FOR A SOCIALIST PALESTINE!

The events of the last weeks that saw a renewal of open hostilities between Israel and Hamas have an element of deja vu in them. Once more the Zionist state steps up its oppression of the West Bank and Gaza using as a pretext the killing of three Israeli youths. Once more the Palestinian masses rise up in resistance as Arab youth are killed and hundreds arrested. Yet we are not taken in by the arguments for or against renewed hostilities; they are a ritual exchange between the Zionist ruling class and the Palestinian bourgeois factions Hamas and Fatah to negotiate the division of Palestine. The two factions are using the Palestinian masses as no more than expendable pawns in their battle for supremacy. Lost in this exchange is the truth of what underlies this conflict between the Zionist oppressor state, and an oppressed occupied state. While both regimes negotiate with missiles the Palestinian masses pay the price in blood. Their leaders continue to sell out to Israel. In selling out they prevent the Palestinian struggle for self-determination from arming independent militias and uniting their forces with other armed struggles in the surrounding Arab states. We are for a revolutionary party and program for the defeat of the Zionist state and for a Socialist Palestine in a United Socialist States of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)!

1) Down with the Zionist State!

Israel is a settler state that came into existence after United Nations (UN) resolution 181 in 1947 which was a fig-leaf for British and US imperialist backing of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine and its partition into two legitimate states. This was followed by a series of wars starting with the civil war followed by the First Arab-Israeli war in 1948, together called al-Nakba by the Arabs, that led to defeat of Arab forces and drove Arabs off their land to the point that today all of Palestine is either settled by Israelis or controlled by the Israeli military. Those parts of the West Bank and Gaza that are not permanently occupied by the military are no more than prison camps much as are the refugee camps that house millions of displaced Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Israel justifies it’s right to occupy Palestine in terms of its Zionist claims to the ancient land of Israel. It is pre-occupied with completing its Zionist program of reclaiming its historic homeland which would not be possible without a massive military subsidy from the US. (See ‘Zionism: A Road Map to Hell’).

Israel is therefore not an imperialist economic power and only exists on the basis of US and EU imperialist support. It might be called ‘sub-imperialist’ in the sense of “sub-contracted to US imperialism”. It is an armed settler state with a theocratic Zionist regime no less ‘fundamentalist’ than its rival Islamic Republic of Iran, or the upstart rival Sunni Islamic State (ISIS), and certainly a nuclear armed ‘terrorist’ state. It is an affront not only to the Palestinians, but to Jews and to humanity as a whole that Zionist Israel exists, and so must be destroyed. (see Against Zionism).

Writing on The Jewish Problem in 1937, Trotsky foresaw the tragedy of Zionism as a reactionary solution to the national rights of Jews:

"But the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism. And how, you ask me, can socialism solve this question? On this point I can but offer hypotheses. Once socialism has become master of our planet or at least of its most important sections, it will have unimaginable resources in all domains. Human history has witnessed the epoch of great migrations on the basis of barbarism. Socialism will open the possibility of great migrations on the basis of the most developed technique and culture. It goes without saying that what is here involved is not compulsory displacements, that is, the creation of new ghettos for certain nationalities, but displacements freely consented to, or rather demanded by certain nationalities or parts of nationalities. The dispersed Jews who would want to be reassembled in the same community will find a sufficiently extensive and rich spot under the sun. The same possibility will be opened for the Arabs, as for all other scattered nations. National topography will become a part of the planned economy. This is the grand historical perspective that I envisage. To work for international socialism means also to work for the solution of the Jewish question.”

2) Palestinian National Liberation

The struggle of the Palestinian masses against Israeli occupation is a national liberation struggle. To achieve Palestinian liberation the Zionist state must be destroyed. National liberation does not mean recognition of the state of Israel as legitimate nor the acceptance of a two-state solution. This is the position of one faction of the Palestinian bourgeoisie –Fatah. Nor does it mean the opportunist policy of the other bourgeois faction Hamas, i.e. military confrontation to recognise the de facto right for Israel to exist until it can be replaced by a theocratic Islamic State of Palestine. Between these two factions’ policies of dividing up Palestine with the Zionists there is no essential difference. Both are “bloody traps” for the Arab masses manipulated as pawns of the rival factions of the Palestinian bourgeoisie.

Much of the Western left also buys into a negotiated ‘peaceful’ solution such as the claim that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state which can be reformed by pressure of international public opinion and more UN resolutions to go back to the partition of 1947. This is based on the belief that Jews have national rights in Palestine that can be peacefully resolved by recognising both Palestinian and Jewish rights. This is making Palestine liberation conditional on Jewish national rights as if they have an equal claim to living in Palestine. Not so. Trotsky argued that in the 1930s that Jews could claim national rights as an oppressed nation, but not at the expense of occupying Palestine.

“The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. Interested in winning the sympathies of the Arabs who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has sharply altered its policy toward the Jews, and has actually renounced its promise to help them found their “own home” in a foreign land. The future development of military events may well transform Palestine into a bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews. Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system.” On the Jewish Problem.

The National rights of Jews therefore cannot be at the expense of the Palestinians. So the national liberation of Palestine means the defeat of Israel and the re-occupation of Palestine by the armed people of Palestine, with or without the support of militant Jews, and necessarily in conjunction with the popular revolutions that have begun in the other Arab states. The national rights of Jews will be realised in a democratic, socialist, multi-ethnic workers’ state in Palestine.

