Workers of the world unite!
ONLY WITH THE RESUMPTION OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE ON AN INTERNATIONAL SCALE
WE WILL BE ABLE TO OPPOSE THEIR IMPERIALIST WARS WITH OUR REVOLUTION
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack from the Gaza Strip on territory controlled by the State of Israel, causing 1,200 deaths. The Israeli army in a matter of days has equaled and surpassed the death toll among the Palestinian population. The Hamas attack has been an extended repetition of the May 2021 one in which 3,350 missiles were launched to overcome by saturation the famous Israeli "iron dome", but with an important difference. This time Israeli "intelligence failed" and did not notice the preparation of the massive attack even though it had been brewing for almost a year and despite advance warning from Egypt.
This Israeli "intelligence failure" has allowed the Hamas military attack to have far greater consequences than if the Israeli military system had responded as might have been expected. And so, what some media describe as the Israeli 9/11 also has this characteristic similarity to the attack on the Twin Towers, of which more examples can be found in history, from the Tea Party in Boston, the sinking of the Maine in Cuba, Pearl Harbor, etc.
But both the attack, the intelligence failure and the subsequent response are embedded in a material historical context that determines them: "Chance (...) appears only at the point of intersection of the necessary processes".
The development of Middle Eastern states
The birth of the State of Israel culminated the replacement of the rule of British imperialism by US imperialism, to which it has served for decades as a dog of prey in the area. The transfer in the Middle East from feudal monarchies to bourgeois monarchies or bourgeois republics was made on the basis of agreements and diplomatic conferences with which the Arab world was subdivided into small states to prevent the emergence of a unitary Arab capitalist power. In this process, the different Arab states developed their bourgeois politics under the protection of the different imperialist powers. The PLO, born as the governing body of a national bourgeois class, has been at all times the executor of social control over the proletariat, it has played the role of repressive jailer directly or through the PNA, a role that Hamas, the PIJ or Hezbollah have also played later.
Since then, the development of the productive forces and the integration of the various areas have gradually prevailed, despite repeated attempts by the US to stop and destroy them either by pushing the regional powers against each other or by direct intervention. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, UAE are capitalist powers today playing their role not only in the Middle East but internationally and especially in Africa. The US had to leave Afghanistan and Iraq in 2021, Saudi Arabia and Iran have just reestablished diplomatic relations by ending the war in Yemen and have both integrated into the BRICS, Syria is being rehabilitated in the Arab world and all this is happening under the auspices of Chinese imperialism. China's investments in the port of Haifa and its business relationship with the technology sectors have been attracting Israel, despite US opposition. On the other hand, Israel is a piece of the route from India to Europe via Saudi Arabia and Israel presented at the G-20 as a competitor to the New Silk Road.
While Saudi Arabia applies through OPEC cuts to keep the price of oil high, the US allows Iran to increase its oil exports (mainly to China) expanding the supply and causing the price to fall. The week of the attack, the price of oil had fallen by 14% and broad sectors of the world bourgeoisie speculate on the effect that the extension of the conflict to Iran would have on the price, fantasizing about an effect similar to that of 1973.
This accumulation of intertwined and opposing imperialist interests takes place within the framework of the processes that determine the present period, once the cycle of bourgeois revolutions in Asia and Africa has closed and the extension of capitalism on a world scale has culminated: the displacement of the center of gravity of capitalism to Asia, the rupture of the division of the world and the crisis of overproduction. Both the rupture of the division of the world and the crisis of relative overproduction of capitals lead the capitalist world towards imperialist war; it is not a question of the madness of one or another puppet but of the essence of the capitalist solution to the crisis: "And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced DESTRUCTION of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the CONQUEST of new markets, and by the more thorough EXPLOITATION of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented." (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
State of Israel, on the verge of internal fracture
Israel was making progress in its recognition by several Arab states (with the so-called "Abraham accords”) and had met with Egypt, the Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco to discuss security, intelligence and technology cooperation. Saudi Arabia had given permission for Israeli aircrafts to fly over the Arabian Peninsula and a gas deal was reached with Lebanon. Meetings of the EU-Israel Council, which had not met since 2012 although the EU is Israel's main trading partner and the two have a free trade agreement, had resumed. Diplomatic relations were also resumed with Turkey with the visit of the President of Israel. The national unity government to oust Likud included an Arab party but this coalition faltered and called for new elections (for the fifth time since 2019), in a sign of the fractioning and instability of the bourgeoisie within Israel.
The November elections were won by Likud (23% of the votes) forming a government with a coalition of five other ultra-Orthodox and anti-Arab parties (with 64 of the 120 seats). Reciprocal attacks and raids between the Israeli army and Palestinian militiamen have been ongoing since November, all causing civilian casualties, prompting the government to announce that it would unblock thousands of applications for weapon permits. Protests against the judicial reform began in February. The core of the opposition to the reform was made up of the technology companies that bring with them their workers and an important part of the reservists that refused to take part in training and maneuvers, which led the Minister of Defense to declare, the day before being dismissed: "The growing schism in our society is penetrating the Armed Forces and the security forces, which poses a clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the State" (El País, 26-03-2023).
