We are publishing here a contribution from a comrade who describes it as "an attempt to clarify to myself why I broke with anarchism (or more specifically libertarian communism, having been a member of the Anarchist Federation)". We think that the text speaks for itself and will be very useful for many others who are currently seeking a way towards the clarity of communist positions.

Since the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989 it would seem that the world has at last changed for the better. We can now look forward to a positive future free from the ideology of the past. It is as if a new morality has been born. ‘Democracy’ has replaced ‘tyranny’ in the old ‘Communist’ states with ‘humanitarian aid’ taking the place of imperialism on an international level. Involvement in foreign wars is justifiable when those involved are labelled fascists or terrorists and there are ‘neutral’ non-government organisations (e.g. Medecins Sans Frontiers) to mop up afterwards. Even the economy has been changed and modified with the introduction of e-commerce. In fact it is claimed that the "technology of the Internet and its generalised use by enterprises and individuals" is &rises and individuals" is "creating a technological revolution comparable in scope to the industrial revolution of the 18th century" (World Revolution 236 p.1). Some have put so much faith in the importance of the Internet that "it is even being compared to the invention of the steam engine" (World Revolution 236 p.1). With all this ‘progress’ in only eleven years it is unsurprising that the bourgeoisie’s claims about the ‘death of Communism’ and the victory of capitalism appear completely justified. In fact anyone questioning the current apparent optimism would have to be mad, wouldn’t they?

The simple answer is no. For those who are seeking to look beyond the current gloss, in which cracks are already beginning to appear, there are many examples of the continuing bankruptcy of capitalism. Whether it’s the on-going imperialist wars, the increasing number of ‘natural’ disasters or the continued attacks on workers’ living standards, it’s clear, to some at least, that capitalism’s crisis is still with us. For a better description of the new century and what capitalism has in store for us we can turn to the words of Trotsky. This is how he described the start of the 20th century "Hatred and murder, famine and blood... It seems as if the new century, this gigantic newcomer, were bent at the very moment of its appearance to drive the optimist into absolute pessimism [...] - Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope! thunders the twentieth century in salvoes of fire and in the rumbling of guns." (from an article on 'Optimism and pessimism', cited in Deutscher's The Prophet Armed). Sound familiar? Essentially we face the same choice faced by revolutionaries at the beginning of the last century: socialism or barbarism. Either we accept that communism is dead and there will be no new society, or we remain optimistic and accept that the opportunity to create a truly human society is not dead but remains alive in the international working class, the gravediggers of capitalism.

The ideas and questions put forward above (and those that will follow) don’t exist in a vacuum and unfortunately many would disagree with them. While this is unfortunate it is also boringly predictable as the majority of those who consider themselves revolutionaries disagree with each other about the problems posed by capitalism. Whether it’s how the working class will create the social revolution if indeed they think this is required (some even question the existence of the working class!) or how capitalism itself ‘works’, confusion reigns among what passes for the revolutionary ‘movement’. This in turn creates an enormous amount of confusion among those younger militants and those unfamiliar with the ‘maddening’ world of so-called ‘revolutionary’ groups, who are seeking a clear explanation of the current situation.

While the bourgeoisie’s campaign around the ‘death of Communism’ has added to this confusion, the collapse of the eastern bloc had an even more fundamental effect on the ‘leftists’ (those groups who despite claiming to be ‘revolutionary’ represent the left wing of the bourgeoisie). The remaining ‘Stalinist’ groups have either collapsed or are in a state of terminal inertia unable to break with an ideology which was the negation of communism. The last ten years has also seen the Trotskyists (in Britain at least) ‘visibly’ move to the centre, joining the bourgeoisie in the parliamentary circus while continuing with their usual tactics of tail-ending single issue campaigns, constantly calling for the unions to act, or for ‘democracy’ to be defended, while all the time espousing their revolutionary credentials. Even the bourgeoisie’s most reliable friend, Social Democracy, has moved further to the right (or perhaps ceased to exist in any real sense?), this being most obvious in Britain with the emergence of ‘New Labour’. All of this may go some way to explaining why the working class seems to have deserted the organisations that claimed to defend its interests, either for the ‘joys’ of the consumer society or the ‘safety’ of religion (1).