3) The Arab Revolution

Since 1948 the Palestinian revolution has been isolated (in effect quarantined) by the Arab states whose regimes professed support for Palestinian rights, but stopped short at limited wars to weakly contest the expanding borders of Israel. The surrounding Arab states condemned the Israeli state but in practice put their own separate interests before the defence of Palestine. They were rivals for leadership of the Arab states and could never agree on a unified strategy. In 1948 King Abdullar of Jordan backed by Britain, schemed with the Zionists to incorporate the US mandated Palestine into Jordan but was opposed by Egypt and Syria who had their own plans to annex Palestine. The outcome of the war was a victory for Israel and its expansion well beyond the UN partition borders (see map). 

The 1967 “Third Arab-Israeli war” between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan also led to an outright Israeli victory and further incursions into Palestinian territory. Since that time the Arab states have collaborated with Israel. Egypt and Israel struck and agreement over Gaza. In Syria, the secular Baathist regime of Assad, father and son, co-existed with the theocratic Zionist state just as much as it collaborated with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Arab and Israeli ruling classes were in agreement on their fundamental interest of keeping the Arab revolution divided and quarantined.

The Arab Spring changed that. Since 2011 the uprisings from Tunisia to Syria have forced the Arab regimes to actively suppress or co-opt the spread and synchronisation of these popular uprisings. In Syria Assad has starved and bombed the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk because the different leadership factions including Hamas that ruled the camp could not suppress the solidarity of the Palestinian masses with the Syrian Revolution. Moreover the revolutions continue in Libya and Syria where the armed resistance continues to fight the regime. The outbreak of a popular war against the Maliki regime in Iraq puts on the agenda not only the defeat of imperialism in MENA but also the defeat of imperialism’s puppet regimes in Iraq and Syria their Islamic State rivals. For the first time a Palestinian popular uprising has the potential to join forces with the Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi revolutions and to link up the Palestinian masses in Lebanon and Jordan in a wider Arab revolution to overthrow imperialism and its national bourgeois puppets.

4) Role of Imperialism

There are no imperialist powers in the MENA. Israel and all the Arab regimes are semi-colonies of imperialism including the oil-rich Gulf States (and the non-Arab Iran). In the last analysis, Israel’s existence is not about land grabbing in the name of God, but its military role as the mercenary of US and EU imperialism in defending their interests in MENA against the emergence of the rival imperialist bloc of Russia and China. The Arab regimes act as agents of one or other, or both imperialist blocs, as they compete to win their favour and increase their share of the oil wealth exploited by imperialism. There can be no Arab Revolution unless it breaks with both imperialism and all the national bourgeois factions that rule over the masses on its behalf.

It is not possible to complete the national revolutions to defeat imperialism without overthrowing the national bourgeois factions that rule on behalf of imperialism. Hamas and Fatah in Palestine use the masses as military pawns to negotiate better terms with Israel for dividing Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Syria compete with the military al Sisi and Assad regimes, and secular bourgeois factions such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), for popular support to win the backing of the US and/or China/Russia. All compete to prove they can contain the Arab Revolution and that it is not they but their rivals that are the ‘terrorists’ that must be smashed. Against such brutal regimes, the Arab revolution that is historically centred on Palestine must declare its political independence from all bourgeois factions and build popular armed militias based on the workers and oppressed. See “The Arab Revolution meets NATO/Zionism”.

5) For Permanent Revolution

The struggle for an independent, secular Arab revolution has to contend with a history in which the revolutionary Marxist party has been betrayed by Stalinist popular front politics. That is, Communist Parties in MENA have historically collaborated with ‘progressive’ national bourgeois factions such as Fatah and the Baath Party purportedly against imperialism. But such collaboration has never led to national independence only to the defeat of the masses. The Arab revolution has made important advances against such historic betrayals only by taking up the armed and independent struggle against imperialism and it bourgeois lackeys. The fighting masses need to take the leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle out of the hands of the national bourgeoisie and embarking on the road to socialist revolution.

So the Palestinian Intifadas threatened to break the masses from the control of Fatah and Hamas and the threat of popular revolution forced these bourgeois lackeys to negotiate with Israel to contain the revolution. In Libya the armed militias retain a dual power against the pro-imperialist post-Gaddafi regime despite the current US attempt led by its henchman General Khalifa Hifter to disarm the militias. In Syria the secular armed revolution is holding out despite terrible odds against both the regime and the Islamic State. In Egypt, the masses are now facing a military dictatorship that strips away all illusions that the military is ‘progressive’. What is lacking is the Marxist party and program for Permanent Revolution that spells out the necessity for the armed, independent struggle for socialist republics within a wider Federation of Socialist Republics of MENA .

6) Revolutionary Party and Program

Only a revolutionary Marxist party and program is capable of addressing the Palestinian revolution as part of the Permanent Arab Revolution and as part of a global revolution. This is because as we said above the Zionist state is a military settler state funded by US and EU imperialism as its mercenary in MENA. It is the key to US and NATO control of its MENA ‘assets’ both political and economic which is today a vital defence of the US blocs oil assets against those of its rival Russia/China bloc. It is also imperialism’s weakest link in MENA because its role as imperialist gendarme forces it to militarise its settler population. This means that all Zionism’s claims to national rights and democratic legitimacy are constantly exposed as extreme hypocrisy turning the oppression of the Palestinian people the flaming beacon of the Arab Revolution. The cry “We are all Palestinians” means that while the Palestinians are not free, no-one is free!

