Some Reference Points on the “Palestinian Question”
(«communist program»; Nr. 10; September 2024)
Introduction
This article was part of a critique of the erroneous positions into which the party had fallen in the autumn of 1982 in relation to the “Palestinian question” – what we called the “fuse” of the general crisis in the party at that time – and of the general balance-sheet of that crisis. Two fundamental errors in particular were criticised: 1) considering “pan-Arab national sentiment” as a revolutionary driving force in the entire Middle East region, provided it were carried forward… only by the proletarian masses; as if, in the absence of a homeland conquered by the anti-colonial bourgeois revolution in the three decades after the Second World Imperialist War, in which “national liberation” struggles were taking place (as in several African colonies), the proletarians could use the “pan-Arab” movement as a vehicle to facilitate their unification movement against fragmentation into different nationalities; as if the proletarians could automatically elevate the “national” struggle to the more general class struggle; 2) the binding – as a matter of principle – of the proletarian struggle for its class interests to the national struggle, these class interests being delimited only to the terrain of the immediate struggle and defence – in this case armed – of the immediate interests; as if the absence of the independent political class organisation, i.e. revolutionary communist party – the only one capable of providing the proletariat with the political and historical class orientation (the orientation which contains instructions for struggle on the immediate terrain, yet this does not mean that it is their automatic result) – could be resolved simply by the proletarian struggle within the national struggle, albeit armed, of the Palestinian people united with the other Arab peoples.
These fundamental errors were not mere tactical errors; they were the inevitable result of a wrong evaluation of the historical phase, of the social forces at work on the scene, and of the relations between them. And as Marxists we know that the evaluation of a situation is foremost a theoretical question, then a political and therefore tactical one; a situation that is not contingent on specific circumstances, not local or linked to a particular area, but international. What most party militants of the time had completely lost sight of was that the general situation is not going to change from counter-revolutionary to revolutionary unless the proletariat, not only of the capitalist underdeveloped countries, but above all the more advanced capitalist countries, enters the scene; and unless this proletariat accumulates solidly acquired experience in the classist struggle, in the anti-bourgeois struggle par excellence, both on the immediate terrain and on the political terrain, i.e. in the presence of the class party – the revolutionary communist party – which has had the objective possibility of exerting its influence on the most advanced strata of the proletariat itself.
The armed struggle of an oppressed people against a colonial power, against an imperialist country or an alliance of countries that oppress and exploit it to the extreme based on their dominant position may be tenacious, long-lasting, but it will never open the way for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, if the proletariat does not free itself from the illusions of the politics of inter-class collaboration, democracy and national illusions, if it has not fought independently not only against the reactionary and ruling powers, but also against these illusions and the social and political forces that keep them alive and that spread them.
It is indisputable that the “national question” is particularly complex and always has been, from the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century; one only has to read the articles of Marx and Engels on the Irish question or on India, Russia and China, or the articles of Lenin regarding the “self-determination of peoples” and the Theses of the Communist International on the national and colonial question. Like the “trade union question”, the “national question” will not see a final solution until capitalism has been defeated.
However, until then, revolutionary communists, Marxists, cannot respond to these questions in the following way: today, already possessing economic, financial, political and organizational power, and taking advantage of the defeat of the proletarian and communist revolution in the 1920s, imperialism has corrupted both the trade union organizations and the national liberation movements, depriving the proletarians of a field of action that in the last century could still have provided a basis for their emancipatory struggle. There are those who say that trade union organising is already fit for the scrapheap and must be replaced by purely political action and organisation; there are also those who say that the “national” question is no longer a question that concerns the proletariat and that it must concern itself only with preparing for the genuine and unequivocal international proletarian revolution. These are not political positions, let alone backed by unquestionable theoretical foundations; they are mere and empty declarations that provide no answers to the real problems that actually affect all proletarians, in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Certainly, considering the development of capitalist exploitation in all parts of the world, including countries that were once on the “periphery” of imperialism, the “national” question no longer arises as it did in the 19th and 20th centuries, given that the bourgeois strata that were forming in the countries of this periphery had become either sold-out bourgeoisies in the pay of a foreign power, or bourgeoisies with such strong tendencies towards independence that they were forced to adopt the national-revolutionary course in a given historical period (such as, for example, in China, Algeria, Congo, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.), alongside which the proletariat, organised on the classist basis and independently, had a role to play, as was the case in Russia in 1917–1922. But this historical period, which re-emerged after the Second World Imperialist War, ended in the mid-1970s with the independence of Angola and Mozambique, while the proletariat of the advanced countries demonstrated that it did not have the strength to take advantage of the weakening of the colonial and imperialist powers to go on the offensive against the ruling classes of the advanced countries; nor could the proletariat of the colonies, in the absence of the revolutionary communist party and its influence over it, have the strength to attack the newly established bourgeoisie after having assisted it in its national revolution. This is a strength that the proletariat does not have even today, and which will take some time to acquire before it can again become the real class enemy in the imperialist metropolises.
