The politics of morality and Palestine solidarity

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The rights of ‘the people’ or ‘humanity’ may appear to be more fundamental and therefore more vital than those of a particular class (e.g. the working class), but this ignores the essential nature of the society that makes the struggle for these rights necessary.  Society is based on particular relations of production that generate the threats and the struggle to defend them.  These relations are capitalist, and the working class is the only social force that can fundamentally challenge these relations and the attacks on democratic and other rights that are generated by them.

It is not an answer to claim that the fight for ‘human rights’ can be taken up by the socialist and working class movement as a struggle to involve the widest layers of society in defence of what might appear legitimately to be human rights – the question of genocide in Gaza is one striking example – especially when it is claimed that no particular class perspective is required.  So, it might be claimed that surely denial of the right to life, most poignantly illustrated in the children murdered by the Zionist state of Israel, is one such example of human rights that transcend class and class interests.

The problem with this is that it ignores the cause of the genocide; that it lies in the nature of the Zionist state and its settler colonial role, and more fundamentally ignores that this is role is on behalf of Western, particularly US, imperialism.  The cause of the genocide does not lie beyond or transcend class politics but is a searing demonstration of the consequences of the continuation of the capitalist system.

Capitalism as the fundamental causal factor is disguised not just by mainstream media censorship and spin but by popular and inadequate understanding of what capitalism is.  It is not a case of class ‘reductionism’ to note that the ideology of Zionism and the actions and policy of the settler colonial state are inadequate explanations for the genocide, which can only be adequately explained by the support and endorsement by western imperialism.  Without this the genocide would not be taking place.

Even attributing the cause to imperialism can leave open a misunderstanding of what is happening, and the tendency to see it a something separate from capitalism, as opposed to its nature as its most advanced form that encompasses the planet. In this case, opposing imperialism can be a way of not opposing capitalism and avoiding putting forward a working class and socialist alternative.  This often begins by excluding a class perspective from the start and appealing to supposedly more fundamental humanitarian concerns that can be expressed in the demands and objectives of single issue campaigns.

This approach confuses the need for the working class to take on board opposition to all oppression and exploitation – to be the universal class that represents the new society within the old – with relegating its own class interests and the central role around which all the struggles against oppression must coalesce and unite.  The working class thus doesn’t become the leadership of such a movement but becomes simply one component of a putative coalition with different agendas, which excludes agreement on the central role of working class struggle and socialism.

The effect of watering down demands to appeal to a wider human-rights concerned audience is that it fails to identify the cause of oppression and fails to fight it effectively.  The constant humanitarian approach, that today justifies the old popular front strategy of yesteryear, has moved older activists to the default belief that this is the path to mass campaigning and led them to forget previous debates about the difference between this approach and a workers’ united front.  For younger activists all this is a completely different language that they see no need to learn.  As George Orwell once said about thought corrupting language, language can corrupt thought.

An example of the effects of this was illustrated to me in a recent conversation with a comrade in Dublin who is involved in the Palestine solidarity campaign.  When Israel, and then the US, bombed Iran she asked that fellow activists oppose the bombing.  She found no support, with opposition usually framed on the grounds that attention should not be distracted from the plight of the Palestinians.

The first thing to note is the instinctive rejection of opposing the attack on Iran (while also opposing the genocide), illustrating how previous instincts for solidarity have been severely weakened.  This is, however, entirely consistent with the policy of single issue campaigning which fails to recognise how the world actually works, meaning you have no coherent idea how it might be changed.  It means no protest against the extension of Zionist and US aggression, intended to strengthen their power – including against the Palestinians – and no intention of offering a total opposition to the forces of oppression.

It rests on the claim that what is needed is that attention is focused on the genocide, as if everyone by now doesn’t know exactly what is going on.  Those who don’t, don’t want to know, and those who do need to realise that the problem isn’t that people are not aware but that they feel powerless to do anything about it.  The repeated demonstrations and protests have not changed anything so those who previously took part, or looked on wondering whether to do so, can see no point to them except that they haven’t worked.

They have failed not because people haven’t been paying attention but because the protests are based on the illusion that an obvious humanitarian disaster will lead to those responsible for it stopping if enough people say that they should. Except appeals to those who are the problem are not a solution.  Western states are fully in support of the Zionist state; thinking this can be radically changed by ‘pressure’ simply avoids recognition that the Western states under ‘pressure’ press back by trying to criminalise opposition.

This approach simply exposes the fact that there is no understanding about the nature of the imperialist system despite often repeated references to it.  It simply leads to some taking more radical direct action that shows awareness of the problem but simply displaces responsibility to a small number of activists.

The current approach of moral condemnation allows many to claim that they are part of the solidarity movement when all they do is mouth words of outrage and nothing else.  Those supposedly in positions of influence are allowed to speak at protests while doing nothing, not because they are getting away with fooling their audience but because this is all that the movement demands.  They pay no price for their failure and the whole movement is rendered impotent by the acceptance of it.  If the movement accepts false friends, why should Western states fear false enemies?

Even to put it like this illustrates the problem.  It is not a question of changing the minds of this or that government but of challenging the interests of the imperialist states involved.  Were a conscious attempt made to go beyond ritualistic moral protest and seek to radicalise the movement politically, including by taking up the attack against Iran, the movement would just by this become a greater concern to the political leadership of the imperialist states.  Were organisation to be directed to workers’ action to prevent armed support to the Zionist state it would have both an immediate direct effect and increase the radicalisation of the movement.

Such a focus is not guaranteed to be successful but only the blind can deny current failure.  At worst we would have a more politically advanced working class movement for the future.

In one respect the slogan “we are all Palestinians”, which I really dislike, is true.  The failure of the political leadership of the Palestinian people is mirrored by the failure of the moral politics of the solidarity movement.

‘The People’ before Profit? – Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism (part 67)

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The substitution of ‘the people’ for the working class as the subject of struggle is presented In Ireland, in an almost classic case, by the People before Profit organisation, whose reformist politics are based on actions demanded from the Irish capitalist state.  While ‘people’ are to come ‘before profit’, ‘people’ replaces the working class, while coming before profit still leaves profit in place.  And anyway, aren’t capitalists people as well? 

This precept fails to bring to the fore the ‘property question’, demanded by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, whereby the profit of capital arising from exploitation of the working class is not de-prioritised but abolished!

It might be argued ‘what’s in a name’, were it not for the fact that the name was deliberated on and selected precisely in order to avoid clearer identification with the working class and socialism. Presumably because reference to ‘the people’ is more readily acceptable; postponing the task of raising awareness of the paramount role of class and denying the centrality previously accorded to it by anyone calling themselves Marxist. In asserting the priority of the people, and so rejecting the primacy of class, the organisation is setting an example to be followed, not one to be excused or ignored.

