WeeklyWorker

Letters

Israeli nation

In the recent Weekly Worker debate over various ‘solutions’ to the civil war in Israel-Palestine I made the case for a democratic, secular, federal republic - or “one state, two nations”: ‘Marching towards what solution?’ (May 16). This drew criticism from Moshé Machover, Mike Macnair and Jack Conrad. A follow-up article, ‘Another Israel is possible’ (June 20), focused on one pillar of the federal republic in a “democratic Israel” (shorthand for a democratic, secular republic). This drew a sharp response from Tony Greenstein (Letters, June 27).

Tony declares: “Another Israel is certainly not possible” - it would be the “height of unreality”. At face value, this is a most ridiculous and dogmatic assertion. Israel is already changing. Yet he suggests, keeping a straight face, that change, contradiction and evolution cannot apply in Israel. This is surely flat-earth communism. But there is more to this than meets the eye. Tony says, “It has to go” - meaning Israel has to be abolished. At best this is ambiguous and at worst dangerously reactionary.

In relation to Tony’s own observation that “It is as well to be clear about what it is that makes the Zionist project inherently unstable and to proceed from there”, there are three important points to be considered. The first is the existence of an Israeli nation. Second are differences over the Israeli working class and its potential to bring change. Third are divisions within Israeli society that mean class struggle is already reshaping it.

The Israeli nation (but not the Zionist state) is here to stay. Jack Conrad explains that since 1948 “millions of Jews have migrated to Israel, learnt Hebrew, intermarried, had children, assimilated, and made and remade the Israeli-Jewish nation. Today some 75% are sabras - Israeli born - and mostly second or third generation. Hence, the Israeli-Jewish nation not only inhabits a common territory and shares a common language: it is historically constituted” (‘Searching for solutions’, July 4)

A nation is not born simply because some ideology declares it to be so. When the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, no Israeli nation existed. It takes time and struggle on many levels, as Jack suggests, before a new nation becomes a fact of life. Even if Zionism and its state gave birth to the Israeli nation, it does not mean that the nation cannot grow up and free itself from the legacy of its illegitimate birth.

There is thus ambiguity in the use of the term ‘Israel’ to cover the Zionist state and constitution, on one side, and the Israeli nation, on the other. Tony wants to abolish both sides, whereas the democratic republican case is to abolish the Zionist state and its constitution and liberate the Israeli nation from it. The apartheid constitution was abolished, but the South African nation continued as a different kind of liberal democratic republic. It is the failure to make the distinction between the state and the people that leads Tony to support a reactionary policy of liquidating the Israeli nation.

There is one major and significant difference to how republicans view the Israeli nation and Israeli working class. We include the 20% of Arab Israelis as part of the Israel nation. Zionism ignores them or treats them as if they are not really Israelis and excludes them from political consideration.

Tony implicitly accepts the Zionist definition of the Israeli working class as equivalent to the Hebrew (Jewish) majority. This impacts on how he sees its revolutionary potential. He thinks they are all bought off by Zionist privileges, when at least 20% of them are discriminated against and treated as second-class citizens. So we are talking about two very different ideas - the Zionist conception of a Jewish working class and the democratic idea of uniting the Hebrew and Arab-Israeli working class around their common economic and political interests. Tony’s Zionist conception of the Israeli working class leads him to reactionary conclusions.

Israel was founded as a ‘Jewish democratic state’ in a compromise between religious and secular Jews. Ben-Gurion found a form of words about “the rock of Israel” in the declaration of independence, so that representatives of both sides could sign up to it. Drawing a veil over this contradiction is one reason why Israel has no written constitution. The contradiction was highlighted in 1984 by rabbi Meir Kahane of the ultra-nationalist Kach party. Kahane “preached that Israel could either be a Jewish state or a democratic state”. As Tony explained, “He was stating a truth that generations of ‘left’ Zionists have preferred to ignore. Labour Zionism spoke of a ‘Jewish democratic state’, which was always an oxymoron” (‘In alliance with neo-Nazis’, February 25 2019).

