The ACG’s support for Palestine Action: a further step towards abandoning internationalism

The ICC has published several articles noting the Anarchist Communist Group’s slide from an initially internationalist response to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East towards a more or less overt support for Palestinian nationalism. While Ukraine is an obvious case of a war between states, the war in Gaza poses a much harder test, given the heightened level of barbarism and destruction, and the evident ‘inequality’ between the two camps. Leftists often argue that “this is not a war, it’s a genocide”, ignoring the fact that most of the worst genocides in the last century or more have taken place precisely in the context of imperialist war and conquest.

Further evidence of the ACG’s trajectory is supplied by its more or less open support for Palestine Action.

Palestine Action provided evidence that it is firmly opposed to any internationalist stance on the war at a meeting it organised at last year’s Radical Bookfair in London. Comrades of the ICC attended this event and posed the question: why are you calling on people to support one side against the other in an imperialist war? This was immediately dismissed by the chair of the meeting as a “childish analysis” and the discussion went back to trying to recruit people for the next series of publicity stunts.

Thus, Palestine Action shows that it is part of the capitalist left, denying that the Gaza war is an inter-imperialist war, playing down the role of Iran and other imperialist states in arming and supporting groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, who are themselves proto-states. The inequality between the two camps in this conflict is not a reason for supporting the so-called ‘nationalism of the oppressed’, which is no less poisonous for the working class, no less inimical to real internationalism.

To be clear, the ACG does not openly call for support for Hamas or Hezbollah. The slide towards placing Palestinian resistance against the Israeli state above the struggle against the Palestinian bourgeoisie and its proto-state is more implicit than explicit, but is nevertheless there, as we point out in the articles  The ambiguities of anarchist internationalism, World Revolution 399 and The ACG takes another step towards supporting the nationalist war campaign  in ICC Online. In the latter article we point in particular to the ACG statement The situation in Gaza (October 18, 2023) which contains the following formulation: “We affirm the right and necessity of the Palestinian working class to resist the Israeli state, including through the method of revolutionary struggle. The priority is first armed self-defence and the building of a revolutionary workers’ movement which can distinguish itself from the nationalist forces”. Even if the idea of self-organised, armed proletarian militias emerging out of the terrible chaos and suffering of today’s Gaza is no more than a fantasy, this passage, far from creating the conditions for a movement that “distinguishes itself from the nationalist forces”, tends to subordinate any incipient proletarian reactions in Gaza to the actual “armed self-defence” organised by Hamas.

Our article also shows that the same ambiguities can be found in the attitude of the ACG towards the big “Free Palestine” demonstrations, where the growing anger expressed in these marches is presented as something positive, without raising the alarm that it is precisely this anger that is being manipulated by the left of capital to boost support for the “Axis of Resistance” camp in this war. We also point out that “the ACG also advocates workers participating in the campaign by the openly pro-Palestinian, leftist Workers’ for a Free Palestine, that calls for ‘an end to arms sales to Israel and for the UK government to support a permanent ceasefire’”[1]. 

With regard to Palestine Action itself, the apporach is the same. The ACG hasn’t openly called for workers or revolutionary minorities to take part in the activities of this group, any more than it calls for workers to participate en masse in the demonstrations (something the trade unions are increasingly taking in hand through the formation of their own blocs on the Free Palestine marches).  The method is more underhand. The same ACG article cited above ends with the following link: “Palestine Action is a group which organises direct-action against Israeli weapons factories in Britain”. There is no other comment. The ACG site also contains reports of specific actions carried out by PA, delivered in a somewhat neutral tone. Palestine Action Rooftop Occupation at Runcorn in Cheshire describes an action in May 2021 which halted production at the arms factory owned by the French-Israeli firm Elbit for six days. The article describes PA as a “grass roots direct action group” and points out that “the Fire Brigade refused to assist the police in removing the activists, while passing Royal Mail trucks blasted their horns in support”. The unstated implication is that this is a form of working class resistance against war.

The dangerous lure of “direct action”

The more recent article published by the ACG, The proscription of Palestine Action, correctly links this ban to a long history of repressive actions by Labour in power, referring to the States of Emergency brought in against the dockers’ strike in 1948 and the seafarers’ strike in 1966. But the explanation for the ban leaves us with more equivocation about the class nature of Palestine Action: “The reason PA was proscribed was because their direct action was proving effective, especially against the arms firm Elbit which was targeted on many occasions. During this time PA was not proscribed. It is with the recent rhetoric of militarism and the backing of Israel by the Starmer government that the State felt it had to act, as PA was now directly focussing on military targets, the splashing of red paint over military planes at RAF Brize Norton. This was seen as a step too far, and that this would encourage further actions against militarism”.  The article then affirms that “as anarchist communists we believe mass working class direct action is a legitimate tool to use against our politicians or bosses or landlords”.

Concerning the ‘effectiveness’ of PA’s actions, this is a red herring if we don’t define the class nature of these actions. After all, an imperialist power engaged in war with a rival camp can often use sabotage as an ‘effective’ means of weakening the enemy. But clearly such methods are entirely part of an inter-bourgeois conflict. And yet the ACG implies, hints, insinuates that what PA is doing amounts to “mass working class direct action”.

The Communist Workers’ Organisation has recently published an article on the banning of Palestine Action which, while denouncing the repressive actions of the government, also clearly situates Palestine Action on the left wing of capital[2]. We also agree with them when they say that “the ‘direct action’ framework that Palestine Action espouses is implicit in its rejection of the working class as the revolutionary subject, instead basing itself on professional activists who sacrifice themselves in more and more extreme ways in order to put pressure on governments and shift the tide of public opinion”.

The anarchist concept of “direct action” can easily encompass the activities of small minorities which, at best, substitute themselves for the working class and thus  go in the opposite direction to the working class taking charge of its own struggles. At worst – as in the case of Palestine Action – they can be part of a bourgeois war campaign. In contrast, real working class self-activity always goes in the direction of drawing ever wider sectors of the class into the struggle, for example through sending massive delegations calling on other workers to join a common fight in defence of working class interests.  Such activities may bear a superficial resemblance to the anarchist notion of “direct action” when they show a willingness to disregard official union diktats or the laws of the state, but their content is entirely different.

Because of its unstable, ambiguous character, anarchism has so often capitulated to the pressures of the dominant ideology. The ACG’s inability to distance itself from the long-standing anarchist tradition of 'exemplary acts' is thus an added factor in pulling them away from a solid defence of internationalism and towards the campaigns of the bourgeois left.

Amos

 

[1] The ACG takes another step towards supporting the nationalist war campaign

[2] On the State Repression of Palestine Action. Leftcom.org. The statement points out that some anarchist elements have been backing PA, linking to another article which specifically identifies the ACG among these elements. Its conclusion is that The ACG has been clear in its rejection of nationalism in Ukraine, but now seems to be entering the mire of bourgeois politics in Palestine”(The Tasks of Revolutionaries in the Face of Capitalism's Drive to War, Leftcom.org). We welcome this clarification, but it does pose the question of why the CWO has in past formed alliances with the ACG under the umbrella of the No War But the Class War groups.