But this does not detract from the fact that national oppression, instead of diminishing, has intensified, not only on the part of the imperialist powers, but also on the part of the younger bourgeoisies that have come to power in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. If a population is oppressed by other peoples, it means that the “national” question remains a lever which the bourgeois strata of the oppressed population continue to use and will continue to use to drag the proletarians to their side by means of nationalism, the myth of the “independent state”, the myth of democracy. And thanks to this lever, the national bourgeoisies of the countries oppressed by imperialism can easily point out the entire population of the oppressing countries, including the proletarians, as their oppressors. And there is no doubt that the proletarians of the oppressed country regard the proletarians of the oppressing country as accomplices of the foreign bourgeoisie which oppresses them. In order to prove that there is no such complicity, the proletarians of the oppressing country must fight against their own bourgeoisie by demanding that the oppressed population, which includes the proletarians there, should have the freedom of “self-determination”. Lenin asserts that this tactic is the only one that allows the proletarians of the oppressing country to support the struggle of the proletarians of the oppressed country in their fight against the foreign bourgeoisie, provided that the proletarians of the oppressed country are themselves organised in complete independence of the other social forces (bourgeoisie, urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat) and that at the same time they wage struggle against their own national bourgeoisie, struggle in which they will be able to find unity with the proletarians of the oppressing countries for the international proletarian revolution, always provided that these proletarians break decisively from class collaboration with their own bourgeoisie. To demand that the proletarians of the oppressed countries – especially in the general situation which has arisen since the Second World War, when there has been a very strong decline in the proletarian struggle in the advanced capitalist countries – should take on, and take on alone, the tasks which concern the proletariat of the whole world and, in the first place, the proletariat of the oppressor countries, is to turn one’s back on tasks which only the proletarians of the advanced capitalist countries must take on. The lessons of the great revolution in Russia in October 1917, which our party has been instrumental in bringing about throughout the period of the restoration of the doctrine and the reorganisation of the class party from 1945 onwards, show that the proletarian and communist revolution – in the presence of an organised, independent and influential party such as the Bolshevik Party of Lenin – can, under certain world-historical circumstances, break out even in a capitalistically backward country and be victorious, but if the decisive revolutionary contribution of the proletarians of capitalistically advanced countries with their revolution is absent, the victory achieved, as in Russia at that time, is destined sooner or later to a suffocating isolation which can lead to defeat and to counter-revolution not only in the country where the revolution has triumphed, but also in the world. Notwithstanding the great combativeness and generosity of the Russian proletarian masses, willing to endure the immense sacrifices that were to contribute to the spread of the proletarian revolution throughout Europe – and thus throughout the world – and notwithstanding the intransigence of the healthy forces of the Bolshevik Party and their determination to endure in power of the proletarian dictatorship even for twenty years (Lenin) or fifty years (Trotsky), as support for the course of the international revolution, the unrealised revolutionary contribution of the European proletarian parties, which at that time influenced and led the proletariat, greatly facilitated the role of the social-democratic, inter-class collaboration and social preservation forces in the intoxication and ultimately the degeneration of the proletarian parties and movements.
