Lebanon: Aggressors only, in the wars of imperialism

The only true victim of attack is always the proletariat 

The Israeli offensive in the south of Lebanon (as well as the renewed offensives in Gaza and the West Bank) are the tragic repetition of a situation – that of the Middle East – to which, in the context of bourgeois relations, there is no way out.Let us try and find out why and subsequently – most importantly – what the prospects are from the point of view of revolutionary and class politics.

Israeli expansionism

The Israeli military drive, officially motivated by the need to “defend our own borders”, is of a purely imperialist nature. In other words, it falls into the pattern of events inherent in imperialism which – being a superstructure of capitalism – can never maintain a balance, a state of pacific stillness, but aggravates to the utmost those features of disorder and aggressiveness that belong to a mode of production based on market laws, on competition, on the extraction of surplus value, on trade war, on the fight of all against all – a mode of production which is led by its own economic laws to a constant division and sharing out of the world market, in the search – once the whole planet has capitulated to the stronger capitalist States – for better positions on the chess board of the world market (in this case, in the field of the Middle East, through the securing and control of the main energy sources, so as to gain a better control of production and related rent) or with a view to excluding the current main competitors. As Lenin wrote inImperialism, “The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agrarian territories, but even most highly industrialised regions (German appetite for Belgium; French appetite for Lorraine), because (1) the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a redivision to reach out for every kind of territory, and (2) an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony” (Chapter VII, “Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism”).

In this sense, Israel – a test-tube state created by the winning powers in the second world slaughter, for the control of an area of strategic importance both for energy and for military purposes, and, as such, a concrete expression of capitalism at its highest point of economic, social and technological development – Israel isan eminently imperialist state:  both internally (state organisation, economic characteristics, social relations), and in its constant, inexorable projection outside its own borders. However, as Lenin always explained, in an imperialist age, all countries are or are destined to become so:  in the A, B or C leagues, leaders or stragglers, obtusely proud of their own super power or frothing at the mouth in their attempt to secure a share, or else wagging their tails in servile hope of gain. Thus they are all, actually or potentially, aggressors:  and all, as cynically demonstrated by two world wars and an endless number of minor wars, in order to … “defend themselves”!

Other, more specific and no less important considerations must be added to this general consideration. Firstly, its special genesis alone (which we cannot go into in much detail here but which we shall return to in the future, taking up the ample analyses we have carried out in past decades) makes Israel the appointed “gendarme” of the USA in the area, in the dual sense of being the longa manus of US economic and strategic interests and, at the same time, their hub, their “launching pad”, in other words their “aircraft carrier”: the latter being a condition destined to open up other, far from simple, internal contradictions, typical of a country substantially fuelled by foreign capital but at the same time (as is typical of capitalist patterns in an imperialist age) desiring to take its own initiatives, its own direction and not remain forever a mere appendage of the dominant imperialism (this is the reason for the severe and recurrent internal political crises: all to be seen in a bourgeois-capitalist framework, of course, but no less significant because of this). In second place, Israeli military activism, cynical and ruthless as only that of a technologically highly-sophisticated imperialism can be, is made even more acute from a general point of view, by the lingering and worsening world economic crisis, in which the capitalist mode of production has been struggling since the mid-‘70s (obliging all countries in different but no less acute ways to constantly divide up the market, the world quotas of surplus value, the land and oil rents, the sources of energy:  the wars of the ‘90s are a clear and dramatic example, despite the eminently bourgeois hypocrisy about “humanitarian wars”!); and, from a more specific and even more pressing point of view, this military activism is made keener still by the effects of the general crisis on Israel itself, on its economic and social structure, on its internal class relations (which demand inevitable chauvinistic rallying, the constant identification of an “enemy lying in wait”, the country being kept in a constant state of alert and tension, the exaltation of a patriotic dimension which even the mild voices of dissent bow down to, like those of the faint-hearted pacifists of “Peace Now”: a further demonstration that all pacifism does is… to prepare for war!).

An old story

On the other hand, the Middle-Eastern tragedy is an old story. With the disbanding of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, imperialist disorder hit the area and the process of constant, dramatic share-outs and new shares-outs began.

