Political context for Israel's founding

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....

Workers oppose federal cops, antifa violence in Portland – The Militant

Workers oppose federal cops, antifa violence in Portland – The Militant

The truth about Seattle's Capital Hill Organized Protest

....The anti-working-class course of middle-class radicals who act as if a new society can be built while capitalism and its state apparatus remain intact was on show in Seattle in early June. Joined by local gang enforcers, they took over a six-block area of the city, including a police precinct, after cops abandoned the station during a protest against cop brutality.

The groups taking over the area renamed it the Capital Hill Organized Protest and appointed their own armed thugs to enforce order. Jenny Durkan, the city’s liberal Democratic mayor, acquiesced, saying the occupation was “the community’s call for change.” She ensured utilities were provided to the occupiers and ordered the cops to stay out.

Over nine days two Black teenagers were shot dead and others wounded....

Democrats, middle-class left find common ground in 2020 – The Militant

Defense of free speech, debate met with slander and threats of reprisal – The Militant

....Workers and our unions need to fight tenaciously whenever bosses — or the political correctness police — use thought control measures to throw any worker out of a job, regardless of whether we agree with their opinions. As the class struggle heats up, bosses will increasingly try to muzzle militant workers for speaking out about the impact of the capitalist crisis on our lives — as they have done in the past.

Working people and youth have a right to consider competing viewpoints, to think for ourselves and express our own views without being threatened with losing our livelihoods by those who claim they know what is in our best interest. We need to jealously guard the right to free speech because we need more  discussion and debate, not less, to forge political clarity on the way forward to strengthen the unity and fighting capacity of the working class.

Defense of free speech, debate met with slander and threats of reprisal – The Militant

Scientific approach to opening of ‘New World’ – The Militant

Scientific approach to opening of ‘New World’ – The Militant

Destruction of statues seeks to erase history we need to know – The Militant

....“Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science, without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognized,” he said. “In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism.”

The working class has an interest in developing a long view of history — understanding how civilization emerged from the earliest toolmakers; how exploitative social systems developed as ruling classes subjugated the toiling majority; and especially how human progress is driven by inevitable rebellions of slaves, serfs, laborers and other oppressed classes throughout history. Through revolutionary struggles more advanced social systems replace outmoded ones.

The bosses and their government want us to believe that people are inherently greedy and capitalism will last forever. But history teaches that the working class and its exploited and oppressed allies are capable of uniting to overthrow dog-eat-dog capitalism, transforming ourselves in the process, and taking political power into our own hands. This will be the mightiest weapon possible for working people to carry forward the battle to end Black oppression and every form of human degradation inherited from millennia of class-divided society....

Destruction of statues seeks to erase history we need to know – The Militant

Liberals demand right to suppress political views on ‘social media’ – The Militant

Liberals demand right to suppress political views on ‘social media’ – The Militant