Anarchism on the other hand has benefited from the ‘death of Communism’, with anarchist ideas and ‘organisations’ becoming fashionable once again. From Seattle to Prague the black flag of ‘revolution’ may have been raised but the same old lie is repeated "Marx, Lenin, Stalin – all the same enemy" (International Review 102 p.22). Why do anarchists echo the lies of the bourgeoisie and support consciously or unconsciously their campaign that the bankruptcy of ‘soviet’ Russia highlights the bankruptcy of marxism (and by default any other idea that questions capitalism’s authority)? Firstly we must ask those who identify themselves as anarchists what they mean by the term. Do they "mean an anarchist like Proudhon?" (World Revolution 170 p.6) Or are they a primitivist, syndicalist or anarcho-capitalist? Rather than define itself "in relation to historic currents on the vital questions which have faced the working class at important moments" (World Revolution 170 p.6), anarchism is made up of a range of different and often contradictory ideas which leads to confusion rather than clarification.

This incoherence is a consequence of anarchism’s origins. While anarchism may have borrowed ideas from other schools of socialism, it differs from these (and in particular marxism) ultimately as it was based from its beginnings on ‘abstract eternal principles’ (2) like ‘individual freedom’ and ‘absolute liberty’ (due to the influence of petit-bourgeois ideology). This characterised Proudhon’s theory and activity and, with more disastrous effects, Bakunin’s relationship with the 1st International and his criticism of the ‘authoritarian’ Marx. These ideas are the bedrock of anarchist thought and can still be found at the heart of ‘programmes’ (for want of a better phrase) put forward by today’s anarchists (see the article on Anarchism and Marxism in the current issue of Direct Action produced by the Solidarity Federation for an example of this) whether or not they have tried to distance themselves from ‘classical’ anarchism. Ahistorical idealism is always preferred to a more rigorous historical materialism and therefore confusion reigns.

The effect of this confusion is an inability to defend political positions while being able to dodge answering the difficult questions which arise from this vacillation. The evidence for the betrayal of class positions by anarchists is all too clear in the history of the workers’ movement. The real tests for revolutionaries arise during times of war and revolution, and anarchists have been found wanting on both occasions. Kropotkin’s support, along with the syndicalist CGT for the imperialist war in 1914, the CNT’s role in the popular front government during the Spanish ‘civil war’, and the general confusion amongst anarchists over the October revolution in 1917 are perhaps the most obvious examples of this betrayal. These examples also show how close anarchism is to its supposed enemy' leftism. While anarchists may claim to be the most ‘radical’ alternative to capitalism, they often fall into the same traps as leftist organisations. This is evident in their support for single-issue campaigns and their on and off relationship with the trade unions. There are groups and individuals that find all of this a bit difficult to defend and look to groups like the ‘Friends of Durruti’ for examples of how anarchism has remained loyal to the working class. Surely the failure of the Friends of Durruti group to break free from anarchism and the CNT lead to its ultimate fate?

Other groups (e.g. in Britain the Anarchist Federation (AF) and Class War (CW), in France Gauche Communiste Libertaire), faced with anarchism’s betrayal, have tried to form a syntheses between anarchism and marxism, to create a ‘libertarian communism’. In practice this involves plucking out ‘acceptable’ (i.e. not ‘Leninist’ as that would be ‘authoritarian’ and therefore unacceptable) political currents (in the case of the AF, Dutch and German ‘left communists’ like Pannekoek and the KAPD) from their historical context and adopting them as their own. The most obvious problem with this approach is that it is ‘sloppy’ history. But more importantly this is a dishonest attempt to pass off the theoretical breakthroughs of the communist left (those groups and individuals who broke with the 3rd International) on for, example, trade unions and national liberation as having something in common with the anarchist tradition. The "conviction that communism is the self-liberation of the working class emerges with marxism not with anarchism" (World Revolution 238) and left communism can never be part of the anarchist tradition. If it were, surely Bordiga would be worthy of a mention? Perhworthy of a mention? Perhaps because of his commitment to the party he is unacceptable? Anarchism’s real commitment is to ‘self liberation’ its "eternal principles liberty, equality and fraternity", as mentioned above, "originally borrowed from the bourgeoisie" (World Revolution 238). It is these principles which guide anarchist theory and practice and why particularly in the form of ‘libertarian communism’ anarchism can only add to the confusion already in the workers’ movement following the collapse of the eastern bloc (3).