The English “Balfour declaration” (1917) already foresaw Jewish settlement in Palestine; at the same time, England had promised the Palestinian Arabs independence in exchange for their alliance during the war: a case of having your cake and eating it, in classical imperialist style, keeping everybody quiet to “divide and rule”. But at that time, just after the war, English imperialism was declining and US imperialism had just started to grow, while other European imperialisms were not really solid enough to be able to penetrate. Not only this. The fire that had been let loose by the Russian October uprisings also affected the poor and proletarian masses of the East who could see a point of reference in the Communist International of the early ‘20s that might lead them out of the dead-ends of outdated modes of production, tribal divisions and contrasts, gathering imperialist oppression, with the inevitable backwash of economic and social disintegration, compromising politics, diplomatic plots and chauvinistic temptations – all weighing on their shoulders.

The First Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in Baku in 1920, proclaimed, in its “Manifesto to the Peoples of the East”: “The peoples of the East have long stagnated in the darkness of ignorance under the despotic yoke of their own tyrant rulers, and under that of foreign capitalist conquerors. But the roar of the world-wide conflict, and the thunder of the Russian workers’ revolution, which has released the Eastern people of Russia from the century-old chains of capitalist slavery, has awakened them, and now aroused from their sleep of centuries, they are rising to their feet. They are waking up and are hearing the call to a holy war, to a ghazavat: this is our call! It is the call of the First Congress of representatives of the Peoples of the East, united with the revolutionary proletariat of the West under the banner of the Communist International. Thus we — representatives of the toiling masses of all the peoples of the East: India, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Kashgar, China, Indochina, japan, Korea, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaidzhan, Daghestan, Northern Caucasia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Khiva, Bukhara, Turkestan, Ferghana, Tataria, Bashkiria, Kirghizia, etc., united in unbreakable union among ourselves and with the revolutionary workers of the West summon our peoples to a holy war. We say:Peoples of the East! You have often heard the call to holy war, from your governments, you have marched under the green banner of the Prophet, but all those holy wars were fraudulent, serving only the interests of your self-seeking rulers, and you, the peasants and workers, remained in slavery and want after these wars. You conquered the good things of life for others, but yourselves never enjoyed any of them. Now we summon you to the first real holy war, under the red banner of the Communist International. We summon you to a holy war for your own well-being, for your own freedom, for your own life!”

Also, the same First Congress of the Peoples of the East declared, in its “Appeal to the Workers of Europe, America, and Japan”, proclaimed: “Here in Baku, on the borders of Europe and Asia, we representatives of tens of millions of peasants and workers of Asia and Africa in revolt showed the world our wounds, showed the world the marks of the whip on our backs, the traces left by the chains on our feet and hands. And we raised our daggers, revolvers and swords and swore before the world that we would use these weapons not to fight each other but to fight the capitalists. Believing profoundly that you, the workers of Europe and Asia, will unite with us under the banner of the Communist International for common struggle, for a common victory, for a new life in common, based on fraternal aid between all toilers, we have formed here a Council for Propaganda and Agitation, which, under the guidance of the Communist International, that union of our elder brothers in revolutionary struggle, will rouse the working masses of all colours, organise them and lead them to the attack on the fortress of slavery. Workers of Britain, America, France, Italy, japan, Germany and other countries! Listen to the voice of the representatives of the millions of the peoples of the East in revolt, who are telling you of their oath to rise up and help you in your fight, and who look for fraternal aid from you in our fight. Notwithstanding the centuries of bondage and enslavement, we turn to you with the faith in your fraternal feelings, with confidence that your victory will mean the liberation of mankind, without distinction of colour, religion or nationality. Repay this confidence of ours in you with confidence that our struggle is not a struggle of darkness and obscurantism, but a struggle for a new and better life, for the development of the peoples of the East on the same foundations of labour and fraternity on which you want to build your life. May your ears be reached by the thunder with which tens and hundreds of millions of working people in Asia and Africa are responding to our oath, and may this thunder meet with response in the thunderclaps of our fight for the common liberation of all the toilers”.

Clearly, the imperialist designs on the area, that had already become explicit in the First World War and in the immediate post-war period, clashed with a widespread, deeply-rooted and threatening ferment, which in only a few years could have led to an authentic social earthquake, destined to join with the conquests of Soviet October and with the expected and hoped-for outbreak of proletarian revolution in the West. The capitalist-imperialist design for the area would have to wait for “better” times.