Opportunism, and hence the political and organisational degeneration of the proletarian parties and the proletarian movement which is influenced by the party, derive their success from the same material basis on which the political power of the bourgeois class has been erected and is preserved; they represent another instrument of social preservation and, if necessary, of repression against the proletariat and the revolutionary struggle. The bourgeoisie never throws in the towel, even in the most dangerous situations for its power; on the contrary, in these situations, as Trotsky put it, the bourgeoisie multiplies its forces tenfold, never surrenders, not so much because of some sort of ideological fanaticism that makes it believe it is invincible, but rather because of the mighty power of its economy, which in two centuries has transformed the world in which the old pre-capitalist societies had survived for millennia. This is why the proletarian revolution differs from the revolutions of previous revolutionary classes in that it is not based on a mode of production that developed in the old society and then pushed the new social forces to conquer political power so that the new mode of production would be free to develop fully; it is essentially a political revolution, where the proletariat – i.e. the producer class – will have to smash the existing political power to transform from top to bottom the social economy and hence the existing social relations. With capitalism, class-divided society has undergone the maximum possible historical development, both economic, political and social, and has dialectically laid the foundations for its demise; however, it will not disappear by a kind of exhaustion; it will disappear as a result of the proletarian revolution led by the class party as long as it is necessary for the political class dictatorship to fully carry out its task also in the economic transformation of society on an international scale.
For this to happen, we need not only a proletariat that regains and surpasses the level of its unification at the international level that it reached in the 1920s, both in the advanced and in the more backward countries, but also a class party that will be strengthened theoretically, politically and at the level of real struggle, and that will gain decisive influence at least on the most advanced layers of the proletariat internationally. A utopian goal? No, the historical proof is the Bolshevik Party under the lead of Lenin and the constitution of the Third International with its theses on the role of the communist party, on its activity in all spheres, from the political-tactical to the economic-trade union to the agrarian and national-colonial. Human history does not advance in gradual stages, but in leaps and bounds. “Marx – as was aptly written in a 1951 Party text – did not envisage a rise and then a decline of capitalism, but instead the simultaneous and dialectical expansion of the mass of the productive forces that capitalism controls, their unlimited accumulation and concentration, and, at the same time, the antagonistic reaction constituted by one of the dominated forces, which is the proletarian class. The general productive and economic potential always rises, until the equilibrium is broken, and a revolutionary explosive phase sets in, in which, in a very short, precipitous period, when the old forms of production are broken down, the productive forces fall back to give themselves a new order and resume a more powerful rise” (1).
Among the many texts we have written on the “Palestinian question”, we are now republishing the following article (published in 1989 in “il comunista”, No. 16, and in “le proletaire”, No. 401), which sums up the fundamental positions on this question that are still valid for us.
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1) Condemnation of the role of Palestinian nationalism as a distraction from and a tool against the class struggle
For twenty years this nationalism has been a political “corpse” and for twenty years this corpse has been “still on its feet”, infesting the proletarians. Far from wishing for its revival in a “leftist” version, which would only be a return of its dead radicalism, we see a positive aspect in the current moderate evolution of all its currents, including the most extreme ones, and we take note of the de facto – in our opinion salutary – final capitulation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and encourage the proletarians to take from it what the very evolution of things is throwing at them: with the conclusion of every solution to the racial and national question, the path of your redemption is the only one, i.e. the path of the intransigent class struggle, until all states in the region are destroyed, and the proletarian dictatorship is installed, Palestine will not win; the proletarian revolution will win!
2) Condemnation of the reactionary nature of the Palestinian mini-state
In fact, the consequences of such a “solution” cannot be other than negative in terms of the development of the class struggle, on the one hand, because such a solution would tend to confine the most advanced and combative part of the proletariat in the whole region to a genuine ghetto, and thus isolate the other proletariats as much as possible from the Palestinian “contagion”, on the other because in any case it would entail a weakening of the pressure exerted by the destitute Palestinian masses on Israel and, consequently, a postponement in time of the moment when the front of inter-class collaboration would break up there too, which would finally allow the Israeli workers to give a hand to their Palestinian class brothers.
