The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections is certainly not as surprising as the bourgeois press makes it out to be. A few immediate considerations can already be made:
- Al Fatah, the movement which historically guided the process of forming the Palestinian State, had for some time being going through a crisis and had been generally discredited for a series of different reasons. To the exploited and deprived masses it increasingly appeared as a corrupt, compromised and compromising organisation, even though it was impossible for them to see that this was not the result of dishonesty or betrayal by one leader or another, but actually the effect of the national, bourgeois framework Al Fatah was operating in and, above all, that their own rebellion was unfortunately being suffocated in. It was therefore inevitable that sooner or later there would be the question of political alternation within the same nationalist-bourgeois framework. That Hamas (with its “extremist” practices and dubious origins) should be best suited to take over is totally unsurprising.
- The objective pressure exerted by the worsening world economic crisis on the disaster-struck middle-eastern area brings with it an inevitable aggravation of the contradictions between bourgeois states: both between the various bourgeoisies in the area (Israeli and Arab) and between the bourgeoisies that have their eye on the area for economic and strategic reasons (the USA with their Israeli appendix, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, China etc.). Most of all, the worsening crisis brings with it rising social tensions throughout the Middle East, with the real prospect of more radical struggles, albeit confined – due to the delay in the recovery of class struggles worldwide, and in particular in the European and American imperialist strongholds – to a national-bourgeois context of “national liberation”. Precisely to prevent the aggravation of conditions and the increasingly radical nature of the struggles from affecting this framework and opening up dangerous spaces for class prospects, the local bourgeoisies are obliged to step on the “maximalist” and “extremist” accelerator, in an attempt to contain and channel the pressure of the masses in less critical directions. This is the origin of the “cases” (anything but surprising from the point of view of a Marxist analysis) of Ahmadinedjan’s Iran and, today, of Hamas, as well as, more generally, of all “Islamic fundamentalism”.
- Once again, and independently of the ideological forms assumed (religious rather than secular), it is a question of the historical function of social democracy, the final card thrown down by the bourgeoisie in answer to the rising tide of a mass movement (irrespective of how confused this is). More will have to be said about this aspect; however, with its widespread and dense network of structures for the relief of impoverished masses (hospitals, places of worship, schools, funds and financial help), Islamic fundamentalism flawlessly performs the role that it has always been historically assigned to social democracy, somewhere between reformism and extremism, between the machine gun and the ballot paper, and always within a solidly bourgeois framework.
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It comes as no surprise, then, that an “extremist” movement like Hamas should take part in the elections, win them and position itself “to govern”: precisely in a national-bourgeois context. There is no contradiction here; only a fool could fail to realise this. From armed resistance to a government for national unity: doesn’t this remind us of something?
So it is not from Hamas, from a government constituted by them with other groups and movements or – in the future – some other “maximalist” and “extremist” national-bourgeois force, that the Palestinian masses can expect real help, but only from a resumed class struggle at the heart of the capitalist world and from the worldwide extension of the Marxist revolutionary party. There is no other way.
International Communist Party
(International Papers - Cahiers Internationalistes - Il Programma Comunista)