That is why the struggle against imperialism in the MENA cannot succeed without the defeat of Israel and the smashing of the Zionist state. While it exists it will play the role it has played since 1948 as the armed mercenary of US imperialism in MENA. Just as the US imperialism can only prevent its decline as the No 1 imperialist power, so Israel’s fate is dependent on its role of protecting its master in MENA. Only the revolutionary Leninist/Trotskyist Party can cut through the pacifist liberal confusion that holds out the possibility of a negotiated peace in Palestine and in the wider MENA. Revolutionary Marxism is uncompromising in leading such a revolution because it refuses to legitimise the Zionist state!

In response to the left-liberal cry ‘victory for the Intifada’ we say victory can only be the victory of a revolutionary war of national liberation that (1) overthrows the Zionist IDF, (2) defeats all intervention by imperialism or its proxies, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iran and Turkey, and (3) exposes and defeats the treacherous leadership of the national bourgeois agents of imperialism in Palestine, Hamas and Fatah!

We agree with Trotsky. In 1998 we wrote:

“A democratic multi-ethnic Palestine could only be achieved as a result of a socialist revolution based on workers councils and militias. It would also be part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East. In that context not only Palestinians would have the right to return but also Arab Jews would have the right to return to Syria, Morocco, Iraq and other Arab countries. Kurds, Assyrian and other nationalities would achieve self-determination and equal rights.” Against Zionism.   

• That is why our program calls for the Egyptian working masses to build workers councils and militias to overthrow al Sisi and the military dictatorship, and to form a popular militia able to break down the walls and open the borders of Gaza to unite its people with the West Bank and Jordan! 

•  We call on the Palestinian masses in occupied Palestine and in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon to unite with the Syrian revolution to build workers councils and militias to smash both the Assad regime and the Islamic State (ISIS) and its allies Hezbollah and Iranian fighters.  

•  We condemn all self-proclaimed revolutionaries in the imperialist countries for failing in their duty to take action against their own imperialist ruling classes, whose defeat ultimately will enable the permanent revolution in MENA to be victorious. 

• We oppose all pacifist, individualist boycotts and appeals to United Nations negotiations as continuing the legitimation of imperialist rule in MENA and as barriers to the armed, independence of the Arab masses. 

•  We call on Israeli workers to take the side of Palestinian liberation, form workers councils and strike for the release of Palestinian political prisoners! 

•  We call on Israel conscripts in the military to refuse to obey orders to shoot or otherwise oppress Palestinians! 

• Defeat Zionism! We refuse to demand that the Zionist state frees its political prisoners, pulls down its walls and grants the right of return. We do not create illusions in Israel as we do not recognise its right to exist. The right of return will be enforced by Zionism’s defeat! 

•  We call on workers in the imperialist countries to mobilise in their unions to enforce bans on all diplomatic, military and trade relations with Israel! 

•  We call on the ranks of the military to mobilise against all imperialist occupation and intervention in the Arab states! 

•  We call on the unions to make political strikes against the US funding of Israeli occupation! We call on workers to build international brigades to fight alongside the armed, independent militias in Palestine, Syria and Iraq, and for weapons and medical aid to the Palestinian struggle! 

•  For a Socialist Palestine within a Federation of Socialist Republics of MENA!

References

Trotsky “On the Jewish Problem” http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm

Against Zionism http://trotskyistinspain.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/against-zionism/

The Arab Revolution meets NATO/Zionism http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/the-arab-revolution-meets-nato-zionism.html

Zionism: A Road Map to Hell. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/zionism-road-map-to-unending-conflict.html



14 July 2014

Communist Workers Group (Aotearoa/NZ)

The Arab Revolution meets NATO-Zionism

Syrian militia with outdated anti-aircraft gun Aleppo August 4th (AFP via Getty)

The current situation in the Middle East is one of a growing confrontation between the resurgent Arab democratic revolution – popularly called the ‘Arab Spring’ now two years old – and US imperialism represented by its military ‘gendarme’, Zionist Israel. The US and EU imperialist powers are attempting to impose a ‘democratic’ counter-revolution, to prevent the working masses from overthrowing their national bourgeoisies and breaking with imperialism. The global crisis means that revolution and counter-revolution are on collision course. Gaza is the first point of impact of the collision. The recent Israeli attack on Gaza was the imperialist gendarme testing the reliability of the Arab bourgeois factions to impose the imperialist ‘democratic’ counter-revolution. The outcome proves that the Zionist and Arab ruling classes are united against the mass base of the Arab Revolution. 


Driving this confrontation is the worsening global crisis of capitalism. The imperialist powers are undergoing a severe recession brought about by falling profits and overproduction of capital. This is not a ‘financial’ crisis but a deep structural crisis of capitalism. To restore profits the imperialist economies have to destroy $trillions of capital value which is why the world economy is still in a long depression. Made to pay for the crisis are the weaker capitalist powers and the world’s workers and peasants and that means further austerity. Between 2008 and 2010 massive attacks on workers and peasants living standards were launched. By 2010 resistance to these attacks were reaching explosive potential. When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Tunisia the masses of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were ready to rise up. The Arab Revolution that had been frozen and driven back by dictatorships since the 1950s rose up and brought down one regime after another in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, while in Syria the regime is approaching its downfall.

