I have shown on the issue of East Timor, the most 'moral' of foreign policy stances in Australasia went out the window as soon as the 'national interests' of oil or trade prospects opened up in Indonesia. The right of the East Timorese to self-determination was traded by the most self-righteous proponents of small nation democracy, as if it was of no value.

And this is the point. 'Human rights' have no value unless they can be used as a pretext by imperialism to gain some economic advantage. It is the trading on human rights that proves conclusively that in the modern capitalist world, it is economic interest that determines what is moral.

This nasty reality is demonstrated by the current 'U turn' on East Timor. The willingness of Indonesia to grant a measure of 'autonomy' to East Timor is clearly dictated by US 'strategic interests'. The US is sufficiently powerful in the region to enforce its will by sheer economic compulsion. It has a battery of IMF/World Bank/APEC/WTO financial weapons with which to batter down protectionist barriers and impose economic control. Should that fail, it can then impose economic and selective military sanctions as against Cuba, Libya and Iraq and Serbia.

We have seen that is it not any difference between a particular imperialist state like the US or France, or sub-imperialist states like Australia and New Zealand, or large neo-colonies like Indonesia, that explains the fate of the small Pacific Island states. It is the imperialists’ requirement to extract super-profits from cheap resources and labour–power. This sets up a chain of domination that extends from the imperialist state through its sub-imperialist agents to the neo-colonies. To defend this 'right' to super-exploit against the right of self-determination, imperialism and its agents must resort to the use of military force.

The success of a workers and peasants movements in PNG, West Papua and East Timor rests upon the ability of workers internationally to intervene to prevent imperialism from smashing the popular revolutionary movement. Workers around the world must also act to stop the imperialists from using the pretext of "peacekeeping" to send in the military to abort revolutionary uprisings. The hypocrisy of Australian and New Zealand governments or all colours in condemning the use of mercenaries when they have tacitly backed the PNG, the East Timor and West Papua "dirty wars" for decades proves that we cannot rely on their attempts at intervention or "peacekeeping".

Instead of passively accepting their 'leaders' moral authority to dictate the fate of the East Timorese, or Bourgainvillians, Australian and New Zealand workers must mobilise to prevent their governments from giving moral and military aid to the reactionary forces. They must unite with workers around the world to provide material and military aid to independence and liberation movements in the Pacific.

The lesson to be learned from all of these struggles is that Pacific Peoples cannot fight imperialism and win short of a socialist revolution. Imperialism in crisis must increase the level of exploitation of Third World colonies and neo-colonies. With less and less room for compromise, democratic solutions are exhausted and the military takes over. The question then arises, how do we build an united anti-imperialist front across the South Pacific that is capable of bringing together all the isolated struggles of peasants and workers into a Pan-Pacific socialist movement? 41
 
 

Fight Imperialism at Home!

We have seen that there is no escaping the fact that imperialism continues to dominate the small island states of the South Pacific. Decolonisation in the form of political independence, or of territorial integration into the metropolitan power, does not create the conditions for independent development. Quite the opposite. In the 'independent' states such as PNG, Vanuatu, Fiji etc, the intensification of imperialist exploitation has produced resistance movements and military regimes to smash that resistance. In the 'integrated states;' such as the French and US territories, the citizens of the Island states are drawn into the metropoliltan powers as marginalised wage workers. 42

Therefore, in the South Pacific the position of revolutionaries must not be to call simply for the removal of direct US, Japanese, or French, ‘colonialism’ and its military presence. Nor must it attach to these direct colonisers the label 'bad' imperialists and counterpose it to the label of  'good' lumpen-imperialists, Australia and New Zealand. The ‘Nuclear–free Independent Pacific’ was the position of Labo(u)rite leaders Lange/Palmer and Hawke who are just as firmly on the side of metropolitan capital. Capital is capital whether armed with nuclear bombs, snipers rifles, Sandhurst trained leaders of coups, or pacifist preachers.

The most damning example of how lumpen-imperialists can retain their neo-colonial hold on a country when it becomes independent is East Timor.  Australia and NZ backed the US and Japan to keep this country under the occupation of their semi-colony Indonesia for nearly 25 yearts.  Despite posing as peacekeepers to oversee the transition to political independence, it is obvious for all to see that Australia and NZ are still playing a lumpen imperialist role by ensuring that East Timor stays firmly locked into the global economy as a super-exploited semi-colony.

For the petty bourgeoisie and the pink-green left in the imperialist countries, including their junior partners, Australia and New Zealand, solidarity with national liberation struggles is limited to calling for the end of imperialism, not capitalism. ‘Solidarity’ means building ‘mass pressure’ to push the imperialist states to voluntarily withdraw and create a nuclear free and independent Pacific. But this slogan is, and will remain social imperialist, so long as the petty bourgeoisie hang onto their privileges resulting from super-exploitation. In adapting to the NFIP slogan, the ‘left' renounces proletarian internationalism for a share in imperialist super-profits.