There is of course an alternative to all of this confusion and this alternative has been hinted at above. Marxism and the organisations it has created (the first three Internationals and, in particular, those ‘left communists’ who broke from the decaying 3rd International) offer a clear and coherent explanation of capitalism in crisis, communist organisation and the history of the workers’ movement. It would be foolish to pretend that communists are infallible. Marxism is not a religion to be passed down to enlightened members of the class. That said it is the ability of communists, using marxism as a tool, to learn from their mistakes and through discussion to build on theoretical ‘lessons’ that differentiates them from the anarchists. The best examples of this are the left communists like, for example, Bordiga or the Bilan group, who were able to identify the capitalist nature of Soviet Russia while remaining in the tradition of the October revolution. This is a political current which has never deserted the working class and always stuck to its internationalist principles whatever the consequence. This leads us to the conclusion that communism unlike anarchism is not a utopian dream but a living movement and perhaps the only perspective for humanity (4).

So what’s to be done? Firstly we must combat the ‘greatest lie of the 20th century’ that the collapse of the eastern bloc lead to the death of communism. The current ‘anti-capitalist’ demonstrations prove that many are not happy with capitalism in terminal crisis and are looking for an alternative. Unfortunately most of these protests have concentrated on the spectre of globalisation and in particular the IMF and WTO. This identification with one aspect of capitalism (capitalism became a global system a very long time ago) has meant that many of the protesters find themselves turning to the nation state and its ‘democratic systems’ for protection (the role of the US unions in the demonstrations in Seattle is an example of this), rather than realising that it is these national units not ‘multinationals’ that call the shots on the world money markets. The IMF and WTO act as forums for each nation, large or small, to fight it out with their competitors. Revolutionaries have nothing to gain by defending national interests. The fight begins with the battle against our own bosses and develops as workers begin to control their own struggles until eventually we are at a position where we can overthrow the state. This battle can only be won by the working class not by an ‘alliance’ of well-meaning do-gooders (e.g. greens, Christians, environmentalists) who represent the left wing of capitalism. The task for those revolutionaries who have not deserted the communist project or the working class (i.e. the communist left) is to intervene in this movement (especially with younger militants) and fight bourgeois mystification at every level. The working class has not gone away and neither has capitalism’s crisis. The ‘death of communism’ was an attempt at finally destroying the working class, which failed. The small but growing number of strikes (including an increasing number of wildcat and ‘unofficial’ ones ) proves this. The ultimate task is clear – Workers of all countries, Unite! Capitalism is dying, long live the communist revolution!

R (September/October 2000)

1). Perhaps the most alarming example of this is the growth in popularity, particularly among the young, of Islam and in particular the suggestion that it is a ‘revolutionary’ alternative to capitalism. Superstition and ‘tradition’ offer the working class nothing and revolutionaries must fight this return to medievalism.

2). While I realise that this statement doesn’t go very far in explaining all the differences between anarchism and marxism it does highlight the ‘moralism’ which is at the heart of all anarchist currents. The purpose of this ‘essay’ was to clarify to myself why I had broken from anarchism, not to provide an in-depth thesis. For a more detailed analysis of the argument see ‘Anarchism or Communism?’ in International Review 79 or the articles on anarchism in International Review 102, both of which I found useful when forced to re-evaluate my ideas.