The only potential positive effect of the creation of such a mini-state, i.e. the “unmasking” of the Palestinian bourgeoisie as the enemy class in the eyes of the exploited masses, is by no means an automatic given. On the contrary, unless there is a political force – the class party – that immediately condemns nationalism and immediately opposes it with a class line – which unfortunately is not the case in the present circumstances – it is inevitable that disillusionment that would inevitably follow the establishment of the so-called “independent State” will not be translated into an impetus for the proletarians to rise up with new energy against the bourgeoisie at home, but will constitute the precursor of a state of lethargy for a period whose length cannot be foreseen. What we can say already now is that the state-prison looming on the horizon will not be able to absorb all the Palestinian masses in the diaspora. Palestinian proletarians cannot all be ghettoised. And that means that the states in the region that have gobbled up Palestine (and the Palestinians themselves) will not be able to stand it, not even through the use of that reactionary mini-state.
3) Condemnation of the ultra-pacifist tactics used by the PLO during the intifada, but also before it, as a deliberate organisation of the massacre of Palestinian proletarians
The PLO, in other words, lets Israeli butchers do the “dirty work” of massacring, morally and economically exhausting the dispossessed masses in the occupied territories. If the coveted mini-state is achieved, it will only happen when the Palestinian proletariat has been sufficiently battered and exhausted by its Israeli companions. That is why the path to the goal of the ‘independent state’ is unfolding by the PLO in slow motion. Also, the filth of this programmed “normalization” of the destitute Palestinian masses must be condemned without hesitation and vacillation.
4) Reaffirmation the fact that the proletarian revolution throughout the region is the only way to resolve the Palestinian national question as well
This means that only the proletarian dictatorship will be able to secure for the Palestinians, if they still so desire, the right to organise themselves into an independent state. Which in no way excludes, but rather implies, that the party will endeavour to promote and support the opposite perspective, namely the free union of proletarians of different nationalities also in the Middle East in a proletarian state as large as possible.
5) Reaffirmation of the need for the formation of the class political party based on the programme, theses and teachings of the international communist movement, set out consistently with intransigent Marxism in the 1920s at the first three congresses of the Communist International.
Formation that cannot come about other than through an open break with the false emancipatory remedies of democratic, pluralist, independentist and pacifist character; and that only by combining the sparks of class consciousness that the struggle of the Palestinian people has evoked and continues to evoke, with the rock-solid communist program and Marxist doctrine reconquered and restored by the communist Left through in its class battles against Stalinism and all opportunist variants of social-democratic, popular and national stamp; and only by reconnecting with the historical continuity of militant activity defended by the communist Left, especially in Italy, in the course of the reconstitution of the supreme political organ of the modern revolutionary class, that is, the party that is communist and international.
At the same time, it is the reaffirmation of the fact that the struggle against the national oppression of the Palestinian proletarians takes an opposing path to the nationalist one, however radical it may be. This means, therefore, that it is the struggle that must be situated and waged on the terrain of the more general class struggle: transposing the anti-bourgeois struggle from the terrain of the “conquest of a homeland” to the terrain of the anti-bourgeois struggle against all discrimination against proletarians of different nationalities and religions at the level of wages, laws and norms, trade union and political rights.
6) Reaffirmation of the fact that the “natural” class brothers of the Palestinian proletariat, the Arab proletarians of the entire region, will never find the way to classist solidarity and to their own emancipation from the yoke of the bloodthirsty and repressive national bourgeoisies (as a series of events have shown – from the so-called Tunisian bread riots in 1983–1984 to strikes in Egypt, workers’ agitations in Morocco to the recent proletarian uprising in Algeria in 1988) unless they definitively break ideological, practical and organisational ties with “their” bourgeoisies and petty bourgeoisies, which have hitherto used and continue to use “pan-Arabism”, religious fetishism and the false “national paths to socialism” against the proletarians and the impoverished dispossessed strata, so ridiculously represented by champions of the double game like Gaddafi or murderous democratic presidents like Chadli Bendjedid (Algerian President from 1979 –1992, ed.).
