A Measure of Justice

Joe Biden has described the murder of Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah, by the Zionist state as “A Measure of Justice” for the many people killed by Hezbollah. These four words are extremely revealing. It again, illustrates the thoroughly hollow and sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and its commitment to the rule of law, and an international rules based system. It required, perhaps, the US, as a society that, itself, arose on the back of religious intolerance on the part of the Pilgrim Fathers, and progressed by violence against Native Americans, and the stealing of their land, and which for much of its history has been based on gun law, and which, today, still routinely murders its own citizens by legal execution, to be so forthright.

But, let us set aside the US's penchant for murdering its own citizens, via legalised execution – a barbaric practice, long since abandoned by most civilised societies in Europe – which, of course, results in a disproportionate number of its poorer citizens, and black and Latino citizens, being executed, because, not only do they not have access to the fancy, expensive lawyers that the rich do, but also that their conditions of life are far more likely to place them in the kinds of violent situation, and desperation that will leave them sitting in the dock in the first place. Yet, even if we set aside this barbaric practice of legalised murder by the state, bourgeois-democracy, and the rule of law requires the idea of “innocent until proved guilty”, at least in legal systems based upon English Law, such as exists in the US.

Biden seems to be confusing “Retribution”, the concept of “an eye for an eye”, contained in the Old Testament, with “Justice”, the concept that everyone should have their day in court, and be proved to have committed a crime. Of course, the notion of “Justice”, of “The Rule of Law”, is itself a sham, even if we, also, set aside the points above, about the fact that it is always disproportionately the poor and oppressed that are placed in the position of breaking the law, and so on.

A look, for example, at the way the law worked in Britain, in the 19th century, showed a clear class bias, even in the way it was framed. Take the contract of employment. If an employer broke such a contract, this was treated as a civil matter, requiring the worker to take the employer to court, and sue for breach of contract. If the worker broke the contract, this was treated as a crime, and the worker was prosecuted by the state, and sent to jail! This kind of class bias is contained in the operation and formulation of the law in every bourgeois society, and legal system.

And, of course, although, in theory, bourgeois democracy, and its rule of law, claims to operate on this basis that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and is entitled to their day in court, so that justice can be seen to be done, that never happens, in practice either. The most obvious example of that is the many poor people, often black and ethnic minority people, who are routinely treated as being guilty until proven innocent. Just look at the way bourgeois society and politicians deals with the question of immigration, for example. Not only does the narrative in support of immigration controls, place all immigrants in the condition of, in some way, being a problem, who must, therefore, be kept out of the country, rather than, the reality, which is that immigrants are a fundamental means of societies meeting their needs for labour, and who also, enrich the cultural development of the society, but, also, this same narrative, then, makes all those in the society, who look like “immigrants”, the target of suspicion.

That is codified in laws, which lead to disproportionately larger numbers of black and ethnic minority citizens, being subject to repeated stop and search by the police, for example. And, of course, at its worst and most blatant, it means that large numbers of black people and other ethnic minorities are simply shot dead by the police, guilty or innocent, without any trial, any concept of justice, or of being innocent until proven guilty, any concept of the right to a fair trial. That is rampant across the US, but it is also seen in Britain, as with the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, for example. But, Britain was also guilty of implementing such policies of state murder on a systematic basis, against members of the Provisional IRA, for example, despite claiming that the IRA were simply criminals, rather than that they were engaged in a war.

In the period since then, especially as drone technology has developed, both the US and UK, have routinely murdered their political and military opponents, without any recourse to the idea of a fair trial, even a fake, bourgeois fair trial, or the idea of being innocent until proven guilty. When Russia does that, by using poisoned umbrellas, and so on, it is, of course, branded as barbarous, and flouting the norms of the international order, which just shows the extent to which both are guilty of the same crimes, and yet, in the West, those crimes are justified, as being, somehow, “a measure of justice”!!

When the British state murdered those members of the IRA, it did so up close and personal. That is not the case when the US and UK, or its proxies, such as the Zionist state, in Israel, now, carry out such actions. The use of drones to murder opponents, let alone the use of high-powered bombs and missiles, do not target and kill just those they are aimed at. Biden's claim that the murder of Nasrallah, which involved the widespread bombing and destruction of large swathes of not just Beirut, but also other cities such as Tyre, by its Zionist proxy, is like Britain had gone after Martin McGuinness, by dropping huge amounts of bombs on Belfast, and justified it by claiming it had intelligence that he was there, and that, taking him out brought “a measure of justice” to those killed by the IRA!