Israel is a deeply divided nation. Writing in Ha’aretz, Alon Pinkas says: “More and more Israelis on both sides of the divide see their country as essentially split into two distinct entities: Judea and Israel.” He adds: “… the divide is real, widening and becoming unbridgeable. Israel and Judea do not share a common perception or idea of a Jewish state” (May 13).

Tony cites Ilan Pappé describing the cleavage “between the state of Judea and the state of Israel”. Tony frames this cleavage in different terms: “The main divide in Israel is between those who see themselves as Jewish first (46%) and those who see themselves as Israeli (35%).” He adds that this “probably underestimates the proportion of Israelis who see themselves as Israeli first”.

Tony goes deeper into this division. “The wealth-creating, western-oriented section of Israel’s population is growing weaker, not stronger, as a settler regime has come to power”. He adds, “Indeed it is one of the ironies of the situation in Israel that, but for the common Palestinian enemy, the two Zionist camps would already have fallen upon each other.”

Under the present Zionist constitution, the modern capitalist section of Israeli society located around Tel Aviv cannot win unless it overthrows or reconstitutes the political laws of Israel. The advanced part of Israel is losing its battle with the Judeans. Tony thinks it serves them right. He is enjoying his Schadenfreude. Netanyahu has understood the same dynamic. He reconstituted the political laws to make Zionism mandatory. Now he cannot stop the war in Gaza for fear of a confrontation within Israel society.

The battleground over what kind of Israel is already mass politics. A struggle between reactionary Judeans and liberal Zionist Israelis is a political expression of class struggle, but Tony denies the Israeli working class has any interest in this. It is an assumption that flows from the ideas of economism, leading to political abstention. Tony believes the working class cannot or should not take sides. Indeed he thinks the Israeli working class is irredeemably reactionary and can therefore only support the state of Judea.

If you view the class struggle as merely economic, you cannot recognise that the fight between “the state of Judea and the state of Israel” is the political form of struggle between the reactionary and progressive class forces. Such a mass struggle cannot take place without the Israeli working class taking sides and the politically conscious Israeli workers formulating their own independent politics.

Lenin was clear that it is not possible to intervene in mass politics in bourgeois society without taking sides - or marching side by side in a certain sense with the liberals against the reactionaries. There was one vital condition - that the working class must have its own independent, democratic programme.

If we want to see the kind of programme, we should look to Moshé Machover’s minimum conditions. Jack Conrad says something very similar: “… while fully taking into account history, any consistently democratic programme must be squarely based on contemporary realities - crucially human facts on the ground. Abolition of Zionist Israel, legal equality for all, secularism, halting expansionism and withdrawing from the occupied territories are basic (minimal) programmatic demands” (‘Breaking the grip of Zionism’, June 6).

A laser focus on the ‘crisis of democracy’ in Israel is not to reject or downplay the importance of the international working class. Another Israel does not mean a narrow, ‘little Israel’ perspective that ignores the rest of the world. There is a futile chicken-and-egg argument over whether a democratic and social revolution in Iran, Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia will come first or vice versa. This is unknowable and unpredictable. But we do know where the sharp end of the conflict is right now.

Of course, a working class programme must include the demand for a democratic, secular republic against a Zionist Jewish republic. This is so obvious that it is embarrassing to have to remind anybody claiming to be a socialist. The republic is not simply one democratic demand among many, but the cement that holds them all together and unites the many demands put forward by Moshé and Jack as one. Yet Tony claims the case for a democratic programme “isn’t helped by Steve’s determination to view the situation through the lens of his favourite obsession, a bourgeois-democratic republic”.

There are two things to be said here. First Tony opposes a ‘democratic, secular republic’ for Israel and carefully avoids it for Palestine, which he calls a democratic, secular state. Avoiding or opposing a republic may be to keep open the option of constitutional monarchy, for example, in the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan or not to alienate the Saudi monarchy. It may simply reflect a cultural preference of anti-monarchists to steer clear of the ‘R word’.