In parallel, Israel's relations with the US were becoming more strained by the day, with statements by the Israeli Minister of National Security affirming that Israel "is not another star on the American flag" (El País, 02-04-2023) or Netanyahu's party holding the US responsible "for the death of 74 Israeli soldiers during the 2014 Gaza offensive." (El País, 02-04-2023).
The bloodbath has allowed the State of Israel to go from being on the verge of collapse to declaring a state of war and forming a government of national unity, to mobilizing all reservists and even trying to include the Arab-Israeli population in this process. The US has gone from not inviting the Israeli president to deploying soldiers and solemnly promising to watch Israel's back. The destruction and deaths caused by the Israeli army serve on the other side to achieve a similar result by making it easier for Hamas to use the proletariat of Gaza as a human shield.
The only alternative: revolutionary defeatism
In Israel, in Gaza and throughout the world the militant communist position is that of revolutionary defeatism, the transformation of the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war: "The proletariat must not only oppose all such wars, but must also wish for the defeat of its 'own' government in such wars and utilize its defeat for revolutionary insurrection, if an insurrection to prevent the war proves unsuccessful." (The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution, Lenin, 1916)
There will be a solution to the situation in Palestine when the Arab and Israeli working class will rise up as one man to overthrow their respective bourgeoisies that today play them off against each other. But this task cannot be undertaken by the Palestinian proletariat or the Israeli proletariat alone, nor by the proletariat of any State in isolation: "the emancipation of the workers is neither a local nor a national task but a social and international task." (Statutes of the Communist International, II Congress, 1920).
An international task: organizing the Party
In order to carry out its historic mission, the working class needs the International Communist Party which should gather the most advanced and determined part of the proletariat, unifying the efforts of the proletarian masses, directing them from the struggle for contingent interests and results to the general struggle for the world revolution, for the transitory establishment of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat towards a classless society, without private property, without wage labor, without state, without mercantile and company regime. The responsibility of every communist is to work for the organization, consolidation, development and extension of such a Party.
Without renouncing at any moment to transform the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war during its development or to unleash it afterwards, it will be possible to respond to the outbreak of the imperialist war itself by declaring the revolutionary general strike only if previously an extensive network of solidarity and fighting has been developed on the labor union level, outside the tentacles of the State, in which the International Communist Party has achieved a decisive influence.
This will not happen if we have not fought the organizational and ideological influence exerted by the bourgeoisie through state-integrated unionism and through parliamentarism, if we have not pulled up the weeds – inch by inch if necessary – in order to sow and take root. Therefore, it is a responsibility for anyone who understands the necessity of revolutionary defeatism (not only as a rhetorical figure) to work to prepare the material premises so that this motto can be put into action.
A fundamental task is to reintroduce in the ranks of the working class integral Marxism, Marxism without any adulterations, revisions or updates, without idle debates or dubitative speculations that only dent its revolutionary edge: "without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement" (Lenin, What is to be done?, 1902). Marxism is for the proletariat an instrument of work and a combat weapon: "at the peak of the battle, neither the instrument nor the weapon is abandoned to "repair" them, but one wins in times of peace and war by wielding good tools and weapons from the beginning" (The Historical “invariance” of Marxism, 1952).
Another fundamental task is to break the straitjacket of integrated trade unionism, to organize the class labor union. There is a very close relationship between the revolutionary possibility and the immediate struggle of the proletarian class against capital: “This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves.” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848). “By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they [proletarians] would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.” (Value, Price and Profit, 1865, K. Marx).
Both tasks must be carried out simultaneously, one nourishing the other, organizing the immediate struggle by weaving the network of the class union outside State integration and introducing Marxism into the experiences of these struggles, making a part of the workers who have undertaken these struggles rise to the level of revolutionary theory, becoming communist militants.
For proletarian internationalism
Any defense of one's own "fatherland" is a betrayal of the cause of the revolution: "The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got" (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848). The material basis of subjection to its ‘own’ bourgeoisie during the war is the previous subjection to the national economy, to the economy of its ‘own’ enterprise. National unity is the grave of the working class. Nationalism consigns us bound hand and foot to capitalist exploitation in times of commercial war and to the slaughterhouse as cannon fodder in times of military war. The slogan of revolutionaries worldwide must be uncompromisingly and without exception:
- Rejection of all nationalism: “the working class has no country.”
- Rejection of solidarity with the corporate economy and with the "national" economy.
- Revolutionary defeatism against the bourgeoisie itself in times of commercial or military war.
- Joint and international organization of the proletarians of all languages in the International Communist Party for the communist revolution on a world scale.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY – “THE INTERNATIONALIST PROLETARIAN” – October 2023 – pcielcomunista.org