Failure to root socialist politics in the material reality of the working class leaves it rootless and prey to the material reality of other forces – we have already pointed to the role of the state in the political alternative offered by People before Profit – but the ideologies encompassing this are many.  Nationalism and racism require denial of the separate political interests of the working class – socialism is international while racism denies working class unity.  It is precisely class interest that is the alternative to these reactionary programmes, not acceptance of the prior interests of an undifferentiated people.

It is possible to fill this missing foundation with moral claims to ‘humanity’ which bases internationalism on ‘human rights’; the ‘self-determination of (capitalist) states’, or protection of minorities based simply on their being a minority.  Similarly, it is possible to oppose racism based on human rights, ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ and opposition to ‘hate’, but these are even more vague and useless than the concept of ‘the people’.  Their employment by many on the left, tellingly often paraded under the banner of a ‘social justice’ movement, is testament to a collapse into liberal (i.e. bourgeois) politics compared to which the 19th century republicanism we have been examining in the previous posts looks positively revolutionary.

If class is not primary and immediately necessary in order to take forward a movement and programme what is opened up is the intrusion of a wide variety of identity politics that makes nationality, race, or sex etc. the primary means of securing freedom from oppression. This in turn can lead to ‘intersectional’ coalitions that further divide while pretending to unify.

It leads to rejection of the view that the working class is the only social force able to create a new society and which alone can unite the oppressed through the abolition of class. It thereby simply becomes one segment of society with no reason to prioritise its role more than any other.  Petty bourgeois ideas of individual subjective identity flourish where the nebulous abstraction of ‘people’ becomes the source of power to change the world.  With this view of politics the numerous instantiations of the people come to substitute for the working class, which in turn leads to the search for a mechanism for them to do so, and which is invariably found to be the state.

In 1849 Marx criticised the naive belief in a single “will of the entire people” rather than that of a singular ruling class (or grouping of classes) that might represent its own interest as that of society as a whole, or at least of its large majority:

‘For the National-Zeitung there exists one will of the entire people, which is not the sum of contradictory wills but a united and fixed will. How is that?

That is—the will of the majority.

And what is the will of the majority?

It is the will which emerges out of the interests, life situation, and conditions of existence of the majority.

In order to have one and the same will, the members of the majority must therefore have the same interests, the same life situation, the same conditions of existence, or must be temporarily linked together in their interests, their life situation, their conditions of existence.

In plain words: the will of the people, the will of the majority, is not the will of separate estates and classes but of one single class, and of those classes and fragments of classes that are socially—i.e., industrially and commercially—subordinated to this ruling class.

“What should we say to that?” Is the will of the entire people the will of the ruling class?’

(Marx, Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 8 p272, Articles from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung)

Marx, in The Civil War in France, noted that the Paris Commune ‘was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative, even by the great bulk of the Paris middle class—shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants—the wealthy capitalists alone excepted. The Commune had saved them by a sagacious settlement of that ever-recurring cause of dispute among the middle classes themselves—the debtor and creditor accounts.’

It was necessary then (as it is now) for the working class to be the ‘universal’ class and to represent the needs of a society oppressed by the prevailing system: ‘For the first time in history the petty and moyenne middle class  has openly rallied round the workmen’s Revolution, and proclaimed it as the only means of their own salvation and that of France!.’ (Marx, The Civil War in France, Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol. 22 p336 & 496)

This was not something that Marx learned only from the Commune but was something strikingly demonstrated by it, particularly the need to win the majority of the population that was then composed of peasants.  How this need is addressed today depends on the particular class composition of society, but this requires that the idea of a unified people is abandoned and the various classes and their interests identified.  In relation to the peasantry, for example, it did not mean strengthening or enlarging their individual property, while a programme based on the demands of ‘the people’ would leave this wide open.

In the writings through which he and Engels formulated their particular politics, The German Ideology, he argued that ‘For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.’ For the working class, this is realised through the abolition of all classes, including itself.

Marx identified this early in his political development (in 1843) before becoming a ‘Marxist’ and expressed himself in the language of the philosophy of the time: ‘No class of civil society can play this role without arousing a moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a moment in which it fraternises and merges with society in general, becomes confused with it and is perceived and acknowledged as its general representative, a moment in which its claims and rights are truly the claims and rights of society itself, a moment in which it is truly the social head and the social heart.’ (Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right)

For this to happen the working class must win others as allies to its programme.  This can only be done if, in the words of The Communist Manifesto, socialists ‘disdain to conceal their views and aims.’  It will not be done by pretending that its views are those of an amorphous ‘people’.  You can only rally others to your flag if it is your flag.

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‘The People’ vs the Working Class 

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Republicanism and Communism differed on the nature of the revolution that was required and so disagreed on the social force that would accomplish it. For the former it was ‘the people’ and for the latter the ‘proletarians of all countries’, which should ‘unite.’

Republicans accused communists of “ignoring the rest of humanity” while they viewed the people as the non-elite sections of the population, which may or may not have included the capitalist class, depending on the particular republican view.  Karl Heinzen, for example, did not see the new bourgeoisie as the enemy.

Marx argued that “The people . . . was a vague expression” to be replaced “by a definite one, the proletariat . . .”  The attempt to use the former combined various classes with an assumed common interest so that any separation within them was an unwarranted division that set back their common interests.

Even were a “privileged class” identified such a view failed to identify the different interests of the ‘non-privileged’ classes as if they had common class interests, including, for example, the working class, independent artisans, peasants and other petty bourgeois classes.

Only an identification of class and their associated interests could specify their material interests that might unite them or divide them. Such an analysis was inevitable as soon as one identified the particular class interest of the “privileged class”, which might prove to be varied – feudal princes or modern capitalists for example – which would then identify the subordinate class(es) they oppressed and exploited.  Talk of “the people’ obscured the interests of all classes, particularly the subordinate ones, and most importantly for the creation of a new society, concealed or blurred the interests of the working class.

Marx argued that failure to identify the separate interests of the different classes making up “the people” resulted in a false understanding of contemporary political realities.  So, in the elections to the French Constituent National Assembly in 1848 the republicans’ “imaginary people” were replaced by the “real people” the majority of whom voted for the candidates of the anti-republicans and elected the representatives of the bourgeoisie and landowners.