The “Arab national factor”, which for a certain historical period – from the collapse of the Turkish empire to the Second World War – could have been one of the unifying elements of populations composed of nomads and merchants rather than settled and peasant populations, had already completely exhausted all its even slight “potential possibility” for historical progress in this vast area covering North Africa from the Atlantic eastwards to the Middle East (and including it). It had exhausted it in the context of a number of factors, including the mode of capitalist development in the area – retarded in terms of industrial and agrarian structure, very contemporary in terms of mineral, gas and oil extraction, and very contemporary in terms of banking capital –; the pattern of the division of the territory into nation-states, which is determined more by the boundaries resulting from the occupations of colonial and imperialist powers than by the natural distribution of the indigenous peoples, who, moreover, are predominantly nomadic; the shape of the bourgeois classes (more “sold out” than from an industrial background), which is the result of the contradictory development of the mode of production and forms of capitalism, and the persistence of feudal, theocratic and tribal survivals that have never been completely eradicated. The very formation of the proletariat, little concentrated in factories and industrial complexes, and rather scattered over vast and poorly fertile territories, but important for natural resources, is a reflection of the process of national development in the area, which is totally dependent on the world market and the prices of raw materials that only the large capitalist countries can redraw; an area that is prone to instability internally and in relations between states.
However weak the bourgeois and proletarian classes are throughout the region, the historic leap towards capitalism has already been made, and what the reality – however unstable – of the present Arab bourgeois states offers is the reality of the class interests of the national bourgeoisies, irrespective of the now completely powerless “Arab factor”, with each one of them keen to profit from “their” Arab proletarians as much as from the proletarians from Korea, India, Pakistan or Africa who immigrate to the rich oil-producing countries.
7) Reaffirmation of the fact that it will be impossible to arrive at a united front of struggle that will unite the Jewish proletarians of Israel and the proletarians of Palestine until the former have broken the bonds that keep them bound to the machinery of their bourgeoisie; and that the necessary step for the Israeli proletarians to break with their bourgeoisie is the abandonment of any support on their part for the national oppression that the latter continues to perpetrate on the Palestinians. There is no greater misfortune for a people than when it subjugates another, Marx said, referring to the English oppression of Ireland. To get out of this their situation, unfortunate from the perspective of the class struggle, the Israeli Jewish proletarians will have to place themselves on a twofold terrain of struggle: the terrain of struggle against the discrimination of Arab and Palestinian proletarians in the workplace and in social life (and therefore against the Judaic sectarianism of the Jewish state), and the terrain of struggle to defend the right of all Palestinians to form a truly independent state on the territory of Palestine.
8) The fact is that the necessary solidarity of the communists of the West and the proletarians of the West with the Palestinian proletarians does not mean at all – as the Autonomia Operaia-style “leftists”, Trotskyists or others believe – shouting louder than others “long live the struggle for Palestinian national independence”, but means working for the resumption of the class struggle here at home and for the formation of a compact, strong, international communist party.
In fact, this is the only way to give the Palestinian proletarians a fraternal hand because the help we can give them consists either in offering their struggle a visible point of support with the reality of the anti-bourgeois struggle, which we can relate to in a perspective that is classist, internationalist and revolutionary, or it is pure demagogy.
Let us understand, then, that the Palestinian proletariat – and with it the proletarians of the whole region who are inserted in the Palestinian national struggle – will inevitably be prisoners of the methods, aims and means of organisation serving exclusively national bourgeois interests until the social movement of the proletarians in the imperialist countries – in our countries of the West – raises its head again and confronts “its” national bourgeoisie in various countries finally on the terrain of the class struggle.
(Il comunista, No. 179; September-November 2023)
(1) See Teoria e azione nella dottrina marxista (report delivered at the party meeting in Rome, April 1, 1951), 1. Il rovesciamento della prassi nella teoria marxista, in collection “Partito e classe”, No. 4 of the series I testi del partito comunista internazionale, 1972, and supplementary Table II, on p. 131.
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