Tony Greenstein's Bad Logic On Hamas

In a letter to the Weekly Worker, Tony Greenstein attacks Daniel Lazare for refusing to support Hamas. Greenstein says,

“Lazare says that Marxists do not side with rightwing groups claiming to speak in the people’s name. Wrong. In the 1950s we supported Eoka in Cyprus against the British. Likewise we supported the IRA. Lazare fails to understand that the nationalism of the oppressor and oppressed is not the same. It is all very simple. We support the struggle of the oppressed.”

The word “we”, here, is the locus of Greenstein's bad logic. It appears to be used in the context of a “Royal We”, in which it really means that Greenstein, and others claiming to be Marxists, supported Eoka, and the IRA. Of course, Stalinists, Maoists and others claim to be Marxists, and have supported all sorts of reactionary causes and movements, which should have given him reason to be careful about imputing such a “Royal We” to Marxists, as against those that simply label themselves as such. In fact, the support for various petty-bourgeois and bourgeois nationalist movements has nothing to do with the Marxism of Marx and Engels, or Lenin and Trotsky, and so with genuine Marxism. As Marx would have put it, “if this is Marxism, then I am no Marxist”!

Marx and Engels' position on the national question, as in everything else, flowed from their class analysis, and determination of what best served the interests of the working-class, and the development of Socialism. The basic idea, conveyed as far back as The Communist Manifesto, that “the workers have no country”, is as far from any concept of, or support for, nationalism, particularly bourgeois-nationalism, as you can get. As far as a number of national liberation struggles in the 19th century, in Europe, Marx and Engels specifically opposed them, as being reactionary ventures.

As far as the actual bourgeois-nationalist revolutions taking place, Marx and Engels attitude to them was clear, and set out in Marx's analysis of The Revolutions of 1848, and his conclusions from it, presented to the Central Committee of the Communist League. That is, the bourgeois-national revolutions were historically progressive, a necessary step on the road to Socialism. The workers, and their parties should support such revolutions, as part of a process of Permanent Revolution. But, you will search that address in vein to find any statement by Marx of support for the bourgeois nationalist parties themselves engaged in such revolutions. Quite the opposite. Marx warns in stark terms of the need for the workers to be organised independently from, and ready to fight, those very bourgeois-nationalist parties, as their class enemy.

“This democratic party, which is far more dangerous for the workers than were the liberals earlier, is composed of three elements: 1) The most progressive elements of the big bourgeoisie, who pursue the goal of the immediate and complete overthrow of feudalism and absolutism. This fraction is represented by the former Berlin Vereinbarer, the tax resisters; 2) The constitutional-democratic petty bourgeois, whose main aim during the previous movement was the formation of a more or less democratic federal state; this is what their representative, the Left in the Frankfurt Assembly and later the Stuttgart parliament, worked for, as they themselves did in the Reich Constitution Campaign; 3) The republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federal republic similar to that in Switzerland and who now call themselves ‘red’ and ’social-democratic’ because they cherish the pious wish to abolish the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital, by the big bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeoisie. The representatives of this fraction were the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the democratic associations and the editors of the democratic newspapers.”

(ibid)

All of these same bourgeois elements can be found in the various bourgeois-nationalist movements. Marx's warning that they are “far more dangerous”, is the precursor of Lenin and the Comintern's warning in The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, to guard against those in such movements that attempt to present themselves as “communists”.

“the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations.”

Unfortunately, Greenstein, like much of the petty-bourgeois Left, in the post-war period, has abandoned those basic Marxist principles set out by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, and fallen into petty-bourgeois nationalism, instead, doing the opposite of what Marxism requires, of the independent organisation of the working-class in opposition to the bourgeois-democratic forces, as part of the process of permanent revolution, and, instead, has adopted the position of social-democracy, of Menshevism and Stalinism, based upon the stages theory. Where Marxism requires that the bourgeois nationalist struggle, in any country, be subordinated to the global class struggle, Greenstein, instead, subordinates the class struggle to the purely purely bourgeois-nationalist struggle, with the interests of workers deferred to some future undetermined date.

Yet, the history, going back to 1848, is quite clear, as Marx set out.

“The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position.”

(loc cit)

Marx goes on to describe the reactionary nature of those petty-bourgeois democrats, even compared to the big bourgeoisie. The former seeks to limit the development of capitalism, and, thereby, of the productive forces, including the working-class. Lenin made the same analysis of the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nature of the Narodniks, in Russia. Marx continues,

“While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”

In other words, the workers, too, seek to abolish the rule of the old landed aristocracy, and all that goes with it, but not simply to obtain a continuation of their existing exploitation by capital, but as part of a process of permanent revolution, to overthrow the bourgeoisie too, and move on simultaneously to Socialism. Support for the idea of bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, in the abstract, does not mean simply support for any such struggle, but only support for it, as part of this process of permanent revolution, in which the working-class increasingly must pursue its own class interests, in opposition to those of the bourgeois-nationalists. The truth is always concrete, and the question of support by communists for any actual party or movement engaged in such a struggle can only be determined, in practice. As The Theses put it,

“the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations.”