3). Again I realise that this is not the whole story. What about organisation, substitutionism or dead-end activism? As I said above this ‘essay’ is an attempt to clarify to myself why I broke with anarchism (or more specifically libertarian communism having been a member of the AF) and I feel it is the commitment to ‘self liberation’ (which breeds an unhealthy moralism) which influences the rest of anarchist theory. The article in World Revolution 238 which deals with the AF points out the theoretical problems faced by an organisation trying to force two opposing ideas together. When this is tried the only outcome is incoherence. The other main problem is the question of organisation. Federalism is preferred because it avoids the ‘authoritarianism’ of the party. In reality an unofficial hierarchy of friends is created which has all the elements of the most undemocratic organisations while pretending to be ‘free’ and ‘democratic’. This effectively stifles debate and allows for only the most basic agreement on political positions. This perhaps explains why Anarchists prefer dead-end activism to more rigorous debate.

4). Once again I realise this is only a brief explanation. Any issue of World Revolution, International Review, Revolutionary Perspectives, Internationalist Communist or Communist Left will expand on these ideas.

The farce around the election of the US president has allowed the rulers of Europe, increasingly anxious to assert their independence from the US, to mount a campaign about how much more efficient ‘our’ dgn about how much more efficient ‘our’ democratic institutions are over here. It’s true that the election stalemate has been a real embarrassment for the US ruling class, and the comrades of our US section analyse the reasons for the mess in the article below. But the article also shows that there are in any case no fundamental differences between Gore and Bush. And this applies to ‘democratic’ elections everywhere. However they are managed, parliamentary elections are always used against the consciousness of the working class. ‘Democracy’ is a mask hiding the real dictatorship of capitalism, and workers can only fight against this dictatorship by struggling for their own interests as a class.

At the time of writing, the outcome of the presidential electoral circus is still unknown. The electoral stalemate was clearly an unplanned accident for the US ruling class, a tremendous embarrassment creating a confusing political dilemma. The political strategy of the bourgeoisie going into the election appeared to reaffirm a commitment to maintain the left, the Democratic Party, in power in the White House. No significant domestic political, economic or imperialist factors existed to call into question the continuation of the strategy of the left in power, which has worked so effectively since 1992 for the effectively since 1992 for the bourgeoisie, not only in the US, but internationally (See International Review 98, ‘Why are the left parties in government in the majority of European countries today?’, 3rd quarter 1999). This strategy permitted the bourgeoisie to use the Clinton administration to maintain a continuous implementation of austerity and the dismantling of the New Deal welfare state, to intervene frequently and effectively on the military level around the world under the ideological cover of ‘humanitarianism’, and to maintain the disorientation of the working class. At the same time, the ruling class was able to revamp and strengthen the union apparatus in order to confront future working class struggles.

If there were no conjunctural factors pressuring the bourgeoisie to abandon the left in power strategy, neither was there any necessity to resort to an alternation in power to revitalize the democratic mystification. The left has only been in power for eight years, and the Republicans have controlled congress and a majority of state governorships, so there was no monopolizing of political power for an overly long period of time to wear out the democratic mystification. After all, the right had held power for 12 years under Reagan/Bush, and was removed from office not to revitalize demfice not to revitalize democracy, but rather because of imperialist preoccupations, following Bush’s indecisiveness to intervene in the Balkans and consequent squandering of American imperialist advantage built up by the Gulf War in 1991.

Consequently, a Gore victory seemed most sensible for the bourgeoisie. As we noted in Internationalism 114, at the same time, to protect themselves against an ‘accident’ the bourgeoisie installed the younger Bush as the candidate of the Republicans on the right. Despite all the campaign rhetoric, and despite their different party affiliations, both Gore and Bush adhere to the same, identical faction of the bourgeoisie, with no significant divergences on imperialist policy, and essentially identical positions on all significant domestic policy questions. Whoever won, the bourgeoisie was assured that basically the same orientation on domestic and international policy would be pursued.

