Comment

Comment on

So, you think that a racist policy can be rational when the purpose is to preserve peace, it seems. I think this is more or less what I’m getting at in the case of Zionism.

Of course there were a range of intentions, then as now, which the label of Zionism encompasses, ranging up to “emigrate and overthrow” then (stay here and genocide, now) but including “emigrate and coexist.” (a peaceful two-state solution with full rights for Israeli Arabs and for Palestinians) I certainly take issue with the former, but the idea of wanting to migrate somewhere for a better life, somewhere perhaps you feel a historical connection to and where many people like you already live, and to participate in a democratic process there, is quite acceptable to me and I think can be properly called Zionism too.

source

Sort:hotnew top

ohulancutash@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The establishment of Israel was itself an act of genocide, involving first the instigation of race wars and the surreptitious purchase of property, then developing to forcible ethnic cleansing and exile. You could take it to the logical extremity and claim any solution involving the existence of Israel condones the genocide that birthed it.

source
- FishFace@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The Naqba was genocidal. But most states have some kind of horror in their past that is not condoned by their ongoing existence. The USA’s existence does not condone the ethnic cleansing of native Americans. England’s existence does not condone the Harrying of the North. France’s existence does not condone the Terror. This is just not how “condoning” works. And even if it were, human rights are more important, and the right to self-determination exists for the Israelis who are now, like it or not, in Israel. Just as Israeli Jews cannot be trusted with power over Palestinians, Palestinian Arabs cannot be trusted with power over Israelis - either situation (one of which we are seeing) results in intolerable ethnic cleansing.
  
  I know it is horrible and feels racist and like it’s letting a crime go unpunished to have Israel continue to exist despite the Naqba. But the only way to avoid that is to just do another genocide against Israeli Jews. That’s not justifiable. Putting one of those other aspects before the necessity to protect a population against new war crimes is, as I said, unhelpful. By all means focus on the other population that needs protecting, and which is not being protected, but that’s not what this is.
  
  source
  - Alex_de_Oliveira_95@lemmygrad.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    In scientific socialism, any violence by a subjugated population without even bourgeois rights under imperialist capitalism is acceptable in order to acquire economic sovereignty. You can see this with Marx accepting the separation of Ireland from England if the alternative is the continuation of the subjugation and exploitation of Irish workers, as long as it is not possible to organize English and Irish workers because of English chauvinism that deceives workers into not acquiring solidarity, then separation is an acceptable alternative so that in the future a socialist federation can be formed with more equal relations between Irish and English, but remembering that the ideal would be to organize English and Irish workers together for a socialist revolution acting together. This already helps to understand the position of defending the self-determination of nations that Lenin wrote.
    
    Workers in the imperialist core must cut off and sabotage all funding that maintains the dominance of imperialist capitalism abroad by capitalists and their agents who profit from this type of relationship. This is non-negotiable in order to avoid declining into opportunistic social chauvinism and to show solidarity with the workers of the world. This means that the sale of arms and loans that support the collaborators of imperialist capitalism, who maintain dependence to intensify capitalist exploitation, is not tolerated. All this means that the workers’ party must take this position no matter how much it is hated for it, and if a party that pretends to be leftist is in favor of reconciling with capitalist imperialism in the imperialist core under the pretext of saving “democracy” and “freedom” abroad, then this party must be destroyed for serving imperialist capitalism.
    
    You are talking about the issue of self-determination of nations, so let’s see quotes in relation to that:
    
    But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:
    
    (1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
    
    Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916, VII. Imperialism as a Special Stage of capitalism.
    
    www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/…/ch07.htm
    
    Now let’s look at his position on the types of countries as examples at the time Lenin wrote about the self-determination of nations and capitalist imperialism:
    
    Three Types of Countries in Relation to Self-Determination of Nations In this respect, countries must be divided into three main types:
    
    First, the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States of America. In these countries the bourgeois, progressive, national movements came to an end long ago. Every one of these “great” nations oppresses other nations in the colonies and within its own country. The tasks of the proletariat of these ruling nations are the same as those of the proletariat in England in the nineteenth century in relation to Ireland.
    
