Whatever the imperialists do in Haiti, they do for themselves. They do it to undermine, not to aid, the anti-imperialist struggle. Whenever they appear to do something progressive, it is either a sham or a concession wrested by the pressure of the masses.
The diplomatic corps of U.S. imperialism seem to be up to their necks in complex maneuvers with the Organization of American States and other imperialist powers to support the restoration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to his elected post as president of Haiti.
All this has been accompanied by florid rhetoric about the need to broaden "democracy" in the Western Hemisphere. In Bush's words, this would be possible because, "with the exception of Cuba," democracies have been gaining full control of their destinies in the Western Hemisphere.
It was only a week ago, on Oct. 1, that Bernard Aronson, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, said the elections that brought Aristide to power "were held under unprecedented international supervision. The OAS and the United Nations both oversaw them. Therefore, they have a legitimacy not just in Haiti but internationally. So it is very important, in our point of view, that they be defended. ... Every time democracy is threatened by the military of this hemisphere it sends off potential shockwaves and we want to make clear that this kind of behavior has a terrible price. We are going to isolate them, and we hope that the hemisphere is going to isolate them until democracy is restored."
Why now the sudden shift in U.S. policy toward Haiti? The Bush administration is now concerned over Aristide's "human rights record." It has suddenly found out that Aristide was weak on defending the "human rights" of the Duvalierists. A great deal of prominence is being given to a move in the Haitian National Assembly to elect an interim president — not Aristide, of course, who was elected by the Haitian people last December with 68% of the votes.
The change can be seen in this quote from the San Francisco Chronicle (Oct. 5): "Business leaders yesterday expressed fear that Aristide's return to power might mean the start of a bloodbath against the army and other groups, including better-off members of Haiti's bourgeoisie. Several businessmen referred to a speech Aristide made Sept. 27, in which he appeared to extol the recent practice by some of his supporters of using a tire necklace known as a `Pere Lebrun' to burn people alive."
This shift in U.S. policy is reminiscent of what happened during the long years of the Vietnam War. The State Department and Pentagon occasionally drove the media up the wall with contradictions that forced the newspeople to lie and later have to retract their stories.
The journalistic team of brothers Marvin and Bernard Kalb, who worked first for CBS and then for NBC, were quite prominent in exposing contradictory public statements of the State Department. Finally in 1984 the department coopted Bernard Kalb, making him their spokesperson.
In October 1986, however, after a briefing by Kalb on the bombing of Libya, a high State Department official completely demolished what he had said, giving a totally different version of the same event. Kalb quit his job in protest. He must have expected his old colleagues in the media to loudly applaud this brave act in the interest of truth. Much to his surprise, the media gave it only one day's coverage.
Thereafter, the State Department went back to its regular procedure. Whenever an important shift in policy was contemplated, they would call in the chief executives of the networks and the publishers of the print media for a long discussion. Then the journalistic corps would do their job in accordance with the bosses' instructions.
That is how it is today. The media is an instrument of imperialist finance capital and must perform its duties accordingly.
It doesn't take a von Clausewitz to know that this current shift by the Bush administration toward the military coup in Haiti is a tactical one and does not involve a change in strategic objectives.
Let us take the statement by the head of the military camarilla, Brigadier General Reynaud Cedras, whose hands are stained with the blood of the Haitian people. He is reported to have said: "Today the armed forces find themselves obligated to assume the heavy responsibility to keep the ship of state afloat.... After seven months of democratic experience, the country once again finds itself a prey to the horrors of uncertainty."
In a formal sense, Cedras' statement seems to be in direct contradiction with the pronounced policy of the U.S. and the other Western imperialist powers — to support a democratic government in Haiti headed by its elected president, Aristide. Cedras appears as the avowed enemy of democracy while the imperialist powers are its fervent, unwavering supporters. But let us look a little closer.
Cedras is not condemning democracy in general. He is condemning the proletarian democracy that the Haitian masses have been engaged in since Aristide's election last December.
They have been taking destiny in their own hands. They were also practicing democracy when they meted out proletarian justice to their tormentors, their torturers, the murderous Tonton Macoutes.
When proletarian democracy and proletarian justice begin to take hold, democracy becomes a danger to the imperialist bourgeoisie. Then it becomes clear they are just as concerned with getting rid of that democracy as Cedras is.
Thus, the line of Cedras and that of the imperialist bourgeoisie are not at all antithetical, even though Cedras himself may be forced out of his military position.
The loud chorus for democracy coming from the imperialist powers is not really in contradiction with what the general is saying so brutally and frankly. What the imperialists have in mind, as they have shown on so many occasions throughout their history, is to establish a pro-colonialist democracy, one run lock, stock and barrel by imperialist finance capital and carried out either by the compradore bourgeoisie through some sort of constitutional government or, more likely, by a military camarilla.
The imperialist masters want to see the democratic facade function in an orderly manner, so that it sustains capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression. When that fails, then the military, the trained cadres of imperialism, step in to establish "order."