The bourgeoisie tries to counter ‘voter apathy’

The campaign was manipulated to generate interest and enthusiasm in the election, to present it as ‘close’ in order to bolster participation by largely apathetic electorate, to rrgely apathetic electorate, to rejuvenate the electoral mystification. The propaganda stressed over and over that the campaign was too close to call, that every vote would count, etc. etc. The polls portrayed Gore as trailing even until the very eve of the election, prodding working class and liberal voters to come out to the poll to prevent the triumph of the right.

So, what happened? In large measure the strategy prevailed. Despite being portrayed as trailing in all but one of the national polls by three to five points, Gore won the popular vote, achieving 49% of the vote, a greater percentage than the vastly more popular Clinton received in 1992 or 1996. In fact, Gore received more actual votes than Reagan did in his landslide victories over Carter and Mondale, respectively in 1980 and 1984. The political accident that threw the electoral circus into turmoil was due to two factors. First, the loose cannon actions of the Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader. Second, the fact that for the first time since 1888, indeed for the first time in the epoch of capitalist decadence, the results in the popular vote were contradicted by the results in the anachronistic Electoral College, which appeared to give the election victory to the candidate who came in second place.

The Nader Factor

Unlike the Perot campaigns of ’92 and ’96, which were designed to siphon off votes from the Republicans and facilitate the victory of the left in those elections, the Nader candidacy was not designed to impact on the current election. The script called for the Green Party to develop a political presence so that it might prepare to play a crucial role in the future as a means to control radicalized workers and petty bourgeois elements, as the crisis deepens and working class discontent becomes more pronounced. In this sense the Nader campaign was designed as a electoral reference point for the Seattle-type anti-globalisation movement, as well as traditional environmentalists and ‘progressives’. The immediate goal was to achieve 5% in the popular vote, which would qualify the Greens for federal campaign funds in the future. However, Nader made a deal with the established environmental groups and the Democratic Party that he would not seek to alter the result of the election, and promised not to campaign in states where it might affect the outcome. For whatever reason – some of his critics in the left of the Democratic party and the environmental movement charge egomania – Nader reneged on this agreement Nader reneged on this agreement and concentrated his campaign in key battleground states that were crucial to a Gore victory. These states were also most receptive to Nader’s ‘progressive message’ attacking big business. Realizing that Nader was poised to threaten the Gore victory, about two weeks before the election the environmentalists and the left of the Democratic Party began an all-out campaign against Nader for reneging on the deal, urging him to withdraw from the election, and calling upon his supporters not to ‘waste’ their votes and help elect Bush. The New York Times joined this campaign, denouncing Nader for ‘electoral mischief’, and TV journalists joined the chorus as well. This campaign was in sharp contrast to the situation with Perot, who never received such criticism and was never asked to withdraw in ’92 and ’96 – precisely because his campaign was designed to affect the election results in the Clinton races.

Even though the bourgeoisie was successful in scaring off more than fifty percent of the people who were supposedly intending to vote for Nader, and achieved a Gore victory in the popular vote, the Green party candidate managed to screw up the Electoral College vote on the state level in at least three states: New Hampshire, Oregon and the all Hampshire, Oregon and the all important Florida, with its 25 electoral votes. For example, in Florida, where Bush had a 1,700 vote margin on election day (before the first recount which brought him down to 330), Nader got 96,000 votes. While undoubtedly a good number of the voters who cast ballots for Nader were people who were so alienated from the mainstream parties that they probably wouldn’t have participated in the election had Nader not been a candidate, if only 3 percent of the 96,000 had voted for Gore, Bush would have been easily defeated on election day.

The anachronistic Electoral College

The unforeseen accident that produced a situation in which the electoral vote did not match the popular vote was caused by Nader’s reneging on the deal, and aggravated by the Electoral College, an anachronistic, anti-democratic - even by bourgeois standards - historical relic created in 1787 as a check against ‘popular passions’. In today’s conditions this institution is weighted disproportionately in favor of rural, small population states, and it was these states that Bush won heavily.