He shows his opposition to a democratic, secular republic in Israel by adding the word ‘bourgeois’ to the Israeli republic - but not to the Palestinian democratic state. Adding ‘bourgeois’ to describe something that exists is uncontentious. But not every future democratic republic will necessarily be ‘bourgeois’, as shown by the Paris Commune or the Russian workers and peasants republic of 1917. So this is deliberately limiting the idea of a future democracy to the benefit of Zionism.

Israel needs to be reconstituted as a democratic, secular republic if the Israeli nation is to escape the deadly trap that Zionism has created for the Jewish and Palestinian people. This much is common sense - easy to understand and revolutionary in its implications. A programme of radical democratic change is in the interests the Israeli working class, the Palestinian people and indeed the working class throughout the region and rest of the world. This means the kind of democratic programme proposed by Moshé Machover and Jack Conrad - but not forgetting its best version as a federal republic of ‘one state for two nations’.

There is a ‘crisis of democracy’ in Israel and a deep divide in Israeli politics between those who support Judea and those who want a secular republic of Israel. At present, the ‘Kingdom of Judea’ is winning under the beneficent rule of King Benjamin I. No doubt some Israel workers would prefer godly rule to secular democracy, but not the many liberally minded Hebrew and Arab-Israeli workers. Of course ‘another Israel’ is possible - an Israeli nation without a Zionist state and constitution.

Nobody can doubt the commitment of Tony Greenstein to opposing Zionism and supporting the Palestinian people. It is with full respect for his long struggle that I make these comments. Zionism and the Jewish republic are anti-democratic and must be confronted by the struggle of the Israeli people for its opposite - a democratic, secular republic. Economism - an inconsistent, half-hearted, unscientific, sneering at democracy - always helps Zionism to keep the working class weak and divided.

Steve Freeman
London

Soviet muddle

Mike Macnair had some interesting things to say in last week’s article about France’s New Popular Front, but his discussion of the Soviet question was a muddle (‘Fragile unpopular front’, July 18).

“I am personally of the opinion that the USSR after the effective implementation of the ban on factions in the double police coup against the party in 1927-29 cannot be characterised as a dictatorship of the proletariat, or, therefore, as socialist,” the article states. Leaving aside the fact that the ban on factions occurred in 1921, this statement is still difficult to parse, to say the least.

If the situation after 1927‑29 cannot be characterised as a proletarian dictatorship, then what was it? It can’t be state capitalism or bureaucratic collectivism, since Macnair says that “both theories were disproved”. So what’s left - Hillel Ticktin’s enigmatic concept of a “form of no form”?

Macnair’s statement that the USSR “cannot be characterised ... as socialist” is equally puzzling. The suggestion seems to be that if the proletarian dictatorship were in place, then socialism would automatically follow. But this is not how Trotsky saw it. On the contrary, he argued that the dictatorship continued to exist, because the bureaucracy correctly viewed it as the basis for its rule. But, rather than socialism, the result was the opposite - which is to say, a vicious caricature that turned the idea upside down. This is why Trotsky called for a political rather than a social revolution. It was necessary to throw out a self-aggrandising party elite that was discrediting socialism at every turn. But it was necessary at the same time to defend the proletarian dictatorship against both the bureaucracy at home and imperialism, seeking to overthrow it from abroad.

Besides, if the dictatorship was not in place, then how does Macnair explain the “socialist camp” that he says expanded after World War II to include not just eastern Europe, but China, Vietnam and Cuba? Where did this socialist camp come from if the Soviet Union was no longer a workers’ state of even the most tenuous sort? Trotsky’s analysis still makes sense. Macnair’s does not.

But I do agree with him that France’s New Popular Front is every bit as unstable as the old one. Still, he misses the crucial point, which is that failure on the part of both Le Pen and the front to achieve a majority clears a path for Macron to assume a classic Bonapartist role as a strong man holding off equal and opposite forces from both sides. Indeed, the news that Macron is joining forces with centre-rightists in order to keep his grip on the National Assembly suggests that the process is already underway. The New Popular Front teamed up with Macron, and now it is reaping the rewards.

Daniel Lazare
New York

RCO points

As a member of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation in Australia, I agree strongly with many of the criticisms and statements made by Martin Greenfield in his article, ‘Primary task set’ (July 18).