Any kind of democracy where the masses have a real say in running their own economic affairs is considered political interference in the affairs of the bourgeoisie.
The Bush administration has drunk some very heady wine while pledging its partnership, so-called, with the Gorbachev bourgeois restorationists and the new East European governments. It spoke about democracy in such lyrical terms that usually skeptical progressive people were beginning to take the demagogy for good coin. Even some of their own administrators have gotten carried away with it.
At first, this "democracy" demagogy with which the U.S. cloaked its counterrevolutionary role in Eastern Europe seemed so appropriate for Haiti. Didn't it prove that Bush's New World Order meant opposing military dictatorship and allowing the people uninhibited rights to organize, freedom of the press, freedom to criticize? But all this turned out to be mere froth.
What changed everything was the turn of events among the Haitian masses themselves. They have directed their wrath not only against the military and the paramilitary Macoutes but also against the compliant bourgeoisie in Haiti, against the merchants and the entrepreneurs who, while often speaking out loudly against the military and also bemoaning the ever-present hand of foreign finance capital — U.S. and French as well as others — will always prefer them to the rule of the masses.
So now there has been a swift change in tone by the Bush administration. They realize that, even with the masses being subdued by naked terror, a full-scale revolutionary convulsion has been provoked by the coup, a virtual second phase of the Haitian Revolution that began with the overthrow of Duvalier.
While the U.S. and its collaborators may have thought they could ingratiate themselves with the masses by intervening under the cover of restoring Aristide, they now realize they can't fool the people that way. Nor can they change the collective mind of the masses by cooking up a deal whereby Aristide is permitted back under conditions that would make him a mere front for imperialist intrigue and brutal military rule.
U.S. imperialism has hopelessly discredited itself with the masses. Only the Haitian bourgeoisie are willing to compromise with imperialism, but they fear for their necks. That's how vigorous the revolution is. It's a genuine attempt at a social revolution, not just a change in the political scenery. The realization of this has caused the abrupt about-face in the tactical approach by the State Department.
An understanding of the situation in Haiti requires a clear Marxist understanding of the nature of the bourgeois state. We must look at the relationship between the form and essence of the state.
The state is not just a collection of political and social institutions. It is not just the National Assembly, important as that may seem at some periods. In times of acute crisis the parliament is revealed as nothing but a talking machine. Nor is the judiciary in any better shape. This is so clearly illustrated in Haiti today.
Who rules in Haiti? The state — that is, the military. As Friedrich Engels long ago explained in his monumental work, "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State," the state when stripped down to its skeletal essence is the bodies of armed men. All else is subordinate.
Without the bodies of armed men and women, no state, whether bourgeois or proletarian, can long exist as long as there are still class antagonisms that rend society apart. The state is an instrument of class domination. In times of acute crisis, when one class challenges another, this domination can only be exercised by the armed terror of the state.
What is Aristide's biggest sin, according to the bourgeoisie? He realized the importance of establishing the embryo of another state, a state based upon the poor and the oppressed. Suddenly all the bourgeois papers have pointed to 300 palace guards trained by the Swiss as the beginning of an independent paramilitary force, appointed outside the commanding staff of the armed forces, which could become the possible basis for a people's army.
For a while the imperialist bourgeoisie winked at this development as nothing more than a palace guard. But the sudden rising of the masses has made the imperialist bourgeoisie more circumspect. They are now putting a spotlight on some of the changes that Aristide made earlier: the retirement of several officers out of line and the promotion of others; the failure to submit the names of new officers to the National Assembly, where they might not have been confirmed; and stirring insubordination by championing the rights of the poorer rank-and-file soldiers.
Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of Ghana's struggle for independence, also attempted to set up an independent force and appealed to the rank-and-file soldiers. But the British-trained officer corps eventually overthrew him.
Aristide's attempt to reshuffle the military staff in and of itself did not arouse the State Department or the Pentagon. Suddenly, however, all this has become important. It is because it hints at the development of a workers' militia, the only true alternative to the military camarilla trained, fed, clothed and housed by the imperialist bourgeoisie.
A workers' militia is the only answer to the vicious terror squads, to the trained thugs nurtured, cultivated and trained by the U.S. But it also must be armed and trained.
In the final analysis, to overthrow the yoke of imperialist domination one must learn from the models of victorious revolutions like in China, Cuba and Vietnam. Of course, a social revolution and the withdrawal of U.S. imperialism through peaceful means is more desirable. But where has that ever happened? Where has true independence been achieved that way?
The military establishment of the bourgeoisie in a colonial country cannot be dissolved by edict. History shows that Marx was right. The old machinery of state cannot be taken over, let alone permit itself to be dissolved. It must be broken, and it can only be broken by the self-effort of the masses themselves in shaping their own state.
The body of armed men and women in modern times can only be dissolved when class antagonisms have been dissolved. Only then will there be peace and no necessity for coercion, repression, or domination of one group of the population against another. And class antagonisms will disappear only when social equality has been attained.
That may be a considerable distance in the future, but there is no other road, as history has shown.
Last updated: 19 February 2018