The bourgeoisie’s strategy provided protection against an vided protection against an accidental defeat at the polls, but not against a contradictory and indecisive result at the polls. For the American bourgeoisie, no matter how much they pay homage to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and the constitution they created over 200 years ago, an election in which the guy who lost the election is declared the winner is a tremendous political embarrassment and liability. All the rhetoric about the ‘will of the people’ and ‘the people decide’ rings empty. Despite the fact that the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie could certainly live with either Gore or Bush as president with no problem, each of the candidates, and their entourages, genuinely want to be president, and this has led to never-ending political soap opera since election day. All the bickering, posturing and rancor by the two candidates camps is in complete contrast to the normal unifying, mutual support and coming together that normally marks the conclusion an American electoral circuses.

The goal of the current recount, and the legal challenges by the Gore staff, is designed not simply to satisfy Gore’s real personal ambitions, but also to produce an election result in Florida so that the final Electoral College results will coincide with the popular vote, though the final outcome is stillugh the final outcome is still in doubt. The ruling class is trying to put the best ‘spin’ possible on the current situation, stressing how this election proves that every vote counts, and that the melodrama we are witnessing is a simply a stupendous civics lesson for the American public. But in reality both sides expose the pettiness and corruption of the highly touted American electoral political system, in which each side is shamelessly trying to cheat and manipulate the vote counts in their favor. Senior ‘statesmen’ in both parties, including former presidents Carter and Ford, are already pushing for a resolution that will somehow salvage the authority and legitimacy of the presidency and American democracy following the settlement of the current stalemate.

Indeed, the current squabbling in no way threatens the stability of American society. Whatever jitters there are on Wall Street have been there for over a year and are not caused by the inconclusive election. The working class is not engaged in open struggle, and the imperialist strategy of American imperialism is not in question. In this sense the so-called ‘sharp political division’ in the American electorate couldn’t come at a better time for the bourgeoisie, even if it is unplanned. While having the left in opposition m having the left in opposition might create certain problems for the ruling class in terms of justifying overseas military interventions, or in potentially provoking oppositional actions by the unions and the Jesse Jackson/Ted Kennedy wing of the Democrats, the situation will not be insurmountable.

Once the election is decided the bourgeoisie will try to foster reconciliation, and a strongly divided Congress and White House will somehow find the statesmanlike wherewithal to rise above partisan divisiveness to continue to attack the standard of living of the working class, and begin to repair the tarnished image of the democratic mystification.

Internationalism, ICC section in the US, 11/18/00.

Day after day, the list of the dead and wounded, in Israel and the occupied territories, grows longer.

In a region which has already been through five out-and-out wars since the end of the second world slaughter (not counting all the ‘peacetime’ military operations), a new war is hatching, without being officially started, and has already killed hundreds of people, especially children and young people.

Officially, everyone talks about ‘peace’ – the Israeli leaders, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, and all the governments of the developed countries, whether European or American.

In fact, despite all the conferences that have succeeded each other since last summer (Camp David in July, Paris on October 4, Sharm-el-Sheikh later on that month) the situation has got worse and worse: stone-throwing, bomb attacks, Israelis lynched by Palestinians, the use of live bullets by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian demonstrators, attacks on civilians populations by rockets, shells and helicopters.

Depending on which country we live in, or on which country we live in, or the political colour of the government, we are being called on to side with one camp or another in this conflict:

"Defend Israel against the threat of all these fanatical Arabs who surround the country"

"Support the just cause of the Palestinians against Israeli atrocities".

But no one is posing the real question: where are the interests of the working class in all this, whether Jewish or Arab, whether in Israel or Palestine, or in other countries?