What does this strategy mean in practice? While the pink-green left adopts the NFIP as the first stage in the Stalinist two-step, it continues to support social imperialism at home and abroad. It liquidates Marxism for the petty bourgeois interest of ‘reconciling’ workers and peasants with their super-exploitation. It cannot break with the Labo(u)r Governments of Lange, Palmer, Clark, Hawke, Keating, and Beasley which parade ‘nuclear–free zones’ as progressive anti-imperialist policy. But the only thing ‘progressive’ about this policy is that it allows the labour bureaucrats and state functionaries in the imperialist states, the colonies and semi-colonies, as well as the ‘transitional’ states, to ‘progress’ in their petty ambitions at the expense of the workers’ and peasants’ international interests.

‘Left’ social imperialism apologises for the lumpen-imperialism of Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific. This pretentious brand of petty, p(r)oxy imperialism is totally consistent with the NFIP. Neither country is capable of brandishing nuclear weaponry. Neither has an interest in direct colonial rule. But both will defend their investments in the Pacific by conventional military force if necessary. Both will intervene to smash liberation movements that threaten ‘stability’ in the region. Neither nuclear port bans, nor bans on military bases will have the slightest impact on the ability of US, Japanese, French and other imperialist states’ ‘freedom’ to super-exploit Pacific peoples. They merely express a chauvinist outrage in support of New Zealand's and Australia’s ‘right’ to scavenge their  'fair share' of the surplus pumped out of the Pacific.
 
 

Notes.                                                                                                       (go to bibliography)

1 This chapter was originally written in 1990 for the revolutionary newspaper Redletter. I have updated it in part to keep abreast of the changes in the Asia-Pacific region.

2 Both Stalinist and 'Trotskyist' left traditions in Australia are heavily into the colony/victim or imperialist/partner scenarios. The Stalinists adopt a position on the completion of the democratic revolution without reference to socialism. (Macintyre, The Reds....) O'Lincoln, (Into the Mainstream...) gives a short but sharp account of the degeneration of the CPA from a state capitalist perspective. Former 'Trotskyists' like the Democratic Socialist Party argue that the revolution has been completed, Australia is an independent imperialist country, and that democratic demands are irrelevant. (West, Holmes, Adler, Socialism...) See the DSP position "Can Australian nationalism by Progressive in Green Left Weekly, November 14 1998. Both fail to come to terms with the political/economic character of Australia as advanced semi-colony in which the struggle to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution has to take the form of the 'permanent' or socialist revolution (See Communist Left, Programme...)

3 On the wider Pacific Peoples struggles see Peace Movement Aotearoa  www.converge.org/pma/ and Asia Pacific Workers Action edited by Robert Reid.

4 Marx and Engels, Review, Collected Works Vol 10  p.267.

5 Lenin, Imperialism...p 283

6 On 'social imperialism' see Lenin, above. p 285

7 The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination. CW 22 p.143

8 On the April Theses, see Lenin, CW 24, p.21. On the East see Lenin, Better Fewer, But Better. CW 33 p.499

9 See Trotsky's prediction of this possibility in  the Transitional Program, p 203

10 During the 1990's a major shift towards capitalist restoration occured in  China, Vietnam and DRK but following a more gradual path than that of the rapid restoration in Eastern Europe and the SU after 1989.

11 Lenin's major critique of social imperialism is in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kausky, CW 28 p 227. See also Lenin's comment on the Australian Labor Party (In Australia). The Australian and NZ Labo(u)r Parties were founded on social imperialist premises, that workers in the new countries could use their Parties to reform capitalism without the need for revolution (see Kuhn, 'Lenin...').

12 Stalin's politics were based on the interests of the labour bureacracy as a caste which has its social base in the labour aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie. See Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed. Chapter 6.

13 Se Trotsky, Results...; Pemanent... Trotsky makes it clear that the concept of permanent revolution goes back to Marx.

14 Trotsky generalised the theory of Permanent Revolution after the betrayal of the Chinese Revolution (Leon Trotsky, Introduction to the Permanent Revolution..)

15 Buckley and Klugman; Macintyre, Oxford...Thompson Australian Imperialism...refers to the late 19th century expansionism in Australasia as "sub-imperialism" because it was part of British imperialism. In fact Irish, workers and republicans in general were generally opposed to expansion. Indeed it as the British fear that Australia would secede that saw Australia gain conrol over the New Hebrides. Thompson shows that economic motives played a relatively limited role in this expansion. Utrecht, Fiji... following Grough and Wheelright, Australia...makes the point that Australia and NZ while having their own Pacific 'client' states, are 'client' states of the US, Japan and the EEC. None of these writers make the case that Austalia or NZ were fully fledged imperialist powers in their own right.

16 See NZ Spartacist League, Towards a Socialist Polynesia

17 See NZ Spartacist League, Towards a Socialist Polynesia

18  Buckley and klugman cite data from Burns Philp to show that most of Australian commercial interests in the South Pacific during 1917/18 were in trade, not production of copra and mining (p. 50). And total trade was no more than 2% of total Australian trade. This proportion has declined ever since.

19 This is most clearly seen in Australian and New Zealand's interest in Bougainville and East Timor where both states have backed the PNG and Indonesian economic interests to further the interests of Australasian and US/Japanese ownership and control of these resources.