    Secondly, Eastern Europe: Austria, the Balkans and particularly Russia. Here it was the twentieth century that particularly developed the bourgeois-democratic national movements and intensified the national struggle. The tasks of the proletariat in these countries—in regard to the consummation of their bourgeois-democratic reformation, as well as in regard to assisting the socialist revolution in other countries—cannot be achieved unless it champions the right of nations to self-determination. In this connection the most difficult but most important task is to merge the class struggle of the workers in the oppressing nations with the class struggle of the workers in the oppressed nations.
    
    Thirdly, the semi-colonial countries, like China, Persia, Turkey, and all the colonies, which have a combined population amounting to a billion. In these countries the bourgeois-democratic movements have either hardly begun, or are far from having been completed. Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation—and this demand in its political expression signifies nothing more nor less than the recognition of the right to self-determination—but must render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois-democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their rebellion—and if need be, their revolutionary war—against the imperialist powers that oppress them.
    
    V. I. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1916
    
    www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/…/x01.htm
    
    Now regarding the issue of wars and the opportunists who obscure the truth by trying to defend imperialist capitalist finance capital that maintains dependency to intensify exploitation. I’m only posting this to avoid confusion if someone is reading what I wrote trying to equate the war of a puppet of imperialist capitalism that uses chauvinism against the Russian population with the right of Palestinians to use violence against Israel to acquire economic sovereignty:
    
    In short: a war between imperialist Great Powers (i.e., powers that oppress a whole number of nations and enmesh them in dependence on finance capital, etc.), or in alliance with the Great Powers, is an imperialist war. Such is the war of 1914–16. And in this war “defence of the fatherland” is a deception, an attempt to justify the war.
    
    A war against imperialist, i.e., oppressing, powers by oppressed (for example, colonial) nations is a genuine national war. It is possible today too. “Defence of the fatherland” in a war waged by an oppressed nation against a foreign oppressor is not a deception. Socialists are not opposed to “defence of the fatherland” in such a war.
    
    V. I. Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 1. The Marxist Attitude Towards War and “Defence of the Fatherland"
    
    www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/…/1.htm
    
    Now a text against those opportunists who equate every war as if it were “inter-imperialist” to defend US hegemony:
    
    Advanced European (and American) capitalism has entered a new era of imperialism. Does it follow from that that only imperialist wars are now possible? Any such contention would be absurd. It would reveal inability to distinguish a given concrete phenomenon from the sum total of variegated phenomena possible in a given era.
    
    V. I. Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 2. “Our Understanding of the New Era”
    
    www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/…/2.htm
    
    Now quotes from Lenin and Stalin against Zionism:
    
    [1] Zionism – A reactionary nationalist trend of the Jewish bourgeoisie, which had followers along the intellectuals and the more backward sections of the Jewish workers. The Zionists endeavoured to isolate the Jewish working-class masses from the general struggle of the proletariat.
    
    J. V. Stalin, 1913, Marxism and the National Question
    
    www.marxists.org/reference/archive/…/03a.htm
    
    Consolidating nationalism within a certain “justly” delimited sphere, “constitutionalising” nationalism, and securing the separation of all nations from one another by means of a special state institution—such is the ideological foundation and content of cultural-national autonomy. This idea is thoroughly bourgeois and thoroughly false. The proletariat cannot support any consecration of nationalism; on the contrary, it supports everything that helps to obliterate national distinctions and remove national barriers; it supports everything that makes the ties between nationalities closer and closer, or tends to merge nations. To act differently means siding with reactionary nationalist philistinism.
    
    Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913, Critical Remarks on the National Question, Chapter 4. “CULTURAL-NATIONAL AUTONOMY”
    
    www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/…/4.htm
    
    As you can see, separatism in itself, without an analysis of class relations, is allowing oneself to be co-opted by the bourgeoisie. A population without economic sovereignty, without an economically viable country to be independent, is also unacceptable. Many Palestinians lack basic bourgeois rights, and others don’t even have citizenship as refugees. The right to natural resources and land for workers, economic sovereignty without being under the control of another bourgeois country, is an acceptable struggle.
    
    source