The Middle East: war without end

The 20th century has been a century of wars, the most atrocious wars in human history, and not one of them has served the interests of the workers. It’s always the workers who are called upon to go and kill each other in their millions for the interests of their exploiters, under the banner of ‘defending the country’, or fighting for ‘civilisation’, ‘democracy’, or even the ‘socialist fatherland’ (which is how certain people described the USSR of Stalin and the gulag).

And after these terrible wars, particularly after the second world war, those who lived through them were again asked to make new sacrifices to reconstruct the national (i.e. capitalist) economy.

Today there is a new war in the Middle East, even if it hasn’t been officially declared.

On both sides, the ruling cliques call on the workers to ‘defend the country’ whether Jewish or Palestinian. The Jewish workers, who in Israel are exploited by Jewish capitalists, the Palestinian workers who are exploited by Jewish capitalists or Arab capitalists (and often more ferociously by the latter than by the Jewish capitalists because in the Palestinian enterprises, working rights are no different from what they were in the old Ottoman empire).

The Jewish workers have already paid a heavy tribute to the war madness of the bourgeoisie during the course of the five wars they have been through since 1948. As soon as they were taken out of the concentration camps and the ghettos of a Europe ravaged by world war, the grandparents of those who today wear the uniform of the Israeli defence Forces were dragged into the war between Israel and the Arab countries. Then their parents paid the blood-price in the wars of 67, 73 and 82. These soldiers are not frightful brutes who think of nothing but killing Palestinian children. They are young conscripts, most of them workers, constantly bombarded with propaganda about the ‘barbarity’ of the Arabs and yet many of them full of doubt and disgust at being forced to act as cops.

The Palestinian workers have already paid the blood-price. Kicked out of their homes in a war that their leaders wanted, they have spent the major part of their lives in refugee camps, enrolled into the various Palestinian militias (Fatah, PFLP, Hamas, etc). Frequently they have suffered the worst massacres not at the hand of the Israeli army but of the armies of the countries where they were in exile, like Jordan and Lebanon. In September 1970 (Black September), King Hussein exterminated them en masse, to the point where some of them had to flee to Israel to escape death. In September 1982 it was the Arab militias (albeit Christian, and allied to Israel) who butchered them in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Lebanon.

Nationalism and religion: poison for the exploited

Today, in the name of ‘Palestine’, they want to once again mobilise Arab workers against the Israelis, the majority of whom are workers, just as the latter are being asked to get themselves killed for the defence of the ‘Promised Land’, Eretz Yisroael.

Both sides are being drenched with nationalist propaganda, which seeks to turn human beings into ravening beasts. The Israeli and Arab bourgeoisies have been aggravating these nationalist feelings for more than half a century. Both Israeli and Arab workers are told that they must defend the land of their ancestors. With the first, a systematic militarisation of society has been developed alongside a siege mentality in order to make everyone into good soldiers. With the second, the idea has been that if they can settle accounts with Israel, they will ‘get their land back’. And in order to achieve this, the leaders of the Arab countries have kept them for decades in concentration camps, subjecting them to intolerable living conditions and preventing them from integrating themselves into the ‘host’ country.

Nationalism is one of the worst ideologies that the bourgeoisie has ever invented. It makes it possible for the ruling class to hide the antagonisms between exploiters and the exploited, to rally them all behind the same flag, to get the exploited to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their exploiters.

And to cap it all, this war is also being fuelled by the poison of religious propaganda, which leads to the development of the most irrational forms of fanaticism. The Jews are called upon to defend the Wailing Wall, the remains of Solomon’s Temple. The Muslims are told to give their lives for the Mosque of Omar and the holy places of Islam. What is happening today in Israel and Palestine clearly confirms what revolutionaries said last century: religion is the opium of the people. Its aim is to console the exploited and the oppressed. Those whose lives on earth is a hell are told that they will be happy after their deaths as long as they know how to find salvation. And the road to salvation passes through sacrifice, submission, and offering your life for the ‘holy war’

The fact that, at the beginning of the 21st century, ideologies and superstitions that go back to antiquity or the Middle Ages are still being stirred up in abundance in order to get human beings to sacrifice their lives says a great deal about the depth of the barbarism stalking the Middle East and many other parts of the world.