This scenario, dangling between two ages, two modes of production, was, unfortunately, to change in the space of just a decade, with the help of the Second World War and of menshevic politics (falling into line behind national bourgeoisies) of triumphant Stalinism.  Thus, what the birth of the state of Israel in 1948 (officially recognized by the Soviet Union in 1950) actually did was to bring back into the area, but with greater violence, the inter-imperialist dynamics that had come onto the scene two decades previously without being able to fully extend themselves. With the ideological pretext of “compensation” for the Shoah, the creation of the state of Israel was a “transplant of capitalism onto the blank sheet of the desert […] a case of ‘bourgeois revolution to the end’ because of the combination of highly modern industrial forms and the collective management of agricultural lands”[1].

And from the very beginning it was the expression of the most powerful imperialism from an economic and therefore military point of view – that of the United States which had supplanted the British over the years. But as well as being the longa manus of the strongest imperialism (with the corresponding blessing of Stalin), the state of Israel responded to another of world imperialism’s needs. Intervention in the Middle East was of exactly the same order as the procedure had been in the division of Germany and Berlin: to avoid any possible repetition of that fire, red and proletarian, that had characterised the immediate first post-war period in areas of critical historical importance from a political, strategic and economic point of view. So began the real tragedy of the Arab people, the impoverished Palestinian masses, the landless and stateless proletarians, too often – during the last half century – hired out to fictitious homelands and reactionary patriotisms, in that “intricate tangle of interests which [as we wrote back in 1955] reflect both the deadly game of inter-continental coalitions and the more limited clash of local state powers, which are of both an imperialist and a nationalist nature.”[2]

A dead-end

The re-arrangement of the area after the Second World War did not, in fact, affect Israel only: a whole geopolitics was involved which on the one hand was supposed to work towards breaking up and thus immobilizing rebel masses with no remaining resources and, on the other hand, had to deal with the political and military management of an area where there were enormous reserves of raw materials, first and foremost oil. This meant: Israel in the role of gendarme, the penetration of world imperialism through its main national segments (primarily the United States, then Great Britain, France, the USSR, Italy, Germany:  today China and India, too, as well as post-1989 Russia), the installing of local regimes that were as sympathetic as possible, with corrupt dynasties holding power, both blackmailed and vulnerable to blackmail, in a weak relationship to the West but ferociously united in the repression of any popular uprising that might come from below… The example of Nasser’s Egypt is crystal clear, with the ideological slogan of pan-Arabism on the one hand (the idea of rearranging the area from above by using politics of an almost Bismarck-like stamp) and the practical compromise at an economic-military level on the other (US financing for large-scale building work, military agreements with the USSR).

The post-war period – which still continues in the year 2006 and will continue until the real inter-war age starts, with the maturing of the subjective and objective conditions preparing the outbreak of a Third world conflict – will proceed entirely according to these same patterns. And it will, indeed, be a dead-end for everyone: for the capitalist powers involved (which have no interest in “pacifying” the area, since here, in the chaos of the Middle-East, they can more easily strike at one another and which, moreover, with the progressive intensification of the economic crisis, are forced into military adventures, exhausting wrestling matches, and into the murky currents of underground diplomacy) and, above all, for the poor Arab masses, Palestinians and more generally proletarians of whatever origin (thus including those of Hebrew origin; it should not be forgotten that the area has also become a “land of immigration” – from Africa and from Asia), who, because of the lack of any class reference, are increasingly rounded up and harnessed within religious-nationalist perspectives, no matter how radical or gun-wielding – always the expression of this or that bourgeois faction, united by a single objective, to share out the rent deriving from oil.

On the other hand, the problem is extremely complex. What we wrote in 1956 – i.e. that, “due to American imperialism intervening in the intricate moves of nationalist movements in the coastal nations of the Middle-East, every new turn their history takes produces deep repercussions for the world as a whole” [3] – is proving even truer now, day by day, turning the whole area (from Serbia to Egypt and Turkey to Afghanistan) into an uninterrupted stretch of unsolvable inter-imperialist tensions: the Balkans of the year 2000. In fact the chancelleries, the “think tanks” and the military commands of the most powerful imperialisms are working on a project of redesign of the area which will take into account the change in international equilibrium, balances of power, alliances and growing tensions:  a new arrangement that would nevertheless bear the stamp of capitalist interests in the area (of a strategic and economic nature) and which would therefore do no more than create another dead-end.

