The neoliberal turn impoverished people in the countryside, therefore creating a situation that justified "revolution."
This is rather amazing, if one thinks about it. Without the alternative Soviet bloc, virtually the whole world has been obliged to conform to anti-social neoliberal policies...Syria included. Does this make Bashar al Assad so much more a villain than every other leader conforming to U.S.-led globalization?
McKenna concludes by quoting Louis Proyect: "If we line up on the wrong side of the barricades in a struggle between the rural poor and oligarchs in Syria, how can we possibly begin to provide a class-struggle leadership in the USA, Britain, or any other advanced capitalist country?"
One could turn that around. Shouldn't such a Marxist revolutionary be saying: "If we can't defeat the oligarchs in the West, who are responsible for the neoliberal policies imposed on the rest of the world, how can we possibly begin to provide class-struggle leadership in Syria?"
The trouble with these Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism. The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological alibi for permanent war.
For the sake of world peace and progress, both the United States and its inadvertent Trotskyist apologists should go home and mind their own business.
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