‘Accordingly, when a struggle is impending, they do not need to examine the interests and positions of the different classes. They do not need to weigh their own resources too critically. They have merely to give the signal and the people, with all its inexhaustible resources, will fall upon the oppressors.’  (Marx in Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 11 p 65)

In the event of defeat ‘then either the fault lies with pernicious sophists, who split the indivisible people into different hostile camps, or the army was too brutalised and blinded to comprehend that the pure aims of democracy are also the best thing for it, or the whole thing has been wrecked by a detail in its execution, or else an unforeseen accident has this time spoilt the game. In any case, the democrat comes out of the most disgraceful defeat just as immaculate as he was innocent when he went into it, with the newly-won conviction that he is bound to win, not that he himself and his party have to give up the old standpoint, but, on the contrary, that conditions have to ripen to suit him.’ (Marx in Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 11 p 65-66)

Politics based on the purported interests of ‘the people’ create imaginary interests that are not shared.  Marx gives the example in France of its famous fraternité, which in the 1848 revolution ‘found its true, unadulterated and prosaic expression in civil war, civil war in its most terrible aspect, the war of labour against capital.’ (Marx in Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 7 p 147)

Marx accused the republican, Karl Heinzen, of invoking the solemn concept of ‘humanity’ to distract from the fact that while individuals may adopt a position that does not accord with their class position, this cannot be true of ‘whole classes which are based on economic conditions independent of their own will.’ (Marx in Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 6 p 330)

The result is to deny the reality of class struggle, which has the result not of abolishing it but of confirming the interest of the bourgeoisie.  In 1850 Marx and Engels wrote that:

‘The struggles of the various classes and factions of the classes against each other, whose progress through their individual stages of development actually constitutes the revolution, are in the view of our evangelists only the unfortunate consequences of the existence of divergent systems, whilst in reality the reverse is true, the existence of various systems is the consequence of the existence of the class struggles. This itself shows that the authors of the manifesto deny the existence of the class struggles. Under the pretext of combating dogmatists, they do away with all specific content, every specific party point of view, and forbid the individual classes to formulate their interests and demands vis-à-vis the other classes.  They expect them to forget their conflicting interests and to become reconciled under the flag of a vagueness as shallow as it is unblushing, which only conceals beneath the apparent reconciliation of all party interests the domination of the interest of one party—the bourgeois party.’  (Marx in Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 10 p 530)

Concepts such as ‘the people’ are unable to identify the specific interest of classes and are very rarely appropriate terms of analysis.  Their use usually denotes a false unity of interest behind which lies the interests of the capitalist class.  This can also appear credible because the social system, the dominant mode of production, aligns with the interest of the dominant class.  So, the claim to represent or act in the interests of the people is also the primary ideological justification of the capitalist state.

The concept of the people is incapable of exposing the claims of the state to act on behalf of the people because it rejects the separate interest of the working class.  At most it permits the view that the state is imperfectly or unsatisfactorily acting on behalf of the people but that it can be made to act in a way that remedies this.  This is the basis for the view that the state can reform the social system in such a way as to truly implement the interests of ‘the people’ and therefore that the state itself can be made to carry this out by reforming itself.  It is what Marxist call reformism, which denies that a replacement of capitalism and its state is necessary or possible.

Part 66 of Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism

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Socialism and the inadequacy of republicanism

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A photograph of the Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, London, 1848

Marx supported the struggle for democratic rights because he believed that a bourgeois republic with political freedoms would make the class struggle between capitalists and workers arising from social inequality more transparent, less disguised by monarchical rule.  It would weaken the legitimacy of authority more generally and stimulate working class political development.  Without this freedom the working class would not develop the political capacity to become the ruling class.

Bruno Leipold, in his book Citizen Marx, notes that Marx adopted many of the democratic demands of republican revolutionaries that constituted these political freedoms, ensuring that implementation of democratic rights was not restricted by measures from the bourgeois state specifically designed to nullify them. (Citizen Marx p244). He notes that this enthusiasm led to what proved to be over-optimistic expectations of what would follow as a result.  So, Marx and Engels appeared to endorse the view in 1846 that the introduction of the Peoples Charter would mean that the working class “will become the ruling class of England” (Marx and Engles Collected Works Vo 6 p 58, ‘Address of German Democratic Communists of Brussels to O’Connor, quoted in Citizen Marx p245)

In The Communists and Karl Heinzen Engels stated that ‘the Communists for the time being rather take the field as democrats themselves in all practical party matters. In all civilised countries, democracy has as its necessary consequence the political rule of the proletariat, and the political rule of the proletariat is the first condition for all communist measures.’ (Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 6 p 299)

Leipold discusses their optimistic expectations of universal (manhood) suffrage in his book (p 245-249) but he also notes Marx’s view of the experience of the French Second Republic, which originated in a democratic revolution but which was usurped by a coup d’état led by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who later declared himself Emperor. This experience had shown that although “bourgeois rule as the outcome of universal suffrage . . . is the meaning of the bourgeois constitution” their democratic commitment crumbles the “moment that the content of this suffrage, of this sovereign will, is no longer bourgeois rule.” On “March 10 universal suffrage declared itself directly against the rule of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered by outlawing universal suffrage.” (Citizen Marx p 246 and 247). Marx was therefore wrong when he claimed that “The classes whose social slavery the constitution is to perpetuate, proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, it puts in possession of political power through universal suffrage.” (Marx The Class Struggles in France, Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 10 p79)

In country after country, we can see the fraudulent character of bourgeois democracy.  In the United States measures to suppress voting are routinely employed while the constitution that is so revered contains significant undemocratic institutions and practices.  The political system is dominated by massive amounts of big business money and individual capitalist wealth.  The repression unleashed by Trump and the multiple law and order organs of the state has demonstrated its class nature and renders pretence of its hallowed democracy cynical.  In Europe, triumvirates of Starmer, Macron. Scholtz or Merz participate in a proxy war that no one voted for and are either deeply unpopular and/or elected on historically low votes but endowed nevertheless with full powers.

The defective features of bourgeois democracy are particular to each country but their universal existence in one form or another is due to the capitalist character of society and the social power this entails for the capitalist class and its retinue of helpers.

Marx was later to learn that a different form of state was required to break the power of these forces and embody real democracy.  This was discovered in the Paris Commune of 1871, when the working classes of that city overturned the ruling authorities and imposed their own rule.  Marx noted that:

‘The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence.’

‘While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself and restored to the responsible agents of society. Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes . . .’

‘It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour.’

‘Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery.’

Republicanism promised the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ but only social emancipation can deliver it.

Part 65 of Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism

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Marx’s critique of moral politics and the politics of morality

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Marx’s criticism of the republican politics of Heinzen was just as cutting as that of Engels, with the title of his writing setting out its nature and the necessary response – Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality. He described it as ‘constantly preaching morality and constantly offending against it’ and again contrasted the approach of communism to that of republicanism:

‘Incidentally, if the bourgeoisie is politically, that is, by its state power, “maintaining injustice in property relations”, it is not creating it. The “injustice in property relations” which is determined by the modern division of labour, the modern form of exchange, competition, concentration, etc., by no means arises from the political rule of the bourgeois class, but vice versa, the political rule of the bourgeois class arises from these modern relations of production which bourgeois economists proclaim to be necessary and eternal laws.’

This type of analysis was not a question of simply understanding the world better but informing to what extent it was possible to change it, thus informing the correct approach to doing so:

‘If therefore the proletariat overthrows the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory will only be temporary, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in the year 1794, as long as in the course of history, in its “movement”, the material conditions have not yet been created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and therefore also the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie.’

