The AWL say,
“Israel has a right to defend itself. Or, put another way, Israeli civilians in the places Hamas and PIJ have attacked, or may yet attack, have a right to security and to life.”
But this is bourgeois liberalism, pure and simple, which deliberately confuses abstract concepts and principles with concrete reality, so as to foster illusions in bourgeois-democracy, and the notion of the state as some kind of class neutral body that represents the interest of the whole of “society”, nation”, or “people”, rather than the interests of the ruling class. Bourgeois-democratic ideology relies upon this delusion that the state is a class neutral state, impartially representing the interests of “the people”. A large part of the work of Marxists, from the time of Marx and Engels themselves, has been involved in dismantling that lie, and breaking workers from it. The AWL seek to reinforce that lie, and to clothe it in kitsch Marxist language, much as their social-imperialism does with their support for imperialism, and Zionism.
Marx noted in The Critique of The Gotha Programme,
“Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”
And later,
“The German Workers' party — at least if it adopts the program — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases.
And what of the riotous misuse which the program makes of the words "present-day state", "present-day society", and of the still more riotous misconception it creates in regard to the state to which it addresses its demands?
"Present-day society" is capitalist society, which exists in all civilized countries, more or less free from medieval admixture, more or less modified by the particular historical development of each country, more or less developed.”
So, what does it mean for the AWL to proclaim that “Israeli civilians in the places Hamas and PIJ have attacked, or may yet attack, have a right to security and to life.”? To suggest that they have this right, to be provided by the Zionist state is clearly a delusion, as Marx describes above, and as every Marxist, since, has shown. Far from Palestinian, or other Arab Israeli civilians actually having any such right provided by the Zionist state, they are, as we speak, being shot at by the armed forces of that Zionist state, inside Israel, and inside the occupied West Bank. That Zionist state, rather than protecting them, is acting to support the Zionist settlers that continue to steal their land and property, and to establish illegal settlements, driving Palestinians from their land, in continued pogroms against them, now led by the fascist Defence Minister Ben-Gvir.
And, over recent weeks and months, could even Jews themselves count on that Zionist state to provide them with a right to security and life? On the contrary, as Netanyahu undertook his fascist coup, the millions of Jews that took to the streets in protest, also found themselves coming under attack from the forces of that Zionist state. In that, they only faced what Palestinians face, every day, and have faced, for the last 75 years.
The implication of the AWL's statement is that all “civilians”, in every state have this “right to security and to life”. As an abstract concept, of course, civilians and citizens, in general, should have such a right, but the truth is always concrete, and so, we have to ask, do all citizens have such a right, and, if not, why not, and under what conditions would such a right actually exist? Do, workers in Britain, for example, have such a right? No clearly, they do not, and Marxists know why they do not, which is because, as Marx describes above, the state is not there to protect their interests, but to protect the interests of the ruling class. Workers, daily face insecurity, as a result of the operation of the capitalist market.
The state does not protect them from that, but stands behind the laws of capital and the market that causes the insecurity. Moreover, if workers resist that insecurity, themselves, by going on strike, for example, as the mines did, in 1984-5, from protecting those workers, the state mobilises against them, breaking their heads, by the use of mass armed force against them.
And, even though the ruling class also includes women, members of the LBGTQ+ community, if you are yourself a part of that community, you know that the state does not protect your life and security either, because the state, in its bodies of armed men, of the police and armed forces, is systemically racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. If you are a young black man, in Britain, far from the state ensuring your right to life and security, it is far more likely to be harassing you, picking you up off the street, and, yes, even killing you in police cells.
But, the logic of the AWL's statement is that, for example, Jews, Communists, trades unionists etc., once WWII started, had a right to expect that the German state would protect them from that war, and from the bombs coming down from France and Britain etc., even though that German state was a Bonapartist, Nazi state, in which the governmental power of the Nazis was fused with the state itself. The logic is that, once WWII started, the Nazi German state had a right to defend itself, so as to defend all of its citizens, including, thereby, all of those citizens that it was itself the enemy of, and who it had been oppressing and murdering, in the preceding years! That is the lunacy of the AWL argument that it has adopted in order to justify its collapse into bourgeois liberalism, and its support for Zionism, and national self-determination, as against the Marxist principle of self-determination of the working-class..
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