I joined the RCO, as I agree with the core politics and the necessity of communist unity around a shared Marxist programme - which few, if any, of the groups on the left here support or even acknowledge. Martin makes great points that comrades in the RCO should take to heart if it is to carry out its aims and objectives: to reorganise the workers’ movement, reorganise the communist movement, and through pursuing unity establish the basis for a mass socialist workers party.

The RCO’s magazine (which I head) Direct Action is relaunching as The Partisan to reflect our stauncher commitment to a partyist orientation for this reason. In particular we must strengthen our publications and iron out bureaucratic quirks, which may be more of a nuisance than they are worth. They may leave us stuck in the mud and unable to carry out effective political work.

If only more on the left were willing to debate their platforms openly and transparently the way that the RCO aims and commits to!

Max Jacobi
New South Wales

RCO trans

Martin Greenfield’s article on the second congress of the RCO, of which I am proudly a member, was one which I deeply enjoyed, and I send comradely greetings cross the main. Yet the reason I write to the Weekly Worker today is to discuss an arena in which I find the CPGB’s Draft programme severely lacking (though personal bias may well influence how I write here!).

As a transgender communist, the fact that the Draft programme fundamentally fails to touch on the growing issues of trans liberation is a worrying concern. While I do not call for the party to fall into bourgeois identity politics, I raise the question of why trans liberation is not raised. The demands currently outlined in section 3.16 cover the gay and lesbian community, yet these are entirely unrelated to the struggle for trans liberation. As important as my ability to marry the woman I love is, the more practical demands for trans workers are about breaking the reactionary, patriarchal approach required to get hormones. Great Britain in particular is notorious for its transphobic culture, both in day-to-day-level struggles, and the infamously gate-keeping nature of the NHS when it comes to these issues.

When comparing the Draft programme to the RCO’s Road to workers’ power, it is clear that the RCO has placed more thought into this arena, and perhaps could be argued to place a higher emphasis on the struggle. This is an organic development of the organisation itself.

In the (perhaps overly verbose) Road to workers’ power, we have 11 demands raised in section 3.8.8. I quote the ones relevant to transgender issues:

For those wondering about the third demand it is common for trans people to be pressured into entering fertility preservation treatment before they begin hormones.

Now let us look over the demands in regard to trans liberation, as outlined in the Draft programme of the CPGB:

… Ahem.

I do not want to lecture to the CPGB from the arse end of the world, yet, in the spirit of comradely polemic and unity, I call on you to develop your theoretical understanding of these issues. The importance of a programme is vital, and it is of crucial importance that the CPGB develop these issues, to be able to push forward the most consistent and revolutionary line for the working class.

In enduring solidarity and deepest respect,

Brunhilda O
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Hardie, a liberal?

I am driven to raise a word in defence of Keir Hardie after Ian Spencer’s rather dismissive description, characterising him as a mere liberal and member of the Parliamentary Labour Party, who dares to rub shoulders with Marx and Lenin on the Chopwell lodge banner (‘A grand get-together’, July 18). Well, he also appears on the Follonsby (Wardley) Lodge banner, where he shares the privilege with George Harvey (founder member of the original Socialist Labour Party and CPGB), Lenin, and the bold James Connolly in his Irish Citizen Army uniform. He similarly appears on the banner of the Bewick Main Lodge.

The miners’ lodge position always has been one of respect for different roads to socialism - in Follonsby’s case not just the parliamentary road, but syndicalism and the armed struggle too. Although I would have disagreed with Hardie on industrial and political perspectives, it’s rather a cheap shot to sell him as a mere liberal.

Before the birth of the Labour Party much of the working class, and especially the miners, centred round the Liberal Party. Two of the miners’ area leaders were Liberals - who then ranged from anti-parliament radicals, to socialistic and actual liberal liberals. Hardie, of course, was distinctive, because he formed the first Independent Labour Party free from liberal ties and patronage. It was, he thought, a first British Communist Party in all but name and, of course, it took affiliations from all wings of the workers’ movement, including the first actual members of the CPGB.