Where Heinzen declared that “You are trying to make social questions the central concern of our age, and you fail to see that there is no more important social question than that of monarchy or republic.” Marx said that ‘The question of property, depending on the different levels of development of industry, has always been the vital question for a particular class. In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the point at issue was the abolition of feudal property relations, the question of property was the vital question for the bourgeois class. In the 19th century, when it is a matter of abolishing bourgeois property relations, the question of property is a vital question for the working class . . . It so happens that the “social questions” which have been “dealt with in our own day” increase in importance in proportion as we leave behind us the realm of absolute monarchy.’

Today, the realm of absolute monarchs for the vast majority of countries has passed and the spread of capitalism has created a larger and larger working class that puts the social question to the fore.  If working class revolution is not currently on the agenda in any country it is not because the class struggle between the working class and capitalism does not exist but because the bourgeoisie has had a relatively long period of winning it.  Because the question of absolute monarchy was on the agenda in Marx’s time and capitalism and the working class were undeveloped, Marx had to reckon on how to orient in these circumstances so that the working class could take an independent position and advance its own interests.  The latter is the task today in an analogous situation in so far as the forces seeking to do so are again weak, although for very different reasons.

It is not therefore the case that the 19th century is a foreign land buried in a past epoch but that Marxists today can learn from the original Marx in how to defend and advance working class politics when it is politically weak.  This includes rejection of the claimed alternatives – in their approach to understanding society and identifying the forces that will create a new one – that existed then and are put forward now.  They are not exactly the same, but neither are they wholly different.

So, while Marxists see the property question as primary, the bourgeoisie today turns its back on it when presenting its own ‘solutions’ to the social question. Marx noted that ‘Nowhere . . . does social inequality obtrude itself more harshly than in the eastern states of North America, because nowhere is it less disguised by political inequality.’ He notes that it is here, and in other ‘constitutional or republican representative state[s], that the “question of property” has become the most important “social question”, it is very much the narrow need of the German bourgeois that interjects: the question of the monarchy is the most important “social question of the time”. It is in a very similar way that Dr. List, in the foreword to his Nationalökonomie* expresses his so naïve irritation that pauperism and not protective tariffs should have been “misconstrued” as the most important social question of our time.’

Today the question of tariffs is again to the fore – for the location of the largest capitalist firms across the world; the rivalry of the various capitalist powers through the creation of huge trading blocs, including the question of Brexit; and the pursuit of trade wars by the strongest power in an attempt to prop up its eroding supremacy.  In these circumstances the modern reactionary alternative, that in the mid-19th century was embodied in the petty bourgeois politics of artisan workers and the peasantry, is now embodied in the idea of the resurrection of national sovereignty and equality between nations, which has never existed and never will.

Marx noted that the 19th century version of middle class reform was ‘just a matter of avoiding extremes! What rational political constitution would be compatible with these extremes, these oh so abominable extremes! . . .  take a look at Heinzen’s “federal republic” with “social institutions” and its seven measures for the “humanisation of society”. We find that each citizen is assured a “minimum” of wealth below which he cannot fall, and a maximum of wealth is prescribed which he may not exceed’.

‘Has not Herr Heinzen solved all the difficulties, then, by reiterating in the form of state decrees the pious desire of all good citizens that no person should have too little and none, indeed, too much, and simply by so doing made it reality?  And in the same manner, which is as simple as it is splendid, Herr Heinzen has resolved all economic conflicts. He has regulated property according to the rational principles corresponding to an honest bourgeois equity. And please do not object that the “rational rules” of property are precisely the “economic laws” on whose cold-blooded inevitability all well-meaning “measures” will necessarily founder . . .’

These measures promised by republicans, which Marx ridicules as impossible under capitalism, were prompted to address the oppression of the absolute monarchy and the state then existing:

‘The violently reactionary role played by the rule of the princes only proves that in the pores of the old society a new society has taken shape, which furthermore cannot but feel the political shell—the natural covering of the old society—as an unnatural fetter and blow it sky-high.  The more advanced these new elements of social decomposition, the more reactionary will even the most harmless attempt at conservation by the old political power appear. The reaction of the rule of the princes, instead of proving that it creates the old society, proves rather that its day is over as soon as the material conditions of the old society have become obsolete.’

While it was not possible for the working class to pose its own solution immediately, Marx defended them in independently supporting steps towards the political freedoms that they could employ to further their own cause:

‘The workers know very well that it is not just politically that the bourgeoisie will have to make broader concessions to them than the absolute monarchy, but that in serving the interests of its trade and industry it will create, willy-nilly, the conditions for the uniting of the working class, and the uniting of the workers is the first requirement for their victory.’

‘They can and must accept the bourgeois revolutions a precondition for the workers’ revolution. However, they cannot for a moment regard it as their ultimate goal.’

Today, the ‘violently reactionary role played by the rule of the capiatalist class only proves that in the pores of the old society a new society has taken shape, which furthermore cannot but feel the political shell—the natural covering of the old society—as an unnatural fetter and blow it sky-high.’

These current political forms of capitalism are embodied in the nation state and their regional and world-wide alliances. They are incapable of serving the interest of humanity and are instead the mechanisms by which inter-capitalist rivalry threatens to precipitate a world war from which humanity may not emerge again, except perhaps as a species put back millennia in its civilisation.

The political shell to be broken today is this system of states; ‘its day is over’ and ‘the material conditions of the old society have become obsolete’.  It is not, however, opposition to globalisation and the utopian pursuit of a return of national sovereignty that is the solution.  Workers should reject the reactionary calls of nationalism, the shutting of borders and opposition to immigrant workers. Nor should it swallow the lies that their lives and freedoms are safe with their own ruling class but threatened by that of foreign rulers, so that they must unite with the former in war against the latter. Capitalist war is always draped in the robes of freedom and justice and the war cries today against Russia on behalf of the Ukrainian state are no different that the pleas on behalf of poor little imperialist Belgium during the horrors of the First World War.

Just as 150 years ago, the development of capitalism creates the ‘conditions for the uniting of the working class, and the uniting of the workers is the first requirement for their victory.’  We should not reject the creation of these conditions internationally in order to return to a past nationalism. Socialism is international or it is not socialism and we should not seek to support the division of the world working class but go beyond the unity it has achieved.

Marx’s progress beyond 19th century republicanism was based on the materialist analysis of the development of society at that time, and so it should be today.  His alternative was not moralistic criticism but the working class and its political movement.

Part 64 of Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism

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The imperialist war against Iran

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Before looking at the ceasefire in the imperialist war against Iran, including its breaking just announced as this is written, we should note the hypocrisy.  The Israeli attack on Iran was a flagrant breach of international law for which Russia has been widely and repeatedly condemned, with the horrendous war supported and prolonged by massive injections of weapons and funding from western imperialism to Ukraine.  The unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia have significantly impacted on the living standards of the working class in Europe, which has committed to massive rearmament that brings us closer to an even greater conflict.

In Gaza, the attacks by the imperialist proxy involve genocide while imperialism has defended Israel’s actions as self-defence and provided the means to implement it.  Opposition to genocide has been criminalised across Europe and the US and equated to terrorism.