The tragedy of July-August 2006 and its foreseeable after-effects demonstrate that there exist neither real possibilities of diplomatic solutions, more or less under the umbrella of the UN, beyond lukewarm “ceasefires” or ambiguous provisional agreements destined to become waste-paper when subjected to future material pressure, nor credible military or “resistance” or “guerrilla” solutions, or of a purely national type: indeed, they merely crush the tormented populations even further in their pits of suffering and destruction. To hand over to them, to tell oneself that they may in some way shake the inter-imperialist hold on the area, to give in to the temptation of the menshevic and Stalinist slogan (“my enemy’s enemy is my friend”) and support one faction or the other means, at best, an “anti-imperialism of appearances”, empty of content and perspectives and, in the worst case, agreeing to the interests of the local bourgeoisie and sectors of bourgeoisie and becoming their “useful idiots”.

On the other hand, it is a fact that, at a military level, too, the strategy of all the contestants (all the capitalist countries caught in the spiral of an economic crisis, and made all the more cynical and ruthless by the putrefaction typical of the imperialist phase), aims essentially at a single objective, apart from the control of the sources of energy and “living space”: to destroy whole villages, cities, neighbourhoods and infrastructures (to then proceed with the re-building: already there is talk of it, “good business deals ahead!”) and, above all, to terrorize and massacre poor civilian populations without resources or means of protection. The only true victim of attack in this umpteenth imperialist adventure where all parties are aggressors is thus the proletariat. In this sense, too, we have a foretaste of the coming world war (“the future front of the third imperialist war is already advancing through the Middle East,” we wrote back in 1955) [4], which, like all imperialist wars, will have to destroy excess production, the goods that have accumulated on the market because of hyper-productive delirium and which are now choking the capitalist machinery.  And it is well known that one of these goods is called labour force: real or virtual, present or future, it consists of men, women, young people and children, all immersed in the horrors of capitalism’s inferno. When they will once again fight for their own objectives, the hatred that the proletarians of all countries will feel for this mode of production, which has now become a mere revolting obscenity, will have to be fuelled also, alas, by these terrible tragedies.

War against imperialist war

Closed inside this vicious circle, the fruit of inter-imperialist dynamics operating from afar, the Middle East will only be able to discover the answer to its dramatic problems in the perspective of a communist revolution.

In the ample party work titled “Marxism and National Issue” (published in #13 of our Internationalist Papers), we wrote: “Israel’s special feature is that it comes into being as a colonising State, which is a characteristic that in no way derives from its religious nature (all the States in the region share this aspect), but from the fact that its economy depends heavily on enormous foreign financing, partly deriving directly from the United States and partly imposed by the latter country on Germany with the pretext of the Holocaust”.

We then affirmed that the recurring catchword of the “destruction of the state of Israel” really amounts to “an openly nationalist objective devoid of any basis in an area now completely bourgeois, like the Middle East, despite the persistence of Jewish privileges and the consequent oppression and persecution of the Palestinians – aspects that have been tolerated for too long by the western proletariat, paralysed by the crumbs of material privileges that have fallen from the banqueting table of the imperialist predators and ensnared by the cross-class ideology preached by the false workers’ parties”. In fact, the struggle must be directed against the States of all the bourgeoisies in the area (Arabic and Israeli), against all the imperialisms that have been trying to get a finger in the pie, againstall the bourgeoisies and bourgeois factions (be they more or less fundamentalist, more or less extremist, more or less armed, “resistance fighters” or “guerrillas”), who are contending rents and profits at the expense of all the Middle-Easternproletarians, of masses that are increasingly disinherited and desperate.

In the same text, after having mentioned the “the central role of an analysis of the balance of power in the area”, in order to avoid repeating merely empty declamatory intentions, we wrote:

“Today, it can be considered that a class-oriented revolutionary path in Israel and throughout the Middle East can only be the result of a catastrophic military defeat of the State of Israel, whose strength lies mainly outside the country and derives mostly from foreign financing and military aid.