The awakening Arab Revolution destabilised the rule of terror of the Zionist regime. Israel had reached a stalemate with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Then came the wave of uprisings from Tunisia to Syria which strengthened the mass support for the isolated Palestinian Revolution. The Egyptian Revolution put the freedom of Palestine at the top of its program, thereby declaring its anti-imperialism and internationalism. The army deposed Mubarak and conceded the election victory of his successor Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to put the lid on the revolution calling for an end to Mubarak’s treaty with Israel. The Libyan armed revolt exploded and threatened to spread across the whole Arab Revolution. It was contained by NATO intervention and bourgeois parliamentary elections.

The Syrian people began to resist al Assad’s dictatorship and without imperialist support are today pushing to overthrow the regime. Under pressure from the Palestinian masses, Hamas broke with Iran to back the Syrian revolution against al Assad. This leaves Hezbollah as a proxy for Iran on the side of al Assad, weakened and isolated from the rest of the ‘Arab Spring’. The weakening of Iran’s influence in MENA reduces the pressure for direct US intervention beyond a CIA watching brief on 'Jihadists' in the Syrian opposition. The US is confident that it can find a pro-imperialist coalition government to impose a ‘democratic counter-revolution’. Israel is not so confident. A revolution without imperialist strings attached could develop into a mortal threat to the Zionist state and to the Arab bourgeois factions who rule over the Arab masses. Israel has lost the support of al Assad as a counterweight to the Palestinian revolution. The Palestinian Diaspora in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan became embroiled in the Syrian war as under pressure from the masses in the camps the PLO and Hamas came out in support of the revolution against the Stalinist PFLF-GC who supported al Assad. Thus it is no surprise that the Arab Revolution threatened to break out of the ‘democratic’ counter-revolution at the major fault line, Gaza, where the Israeli and the Palestinian bourgeois factions staged another missile war to test the new balance of forces in MENA.

The Gaza attack has allowed the Arab and Israeli ruling classes to test their relative power and re-affirm their class alliance against the Arab masses. The result is that Israel re-affirms its military gendarme role against the armed Arab revolution, by doing a deal with the Palestine bourgeois factions, Fatah and Hamas, taking the pressure off al Assad, and reinforcing the MB rule in Egypt. The ceasefire signals that Israel has tested its defences and reached agreements with the ‘moderate’ Islamic regional powers Turkey and Egypt. Israel has fine-tuned its gendarme role to play tough cop to the soft cop of US/NATO ‘democratic’ counter revolution. Imperialism has incorporated Israel into its ‘solution’ to the Arab Spring, the flowering of moderate Islamic regimes in a bloc with Israel against radical Islamic nationalism and against popular mass revolutions that are capable of breaking with imperialism.

Obama’s foreign policy setting is to stabilise MENA as a secure base to pursue its vital hegemonic interests in the ‘pivot’ towards the Asia-Pacific. This requires a firm alliance between the Zionist and moderate Islamic nationalist regimes against the masses. The US will enlist the ‘global community’ to pressure Israel to re-open negotiations with Palestine for a ‘two state’ solution. Recognising Palestine as an UN ‘observer’ state is a move in that direction despite US official opposition. To the extent that Iran’s allies on its borders weaken, Israel has less reason to threaten war with Iran. Thus Iran’s significance will be less as a destabilising factor in MENA and more a focal point in the inter-imperialist rivalry between the US and China for control over the Asia-Pacific.

Permanent Revolution

This imperialist policy setting for MENA - that of ‘democratic counter-revolution’ - is inherently unstable not only because behind the fig leaf of parliamentary elections there are the naked austerity attacks on the working masses. Fundamentally ‘democracy’ in MENA is incompatible with the existence of Zionist Israel. The borders imposed by imperialism after WW1 created artificial states, dividing and trapping nations such as the Kurds and other minorities. In the case of Israel however, imperialism allowed a new settler colony to drive the Palestinians off their land creating the Zionist ‘nation’ at the expense of the Palestine nation. Any claims by the Zionist state to ‘democracy’ are a lie since its very existence is at the expense of Palestinian national rights. Therefore, imperialism cannot impose stability on MENA by pretending to resolve the Palestine question, i.e. recognising Palestine and imposing a ‘two state solution’, as long as Israel continues to exist. Just as Palestine can only be freed by the destruction of the colonial settler state of Israel, the Arab masses cannot be freed without overthrowing the rule of imperialism and the national bourgeoisies that serve imperialism in the MENA. This means the Arab revolution must fight to complete the national bourgeois revolution by means of socialist revolution in the whole MENA region.