The attack on Iran by Israel and then the United States has been defended by posing the issue as Iranian possession of nuclear weapons it doesn’t have, which Israel does. Iranian aggression is condemned while ignoring Zionist aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran.  Immediately after the Israeli and US attacks the leaders of the European Union called for restraint, de-escalation and for Iran to enter negotiations; ignoring that Iran had never left them, that Isreal and the US had torpedoed existing talks, and that both had just escalated attacks that were against the sacred international law the European leaders said they were defending in Ukraine.  While media focus was on Iran Zionism continued its genocide in Gaza.

There would seem no reason to believe anything the imperialists say, except of course part of the left has accepted their rhetoric in relation to Ukraine, fully supporting the imperialist proxy and the provision of massive financial and military resources.

These wars are hardly unconnected and it is widely understood, even to the consumers of the dumbed-down coverage of the BBC and RTE, that behind them lies the growing conflict between the United States and China, also expressed in the trade war by the US intended to weaken China and its allies and further subordinate its allies in Europe etc.  The eruption and now sudden attempt at ending (or rather suspension) of the war against Iran is inexplicable without understanding this.

This has not prevented sections of the left taking the side of one camp or the other in the inter-imperialist conflict while still claiming either to be against ‘campism’ or against all imperialism.  The really stupid find themselves both supporting the actions of Western imperialism while verbally denouncing it for not doing enough in Ukraine and doing too much in Palestine and Iran.  Apparently imperialism can play a progressive and reactionary role at the same time. Some reached the bottom with their opposition to the dictatorship of Assad leading them to welcome the victory of a new dictatorship of western backed Islamist terrorists.

The attack on Iran was thus one consequence of this conflict with the support of US imperialism vital for Israeli action against its regional rival, which is aligned with Russia and China, if not in the formal or tight relationship that the West has with Israel and Ukraine.  Of course, Israel has its own agenda but it is subordinated to that of US imperialism, with differences mainly arising over secondary issues of method and presentation.

Left supporters of Ukraine among the left will share in its defeat by Russia, having abandoned an independent position, while the left supporters of Russia and China have suffered their own through the defeat of Hamas in Gaza, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria and the weakening of the Iranian state, again without signalling a socialist position in relation to them.

The attack by Israel, agreed and supported by the US, was intended to remove the potential for Iran to recoup some recent losses to its ‘axis of resistance’ and to degrade its position so that it could no longer present as a potential rival hegemon in the region.  Having done this it might be possible to enable regime change, or more likely simply wreck and ruin the country.  The pivot to China, which has been declared as US policy would thus go through west Asia.

US interests require that war with Iran should be a stepping stone and way station to pressing on China and not an obstacle, while for Israel the point about Iran is that it is its immediate and main rival.  The interests of the US and Israel are not therefore identical.  For the US, weakening Iran weakens the alliance that encompasses Russia and China, in doing so revealing its lack of coherence and strength, but Iran is not a threat to the US and there is no principled reason that an accommodation could not be found with it, where Iran to accept its role as a subordinate to the United States.

It is quite possible that the US strike on Iran’s nuclear sites have not achieved the complete success claimed by Trump but that this is less important than the Israeli weakening of Iran’s overall military capability and the deterrence to further escalatory response by a chastened regime.  Claims have been made that the US attack took something of the same form as the retaliation by Iran on US bases – that they were telegraphed and performative to prevent escalation but enough to allow Trump to claim victory while Iran could claim to maintain the credibility of its military deterrence.

The initial attack by Israel achieved significant effects but it has not neutered Iranian capacity to strike back, while the Iranian response has been to demonstrate this capacity while seeking not to provoke a US intervention.  The difficulty is that Israel, just like Ukraine, has an incentive to seek such escalation in order to further involve the US in the war; so we are left with the media obsession with the decision making process of the moron that is Donald Trump and his administration about what exactly it intends to do.

Iran is a very large country with nine times the population of Israel.  That Israel can attack it is solely due to its client status of the US.  While the US could provoke a war with Russia by using the bodies of Ukrainians, Israel cannot invade Iran and neither can the US, not without a war on a scale dwarfing that of Iraq.  Even a campaign of missile strikes and bombing would weaken the US in relation to the resources it can leverage against China.

In this dynamic the unambiguous losers are the people of Iran, oppressed by a brutal theocratic regime, and assailed from outside by imperialist sanctions, missiles and bombs.  They had no say in starting the war or in responding to it but, like the rest of us, can immediately only seek to protect themselves and seek a way to deal with their own ruling class and its state.

The responsibility of socialists is to oppose the imperialist attack on Iran and to demand that their own countries stop supporting it, including the ending of all support to the Zionist state.  This is true in the US, UK, and EU; and also in Ireland where the weasel words of the Irish government are simply a different flavour of hypocrisy to the rest of the imperialist bloc it belongs to.

The point of solidarity with Iran is not to support the reactionary regime and its state but to protect its people and to create the conditions in which the Iranian working class can carry out its own regime change.  Only the working class around the world has a united interest in ending imperialist war, which cannot be done by supporting any of the rival capitalist powers, which in doing so surrenders its political independence. Ending the war through such a movement would have very different consequences to a temporary reprieve arising from any imperialist imposed ‘peace.’

Engels and republicanism

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Marx’s materialist understanding of history identified the contradictions of capitalist society, the struggle of classes and the alternative of working class rule.  Republican critics of communism rejected all of this with criticisms that have been repeated ad nauseum since.  The Italian republican Mazzini damned it for reducing man to existing in “the cold, dry, imperfect theory of economists, nothing more than a producing machine,” while the German republican Karl Heinzen stated that “humanity is not always determined by ‘class’ or the size of their wallet”. (Quoted in Citizen Marx p265)

Both Engels and Marx criticised Heinzen, and not just from a theoretical perspective but with a view to the political consequences of his approach, which opposed the materialist analysis that was the foundation of their politics.  Engels accused him of not appreciating where the political struggle was starting from and what should therefore be done:

‘Scarcely had the way back been cut off for him when he declared the necessity of an immediate revolution. Instead of studying conditions in Germany, taking overall stock of them and deducing from this what progress, what development and what steps were necessary and possible, instead of obtaining for himself a clear picture of the complex situation of the individual classes in Germany with regard to each other and to the government and concluding from this what policy was to be followed, instead, in a word, of accommodating himself to the development of Germany, Herr Heinzen quite unceremoniously demands that the development of Germany should accommodate itself to him” (Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 6 p292-293)

He criticised his argument about the nature of the revolution that was required, whether a purely political one or also a social one was necessary:

‘He declares the princes to be the chief authors of all poverty and distress. This assertion is not only ridiculous but exceedingly damaging. Herr Heinzen could not flatter the German princes, those impotent and feeble-minded puppets, more than by attributing to them fantastic, preternatural, daemonic omnipotence.  If Herr Heinzen asserts that the princes can do so much evil, he is thereby also conceding them the power to perform as many good works. The conclusion this leads to is not the necessity of a revolution but the pious desire for a virtuous prince, for a good Emperor Joseph . . . the exploitation by the landowners and capitalists is after all surely responsible for nineteen-twentieths of all the misery in Germany!’