The great powers are responsible for the war

As for the ‘developed’ countries, the ‘great democracies’ of Europe and the USA, which are today so keen to announce their compassion for the suffering of the people in the Middle East, their revolting hypocrisy deserves to be denounced from beginning to end.

It is the leaders of these same powers which have created the infernal situation facing the exploited of this region.

It was the European bourgeoisies, particularly the English bourgeoisie with its Balfour declaration in 1917, which, with its policy of divide and rule, permitted the formation of a "Jewish Homeland" in Palestine, opening the door to the chauvinist utopia of Zionism. It was the same bourgeoisies who, at the end of the second world war, arranged for the transportation to Palestine of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees and concentration camp victims. This made sure that all these refugees were kept well away from their countries. It was the same bourgeoisies, first the British and the French, then the American, who armed the state of Israel to the teeth in order to make it the spearhead of the western bloc in the region during the cold war. The USSR, on the other hand, poured weapons into its Arab allies. Without these big ‘patrons’, the wars of 1956, 67, 73 and 82 wouldn’t have been able to take place.

With the collapse of the eastern bloc we were promised a new era of peace. This lie was immediately exposed by the Gulf war in 1991. But after that, illusions about peace were spread far and wide by the politicians and the media. It was the period of the Madrid conference of October 91 and the ‘Oslo accords’ signed at the White House in September 1993.

But there can be no peace in capitalism. This was demonstrated by the horrible massacres going on in Yugoslavia at the same moment. As for the Middle East, peace meant a ‘Pax Americana’, a still more powerful presence of the US in the region. This is something that the other bourgeoisies did not want at a time when the disappearance of the ‘Soviet’ threat was leading them to affirm their own imperialist ambitions.

Today all the bourgeoisies claim they want peace. What they really want is to get their foot in the door, or strengthen further their position in the Middle East, one of the most coveted regions of the world because of its economic and strategic importance.

To end war, you have to end capitalism

This is why, in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, we find the US backing Israel while other powers, such as France (as we saw at the Paris meeting in October) are lining up behind the Palestinians.

Even after the disappearance of the USSR, the great powers are there to throw oil on the fire, as they have been doing in Yugoslavia over the past 10 years.

This is also why the workers of these countries, the ‘great democracies’, whose leaders talk about nothing but ‘peace’ and ‘human rights’, must refuse to take sides with either camp. Above all they must refuse to be taken in by the speeches of those parties which claim to be part of the working class – the parties of the left and the extreme left, who are calling on workers to show their ‘solidarity with the Palestinian masses’, to support their ‘right to a homeland’. A Palestinian homeland will never be anything but a bourgeois state in the service of the exploiters, oppressing the same Palestinian masses with its police and its prisons. The solidarity of the workers of the most advanced capitalist countries does not go out to the ‘Palestinians’ or to the ‘Israelis’, among whom you will find both exploiters and exploited. It goes out to the workers and the unemployed of Israel and of Palestine, who have their own struggles against their exploiters despite the constant brainwashing they are subjected to, as it goes out to the workers of all other countries. And showing solidarity certainly doesn’t consist in encouraging their nationalist illusions.

This solidarity means above all developing their own struggle against their own bourgeoisies, against the capitalist system which is responsible for all wars.

In the Middle East as in many other regions of the world ravaged by war today, there is no ‘lasting peace’ possible under capitalism. Even if the present crisis is not leading to an open war, even if the different protagonists arrive at some temporary truce, this region will remain a powderkeg ready to explode.

Peace can only be won when tha">Peace can only be won when the working class overthrows capitalism on a world scale. And the working class can only move in that direction by developing its struggles on its own class terrain, against the increasingly brutal economic attacks demanded by the insurmountable crisis of the system.

Against nationalism, against the wars our exploiters want to drag us into:

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

November 2000