We can see what progress is being made in transforming the national into the socialist revolution. The most advanced front is in Syria where a popular ‘peaceful’ resistance movement was transformed by defections from the military into an armed insurrection. Here imperialism has not intervened directly to subordinate the popular rebellion to a ‘government in waiting’. The militias are not controlled by the SNC or by any attempt by the US to set up a ‘reliable’ alternative to al Assad. Despite the imperialist legacy of splitting up nationalities and the deliberate sectarian incitement by the regime to weaken the opposition, the militias are broadly committed to an inclusive, tolerant bourgeois democracy. Any attempt by imperialism to prevent or hijack the victory will turn the insurrection against imperialism. The Syrian revolution has already reactivated the Palestinian revolution so the two cannot be isolated. The question of whether a victorious Syrian revolution and the Palestinian revolution can be contained by a ‘democratic’ counter-revolution will depend on wider developments in the Arab Revolution.

While the revolution has been driven back by force in Kuwait, and so far contained by an Islamic regime in Tunisia, the resistance in Jordan where the majority are Palestinians has taken to the streets protesting against fuel price rises and calling for the downfall of the regime. This shows that while the revolution may be stalled or pushed back in some countries, in others is it moving ahead. Those who are being driven back or are just beginning their struggle need to look to the most advanced struggles to learn the lessons of how to fight for permanent revolution. If we look at Syria, Libya and Egypt we can see that some of the conditions for permanent revolution exist, while others have yet to be created.

Libya is the only other front of the Arab Revolution where the armed struggle succeeded in overthrowing a national dictatorship. It must be remembered that strength of the rebel army resulted from defections from Gaddafi’s armed forces. This is a key development that allowed the rebel army to win without becoming subordinated to NATO. NATO intervened to prevent the war of liberation from dragging on like in Syria and sparking a wider Arab war. It succeeded in installing a parliamentary regime but has not been able to disarm the militias or form a stable government. The recent attack on the Benghazi US Consulate shows that the US has some way to go to create a ‘reliable’ client state in Libya. While the elections have been widely supported the masses have yet to see any relief from the austerity of the Gaddafi dictatorship. The militias remain armed and the potential to overturn any austerity regime exists. This fact shows that it is vital for the Syrian revolution to build and maintain a popular militia independent of imperialism and of any pro-imperialist national regime.

In Egypt the popular revolution did not arm itself or take power. The military regime replaced Mubarak with Morsi of the MB as a ‘democratic’ facade, but this has already proven unstable. Morsi has assumed total power to rush a new constitution through that will guarantee a MB majority in a new parliament. The MB knows that its middle class support base will not survive mass resistance to the austerity measures that the IMF demands. It wants to create a constitutional front that allows an Islamic bloc backed by the military to restore a dictatorship. This has revived the revolution on the streets but the masses do not have the power to bring down the Government. Demands that Morsi retracts his assumption of total power or resign cannot be enforced as it could be in Libya by the armed militias. What is lacking in Egypt is any popular power based on industrial action or more importantly winning over the base of the army. Both of these essential conditions were never seriously fought for by the revolution of the streets. To realise them now requires a fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly to unite the masses and the base of the army to bring down Morsi and his middle class MB dictatorship.

Permanent revolution means that to win the most basic democratic rights, such as Palestine liberation, such as a constitution that reflects the popular working masses and not just the middle class in Egypt, such as a popular victory over the al Assad regime in Syria, it is necessary to arm the popular struggle. In Palestine the resistance to Israeli occupation has always come from the masses not the Fatah or Hamas bourgeois leaderships. In Libya and Syria, the masses were armed when militants and defectors from the army joined forces. In Egypt, the fight to bring down Morsi will mean winning over the base of the military and uniting it with armed militias based on the organised workers. This will open the road to popular democracy and to bourgeois democratic republics. Yet, in semi-colonies dominated and super-exploited by imperialism, the national bourgeoisies serve as agents of imperialism to rule over the super-exploited masses. The bourgeois democratic republic must always revert to an open bourgeois dictatorship unless it is overthrown and turned into a proletarian dictatorship. For the working masses to survive they must insist on retaining their armed independence from the bourgeois regimes and take the fight to imperialism. We can see that this is necessary in the whole of MENA just as the liberation of Palestine necessitates the destruction of the Zionist imperialist enclave.

A new revolutionary international

The Arab masses are fighting to complete their national revolution against imperialism in crisis and the national bourgeoisies that act as its agents. Their spontaneous demands are to reform the state so that they are not victims of exploitation and oppression. The default ideology of capitalism is that individual citizens are equal and that once a majority mobilise for equal rights this can be won. In Libya, Gaddafi was seen as the problem. In Egypt, Mubarak was seen as the problem. In Syria al Assad was seen as the problem. The revolutions against these dictatorships aim to create egalitarian bourgeois democracies. The problem is that in the epoch of imperialism bourgeois democracy is incompatible with the survival of global capitalism. Once dictatorships are overthrown, new dictatorships must arise in their place. This is particularly true of semi-colonies where imperialism must use the national regimes to repress mass resistance to super-exploitation.

This means that to win the most fundamental bourgeois democratic rights the bourgeois ruling class must be overthrown and replaced with a socialist republic – the dictatorship of the working majority over the exploiting minority. But for this to happen, the most advanced workers must have a program to lead all working and oppressed people to socialist revolution. But in the Arab states socialism has been repeatedly betrayed. First, by the Western social imperialists of the rotten Second International who turned their backs on national struggles; second by the Stalinists of the rotten Third International who aligned themselves with the national bourgeoisies during the national struggles; and third the fake ‘Trotskyists’ who made friends with Gaddafi and al Assad and co, and today give critical support to the national bourgeoisies. Those who pass themselves off as revolutionaries like the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt vote for bourgeois governments. There is no revolutionary party embedded in the working class in any of these countries that fights for a clear transitional program that lays out the road forward from the struggle for immediate and democratic demands and shows how these can only be won by an armed insurrection – the Permanent Revolution. Building such a party as part of a new socialist international party is the most important and urgent task facing revolutionaries.