The role of the revolutionary party (understood as a general movement) was therefore different:

‘Its task is to reveal the oppression of the proletarians, small peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie, for in Germany these constitute the “people”, by the bureaucracy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie; how not only political but above all social oppression has come about, and by what means it can be eliminated; its task is to show that the conquest of political power by the proletarians, small peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie is the first condition for the application of these means’. (Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 6 pp292-293, 294)

The republican demands of Heinzen, including his social ones, were therefore inadequate, not least because for him they were ‘not a means but an end.’   In fact, as we saw in the previous post, in so far as these arrested economic development – ‘free competition’ – without seeking to go beyond it they were reactionary:

‘All measures, therefore, which start from the basis of private property, and which are nevertheless directed against free competition, are reactionary and tend to restore more primitive stages in the development of property, and for that reason they must finally be defeated once more by competition and result in the restoration of the present situation.’

What made the demands of the communists appropriate was their arising from existing social conditions and their role within a continuing working class struggle (while those of Heinzen represented petty bourgeois politics, of the peasantry, for example).  This included that they necessarily had to be considered in an international context:

‘Herr Heinzen—one of the most ignorant men of this century—may, of course, not know that the property relations of any given era are the necessary result of the mode of production and exchange of that era. Herr Heinzen may not know that one cannot transform large-scale landownership into small-scale without the whole pattern of agriculture being transformed, and that otherwise large-scale landownership will very rapidly re-assert itself.’

‘Herr Heinzen may not know that a country as industrially dependent and subservient as Germany can never presume to undertake on its own account a transformation of its property relations other than one that is in the interests of the bourgeoisie and of free competition.’

‘In short: with the Communists these measures have sense and reason because they are not conceived as arbitrary measures but as consequences which will necessarily and of themselves ensue from the development of industry, agriculture, trade and communications, from the development of the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat which is dependent on these; which will ensue not as definitive measures but as transitory ones, mesures de salut public arising from the transitory struggle between the classes itself.’ 

Engels therefore condemned the republican demands of Heinzen for being arbitrary arising from ‘obtusely bourgeois visions of putting the world to rights; because there is no mention of a connection between these measures and historical development’ (Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 6 p 296)

Engels quotes communist criticism of Heinzen that they ‘have made fun of his sternly moral demeanour and mocked all those sacred and sublime ideas, virtue, justice, morality, etc., which Herr Heinzen imagines form the basis of all society.’  He criticises politics based on morality instead of recognition that this morality arises from society and that it is the material reality of this from which one must start. (Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 6 p 301)

We are left with the seeming incongruous republican politics of a call for immediate revolution based on a limited democratic programme that, in so far as it seeks to go further, is out of kilter with the state of German development and what it can likely support.  Engels acknowledges the latter by stating that:

‘. . . the Communists for the time being rather take the field as democrats themselves in all practical party matters. In all civilised countries, democracy has as its necessary consequence the political rule of the proletariat, and the political rule of the proletariat is the first condition for all communist measures.’ (The optimism involved in this is take up in a future post)

Engels goes on: ‘Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat in this struggle and the theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat.’ (Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 10 p 299 and 304)

The reality of working class struggle and revolution in less developed capitalist societies that in themselves are not ripe for socialism, not least because they have a relatively small working class, has thrown up enduring controversy and countless debates.  In relation to them, this early article by Engels retains its relevance through its general approach compared to an earlier revolutionary republican – not socialist – alternative.

Part 63 of Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism

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Marx and Republicanism

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A recently published book has examined the influence of republicanism on Marx’s politics and explained that it was the main rival to socialism for the allegiance of the developing working class for much of the 19the century.  (Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, Bruno Leipold) It explains that socialism at this time was largely anti-political, in that it thought political struggle was irrelevant to the emancipation of the working class, and that it was Marx (and Engels) combination of socialism with political conceptions from republican political thought that propelled them to elaborate their politics, including the fight for the political rule of the working class (see Marx’s own statement of what he considered his own contribution to be).

In doing so they superseded both non/anti-political socialism and radical democracy that did not seek the overthrow of bourgeois private property.  Marx condemned those republicans who see “the root of every evil in the fact that their opponent and not themselves is at the helm of the state.  Even radical and revolutionary politicians seek the root of evils not in the nature of the state, but in the particular state form, which they wish to replace with a different state form.”  As Leipold notes, Marx thought that ‘Workers thus needed to move on from seeing themselves as “soldiers of the republic” and become “soldiers of socialism.” (The King of Prussia and Social Reform, Marx quoted in Citizen Marx p161 and 163).

It would therefore be a mistake, in acknowledging the contribution of republican thought to Marx, to give it a centrality to his politics that it doesn’t have, which danger depends of course on what might be claimed for it.

It should be noted that Marx was to develop his ideas on the political power of the working class and the state considerably from 1844 and also that the vast majority of what is called socialism today, including the claims of many ‘Marxists’, wholly propagate what Marx criticises here, often professing to agree with him while doing so.

Leipold argues that Marx moved beyond republicanism after coming to an awareness of the shortcomings of existing republican revolutions in America and France; from meeting prominent socialists and social critics in Paris, including reading the writings of his future friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels; and meeting French and German workers in their various underground communist worker organisations. One result was Marx’s identification of the role of labour in human flourishing, rather than overturning the exclusion of workers from full political participation, which was the centre of republican politics (see the previous posts on alienation).  The emancipation of the working class was not only its alone since “in their emancipation is contained universal emancipation”. (Marx, quoted Citizen Marx p175).

This did not mean the exclusion of the fight for political rights, which Marx and Engels both thought was vital to and for the political development of the working class, but that democracy ‘had become completely inextricable from social issues so that “purely political democracy” was now impossible and in fact “Democracy nowadays is communism”’ as Engels put it in 1845. (Citizen Marx p 172).

This new political commitment led to disputes with republican revolutionary thinkers even before Marx and Engels’ writings on the nature of their communism had been fully published and made known.  Many of the criticisms made by their opponents are still common so the responses to them are still important to a presentation of their politics today.

Their political opponents at this time also consisted of a diverse group that they termed “true socialists”, who substituted moral claims for class struggle, and eschewed the fight for political rights that Marx considered “the terrain for the fight for revolutionary emancipation” even if it was “by no means emancipation itself.”  (Citizen Marx p190).  These rights included trial by jury, equality before the law, the abolition of the corvée system, freedom of the press, freedom of association and true representation.” (Citizen Marx p213).

Through this approach Marx and Engels were able to rebut the criticism of radical republicans that they were effectively on the side of reaction in the political struggle against autocracy.  In turn they denounced republican revolutionaries as petty bourgeois who demanded a ‘social republic’ or ‘democratic republic’ that did not “supersede [the] extremes. Capital and wage-labour” but “weaken their antagonism and transform them into harmony”. (Marx 1851-52, quoted in Citizen Marx p222).

