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In Colombia a civil war exists. It is a civil war that that
has nothing to do with the promotion of the class interests of the working
class. The FARC and the ELN are the principal guerrilla armies claiming to
represent the interests of the masses. But there is little or no difference
between these movements and the forces of the state. Both are merely different
expressions of the interests of the bourgeoisie and thereby serve different
functions in perpetuating the existence of that class.
The masses are merely pawns in the conflict between the
different bourgeois political interests. The FARC and the ELN are petty
bourgeois organisations that ultimately represent the interests of the
bourgeoisie --analogous to the Provo IRA. Like the IRA they cannot and do not
want to promote the class interests of the masses --however much they pretend
otherwise. Like the IRA they are prepared to do a deal with the forces of the
state in the interests of establishing a bourgeois settlement. The issue is the
price at which they are prepared "to betray their principals" --as some might
put it.
The essential difference between FARC/ELN and the bourgeois
political forces centred in and around the Colombian state is not the essential
bourgeois class interests which each in its own way sustains. The difference is
a more derivative, perhaps even more superficial, one. FARC/ELN express
bourgeois interests in a way that is more accommodating to the petty bourgeois
masses on which their support is based. Consequently a bourgeois settlement must
be one that includes conditions that in some partial way satisfy the needs of
the peasant masses. This compromise, like the Good Friday Agreement, must be
dressed up in bright colours in order to deceive, confuse and diffuse the
Colombian masses to render it more possible to foist compromise on them.
The success in implementing such a compromise allows the leadership of FARC/ELN
to establish itself within the institution of the state in such a way that it
can preserve its petty bourgeois interests as an integral part of the state.
This is what Sinn Fein/IRA in Ireland have been striving to
achieve. They are hoping that their petty bourgeois interests are sustained
within the structures of the British state in a Northern Ireland Assembly, the
Northern Ireland Executive and other state and para-state bodies. Consequently
the economic sustenance of Sinn Fein/IRA petty bourgeois interests will
shift its support (through its existence as a armed organisation)
from economic sources that may have been less than legitimate to more
explicit economic support in the state. In this way it will have succeeded
through compromise in shifting the economic source of its existence from outside
the imperialist to inside it. In this way this petty bourgeois interest will
have been successfully colonised by the state --by imperialism. The corporatist
imperialist state will have further integrated interests that had existed
outside it into its very imperialist statal being. In a previous period this
same state largely colonised the British working class in a similar way --it
cannibalises all that challenges it from the outside.
Ultimately both Sinn Fein/IRA and FARC/ELN seek are more
sophisticated and subtle capitalist state that appears to encompass the
interests of a variety of different petty bourgeois elements while essentially
and effectively serving the interests of the bourgeoisie. They thereby seek to
restructure the capitalist state investing it with a colonising
capacity --colonisation through a corporatist strategy. In short the struggle of
Sinn Fein/IRA and FARC/ELN is a pro-imperialist struggle for the restructuring
of the capitalist state. To suggest that these political elements are
revolutionary from the point of view of the masses merely invests them with a
revolutionary mystique which belies the essential political interests which they
express.
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