What should revolutionary socialists do in Iraq?
What should the revolutionary socialists do in Iraq? They should propagandise for and build workshop organisations, trade unions, and so on. They should preach socialism. They should adopt a political programme whose immediate demands are for a secular democratic republic, civil rights, the separation of religion and state, an independent sovereign Iraq, self-determination for the Kurds, rights for minorities like the Assyrians. They will naturally oppose all the clerical-fascists (those collaborating with the USA as well as those in conflict with it); the Ba’th quasi-fascists; the occupying troops; and every force antagonistic to what they want to see develop. They will not of course ignore concrete realities and just mouth propagandist abstractions. While maintaining its intransigent class opposition to the US occupying forces, it would be right for such a Third Camp force not to call for immediate US-British withdrawal. It is right for the IFTU not to do so now. It would be suicidal
