Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 25.08.2024
Fred Weston of the Faked Communist International, led by Woods, a student of Grant, wrote an interesting article on the responsibility of Stalin for the creation of the Zionist state. Yet, it fails to understand the nature of Israel as a settler colonialist state.
In Britain, where the Allan Woods group probably has around 1000 members, it is likely the more extensive group within this tendency. It is not a revolutionary party but a propaganda league. This method of declaring a few small groups a revolutionary International brings Gerry Healy and the SLL to mind. This method can lead only to self-destruction, as the case of the SLL proves.
But let us return to Weston’s article. Correctly, he began the article by saying: “At the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920, the Theses on the National and Colonial Questions, drafted by Lenin, stated:
“The Zionists’ Palestine affair can be characterized as a gross example of the deception of the working classes of that oppressed nation by Entente imperialism and the bourgeoisie of the country in question pooling their efforts (in the same way that Zionism in general delivers the Arab working population of Palestine, where Jewish workers only form a minority, to exploitation by England, under the cloak of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine).”[i]
He continues, writing: “The question has to be asked, therefore, as to why Stalin adopted a position which was diametrically opposed to that of Lenin? Stalin played a key role in getting the infamous 1947 UN resolution that partitioned Palestine adopted with the required two-thirds majority of the UN Assembly.[ii]
He provides details that are not very well known: “Using archive material from the Soviet Union, Laurent Rucker provides interesting details about contact between Soviet diplomats and important figures within the Zionist leadership. The source for details of this encounter comes from ‘Sovetsko-Izrail’skie otnoshenia. Sbornik Dokumentov 1941-1953 (SIO) (Moskva: Mezhdunarodnye Otnoshenia, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 15-17’, official documents on Soviet-Israeli relations.A meeting that took place in January 1941 between Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organisation, and Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the UK, was very revealing. According to Rucker:“…Weizmann brought up the future of Palestine. Maisky stated that there would have to be an exchange of populations in Palestine in order to settle Jews from Europe. Weizmann replied that if half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place. Maisky did not appear to be shocked by this idea.”[iii]
The rest of the article deals with details that are known about using Czechoslovakia to deliver the weapons the Zionists needed for the creation of Israel through the ethnic clearance of the Palestinians. Probably, he believed that Israel would be a pro-Moscow satellite.
But toward the end of the article, we find the old line of Alan Woods of a Jewish-Arab socialist state rather than socialist Palestine with civil rights for the Jews living in Palestine
“The idea that Israel could be a ‘socialist experiment’ ignores the fact that the kibbutzim were often armed outposts of Israel and played an important role in colonizing the land that had previously belonged to Palestinians. As some have described it, it was a “socialism only for the Jews, not the Arabs. One cannot build socialism in this way. Socialism either comes from a united movement of the whole of the working class – in this case, both Jewish and Palestinian – or it will turn out to merely cloak and assist in the oppression of one section of society by another, to the ultimate benefit of the capitalist class. What was being built was capitalism, and precisely because of its isolation and oppressive nature, it soon became an entrenched outpost of imperialism in the Middle East. That also explains why the most powerful imperialist country on the planet had no problem with this kind of ‘socialism.’[iv]
Why will the Jewish workers, who are labor aristocracy, join the struggle of the Palestinians for freedom, a battle that must end with a working-class revolution that will form a Palestinian worker’s state? This can happen only with the victory of the Arab revolution.
He ends his article once again by calling for a socialist state and avoids the national character of such a state. By doing so, he throws pro-Zionist dust in the eyes of the international working class:
“We stand today on the shoulders of our RCP comrades back in 1947-48 in advocating a homeland for both people, which could only be achieved in the form of a socialist state across the whole of historical Palestine, within a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, in which both Jews and Palestinians could live in peace based on the socialist development of the economy.”[v]
Fred Waston is likely to argue that his program is an internationalist one and our position of a Palestinian worker’s state is a Palestinian nationalist one. To argue such an argument, it is necessary to ignore the fact that Israel is an apartheid state and that Trotsky, on the question of South Africa’s apartheid, called for a black worker’s state.
Trotsky wrote:
“A Black Republic?
The overthrow of British imperialism’s hegemony in South Africa can result from a military defeat of Great Britain and the disintegration of the Empire. In this case, the South African whites could still, for a certain period—hardly a considerable one—retain their domination over the blacks.
Another possibility, which in practice could be connected with the first, is a revolution in Great Britain and her possessions. Three-quarters of the population of South Africa (almost six million of the almost eight million total) is composed of non-Europeans. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the awakening of the native masses. In turn, that will give them what they are so lacking today – confidence in their strength, a heightened personal consciousness, and cultural growth.
Under these conditions, the South African Republic will emerge first of all as a “black” republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites or brotherly relations between the two races – depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. However, it is obvious that the majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will imprint a certain state.
Insofar as a victorious revolution will radically change not only the relation between the classes but also between the races and assure the blacks that place in the state which corresponds to their numbers, insofar will the social revolution in South Africa also have a national character.
We have no reason to close our eyes to this side of the question or diminish its significance. On the contrary, the proletarian party should, in words and deeds, openly and boldly take the solution of the national (racial) problem into its hands”.[vi]
Thus, a fake International produces a fake solution to the road to the socialist revolution.
In the same vein, Woods and Fred Weston refuse to take the revolutionary position that in the war between Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran against imperialism and Israel is an imperialist state, it is necessary to side with these non-imperialist forces without giving them political support. Their position aligns with their refusal to side with non-imperialist Argentina against British imperialism in the Malvina War.
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] Fred Weston In Defense of Marxism ” Stalin’s responsibility in the creation of Israel and its disastrous consequences” 26 July 2024
[ii] Ibid
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Ibid
[v] Ibid
[vi] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/04/safrica.html