SMASH THE ZIONIST STATE OF ISRAEL! FOR A SECULAR, SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF PALESTINE!

DOWN WITH BOURGEOIS REGIMES—THEY SERVE THE IMPERIALIST MASTER!

US/NATO/CHINA HANDS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA!

DOWN WITH THE REACTIONARY BOURGEOIS CONSTITUTIONS OF TUNISIA, LIBYA AND EGYPT!

FOR REVOLUTIONARY CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLIES FOR ALL FROM 16YRS OF AGE!

FOR WORKERS COUNCILS, WORKERS MILITIAS, POOR FARMERS COUNCILS, COUNCILS OF THE MILITARY RANKS! FOR GOVERNMENTS OF WORKERS COUNCILS!

FOR A FEDERATION OF SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA!

Statement of Liaison Committee of Communists 

Communist Workers' Group (USA) 

Revolutionary Workers' Group (Zimbabwe)

Communist Workers' Group (Aotearoa/NZ)

 Co-signed by Workers Socialist Party (India)

30 November 2012

END NATO-US INTERVENTION! DEFEAT QADDAFFI! BREAK WITH THE TNC! ARM THE WORKERS AND YOUTH TO DEFEAT IMPERIALISM IN NORTH AFRICA

Class Contradictions in the North African Revolution

Decades of crony capitalism, funded by the flow of petro-dollars to despots, sheiks, reactionary Bathists, and fake socialist regimes alike, have underdeveloped the Maghreb (North Africa) and the Near East. These regimes have held back the “democratic” aspirations of the people and closed book on the Pan-Arab nationalist revolution that appeared to threaten imperialism 30 years ago. Even while posing as anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist, regimes throughout the region have made their peace with both and have become imperialism’s willing pawns. All have done their part to suppress the masses, and in particular the Palestinian revolution, the working class, minorities (tribal and religious), and women. The role of these regimes, today threatened by their own people, has been to maintain the status quo, keeping oil flowing to imperialism’s oil cartels, and dollars and gold flowing back to a small elite concentrated around the inner circles of the dictators, their families, and their military and security organizations.

The aspirations of Pan-Arabism – national independence (from imperialism and Zionism), secular democracy, and social progress – were destined by the weakness of the national bourgeoisie to collapse. Since this occurred, social equilibrium has been enforced by a well-balanced distribution of the carrot and the stick. In Libya, oil wealth allowed a relatively larger portion of “carrots” to be allotted the masses. In Saudi Arabia, extra “carrots” were quickly distributed at the last moment when the monarchy realized that this equilibrium could not withstand the crisis of capitalism and the uprisings of 2011.

The unfulfilled expectations of the masses, the desire for “democratic” freedoms, and the consequences of high unemployment exploded this winter/spring in a revolutionary upsurge whose leading actors were the under-employed youth, students, and workers (both private and public sector), closely followed and joined by the petty bourgeoisie (small business people, shop owners, professionals and academics). Usurpers to the mantle of leadership, like ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the TNC in Libya, emerged not from the heterogeneous masses who first bared their chests to the bullets of reaction, but only after the initial uprisings, in hope that they would get the nod from imperialism and emerge at the top of the heap.

It is essential to understand that democracy and freedom have different meanings to different social classes. For the workers, basic democratic rights, such as the right to organize and control over one’s conditions of labor, are primary. For the small and large capitalists, bourgeois academics, and intellectuals, the right to exploit labor and participate in the market free from the dictates of crony capitalism, alongside the desire for political, cultural and intellectual freedom, turned them against the regimes. Although each country has its own unique dynamics, these uprisings, which spread across the region in a firestorm of historic consequence unlike anything since 1848, contain the contradictory aspirations of two opposing classes: one consigned forever to be pawns of imperialism, the other burdened with the historic task of defeating it.

These contradictions are subsumed in this re-emergence of the Arab-national revolution, but they can not be resolved by the emergence of “constitutional democracy”. The aspirations of the mass base that ignited the revolution cannot be successfully met if the revolution limits itself to the fight for “freedom and democracy,” as defined by western imperialism and embraced by the petty bourgeoisie, the academics, and wannabe imperialist lackeys like ElBaradei in Egypt and the TNC in Libya.

For imperialism to maintain its financial position, workers must not be permitted to control the conditions of their own labor or the economy, or even be apportioned their proper share of the economic benefit from the natural wealth of these nations. To achieve this end, a willing pawn is required, one who will feign left (advance “political freedom”), but strike to the right (crush the workers’ movements and administer exploitative deals with imperialism).

