File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/current, message 23


From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: A fusillade towards the past.
Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 17:57:48 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)


     Eight observations on this debate:
     1)  Louis P. is correct that the situation in Israel 
is very complex with Zionism consisting of a variety of 
shades.
     2)  It is also true that the fascist/racist element is 
increasing in strength.  This can be seen by the recent 
emergence of efforts to expel Palestinians from East 
Jerusalem along with the recent passage of the law granting 
only Orthodox conversions legitimacy within Israel, the 
Orthodox view stressing much more strongly the 
racist/ancestry aspect that Hitler himself followed when he 
tracked people down to kill them.
     3)  In a sense the class base for fascism was there in 
that most immigrants to Israel came from either petit 
bourgeois or proletarian strata.  The latter were 
responsible for the strong socialist orientation of the 
state in its early days.  The Rothschilds and their ilk did 
not go to Israel, at least not to live.
     4)  Andy Austin's remarks are not entirely correct.  
There is a legitimate case to be made that Israel's economy 
has very strongly corporatist elements, if not of the 
classically fascist variety.
     5)  Israeli parliamentary democracy has been 
marginally more democratic than was that of South Africa.  
In the latter blacks were not allowed to vote whereas Arabs 
who are citizens of Israel (and there are many) are allowed 
to vote and do so.  Of course they are a minority given the 
expulsions/fleeing of many Palestinians in 1948 and the 
state of the borders at that time and of course the 
Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza have been until 
recently completely deprived of any political or civil 
liberties whatsoever, the conditions there approximating 
those in South Africa.
     6)  The relationship between Israel and world 
capitalism, and for that matter between the Israel and the 
US is a lot more complicated than is generally thought on 
the Left.  The idea of Israel as the battering ram of 
capitalism in the Middle East is actually fairly 
ridiculous.  Especially in the 1970s with the oil crises 
many western and US capitalists considered US support for 
Israel to be a major pain in the ass that was messing up 
their relationships with the oil state leaders.  This was 
the view of the dominant "Arabists" in the US State 
Department and certainly was long the predominant view in 
Whitehall as well.  The tensions have shown up as recently 
as the current search for the "Israeli mole" in the US 
government, not to mention such incidents as the sinking of 
the USS Liberty during the 1967 war by the Israelis.  
     7)  Clearly there has been an alliance and the US has 
backed Israel when push comes to shove, but I see nothing 
that Israel has done for any US capitalist in the Middle 
East of any significance outside of those who are making 
money within Israel itself.  Israel does not enforce 
anything for the US in the Middle East, although it has 
often helped US capitalists out in other parts of the world 
such as Central America.  There the claim can be made.  
But in the Middle East, Israel is looking out for Israel, 
not US capitalists as a group.
     8)  One basis for the claim of course has to do with 
the role of the Balfour Declaration in which British Jews 
essentially purchased a promise of support for Zionism from 
Britain during World War I.  But, of course, the British 
were playing a double game and made a similar promise to 
the Arabs (the Hashemites to be precise) in the MacMahon 
Correspondence.  As all good Bolsheviks know, Britain and 
France both shafted their flunky supporters in the Middle 
East with the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 wherein they 
divvied up the goodies of the rotting Ottoman Empire among 
themselves.  The leftover struggle between the Palestinians 
and the Israelis today must be seen in the light of that 
ancient perfidy.
Barkley Rosser 
On Wed, 14 May 1997 16:03:54 -0500 slr-AT-marx.org wrote:

> Louis G.:
> 
> >Doug H objects to my defining Zionism as Jewish fascism because Jews voted
> >for David Dinkins in large numbers (while white *goyim* reactionaries,
> >presumably, did not).   Carrol, too, demurs, citing what he fears are the
> >effects of "blunting" future anti-Fascist movements.  And Gary M votes "no"
> >because, well, I'm not really sure why, but he does mention Nico Poulantzas
> >and Ernest Mandel, together with classical definitions of fascism which
> >appear to me hopelessly out of date.  
> >
> 
> Louis P: What's "out of date" is a revolutionary working class. Spain,
> Italy, Germany and Portugal had fascist regimes. Hungary, Romania, Croatia,
> France and  Austria all had fascist mass movements. Fascism arose as a
> last-ditch method to suppress proletarian revolution when parliamentary
> options would not suffice. The "classical" definition of fascism would
> certainly be appropriate if you had millions of desperate and radicalized
> workers in Western Europe demonstrating and voting for socialism. This is
> not happening, but may some time in the future as the contradictions of
> capitalism deepen. At that time the "classical" definition of fascism will
> do nicely.
> 
> 
> >I argue that, not only does Israel represent the quintessential modern
> >Fascist State, but that the nationalist mystique normally associated with
> >fascism has been replaced here by the idea of "The Jew" as the Absolute,
> >though with its own rationalist and materialist components.  In this sense,
> >the type of "tribal", "integral", or "total" nationalism (epitomized, for
> >example, by Barrels in France, Corradini in Italy, or the German *Blut und
> >Boden* school) so essential a component in fascism finds its echoe in
> >doctrines of "exceptionalism" and the notion of a "Return" of the Jew to the
> >home of his ancestors.
> 
> 
> Louis P: The Zionist movement does have a fascist dynamic. Jabotinsky tried
> to strike a deal with Hitler. In exchange for Nazi support for his Zionist
> project, he would back Hitler's anti-Bolshevism. After a while, in the face
> of Nazi anti-semitism, it became too absurd to put forward a Nazi-Zionist
> alliance. However, the Jabotinsky wing of Zionism certainly *is* fascist.
> 
> >
> >Zionism, like the fascist movements prevalent during the first half of our
> >century, is a direct offshoot of the European revolutionary tradition.  It,
> >too, began its life committed to the apocalyptic core of the Marxist idea,
> >the class struggle.  And, similar to other variants of European fascism
> >after 1918, Zionism came to fuse nationalism and syndicalism.  This
> >synthesis, too, did not long survive the winning of State power.  Zionism at
> >its core, like its counterparts throughout Europe, came to repudiate liberal
> >individualism, humanism and Marxism, philosophies based on natural rights,
> >utilitarianism or hedonism, as well as rejecting the premises of
> >parliamentary democracy. 
> 
> 
> Louis P: You are using a meat cleaver when a scalpel is necessary. Zionism
> includes Social Democratic, bourgeois liberal, conservative and fascist
> subgroupings that are constantly at war with each other ideologically. Some
> day this warfare may turn into open civil war. Initially Israel's Zionism
> was a social democratic project but has shifted rightward for the past 20
> years or so. Did Zionism come to reject "the premises of parliamentary
> democracy"? This grants much too much to the validity of the original state
> of Israel. The "parliamentary democracy" was based on the
> disenfranchisement of Palestinians, just as Afrikaner democracy was based
> on apartheid. There was never parliamentary democracy in the true sense of
> the word.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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