20 See Howard, Political Economy of the South Pacific, also Mining, Politics and Development...; Sutherland,  Beyond the Politics of Race... ,and Andrew Needs, NZ Aid and the Development of Class in Tonga. Epeli Hau'ofa The New South Pacific and Our Sea of Islands. For a critique of various theories in relation to Fiji see Naidu, Development...

21 On the debate over decolonisalism today see Denoon, et al The Cambridge History....441-467.

22 On US rule of its 'protectorates' in  Micronesia see Smith,  The Nuclear Free...p57 who argues that the US can overide its free association pacts in its 'security interests. See also Denoon et al Cambridge History... Chapt 10.

23 Melanesian Solidarity for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, based in Papua New Guinea

24 It could be argued for instance, that Eastern Samoans have more democratic rights as a territory of the US, than 'independent' Western Samoa. This is because they are virtually US citizens. see Denoon et al,  p 449

25 The WTO, the World Bank and APEC act for US imperialism in imposing free trade and freedom of capital movement in order to facilitate super-exploitation of the Pacific neo-colonies.

26 With the election of Rocard as Prime Minister, a new ‘deal’, direct rule from Paris for one year and a negotiated solution, offered no more prospect for advancing Kanak control of New Caledonia. The FLNKS agreed to direct rule for a year from July 1988, but rejected the other terms - the partition of New Caledonia into three parts; a referendum on self–determination postponed for 10 years; and the right of recent settlers to vote. The FLNKS

27 The report of Jacques Cousteau who went to Mururoa in October 1987 to dive and photograph the testing site, has only recently been made public. (find it). Of 1000 deaths in French Polynesia in 1985, only 95 people had death certificates issued, and the official statistics state that 200 people died from no specific cause. One of the most blatant attempts to suppress information about the effects of the testing was the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in July 1985 in Auckland harbour. The ship was due to sail for Mangareva, the nearest inhabited islands to Mururoa, with doctors on board to assess the radiation exposure of the inhabitants.

28 In the May 1988 elections for the Presidency, Tahitians voted 54.4% for Mitterand and 45.5% for Chirac. Of the 108,000 voters in French Polynesia, 10,000 are French settlers and 8,000 military personnel, gendarmes or government officials. Participation of Polynesians is low, just over 50%. But of these who voted in the National Assembly elections, to select two deputies, over 40% voted for pro-independence and anti-nuclear parties. There is also strong pressure in the Territorial Assembly to make the economy less reliant upon the military budget.

29 The former Socialist minister for Overseas Territories and Departments, Louis Le Pensec, made it clear that he would pursue the policy of his conservative predecessors of "integrating and assimilating better the native populations in the Pacific Territories".

30 Not just in the Pacific but elsewhere in the 'third world'.

31 See Rokotuivuna et al Fiji...; Utrecht,  Fiji...; Sutherland, Fiji; Howard, Political Economy; Naidu, 'Fiji..' ; Naidu, Development...

32 On the Coups see Howard, Fiji; Sutherland, Beyond...; Victor Lal, Fiji...

33 These events were reports by the Bouggainville Freedom Movement ([email protected]) and the Australian journalist Max Watts ([email protected]).

34 For current reports on Bougainville see the website http://www.eco.action.org/bv/bvupdate.html

35 See reports on the  Peace Process and the indulgence of these illusions on http://www/eco.action.or/bv/bvupdate.html

36 See Jolliffe, East Timor; Taylor, Indonesia's... Of course, all pretended to be concerned about Timor's self-determination. The US stoppied its aid programme to Indonesia, yet voted against a UN resolution condemnning the invasion. Australia voted for the resolution, but at the same time PM Fraser made it clear that Australia was not going to press the matter. NZ abstained and then tried to inflluence Indonesia by private negotiations to 'legitiate' its occupation through the authority of the UN! This should not have come as a surprise after the craven retreat on West Irian iindependence in the late 1960's. (See Sharp, The Rule... John Taylor's books on East Timor,

37 See his Introduction to Jardine, East Timor and recent article in Le Monde Diplomatique??

38 See Stepan, Credibility Gap.

39 Ellis (The NZ Response...) makes some interesting points about how Lange tried to use his personal influence to change Indonesia's methods of rule. Of course this polilcy was shown to be bankrupt by the subsequent revelations of Indonesia's brutal rule. Marxists can draw a further conclusion from this shabby episode, that petty bourgeois moral hypocrites like Lange not only delude themselves, they act as apologists for imperialism in deluding those who look up to them as moral authorities.

40 Indonesia left to itself would not have been willing or able to 'reverse' the situation in East Timor. While it is true that the overthrow of Suharto opened up some space for democratic politics so far this falls far snort of self-determination for Indonesia's national minorities. The Demcracy movement has yet to make any real impact on the New Order Constitution that empowers the Army to run the country.

41 On the resistance movements and the incorporation of Pacific peoples into the pan-pacific migration and cultural mixing since 1990 see Denoon ed The Cambridge... Chapts 12 and 13.

42 Hau'ofa The New South Pacific.