Marx continued,

“Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.”

Lenin and Trotsky noted that, in terms of strategy and analysis, there is no difference between this bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, and the anti-colonial revolution. Marxists support, in the abstract, the anti-colonial struggles, but, again, the truth is always concrete, and whether we give actual support to any given movement depends upon it fulfilling those criterion set out above. In other words, we “only” support the truly revolutionary proletarian movements, engaged in such a struggle, and those movements are hostile to the idea of being limited to simply the bourgeois national revolution.  Neither Eoka, nor the IRA conformed to that requirement.

The most obvious first instance of that was the Chinese revolution of 1925-27. The Kuomintang was clearly the leading bourgeois nationalist movement, engaged in a national war of independence against British, and other colonialist powers, in China, and their agents amongst the various Chinese warlords. On the basis of Greenstein's principles, Marxists should, then, have supported the KMT, in the same way he says they supported Eoka and the IRA, and in the same way, he now supports Hamas, and the USC support Ukraine. Indeed, the “Marxists” of Stalin's Comintern, did support the KMT, telling Chinese Communists to join it, as well as supplying it with arms. But, as Trotsky set out in detail, such a position had nothing in common with Marxism, or with the principles set out, on the basis of Marxism, by Lenin.

There is a vast difference between forming a temporary tactical alliance, in action, with a bourgeois, or petty-bourgeois movement, as against “supporting” such a movement. As Marx put it,

“This unity must therefore be resisted in the most decisive manner. Instead of lowering themselves to the level of an applauding chorus, the workers, and above all the League, must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers’ party, both secret and open, and alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes a centre and nucleus of workers’ associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence. How serious the bourgeois democrats are about an alliance in which the proletariat has equal power and equal rights is demonstrated by the Breslau democrats, who are conducting a furious campaign in their organ, the Neue Oder Zeitung, against independently organized workers, whom they call ‘socialists’. In the event of a struggle against a common enemy a special alliance is unnecessary. As soon as such an enemy has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties will coincide for the moment and an association of momentary expedience will arise spontaneously in the future, as it has in the past. It goes without saying that in the bloody conflicts to come, as in all others, it will be the workers, with their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory.”

(loc cit)

Moreover, as Trotsky set out, in opposing the Stalinist support for bourgeois-nationalist parties, whilst Lenin spoke of forming such alliances of the revolutionary forces, in action, with the bourgeois and petty bourgeois masses, it was precisely with those masses, and NOT with the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist parties.

“Lenin, it is understood, recognized the necessity of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois-democratic movement, but he understood by this, of course, not an alliance with the bourgeois parties, duping and betraying the petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy (the peasants and the small city folk), but an alliance with the organizations and groupings of the masses themselves – against the national bourgeoisie.”

(Trotsky – Stalin and The Chinese Revolution)

In other words, our support depends, and is directed towards, only truly revolutionary forces engaged in such struggles, which means not bourgeois or petty-bourgeois nationalist forces that represent the enemy of the working-class.  Again, neither Eoka, nor the IRA, nor the Algerian NLF, the Viet Cong, and certainly not Hamas, nor the imperialist, Ukrainian state, conform to that requirement!  A temporary alliance of such revolutionary forces with the wider bourgeois-democratic masses, but certainly not any alliance with (Popular Front), or merger with their parties, (and certainly not governments nor states!), is possible in action, and its via such action that the revolutionary party seeks to break those masses away from their existing parties and bourgeois-democratic nationalist illusions, and to the cause of permanent revolution.

Greenstein admits that Hamas is reactionary, but the logic of his position of supporting them, leads him to try to apologise for them, and their actions, just as the USC have tried to deny the nature of the Zelensky regime, and apologise for it, and as the Zionists of the AWL, similarly apologise for the actions of the Zionist state.  In similar fashion the supporters of Putin, do exactly the same thing.  This is the inevitable consequence of "lesser-evilism", and of "My enemy's enemy is my friend", in which instead of an independent working class position, the working-class and socialists are left choosing one bourgeois camp or another to support, and to cheer it on.  It has nothing to do with Marxism, which requires a stance of "a plague on both your houses".

The experience of the position that Greenstein puts forward, and which ironically, the USC promote in respect of Ukraine, is one of unmitigated disaster for the working-class, and the cause of international socialism. From the coup of Chiang Kai Shek, and slaughter of tens of thousands of Chinese workers, to the Popular Front in Spain in 1936, to the victory of the viciously anti-working class Viet Cong, or the Algerian NLF, to Khomeini in Iran, and many more, the workers were sold a reactionary bourgeois illusion, in pursuit of the class interests of their class enemy, just as surely as they were when they were similarly asked to back their own ruling class in WWI and II.

It was not Marxists that backed Eoka, or the IRA, or any of these other bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist forces, but Stalinists, Menshevists, reactionary petty-bourgeois socialists and nationalists camouflaged in communist colours.