I was always proud of the influence of sections of the Irish community. It was Connolly’s Irish Labour Party which formed along the Tyne, especially Gateshead, Hebburn, Jarrow, etc. But to describe him without his granite-hard socialist-pacifist war resistance is really to short-change him. What was it Lenin said about having more in common with the Zimmerwaldists than members of his own party and international who supported the war and were carried along by it? Hardie opposed the Boer war and World War I in the teeth of patriotic euphoria, when so-called socialists (even otherwise sensible anarchists) went along with it, even to the extent of finding it progressive.

So maybe Lenin wouldn’t have objected to Hardie appearing on the same banner as him, as Spencer thinks. I don’t think Marx would have found him in the least bit objectionable, though he may have thought his objections to the war were idealistic, since opposition to war as such wasn’t a great hit on his agenda. He tended to believe in the survival of the fittest, when it came to inter-capitalist struggles - a sort of weeding out the weakest strains before the working class superseded them. Keir Hardie has as least as much right to take pride of place, along with the other trail blazers - rather I wonder what any of them would make of the current crowd of traitors and misleaders sharing today’s leadership (thankfully they were not on any of our platforms, let alone banners).

Dave Douglass
Follonsby Miners Lodge

Mine’s a pint

Again, Tony Clark makes some very good points (Letters, July 18). I agree with his analysis of the Revolutionary Communist Group, which publishes the bimonthly Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism, as having a sectarian position regarding the work of communists within the Labour Party.

Regarding the legal regulation of all drugs by the state, Tony and I are not that far apart. Whilst I have only, briefly, had a puff of cannabis when I was a student in 1984, I do have to admit that I regularly take a drug - it’s called alcohol. Each Tuesday lunchtime I meet with a group of friends at my local pub and have a pint of each of their two guest beers on offer that week. If I’m still around, like most people, I’ll continue to drink alcohol under communism.

Tony is right to reserve judgement about the call for the ‘legal regulation of drugs’ - a better description than the phrase, ‘Legalise all drugs’, which is always destined to upset the editors of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. The term, ‘legal regulation of all drugs by the state’, was first used by the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which changed its name to Law Enforcement Action Partnership in 2017.

LEAP is a US-based non-profit organisation of current and former police, judges, prosecutors and other criminal justice professionals, who use their expertise to advance drug policy and criminal justice solutions that enhance public safety. They have more than 180 representatives around the world who speak on behalf of over 5,000 law enforcement members and 100,000 supporters.

One of the main speakers for LEAP in the UK is Neil Woods, who worked as an undercover anti-drugs agent for 14 years, putting many drug kingpins behind bars. After those long years, he concluded that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ was a waste of time and money. By putting drug kingpins in prison, it only allowed the competition to move in. Neil has written two books about his experiences: Drug wars and Good cop, bad cop, which I highly recommend to Tony and all other comrades.

I also recommend that Tony reads the numerous articles by Eddie Ford and Paul Demarty in the Weekly Worker about its call for the legalisation of drugs. I suggest he reads the excellent article, ‘War on drugs’, on Wikipedia, which explains how president Richard Nixon in 1971 launched that attack on drug use. The main reason for doing so was that 10%-15% of the soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. I also point Tony in the direction of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation website, which has some useful books based on research about drug policy worldwide.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Spit on Pinochet

On Chile’s ‘National Day of the Payador’ (July 30) I will laud the activist, Victor Jara, and spit on the memory of that butcher, Augusto Pinochet, who was protected by that abhorrent Tory premier, Margaret Thatcher, and released via the actions of Menshevik Jack Straw, so that he could die peacefully - unlike tens of thousands of his victims.

Today’s Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, promises to bury neoliberalism - let us with our many actions destroy neoliberalism, its corporations and the vile regimes in the USA, UK and elsewhere, who insist on it.

On July 30, I will enjoy a bottle of fine red wine from Chile and sing along to Manifiesto and Te recuerdo amanda, as well as A las barricades, the anarchist anthem. I will salute Victor, but also the women and men alive today who will sweep aside the geriatrics who rule Earth to the sad tombs where they belong.

Social revolution now!

K Sean Vincent
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