Dave Prince's 2020 introduction to Abram Leon's study The Jewish Question (written during the Nazi occupation) is a welcome addition to the classic work, alas timely and essential given today's uptick in Jew-hatred by both the petty-bourgeois left and right.
The new edition is augmented by a section of maps and many pages of magnificent photos.
Of particular interest to me is Prince's account of events in 1945-48 that culminated in the founding of Israel.
....Revolutionary and pre-revolutionary situations did emerge in several imperialist countries in Europe in the aftermath of World War II and the Soviet Union's victory over efforts by German imperialism to destroy the remaining conquests of the Bolshevik Revolution. Moreover, exploited toilers and oppressed peoples across the Asia, Africa, and the Americas launched national democratic struggles for land, labor rights, political liberties, independence, winning freedom from colonial rule for hundreds of millions.
In Cuba the battle against imperialist domination culminated not only in a socialist revolution but also, for the first time since the Bolsheviks, one guided by a communist, not Stalinist, leadership. A leadership that was based on and acted in the interests of the working class, both there and internationally.
In Europe, revolutionary opportunities for the working class and its allies came to naught, however. Meeting in Yalta in early 1945, US, British, and Soviet leaders Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin ratified the military facts on the ground by recognizing post-war "spheres of influence." Moscow was awarded Eastern Europe, much of which had been occupied by Soviet armed forces marching toward Berlin.
Implicit in this pact was cooperation by Stalinist communist parties in Greece, France, and Italy to block revolutionary prospects anywhere in southern or Western Europe and assure the restabilization of capitalist rule. This class collaborationist course was rationalized by the illusion that imperialism would maintain peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. Instead of advancing the organization of workers to make a revolution against the ruling class in their own countries, CP leaderships assured their members and sympathizers that Moscow's bureaucratic Economic Planning would, over time, prove its superiority and win over working people to socialism.
In face of these Stalinist betrayals and defeats, prospects to resolve the Jewish question along the revolutionary proletarian road pointed to by Trotsky and by Leon were also betrayed.
With borders shut tight by Washington, London, and other imperialist powers, Jewish survivors of the Nazi extermination effort looked to Palestine as their refuge from misery and persecution. They looked to, and some 700,000 found a way to go to, what in May 1948 was proclaimed the state of Israel, a Jewish state. It was recognized within hours by US President Harry Truman, followed soon after by the Soviet Union – the first two governments of the world to do so.
Leon explains that his treatment in this book of the Zionist movement is limited to its inability to offer a solution to the Jewish question. The place of "Zionism in Palestine, of course, is another question," he writes.
There is no answer to that question that does not address what has been wrought since the end of World War II by capitalism and the class struggle in the Middle East and internationally. That includes both the enduring fact of Jew hatred, as breakdowns in the imperialist world order multiply, and the unresolved national dispossession of Palestinians.
Israel is nearing its seventy-fifth year as a state, with a population encompassing working people who are Jews, Arabs, and others. For decades workers, peasants, and the oppressed across the Middle East and North Africa have been wracked by the treachery, bankruptcy, and rot of Stalinist, bourgeois nationalist, and Islamist political currents falsely claiming to speak and act on their behalf. And never have the Palestinian people been more bereft of political leadership either capable, morally fit, or above all of a proletarian class composition and outlook able to advance the struggle for their national aspirations.
Recognition of Israel together with a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state is the course class-conscious workers must champion and explain.
That is the course that today can enable Palestinian, Jewish, and other toilers of the Mideast, whatever their religious or other convictions, to recognize the interests they hold in common. The course that could enable them to come together in struggle against their exploitation and repression by capitalist governments and ruling classes - whether in Israel, the Arab states, Iran, or elsewhere - as well as by Washington and other imperialist powers.
Only along that road can class solidarity be forged through common battles, including the revolutionary struggle in Israel and Palestine to take power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers and replace them with workers and farmers governments, governments that act in the interests of working people and the oppressed across the region.
As history and the class struggle are proving once again in the early 21st century, Abram Leon could not have been more correct that there is no way quote "to resolve the Jewish question independently of the World Revolution." But along that revolutionary course, any political party aspiring to speak and act in the interests of the working class that does not today recognize Israel's right to exist sets itself on a collision course with the interests of all toilers, of all national origins, in the Middle East and world over....
Well said.
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