Republican politics was petty bourgeois because it did not reflect the potential collective working class ownership of the forces of production, which required such ownership because of their increased scale and division of labour, but instead sought the widening of individual property ownership. This reflected the still large number of artisan workers whose individual ownership and employment of their own labour was being undermined by expanding workshop and factory production.  For Marx, to seek to go back to craft production was a harkening to a past that could not be resurrected and was thus reactionary.

The grounds for Marx and Engels criticism of revolutionary republicans and non/anti-political socialists was their materialist analysis of existing conditions (which various forces were opposed to) and which included identification of the social force – the working class – that was to overthrow these conditions and inaugurate the new society.  In the previous posts of this series, we have set out how these conditions were to be understood – centring on the developing socialisation of the productive forces – and the necessary role of the working class.  These grounds required the prior development of capitalism and the irreplaceable role of the working class in the further development of the socialisation of production.

The alternative to capitalism developed by Marx was therefore an alternative to capitalism, not to some prior feudal or semi-feudal society; not dependent on some overarching moral ideal or future model of society, and not on the basis of the degree of oppression suffered by different classes or parts of the population under existing conditions.

In the first case there would be no, or only a very small, proletariat as a result of underdeveloped forces of production, which would limit their existing socialisation and therefore preclude collective and cooperative production.  In the second, Marx and Engels were averse to ideal models arising from individual speculation about the future form of society, and were aware that the application of moral criteria to the construction of a new society was subject to the constraints of the existing development of the forces of production and attendant social relations.  In the final case, there were more oppressed classes than the working class, the peasantry for example, which until recently was also much more numerous, and more oppressed layers of society, including women, and working class women in particular.

Their ideas and politics were therefore not crafted to be superficially appealing but to be appealing because they corresponded to reality, one that was to be humanised by a class that itself had to undergo as much change as the society it was called upon to transform.  As Marx and Engels noted in The German Ideology:

‘Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.’

In his book ‘Citizen Marx’ Leipold notes that the implications of this were “a hard pill for workers to swallow.” (p243): 

‘But we say to the workers and the petty bourgeois: it is better to suffer in modern bourgeois society, which by its industry creates the material means for the foundation of a new society that will liberate you all, than to revert to a bygone form of society, which, on the pretext of saving your classes, thrusts the entire nation back into medieval barbarism.’

Part 62 of Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism.

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Visiting Munich and encountering Palestine

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My first walk in Munich city centre from Sendlinger Tor U-Bahn station led me to the town hall in Marienplatz from which three banners hung, all upholding Western imperialism.

The first was the flag of Israel, the Zionist state carrying out the most visible genocide in history now promoted by the city authorities where the Nazi party was founded and where it maintained its headquarters until 1945.  Where Hitler launched his beer hall putsch in 1923 and the first concentration camp was created at Dachau.

The second was the flag of Ukraine, home to the most violent neo-Nazi movement in Europe, once recognised by the Western liberal media but now buried by that same media and celebrated as a leading section of the Ukrainian ‘resistance’ which Western liberalism now parades as the vanguard of the fight for democracy.  The banner of Ukraine hangs appropriately beside that of Israel as its President Zelensky has hailed the Zionist state as a model for Ukraine to emulate.

The middle banner was promotion of Mayors for Peace, which neatly parades the hypocrisy of Western imperialism and its liberal pieties.

Of course, Germany is not defined only by its Nazi past or the proclivity of the German state to sanction genocide.  A couple of recent opinion polls record that a majority of Germans oppose arms exports to Israel and oppose the genocide, with nearly 60 percent also opposed to supplying Ukraine with Taurus missiles.  Even Munich has a different history, having been home to a short-lived workers revolution in 1919.

There is more than one Germany and I was pleased when I later came across a Palestine solidarity stall on Sendlinger Straße on my way to Marienplatz again.  The Palestinian woman at the stall told me how difficult it was to carry out campaigning – “up in court” all the time – and that there was a demonstration later in the afternoon.

The rally had around 500 people, which isn’t large for a city the size of Munich, with a large number being what I took to be Palestinian.  A number of speeches were made, all in German except for one in English by a young man of Palestinian extraction who appeared German by his accent.

He gave a powerful speech condemning Western imperialist responsibility for the genocide and condemning the settler colonial Zionist state based on his own family’s story of dispossession.  He condemned the demand that the Palestinians resist along the approved lines of Western liberals and stated accurately that asking politely for their rights would make no difference.  He called for workers, their unions and students to take action.  He also declared that all types of resistance were justified.

Some people can speak powerfully with emotion without losing the ability to articulate their argument and he was such a speaker.  His anger was palpable but so was the feeling that he spoke with a degree of desperation. This is not a criticism, since the plight of the Palestinian people is desperate.  It is not possible to argue that what they are enduring is genocide with no sign of it ending soon, without acknowledging that their situation is urgent and tragic.

The most recent muffled admonishment of Israel by the likes of Starmer and Mertz is even more nauseous than their previous hypocrisy for it signals that not even the grudging and muted acceptance of the reality of genocide will see them take any relevant action.  The speaker’s knowledge that it is Western imperialism that is ultimately responsible makes such awareness unavoidable, which is why he called for an anti-imperialist struggle.

Unfortunately, no anti-imperialist struggle is currently taking place.  Some think one is being carried out by Russia (in Ukraine) and by China but their indifference to the suffering of the Palestinian people simply illustrates the reactionary character of these capitalist states.  That some fake socialists think Western imperialism can actually play an anti-imperialist role (in Ukraine!) demonstrates the bizarre and crooked character of their ’anti-imperialism’.

Liberals have criticised Netanyahu because he has not set out a plan for the day after – when his war aims have been achieved.  The problem is that the issue is not Netanyahu and what we are looking at is not a war but a genocide. The Zionist ‘solution’ is not what comes after genocide but is genocide. In this sense there is no ‘day after’, which will simply be expulsion of those who haven’t been killed, however arranged, however comprehensive and to whatever timeline adopted.

The speaker in Munich understood that the meaning of genocide was the end of any pretence to a two state solution.  Of course, this has never been a solution and has been employed by Western imperialism as an alibi for colonial aggression, but the genocide also signals the death of a one state solution i.e. an imperialist imposed bourgeois state encompassing both the Jewish and Palestinian people.

The speech, for all the truth it contained, left two nagging doubts.  The first was the criticism of the reactionary Arab regimes that have done less than nothing for the Palestinian people, where he called out three states.  This included Morocco and the UAE with one other that I can’t recall.  It did not include the biggest – Egypt – or Saudi Arabia or many others.  Yet liberation of the Palestinian people is inseparable from the liberation of the working classes of all these countries, through the destruction of all the rotten regimes and the capitalist states that they sit upon.

The second was the statement that all types of resistance are justified.  But justification is not effectiveness and approval of all is a sign that there has been no identification of which one is central, what strategy lies behind it and how it should be pursued.