In Libya, despite the higher GDP and limited gains of women under the “Green Revolution,” the masses, led by unemployed youth and inspired by the events across North Africa, stood up against the repression of Qaddaffi’s brutal regime. The masses no longer believe the lie that Qaddaffi is fighting imperialism and building “Green-Socialism.” Decades of harshly enforced crony capitalism, and Qadaffi’s capitulation to imperialism in 2003, assured that once unleashed, the protests spread across Libya even to Tripoli, where the masses faced an unrelenting violent repression unlike any seen in Tunisia or Egypt. The fantasy of a peaceful “Jasmine” revolution came to an abrupt end. The masses armed to defend themselves from the cruel regime’s commitment to maintaining the status quo – i.e., its deals with imperialism and its hording of wealth at the expense of social programs and political freedom.

In the early days of the Libyan rebellion, two forms of organization emerged: on the one hand, councils of the heterogeneous mass of rebels, organizing in the streets and neighborhoods – embryonic workers’ councils like those we have seen in Tunisia and Egypt – and on the other, a bourgeois council which has now been transformed into the TNC – a rotten menagerie of defectors, monarchists, tribalists, intellectuals and capitalists. As a consequence of decades of repression, these councils are extremely disorganized, and tendencies within them have not fully consolidated. The rapid escalation of military events outpaced the ability of the working and lower classes to self-identify and differentiate from the TNC, particularly since the latter includes military deserters from the regime who appeared to promise sorely needed military leadership, arms, and forces.

The contradiction between the aspirations of the masses and the TNC are reflected most recently in the refusal of the TNC to arm militant youth who stake their lives driving out to the front. Imperialism sees the contradictory nature of the “rebel force” and is having a hard time differentiating who they can trust, hence the hesitancy in sending arms for fear that they fall into the hands of the working masses and unemployed youth.


Libya: A Test of Revolutionary Marxist Method

Recent events in North Africa have caught the Left playing catch-up. Libya in particular has most of the Left stumbling over itself. The contradictions outlined above are quite obvious in the unfolding of events in Egypt and Tunisia, where the workers, democratic militants, and women are already experiencing the reaction of the interim regimes as they try to keep Egypt and Tunisia “safe” for imperialism by preventing workers’ revolution. But in Libya, the left was caught off guard.

Imperialism is intervening in Libya to remove Qaddaffi, a dictator whose brutality has aroused an armed insurrection that threatens to overshoot the US-desired “orderly transition” to bourgeois democracy, and to become a workers revolution. Imperialism’s objective is to replace Qaddaffi with more a “democratic” bourgeois leadership, including ex-Qaddaffi cronies, that can and will keep a lid on the revolution. Both bourgeois factions are appealing to imperialism to be the chosen regime, using the young rebels and the mercenaries as bargaining chips and missile fodder. But Qaddaffi’s shelf life has long since expired, and the TNC has yet to prove its viability. This instability invites an imperialist-dictated partition of the country, a NATO-US “boots on the ground” invasion under the guise of peacekeeping, or both.

Presented with this spectacle – a semi-fascist dictator currently doing imperialism’s bidding, faced off against a second willing pawn waiting in the wings – the Left has floundered. The self-proclaimed Bolsheviks (in the Spartacist family) claim workers have no side. Other spin-offs from the Healyite legacy revive the fantasy that Qaddaffi is defending the gains of the 1969 revolution against Monachist restorationists and agents of imperialism. Both these tendencies reject the righteous indignation of the workers, the poor, and the oppressed, and attribute the uprising entirely to persistent and ever-present imperialist/CIA/MI6 instigation.

Apparently, unless these outfits are themselves in the leadership of a rebellion, they view the masses as the mere fodder of history, to be abandoned to their fate. No, comrades, Marxism does not teach an abstentionist internationalism. Marxism as a method for analysis and intervention guides revolutionaries to act in the historic interest of the working class – an impossible task for centrists, who cannot distinguish the revolutionary agents in this struggle from the stooges of imperialism. We in HWRS and the CWG stand in contrast to those on the left who are blind to the class distinction between the bourgeois leadership of the TNC and the working class youth core of the rebels. Instead, we condemn all attempts to co-opt the youth and exclude them from the military action against Qaddaffi’s forces; we advocate the rebellion’s political and military independence from the TNC leadership; and we urge internationalist workers everywhere to come to the aid of and arm the struggle of the youth and the workers. In other words, as Marxists, we stand for the independence of the working class in its armed insurrection, supporting its promise of defeating Qaddaffi; breaking from the TNC’s “alternative” regime, and then – as the revolution requires – joining with other Arab revolutions to defeat imperialism in the Maghreb.

Despite Qaddaffi’s attempts to paint himself as anti-imperialist, his actions long ago proved his interests lie with imperialism and not with the Libyan masses. His attempt to wipe out the popular revolt of the working people, the only class force that can defend what gains remain from 1969 and defeat imperialism, was initiated both on behalf of his imperialist patrons and his gang of crony capitalists. Unlike the “thirdworldist” left (Castro/Chavez), we do not bloc with Qaddaffi militarily against imperialism (though we do advocate that the working class base of Qaddaffi’s forces defect and join the anti-imperialist fighters).

We are for the defeat of imperialist intervention in every nation oppressed/invaded or bombed by imperialism. The main responsibility for this defeat is in the hands of the workers’ movements in the imperialist countries and their allies in NATO. Therefore, we are against the entire social imperialist left who find excuses for intervention, “humanitarian” or not, of an oppressor country, when they perceive it as necessary to defeat semi-fascism or dictatorship in an oppressed country.