“To sum up very briefly, the following elements must be considered:

a) the State of Israel is the launching pad for all projections of American power in the area. Up to now Europe and Japan have profited from this situation and have participated in the financing of what is an authentic mercenary State;

b) given that the Israeli proletariat is extremely various (Hebrews, Arab-Israelis, immigrants from south-east Asia, from eastern Europe, from Africa, from Latin America…), the class collaboration and chauvinism of the salaried workers of Jewish origin are rooted not in the religious element but in the fact that they constitute a “working-class aristocracy” with their own special characteristics and privileges, linked to the specific nature and role of the State of Israel: i.e., they are wage workers for whom – because of material conditions – solidarity with the State of Israel comes before any, even vague, class identity or membership;

c) defeat of the Israelis’ internal front is only possible in the case of a general collapse of the State.  It may come economically with the termination of free financing by the imperialist Trilateral (but already a stop to European aid could pose great economic problems for the Zionist State and its American protector) […] or politically, through a military defeat”.

And so we went on:

“In the present situation this defeat is inconceivable. Only a revolutionary process that shook Europe, unifying and centralising it under a revolutionary dictatorship, could set off economic, political and military dynamics leading to this result.Without this condition, the dispersed and desperate forces of the Palestinian proletariat and the disinherited Arab masses, were they to be persuaded to fight, are of no military value, though politically they would be of considerable significance: in fact, to paraphrase what Marx says about revolution (‘the first result of revolution is revolution itself’), it could be argued that the first victory of the Palestinian proletarian struggle is the battle of the Palestinian proletariat itself.In this context, the cycle of purely national struggles and movements for Palestine and for the whole of the Middle East is thus finally devoid of any historical perspective. Therefore the Party can do no more than indicate a single solution to the Palestinian proletarian masses, one that also contains the possibility of cutting through the knot of national oppression and discrimination: that of establishing themselves on the ground of an open class struggle against all the rapacious bourgeoisies of the region, in defence of their material living and working conditions, a struggle capable of bringing together in a single front working classes of mixed nationalities, to be sealed by the open, anti-capitalist fight of  the proletariat in the imperialist metropolises”.

The problem cannot then be solved simply and demagogically by the “destruction of the state of Israel”. It is one thing to reason on the basis of a scenario (improbable or at least only a distant possibility in the present state of affairs and anyway depending on complex and not only local factors) in which a hypothetical military defeat of Israel would inevitably involve shattering decades of balance and thus the re-arrangement (in any case imperialist) of the area: from the communist point of view, this “reasoning” would only have sense and value as part of an overall strategy, which would have to be able to count on a) a return to open class warfare in the imperialist areas, b) the central, organizational and guiding role of the revolutionary party in this return and thus in its development in a revolutionary direction, c) the close link between this return and the struggle of the disinherited masses of the Middle-East, which would allow them to break free of ideological-strategic bonds of a purely nationalist-chauvinist nature, and thus with the objective, as has been said before, of destroying all the states in the area, as all being bourgeois states (whether Zionist or Islamic, lay or religious). It is another thing to speak instead of the “destruction of the state of Israel” as a pre-condition, the “first step” in a process (as well as being a moralistic “act of faith” against which to measure the extent to which a political position is “revolutionary”), because this – as well as smelling awfully like menshevism with a Stalinist dressing – would merely deliver the disinherited Middle-Eastern masses to a different circle of suffering in their inferno of exploitation and repression, in which the protagonists would no longer be the Zionist state of Israel but fundamentalist or moderate Islamic states, moreover largely compromised by US or European imperialism: all – we repeat – equally bourgeois and therefore all ferociously anti-proletarian.

It is therefore a question of regaining the prospect (and of working towards it) of a proletarian outbreak whose epicentre would inevitably be at the heart of the western, imperialist areas and which would also affect and carry in its wake the shattered and desperate area of the Middle East. The return onto the scene of the proletariat of the imperialist areas, under pressure from material causes deriving from the worsening economic and social crisis and consequently from open attack on them by capital, will inevitably have to start out from an unrelenting defence of their own living and working conditions: this will mean no concessions to their own bourgeoisie, no sacrifice in the name of the national economy. But a real class war waged in this direction and in an unrelenting manner will also mean, in turn and implicitly, the need to go beyond the horizon of mere defence: it will mean laying the practical, organizational and tactical bases for moving forward to the attack, toan open fight against the bourgeoisie. Because “The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).

