Re: AUT: Re: Palestione, Israel and other ghettoes

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

What we are faced with is the old problem of how to
make a revolution in an underdeveloped country, where
the struggle for bourgeois democratic rights won long
ago in the West intersects with the class struggle for
socialism.

A socialist confederation is fine as a long-range
demand, but revolution has to start somewhere, and
right now there is arguably a revolutionary situation
in Palestine (ie dual power inside Palestine, with the
militias and local resistance committees challenging
the remnants of the PA for leadership of the national
liberation struggle), but not in any other country in
the region. Do the Palestinians have to wait for the
rest of the region to catch up? This was the
ultra-left(see Ruhle)/Menshevik (see Kautsky)
criticism of the Bolshevik revolution, and as an
argument it hasn't improved with age.

Harald is quite right implicitly to reject the goal of
a 'new democratic' revolution establishing a
capitalist Palestine under the rule of a 'progressive'
bourgeoisie, as a prelude to some 'second stage'
socialist revolution. In the past I argued on this
list for a two stage approach like this, and it was
only earlier this year, when the invasion of the West
Bank led to relatively large Arab protests in
Auckland, that I realised that it was a Stalinist
solution, the same solution that failed in China in
1925-27, and has failed countless times since in the
Third World.

I only ever advocated the two stage solution because I
felt the futility of the ultra-left call for the
Palestinian revolution to put off until the whole
region, or better still Europe, rose up in revolution.
But it seems to me now that the programme of permanent
revolution is far superior to either the stagist
Stalinist or the ultra-left solution to the problem of
revolution in the Third World.

Permanent revolution acknowledges the fact that the
struggle in economic semi-colonies like Palestine is
partly a struggle for democratic rights, and
therefores involves other classes besides the workers
and peasants, ie the middle class and elements of the
national bourgeoisie, but it does not follow the two
stage programme and capitulate to this fact by calling
for a political alliance between the different classes
before the revolution leading to a cross-class 'new
democratic' government after the revolution.

On the other hand, the programme of permanent
revolution does not go the ultra-left way of ignoring
the fight for democratic rights, national
independence, and the inevitably cross-class nature of
resistance to imperialism in an economic semi-colony.

What permanent revolution says is that, because a
semi-colony is caught in the web of imperialism, of a
global economic system, and cannot in the age of
imperilaist decline  ever escape from this web, the
material conditions for the creation of bourgeois
democratic rights are just never going to exist, so
long as capitalism exists. The call for 'civil rights'
has to be fused with a call for the destruction of
capitalism in the semi-colony. As long as capitalism
remains, civil rights will not be forthcoming, because
the superprofits imperialism gets out of semi-colonies
cannot coexist with real civil rights. The history of
Stalinist 'new democratic' societies - Zimbabwe, for
example, or even South Africa - makes this fact
painfully clear.

Democratic demands, then, can only be won by the
overthrow of capitalism, and the removal of the
society in question from the web of imperialism. The
democratic and socialist 'stages' have to be gone
through together.

In the leadup to revolution, the workers and peasants
have to bloc with other classes, but they should only
make a 'military bloc' - they should not form a
political alliance with the bourgeoisie. If they keep
their organisational and military independence they
can be prepared to seize power when the bloc of
classes and its international allies defeat
imperilaism (ie, in the case of Palestine, get rid of
Israeli occupation, to start with).

Of course, a tiny country like Palestine is not going
to be able to build socialism in the long-term on its
own, though it can potentially hold out for a while,
so the revolution must be spread, and confederations
like the one Harald argues for must be established.
So what does all this mean for the present, in
Palestine? It means the militias and committees of
resistance must be built into organs of dual power,
free from the class collaborationism of the PLO, which
is a political bloc of classes. At the same time,
though, they must bloc militarily with bourgeois
groups (Al Fatah) fighting the occupation. When the
enemy is driven out, they must be ready seize power
from these bourgeois forces.

Who am I to lay out this road map for revolution in a
country I have never visited? What I am repeating here
is the advice being given to Middle Eastern
revolutionary groups by some of the revolutionaries in
Argentina. I think it is significant that the
Argentineans, unlike the stagist and even two statist
Western left, see a strong parrallel between their
revolution and the Palestinians'.

Cheers
Scott







 --- Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <topp8564@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Aut-Op-Sy"
> <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: 26. oktober 2002 17.59
> Subject: Re: AUT: de- and re-territorialization
>
> Thiago wrote:
>
> "I think it is a pretty serious failure of
> imagination to
> think that a free Palestine should take the form of
> a
> Palestinian nation-state. It just clearly  cannot
> take
> the form of a chauvinist Zionist nation-state. "Free
> Palestine" could be a very radical idea, if you
> chose
> to push it"
>
>
> The only  worthy reformist demand, and one which
> also has a social  revolutionary potential, is the
> call
> for civil rights and a East Mediterranean
> confederation.
> (To eternal hellfire with all nationalist and
> religious
> cravings. Better to vomit from too much alcohol.)
>
> Commericial:
>
> The next (just published?) issue of the
> "Anarcho-Syndicalist
> Review" should include an article I wrote around
> this subject
> called  "Ghetto-statism, or confederal, social
> emanicipation?"
> It is introduced by these no doubt by me too hastily
> written
> down words as far as good language is concerned:
>
>
> "In the following Zionism is viewed, as a settler
> colonialist
> project of a particular kind, but also in its
> historical roots
> as a mirror image of the German nationalistic
> proto-type
> born out of the debris of capitalist development.
> But it is
> the French Revolution which none the less is the
> point of
> departure and in a certain sense endpoint of this
> article,
> as this revolution posed, at least in theory, but
> not only so,
> the idea of a nation, not resting on "nationality"
> but on
> citizenship irrespective of "blood", even if as we
> are still
> talking about a state, also founded on exploitation
> and
> the oppression needed to maintain it. Still the
> principle
> of universal citizenship's rights (as far as
> possible imposed
> and enforced from below) is a far better base than
> nationalism to develop a directly democratic
> struggle of
> workers-to-workers-solidarity on.  While the former
> falls
> far short of our ends, it does not, unlike
> nationalism, stand
> in a direct opposition to these.  Thus I will argue
> in regards
> to the Palestine conflict that the only sensible
> perspective
> in the current situation is to advance the idea of
> citizenship rights within a East Mediterranean
> confederal
> framework. I will also claim that up to this point,
> paradoxically
> enough, the most advanced corporate capitalist
> forces in
> Israel and the region as a whole, would share our
> interests,
> in as far as this would entail a more effective
> exploitation
> of the labour force (the inhabitants of the refugee
> camps
> may be dirt poor, but they are not lucrative) and
> provide a
> internal market large enough, to become players of
> some
> importance within an increasingly globalized
> economy. In
> this perspective Zionism, with its desire to
> exclusively
> exploit Jewish workers, as well as a Palestinian
> mini-state,
> has both run out of date."
>
> Harald
>
>
>
>
>
>      --- from list
> aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

=====
"Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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