Indeed, the social imperialists (like the German Greens who support the NATO bombing) and the “thirdworldists” are in reality two sides of the same coin. Neither puts any faith in the capacity of the semi-colonial masses, and especially the revolutionary youth, to fight for and win the national revolution as a social revolution. They have a pseudo-revolutionary version of the bourgeois civilizing mission. They believe that either the imperialist bourgeoisie, or the national bourgeoisie in the semi-colonies, can play a progressive role. In either case, their analysis ignores and dismisses the agency of the working masses as the only possible progressive subjective factor in history.

The liberal and progressive pacifists, a sorry strain of social imperialism, place their hopes on NATO/US “humanitarian” intervention. But imperialism cares not one whit for the humanitarian needs of civilians. This lesson – apparently lost on these idealists – has been proved over and again by history: Hiroshima, Vietnam, “Shock and Awe,” “Cast Lead,” Rwanda, and even today in the Congo today. But in the case of the present Libyan war, the perceived threat of massacre has given imperialism a chance to both “toot its humanitarian horn” and find a road to consolidation and victory for their pawn of choice (or last resort), the TNC. Both the pacifist interventionists and the sectarian abstentionists, with their grand pronouncements, ignore the independent role of the working class, and are thereby opening the road for the only other “realistic” solution: imperialist intervention.


The Tasks at Hand

To defeat imperialism, Libyan workers and their allies in Tunisia, Egypt, the Middle East, and Europe must give their IMMEDIATE attention to these urgent tasks facing every working class in the region:

1. Independent mass political organization is essential. A body such as an All-Libyan Conference of Workers’ Councils must be formed, with the explicit project of taking sole, unitary political power throughout the country.

2. Underground and exiled workers’ forces should be represented with delegates, so that the population in Qaddaffi-controlled territory will know that it is not the working class that is bargaining with imperialism over a division of Libya into two poverty-stricken semi-colonial, countries! OPPOSE PARTITION! FORWARD TO THE FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF NORTH AFRICA AND THE NEAR EAST.

3. Workers must found and build a revolutionary Marxist party now, to delineate a programmatic response to the revolutionary crisis, to popularize the program among the masses, and to win the majority of the Workers’ Councils to support its demands and objectives.

4. No to “power sharing” and to “national” or “people’s” fronts. Each of these is a bayonet pointed at the working class! The TNC’s program is civil war in place of class war. This means a thousand kilometers of desert to cross, at a military disadvantage even with on-again/off-again imperialist air support. This is all the TNC has to offer imperialism, and all it can possibly offer in return for imperialism’s support.

5. Without independent political organization, the working class and youth can expect to be ground between two bourgeois millstones – the old goons of Qaddaffi, and the new goons of the TNC – in a war of exhaustion and elimination. Meanwhile, the young fighters’ relatives who are in Qaddaffi’s hands will pay with their lives. It is only an independent workers’ political program that will cause new revolts in Qaddaffi’s rear and advance the workers’ front line to the door of his tent!

6. Victory over imperialism, Qaddaffi ,and the TNC will require an independent military organization subordinate only to the Workers’ Councils. The TNC leadership will attempt to turn its troops on the youth and the workers tomorrow. Should the youth be so fortunate as to bring Qaddaffi’s head back to Bengazi on a plate, the TNC would soon enough fête the heroes with firing squads! Workers must assume that getting the TNC leaders to commit to class warfare is the true mission of the envoys Washington has sent, in place of arms or Libya’s impounded funds. Neither will be released to the workers and the youth! Not by Washington, and not by the French bourgeoisie, who may invade their country to save it from them! Right now, Washington has a shortage of available troops, and the E.U. NATO countries have even bigger money worries. We say to the Libyan workers: You must build your own workers’ army! Only in this way you can persuade them to give up their invasion plans and return to their secret agent plots.

7. All internationalist fighters must appeal immediately to the unions and sympathetic troops of Tunisia and Egypt to send arms of all calibers, and to form up brigades of trained worker-soldiers to come to the aid of the Libyan revolution! Libyan workers must pledge to return the solidarity when their comrades’ own national bourgeoisies try to loose the professional armies on them! Meanwhile, workers in the imperialist countries have an obligation to wage class struggle against every design the exploiters and their smiling “public servants” have upon your lives, labor and national treasure! This is more possible now than it has been at any time since 1946-47. European workers trained in conscript armies have the experience to form up armed internationalist workers brigades and join the revolution! Workers of Europe and the USA: the victory of the North African workers’ revolution depends to a large extent on our ability to arrest imperialism’s bloody death grip!

In an epoch when imperialism is facing an ever-deepening crisis, the interests of the capitalist imperialist class and its semi-colonial agents can only be realized by intensifying reaction and counter-revolution. Only a national revolution that fulfills the tasks of the permanent revolution can defeat the counter-revolution and open the way to socialism – in the Maghreb, in the Near East, and worldwide.

For the workers to live, imperialism must die! Victory to the Libyan and Arab masses!
Defeat US/NATO in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! Reignite the Palestinian revolution!

Victory to the popular uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Jordan!
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Statement of Liaison Committee of Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism (USA) and Communist Workers' Group (Aotearoa/NZ)