Clearly this prospect cannot then do without the active and significant presence of the revolutionary party, internationally rooted, alongside the working class, to organize and direct its fights and finally guide it, when objective conditions are mature, against the bulwark represented by capital’s State. What must be central to the work of the revolutionary party, starting from now, is a relentless struggle, both theoretical and practical, against any national and nationalist position, no matter what “left-wing” disguise it may have been given, the “classical” forms taken by the unhappy experience of “national-bolshevism” or the present ones of varying types of support for local bourgeois factions that have more or less taken up arms.

Briefly, it is a question of resuming the communist perspective of the war against imperialist wars, which means fighting against the imperialist adventures of one’s own bourgeoisie, however they may be presented (“peace missions”, “humanitarian missions”, “buffer troops”, etc.), taking up agitation once again with the classic slogan of “revolutionary defeatism”. It means the refusal to support armed intervention, a boycott of war efforts (both in the “front line” and in the civilian ranks), fraternising instead with an “enemy” that consists of proletarians from other countries.

Of course: this is a very long-term and extremely difficult perspective and above all not one that will offer immediate relief to the disinherited masses in the area. But history has demonstrated amply (and tragically) that there are no alternatives or shortcuts.

Post scriptum

Whilst waiting to return in more detail to the situation and its development, a few words about the most recent events [5].  As is well known, in the meantime the UN has produced, with much difficulty, Resolution 1701, which, just for a change, proves to be vague and ambiguous. It foresees a ceasefire and the setting up of a buffer zone in the south of Lebanon using troops of which half consist of elements from the Lebanese army and half of UN military forces; the disarming of Hezbollah would be the job of the Lebanese army and in all probability would take concrete shape in the inclusion of the irregular forces in the official ones of the Lebanese army. The United States and England stand by and watch, leaving others to do the dirty work and to bear the expenses in every sense. As to Europe, it once again proves not to be (and not to be capable of being) a political player:  after having been the promoter of the resolution, France has started to step back and Germany has kept an extremely low profile. The Italic bourgeoisie instead, faithful to the “libidinous desire to serve” that has always distinguished it, no matter what government represents it, is ready to leave and even (a historic occasion!) to guide the “peace mission” as proposed by Israel. In actual fact the war seems to have left things as they were before:  a purposely intricate, fluid situation, pregnant with explosive future potential, as suited to any “arrangement” deriving from the diplomatic manoeuvres of imperialist bandits. The buzz is: good business opportunities for re-building, the freezing of the Middle-Eastern situation in the form that is best suited for energy sources to be controlled by the leading imperialisms (to the detriment of the political adversaries of the moment), whilst awaiting the opportunity to re-arrange the balance of power in the area (something that will not be done on paper but through future clashes and massacres). Meanwhile, the disinherited and desperate masses will continue to act as meat for the slaughter.

The troops that will be sent to the south of Lebanon are none other than “troops of war”, because every intervention – however it is disguised – is a military intervention for imperialism.

Is there still an issue of the “Palestinian Nation”?

Following the failure in the ‘60s and ‘70s to deal in some way with the issue of a “settlement on national territory” (just as the issue of “national unity of Arabic-speaking territories” had failed in the ‘50s and ‘60s), the Palestinian bourgeoisie has played the same repressive role towards the Palestinian proletariat that other Arab bourgeoisies have assumed towards Arab proletarians, including the Palestinians. Today the Palestinian bourgeoisie in the West Bank and in Gaza keeps the Palestinian proletarians under control both on its own behalf and on behalf of other Arab and international bourgeoisies, using the strips of territory assigned to it by the moves of world imperialism. Increasingly torn between the interests of Arab and international bourgeoisies, it is reduced to organizing and fuelling the division and the massacre of the Palestinian proletariat in the name of its own specific faction and delivering it, weakened and harmless, to the armed repression of the Israeli bourgeoisie.

This now entrenched and irreversible situation makes it increasingly urgent for the Palestinian proletariat to cut off any endorsement or support for either the bourgeois current of Al Fatah, with its connections to certain Arab bourgeoisies and to Israeli and western ones, or the bourgeois currents of Hamas, more closely linked to an Arab bourgeoisie that waves the flag of Islamic fundamentalism, although only as a cover for its own imperialist regional ambitions and its repressive, anti-proletarian function, which is openly to be seen.