Back in Ireland I returned to read about the latest pronouncement of the gobshite Bono who managed to make Israel the victim (of Netanyahu) while calling for peace.  Less gross, but in reality worse, is the hypocrisy of the Irish bourgeoisie promising yet again to take the miniscule action they have promised for years and which is now so obviously damning in its pathetic inadequacy.

The responsibility of Western imperialism for genocide with this support and its hypocrisy on display in Munich and also the opposition to it, drives home the international character of the struggle against imperialism.  Too often, however, this is not against all imperialism, is not against capitalism – which is often treated as something separate – and does not identify the force for change and the socialist politics that define it. The popular opposition to genocide among the population of Europe alongside the widespread complicity of European states shows that a struggle is required against these states and not just the war and genocide abroad that they are complicit in.

Left reaction to the ‘discovery’ that a woman is an adult human female (4) – questions and answers

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Of all the misconceptions and egregious nonsense in the responses of the left to the UK supreme court judgment the most irrational I have seen comes from the Fourth International and its British organisation Anti-Capitalist Resistance.

The former asks a number of questions as if these on their own expose the falsehood of the court decision but which really require only straight forward answers from anyone not immersed in gender identity ideology.

“What of the practical impacts that this ruling will have on cis women?” it asks.

The impacts are that single sex spaces will be open only to women and exclude men.  This means no men in women’s prisons, no men in women’s refuges, and no men in women’s sports etc.  Something taken for granted in the previous century during which no one was claiming that this involved women’s oppression – quite the reverse.

“What do we tell our young women when we say, ‘a woman is only biological sex’, that a man is also only biological sex?” 

Who is claiming that any woman or man is only a biological woman or biological man regardless of their other qualities, experiences and achievements?  What Marxists affirm is that, just like the assumption in the question itself, humanity is made up of women and men, and most will know that the distinction between them arises solely from their biological difference.

This reality does not at all mean, as this organisation seems to claim, “that because of a man’s biological sex, he is right to partake in oppressive structures of male hierarchy? That his desire to rape and sexually assault women is justified because of his biology?”  The biology of men does not mean that “oppressive structures” and “desires” are inevitable and if the Fourth International thinks the biological reality of humanity necessitates such structures, how then is it going to negate this biological reality and destroy these structures?

Does it think that gender identity is the answer to such ‘structures and desires?’  Does it seek to compel or convince everyone to adopt a gender identity that dispenses with their knowledge of their biological nature?  Would this not be an admission that it is they who wish to narrow young women and men’s understanding of themselves to a ‘gender identity’ that many reject they even have?

Anti-Capitalist Resistance states that trans “existence directly challenges the social order, which is structured by gendered power relations”, but fails to explain how identifying as the opposite sex (regardless of what that really means) actually changes “gendered power relations”, unless the gendered identities adopted are not those of real existing men and women that it currently argues constitute these “oppressive structures.” In other words, in their world in which sex is unimportant, but gender is decisive and in which we still have gender oppression, how will such oppression be ended simply by some (or all) identifying as the other (irrelevant!) sex?  Unless, that is, transmen aren’t actually identifying as men with all their claimed oppressive desires and transwomen aren’t really identifying as women with all their experience of oppressive structures.

Anti-Capitalist Resistance further claims that feminism seeks to overcome the view “that biology is destiny”, but only the adherents of gender identity ideology are arguing that biology is destiny, which is why they attempt the false claim that it can be dismissed.

Biology isn’t destiny in the way they claim – that it necessarily involves social oppression – but it is reality.  Biology is reality and if biology is physically and socially unimportant why does gender identity ideology base itself on being able to identify into the other sex with whatever physical changes that an individual believes they can make (with or without medical and surgical intervention)?

If these ideologists really want to stick to the claim that biology is not destiny I have an additional concept for them – death.

This organisation further claims that feminism opposes ideas “that bodily autonomy is socially dangerous” and “that organising social reproductive work on gendered lines is “natural”.  Yet the foundation of human reproduction is biological – one hundred percent of people reading this blog will be born to a woman.  The claim to autonomy is meant to evoke the rights of women to abortion but this autonomy – this independence and freedom – refers to the right to choose, which then requires the recognition by others for its effective exercise.  Trans people, as autonomous individuals, can think of themselves in any way they like but they cannot by this alone compel the world to accept their view of themselves and act upon it without violating everyone else’s right to the same autonomy. 

The Fourth International asks some more straight forward questions even more simply answered.

“How do you balance sex characteristics with gender reassignment characteristics?”  – Since these are separate characteristics, no balancing is required, the latter does not alter the essential nature of the former. 

“How do you prove sex discrimination when you are not recognized as that sex?”  – You can’t.

The Fourth International states that without this ideology we would have “an absurd ahistorical view of the working class as a homogenised lump that apparently never had gender queer people, or gay people or drag queens among its ranks.”  It sticks out a mile that women are absent from the list but yet another category of men pretending to be women is included.  That the history of the Marxist movement, going back to the man himself, has recognised the special oppression of women, and sought their organisation, is lost.  Instead, we have the truly ahistorical view of the working class in which we have something called ‘cis women’, and trans women whose very existence somehow “directly challenges the social order.”

For a Marxist the issue is also the claim that “There will be no revolution without trans liberation!”  Except, if this were true it would require the erasure of the female sex as a separate part (half!!) of humanity with all their specific oppression and need to organise.  It would also require abandoning any critical thought, with acceptance of the claim that ‘transwomen are women’ with no debate allowed over what are palpably untrue claims because of hyperbolic rhetoric and juvenile name calling.

Marx once said that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.’  The left supporters of gender identity ideology think they can change it by reinterpretation but since the real world is a stubborn thing it cannot be changed by declaration, and it cannot even be reinterpreted by incantation of inane slogans or without debate.  The attempt to silence opposition by naming the gender critical left as ‘fascist’ or ‘transphobic’ is another illustration of denying reality and attempt to close down challenges to its imagined world of changing sex and many genders.

The demonisation of opponents however is only a device to buttress a position already acquired because adherents have accepted that gender identity ideology is ‘progressive’; to stand against it would see individuals also stand against those they would normally stand beside.  Support for the ideology no longer depends on rational argument because it is simply considered to be the ‘left wing’ position; it is left wing because I/she/he/we are left wing and therefore so must it.  It is circular reasoning, and a form of identity politics inoculated from reality by a form of solipsism.  The exploitation of their mistake by the right is then held aloft as ‘proof’ of their position’s left credentials.

The phenomenon of a political position being held up as left wing because so much of the left supports it has been seen before; as previously much of the left capitulated to Scottish nationalism and is now capitulating to western imperialism through support for Ukraine, both of which are their unlikely candidates as beacons of ‘democracy’ for the world.

It’s a case of political gangrene that occurs ‘as a result of an injury, infection or a long-term condition that affects blood circulation’.  The defeats of the working class and its movement are the injury; the infection is petty bourgeois politics, and these long term factors have affected the circulation of critical thought and Marxism.

Concluded

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