Strikes against the massacre in Gaza: The proletariat in Italy caught in the nets of pacifism and nationalism

More than any other, the peace imposed by Donald Trump on Gaza deserves to be called the ‘peace of the grave’. After two years of conflict and blockades, after 68,000 deaths, most of them civilians, including 20,000 children, after the destruction of homes, hospitals and schools, the two million surviving Gazans are exhausted and 50,000 children are at risk of acute malnutrition and need immediate treatment. It is a very precarious ceasefire, given the explosive nature of imperialist conflicts of interest in the Middle East.

These conflicts of interest between the major powers, between regional powers, between different bourgeois factions within each country, and the clashes between clans and armed gangs will quickly belie the promises of a ‘historic dawn of a new Middle East’ made by its American promoter. Already the truce has been violated and the hellish cycle of massacres has resumed. The Rafah crossing at the border with Egypt is once again blocked, preventing the arrival of much-needed food and medical aid.

In the current historical period, where all the phenomena of capitalist decadence are being pushed to the extreme, where militarism and death lurk everywhere, this massacre could only turn into genocide. Every Palestinian was declared guilty and therefore deserved death. ‘There are no innocent Palestinians’ was the mantra of Israeli public opinion, shaped as always and everywhere by the media under government control. All the events that followed took the form of a blind, irrational, barbaric rampage, from Hamas' surprise attack on 7 October 2023, to Israel's apocalyptic response, which seemed to abandon any concern for the survival of the hostages, to the humiliation and torture inflicted on the hostages in the underground tunnels of Gaza and on Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

This situation has provoked widespread disgust, indignation and sometimes even reflection on the nature of capitalism and the future it promises us. These reactions of empathy and anger were certainly present in the strikes that broke out in Italy on 19 September, followed by the first major mobilisation on 22 September. This strike affected many sectors of the public and private sectors and led to huge demonstrations in more than 80 Italian cities. A million people marched in the streets against the ongoing massacre in Gaza.

However, indignation and anger, which can be elements of class consciousness, should not be confused with it. Today's proletariat has not had time to develop its consciousness sufficiently since the resurgence of militancy in 2022. The weight of the setback it suffered after the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc and the deafening democratic campaign that erupted after 1989 still weighs heavily and hinders the maturation of its consciousness and the recovery of its class identity.

When we take a step back and examine the facts more closely, we see that the ‘general strike’ launched by the USB (Unione Sindacale di Base) union and the grassroots unions (Adl Cobas, Cobas, Cub and Sgb) is not in support and solidarity with Palestinian workers and the exploited population, victims of this genocide, but with Palestine, that is, one of the sides in this imperialist war between Israel and Hamas. Despite the economic crisis and the imperialist conflicts that are hitting it hard, the international bourgeoisie still has the strength to divert the spontaneous reactions of its class enemy, which wants to do at least something against the barbarism unfolding in Gaza, towards nationalism, chauvinism and pacifism, that is, to trap them in the nets of bourgeois ideology. This is the meaning of the many Palestinian flags present in demonstrations in Italian cities and slogans such as ‘Free Palestine’. The bourgeoisie and its left-wing and leftist appendages asked the proletariat to choose one of the two sides involved.

Of course, this war concerns the entire proletariat, for it is the agent of international class solidarity, which it will be forced to develop in its struggles to forge its unity. It is also the main victim of imperialist war, on the front lines as cannon fodder sacrificed in the name of capitalist profit, and behind the lines as an overexploited labour force to meet the exponential demand for armaments. Finally, it is the only social force capable of opposing the bourgeois perspective with its own alternative: against the proliferation of imperialist wars threatening the very disappearance of humanity in the maelstrom of the current crisis, chaos and barbarism.

Let us remember that it was the proletarian revolution in Russia and Germany that forced the bourgeoisie to end the First World War. Let us recall that in the middle of the counter-revolution, the workers of Amsterdam, leading the population of a dozen cities in the Netherlands, went on strike in February 1941 to prevent the Nazis from rounding up Jews. We were actually in the middle of a counter-revolution, but before the bulldozer of the Second World War came along and crushed everything, the Dutch working class had retained the memory of the revolutionary struggles that had begun in Russia in 1917. Today, we are no longer in the middle of a counter-revolution, but the proletariat is still too weak to counter the ideological force and massive propaganda of the ruling class.

However, the working class remains capable of acting and mobilising in the face of economic attacks on its working and living conditions, as it has shown on an international level since 2022. It is even capable of understanding, particularly its most conscious and combative minorities, the link between rearmament, military budgets and austerity policies.

But this is now made more difficult and complicated in the face of war, whose massacres and terror give an impression of its own powerlessness. Stunned silence leads to paralysis, while Maoists, Trotskyists and even official anarchism praise the Palestinian resistance or the women's battalions of the Kurdish resistance. Whether it is an official state or a potential state, as in Palestine and Kurdistan, imperialist war pits bourgeois factions against each other as they attempt to mobilise the entire population, and in particular the working class, in the war effort. Faced with the Israeli ruling class, Hamas is no better, claiming to represent the radical Islamism we see at work in Afghanistan and Iran. As soon as the Israeli army partially withdrew, Hamas resumed its military parades and carried out public executions of some three hundred ‘traitors’ who had allegedly collaborated with Israel.

As Engels says in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the existence of classes is the source of the dynamic that leads to the formation of a state that is always in the hands of the ruling class and aims to protect the conditions of exploitation. Such is the situation in Palestine. The working class has no interest in this war and its interests diverge from those of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, whether Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Fatah or any other organisation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

During the first workers' demonstrations against the First World War, Lenin explained that the pacifism proclaimed by the broad masses of the proletariat in 1915 and 1916 was certainly a weakness, but that the dynamic was then carrying the proletariat towards revolution. We are not in such a situation today. That is why it is important for revolutionaries to patiently explain to workers that pacifism is a trap, just like support for international law or the defence of democracy against populist bourgeois factions. Defending the right to national self-determination is tantamount to the proletariat digging its own grave. Conversely, internationalism, the refusal to choose between two imperialist camps, is the antidote that will enable it to constitute itself as a class and be in a position to overthrow capitalism, which, through each war, takes its daily toll of the proletariat.

In De Tribune, the organ of the Sociaal-Democratische Partij in Holland, Anton Pannekoek wrote on 19 June 1915: “Only as part of the general struggle against capitalism can the struggle against militarism be successful.” Indeed, peace is impossible under capitalism, and events in Gaza are already confirming this. Similarly, the mystification of national liberation has already cost the Palestinian proletariat dearly, and today it is one of the dangers faced by the proletariat in Italy.

 

YR, 20 October 2025