AUT: Can 'entrepeneuring capitalists' save Palestinians?

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

Harald thinks the comparison of his views with
Kautsky's is ridiculous, but in his latest post he
comes out all the way and says that he thinks
imperialism in Israel and surrounding countries can be
reformed, and the state of Israel transcended, by the
continued development of capitalism in the East
Mediterranean region. If the capitalists could just
realise war isn't in the best interests of profits and
practice internationalism, then we'd all be better
off!
Here is what Harald writes:

> The scenario of an East Meditarrean political-
> economical confederation is not more radical
> than it probably would be preferred by the
> European Union, and capitalists throughout
> the region, including entrepreneuring
> capitalists in Israel of the more neo-liberal kind.
> The Zionist project  has become an anacronism.

It goes without saying that Harald's views are
completely at variance with the anarcho-syndicalist
political tradition he claims. After all, it was Big
Bill Haywood who said 'The employer class and the
working class who have no common interests'. Big Bill
may not have known how to oppose the First World War
owing to his economism, but at least he never claimed
that capitalists could help workers stop war and
oppression.

What Harald is arguing is very, very similar to what
Kautsky used his theory of ultra-imperialism to argue
around the First World War. In opposition to the
anti-war socialists, who argued that the war was the
inevitable result of imperialism, and had to be
stopped by revolution, Kautsky argued that the war was
actually detrimental to the best objective interests
of capitalism, because in the era of
(ultra)imperialism capitalists' investments were so
international, so interpenetrating, that war was bad
for everyone's business. Better to end war and
establish international bodies to run capitalism
smoothly, in the interests of workers and bosses.

Kautsky, then, would have been vigorously in favour of
Harald's East Mediterranean capitalist confederation.
Here is a quote from the man himself:

?Every far-sighted capitalist today  must call on his
fellows: capitalists of all countries unite! Stop the
war in your own interests. Peace brings prosperity!"

(quoted pg 180, Lenin's Fight for a Revolutionary
International, 1907-1916, ed John Riddell)

Harald now says that even if a revolution could occur
tommorrow in Palestine, even if the workers were
organised and able to take power for themselves, he
would still be against the idea. It is simply too
dangerous at the moment to overthrow capitalism in
Palestine. Why? Because of the way that the
capitalists would react.

But if the capitalists are so dangerous, so
ferociously determined to crush any Palestinian worker
resistance (and, make no mistake, they are!), why does
Harald think that they can help Palestinian workers by
establishing a capitalist confederation and abolishing
Israel? Why does he think the continued development of
capitalism in the East Mediterranean will help
strengthen the hand of the Palestinian workers? And
why, if the imperialists are so ferocious and
dangerous, does Harald favour the disarming of the
Palestinian  institutions - the militia and Popular
Committees - that are trying to protect the
Palestinian people from imperialism?

The reality is that the behaviour of Israel and the
United States is not some aberration that can be
corrected by  the progressive "entrepeneuring
capitalists" Harald appeals to. Imperialism cannot be
civilised, it is a crisis-ridden system which creates
wars which can only be halted by revolution. Israel is
a garrison state for US imperialism in the Middle
East, and as other Arab states waver in their support
of the US under the threat of massive discontent
Israel becomes more rather than less important for the
US. There are no anti-imperialist Israeli entrepeneurs
of the type Harald hopes for, because Israel's entire
economy is bankrolled by imperialism. Trade with
Lebanon is not much of an alternative to the billions
the US pumps into the economy every year.

As Ilan Sharif has noted, Israel is a state on the
road to fascism. Sharon's government is not itself
fascist, but it contains fascists, open advocates of
genocide, and its main opposition comes from
Netanyahu, who is close to these fascists. As long ago
as 1956 Sharon advocated the mass murder of
Palestinians, and he has numerous times urged their
expulsion to Jordan. A state run by the likes of
Sharon and Netanyahu, and backed by the full force of
the US, is not a state in which a peaceful struggle
for 'civil rights' can be run by a coalition of
Palestinian workers and 'entrepeneurial capitalists'.
It is a state from which the Palestinian people must
protect themselves from with arms.

In defending his own position, Harald has dismissed me
as a fantasist. Let's have a look at our respective
views about what should happen in Palestine.

Harald thinks the Palestinian workers should abandon
the intifida, dismantle the institutions which they
have set up to fight the intifada and protect
themselves, and make an alliance with progressive
entrepeneurs to protest for full civil rights, the
abolition of Israel, and the establishement of an East
Mediterranean capitalist confederation.

I think that the Palestinians should develop their
Popular Committees and militia into alternatives to
Arafat's PA, and continue to fight to protect
themselves from Israeli occupation and attacks. With
the help of massive solidarity led by workers in the
rest of the Arab world and the West, the sort of
solidarity that the Vietnamese received, the
Palestinians can succeed in defeating Israel and then
should go all the way to socialist revolution by
turning their Popular Committees into organs of direct
democracy over their liberated territory.

I think that my view is far more in tune with what is
happening in Palestine than Harald's vision of
anti-imperialist Israel entrepeneurs joining forces
with Palestinians. Perhaps though Harald can make his
argument more credible by naming some of the
'entrepeneuring capitalists of the neo-liberal kind'
who have come out for the abolition of Israel, and who
are willing to protect the Palestinians who give up
their arms from Sharon's security forces? Perhaps not.

Cheers
Scott










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

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