The problem of a Palestinian nation cannot be tackled and solved by the Palestinian bourgeoisie, just as the more general problem of an Arab state cannot be dealt with and solved by any Arab bourgeoisie. The recent division and armed conflicts between the two bourgeois political factions in the territories of Gaza and the West Bank demonstrate, if this were still necessary, that the objective of having a “more acceptable” national territory in terms of extension and borders is no longer one of their main interests. Fully integrated in the business interests of the area for some decades now, influenced by the most powerful and ambitious of Arab bourgeoisies, realistically speaking, the Arab bourgeoisie is no longer concerned with territorial ambitions but uses the existing territories to squeeze the most out of the Palestinian proletariat, whilst controlling and repressing it.

The latter can do nothing but acknowledge this situation. The fact that the objective of an “acceptable” national territory has failed miserably and no solution is being found by the Palestinian bourgeoisie does not mean that the proletariat should “force” a solution, press for it or subjugate itself any further in order to reach this objective. For any proletarian the objective of a national territory with “fair borders”, well-defined and safe, and thence any support given to the national bourgeoisie to attain this, is not a principle it should “obey” or which should take priority over its fight against the bourgeoisie itself. Support for a country’s bourgeoisie (and in all events practical and military support and certainly not theoretical-political or organizational) were only of use or justifiable in historical situations where the latter took initiatives in which it filled a revolutionary function in opposition to old systems of production and old social classes. In situations where this bourgeoisie has proved incapable and unable to carry out this function, as in the case of the Arab, and especially Palestinian, bourgeoisie – situations in which the old modes of production have certainly been surpassed but through mediation and compromises with the old classes and with imperialist big business – , national problems and territorial settlements almost never find a solution and are more or less put aside, as in the Middle East, creating chronic situations of tragic stalemate. In such situations the belief that in order to fight a country’s bourgeoisie the problem of the nation must be solved “first”, “settling” the territory, giving it “fair and safe borders” implies a nationalistic vision of the class war. Moreover, the belief that it is possible to “put pressure” on the bourgeoisie, share a common cause, supposing that this will strike a blow against Israeli or western imperialism, is pure illusion.

The proletariat does not make the issue of the nation (or the fight against one of the imperialist camps) a partial objective or a “phase” taking priority over its own battle, which must be waged first and foremost against its own bourgeoisie. Even if it had encountered a truly revolutionary bourgeoisie, “deserving” of military support (and these are historical situations that no longer exist and are no longer practicable today), the Palestinian proletariat should certainly not have waited for a “real” or “fair” settlement of the nation and of its borders etc. to be reached “first”, before fighting it. However the national issue is solved or not solved, whatever type of national problem occurs in the bourgeois framework, the proletariat is always crushed and oppressed, both economically and militarily. It must remain indifferent to the way in which the bourgeoisie or the world imperialist theatre deals with and “solves” (in its own way!) the national issue, instead putting in first place the struggle to resist the oppression brought to bear by its own bourgeoisie, whatever national situation has taken shape, looking for its allies amongst other proletarians only.

In the Middle East, the proletariat must develop and organize its class unity starting out from the existing situation of “states” and “nations”, and fighting the greedy, thieving local states and bourgeoisies. Not until these states have been overthrown and a dictatorship of the proletariat has been established in the region (a prospect that is unimaginable without there also being a victory of the proletariat in the big centres of capitalism), will the issue of the nation be able to be dealt with and re-examined in completely different ways, forms and perspectives. For Palestinian proletarians there is therefore no longer any “national issue” today, any question of a national settlement or national self-determination; or rather, if there still is, it is nothing to do with them and cannot be solved by the Palestinian proletariat alone, but is a problem of the whole of the Arab and world proletariat. As such, it must be faced and solved in terms of the struggle and dictatorship of the world proletariat against all bourgeoisies and their state apparatus. Claims to “Palestinian self-determination” can still usefully be made (i.e. from the point of view of developing a class struggle in the area) exclusivelyfrom the viewpoint of the Israeli proletariat, (who must thus demonstrate to Palestinian proletarians, by their actions, that they wish to fight against their own bourgeoisie on this ground, too): certainly not in order to give a new impulse or aboost to the national movement of the Palestinian proletariat, but merely as a defeatist tactic against their own bourgeoisie, to increase the Palestinian proletariat’s confidence in their Israeli counterpart, which may otherwise be considered an accomplice in the misdeeds of its own bourgeoisie.

Only in this way will it be possible to start moving out of the dead end of anti-proletarian massacres, whether they are of Israeli or of Palestinian origin.