Reply to a polemic of the PCO (Brazil) against the joint statement of LIT-CI, UIT-CI and RCIT on the Syrian Revolution

By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 15 January 2025, www.thecommunists.net

The Brazilian Partido da Causa Operária (PCO) has published a polemic against the joint statement on the Syrian Revolution which the RCIT has recently issued together with two other Trotskyist organisations – the International League of Workers – Fourth International (LIT-CI) and the International Unity of Workers – Fourth International (UIT-CI). [1] In this declaration we stated our support for the revolutionary uprising against the Assad tyranny after nearly 14 years of devastating civil war but warned against the new HTS-led government. ^[2]

In contrast to other Trotskyists who preferred to take the neutral position of bystanders of the Syrian Revolution – like the PST/FT or the MST/LIS ^[3] – the PCO openly supports the camp of Assad. It denounces the Syrian Revolution as a “coup orchestrated by imperialism”. Hence, “the fall of Assad was not a victory of the masses, it was a victory of mercenaries financed by the US.” ^[4]

They agree with us that the civil war since 2011 was not reactionary … but for exactly the opposite reasons! For them, the rebels were reactionary while the Assad dictatorship supposedly represented an “anti-imperialist force”. “Despite being a bourgeois government, the Assad family's government was a government of the Syrian national bourgeoisie, which opposed imperialism on a number of factors. (…) Syria had a nationalist government and, being a backward country, this government was semi-oppressed and semi-oppressive, just like the government of any country in Latin America, Africa or Asia, with the exception of Japan, as well as Eastern Europe. However, the forces that took power in Syria are reactionary because they are carrying out the imperialist program for the region. No force in the world is as reactionary as imperialism.”

These are not the only notable statements of the PCO article. It asks cynically: “What democratic freedoms were achieved, exactly?” – ignoring the fact that the thousands of people were liberated from the torture chambers, that millions celebrated in the streets, that it is now possible to hold public rallies, that a gigantic surveillance and repression apparatus has been destroyed, etc.

Likewise, they repeat the silly Stalinist slander of calling the rebels “mercenaries financed by the US” – ignoring the facts a) that the rebels were listed as “terrorists” by the U.S., b) that they did not receive any weapons from Washington (why else did they have only a single tank when they started the final offensive on 27 November?!), c) that the U.S. Air Force launched bombing attacks against ISIS but never against Assad’s forces and never in support of the rebels.

The PCO claims in their article the Israeli government “celebrated Assad’s downfall” – so why on earth do the Zionists now launch air attacks to destroy Syrian heavy military equipment when it could fell into the hands of the rebels (but not before when these were under control of Asad and deployed against the rebels)?! And why does Israel’s Foreign Minister call the new government a “terrorist gang”? Obviously, facts and logic have a difficult time in the ranks of the PCO leadership!

What is the cause of such statements from a parallel universe? Do these people not read any news? No, their problem is not lack of knowledge but lack of Marxism. The PCO – coming from the sorry tradition of the Argentinean pseudo-Trotskyist Jorge Altamira – stubbornly denies the imperialist nature of Russia and China. In the same article, they claim – without any elaboration: “The thesis that Russia is imperialist is not Marxist.”

As the RCIT has elaborated in a number of documents, recognising Russian and Chinese imperialism as important powers which rival the old hegemon – U.S. imperialism – is a precondition in order to understand the dynamics of the world situation of the past decade. [5]

And this is the basis of all these differences. The PCO considers only the Western powers as imperialist. Hence, China and Russia which are rivals of Washington, are the “lesser evil”, an “obstacle to imperialism” and therefore, play an “objective progressive role”. Where the U.S. makes a plus, the PCO makes a minus and the other way round. This is anti-imperialism for fools but not Marxism. [6]

This is the reason why the PCO correctly sides with Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel or with the Taliban against the U.S. occupation but sides with Russian imperialism and its allies against oppressed people like those in Syria, Ukraine or Chechnya.

Such a policy is a one-eyed anti-imperialism behind which lurks pro-Russian social-imperialism. In the real world of politics, these people are Assad’s Best Friends Forever which meant in the past decade joining the camp of counterrevolution in Syria.