What is the corollary of that? Well, if we look at what actually happened both in Northern Ireland, and in Lebanon, its instructive. Before 1969, when Britain sent in its troops to the streets of Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA was an insignificant force. Its predecessor, the Official IRA, had abandoned armed struggle, in favour of bourgeois-democratic politics. When, that same bourgeois-democratic politics, undertaken in the form of the Civil Rights Movement, demanded equal political rights for Catholics, something that should not even have to be demanded given the basis of bourgeois-democracy, the Protestant community, which had been given privileges by Britain, in order for it to act as its own agent in Ireland, much as Britain envisaged the role of Zionism in the Middle East, when it set out The Balfour Declaration, rebelled, violently.

The British troops on the ground, in 1969, were supposed to be there to prevent that violence, and were welcomed by Catholic communities, in that light. But, it did not take long for the real purpose of their presence to be felt, which was to suppress the Catholic community itself, and its demands for equal political rights. It was that, emphasised by events such as Bloody Sunday, of again, the cold blooded murder of unarmed Catholics by the British Army, which soon drove Catholics into the arms of the petty-bourgeois nationalists of PIRA, which they saw as their defenders, and whom they provided support for within their communities. 

This of course, is the inevitable consequence of nationalist ideology, and national struggles, as against class struggle. A national struggle, be it one to establish some new bourgeois nation state, fought against some existing oppressor nation state, or a straight forward war between two opposing nation states, inevitably, breeds even greater nationalism, and nationalist antagonism between the masses of the two opposing states. It is why Lenin, argued that, as Marxists, we are opposed to such struggles for the creation of new bourgeois states, we are generally, opposed to the idea of national self-determination, and rather in favour of the abolition of national borders, as part of our struggle for the self-determination of the working-class, and its maximum class unity across borders.

"As the party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations. We must always and unreservedly work for the very closest unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it is only in isolated and exceptional cases that we can advance and actively support demands conducive to the establishment of a new class state or to the substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the complete political unity of a state."

The same is seen with Hezbollah, and Zionism. The narrative being given by Zionism and its imperialist sponsors is that the Zionist state was led to invade Lebanon, because of the role of Hezbollah, much as later, Britain, claimed that its military occupation of Northern Ireland, its use of concentration (internment) camps, where people were imprisoned, for years without trial, was in response to the actions of PIRA, whereas, PIRA only grew, because of the actions of the British Army in Ireland after 1969. The reality is that, prior to the invasion of Lebanon by the Zionist state in 1982, when it intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, in order to try to install a right-wing, Maronite-Christian, regime, Hezbollah did not exist. It was created, in a similar manner to the PIRA, in response to the external invasion, and as a means of defence of a local community.

As Marxists, we neither support the petty-bourgeois nationalism of groups like Hezbollah or PIRA, but nor do we give any ground or support to the forces of imperialism and Zionism in their hypocritical attacks on them, because it is the actions of that same imperialism, and of Zionism that creates the conditions in which those petty-bourgeois nationalist organisations spring up in response to them, and their brutal oppression of the communities who turn, in desperation, to such groups.

Of course, the further hypocrisy of US imperialism is that its own history is one in which it resorted to the same terroristic methods, in its struggle for independence from British Colonialism, in the 18th century. And, even more obviously, and recently, the Zionist state, itself, was created by the terrorists of the Irgun and Stern Gang. Irgun terrorist, Menachem Begin, as Prime Minister of Israel, was the one that organised the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, that led to the siege of Beirut, which was only turned back a a result of the creation of Hezbollah, as a resistance movement to it.

Similarly, prominent Stern Gang terrorist, Yitzhak Shamir, was Prime Minister of Israel, between 1983-4 and 1986-92. US imperialism, as with British imperialism has no problem with terrorists, so long as they are “their” terrorists, or, as in the case of people like Nelson Mandela, after they have ceased being a part of the threat to imperialism, and have been absorbed by it.

Whilst Marxists have no reason to support petty-bourgeois nationalism, or terroristic acts by such organisations, which are generally counter-productive, ineffective, and also act to drive divisions between workers, we do understand, why, in the absence of large, revolutionary workers parties, to lead such struggles, the natural response of oppressed peoples is to lash out by whatever means, and to be driven into the hands of these reactionaries. In considering, our sense of justice, we do not at all equate the violence of the oppressor, particularly the violence of a huge well armed oppressor such as the Zionist state, with its even bigger sponsor US imperialism standing behind it, with the violence of the oppressed that responds to it.

But, if we take Biden's words, what might we then conclude. To murder Nasrallah, US imperialism, using its Zionist proxy has flattened a large swathe of Beirut, and is continuing with that slaughter across Lebanon, as it has done in Gaza. In Gaza, the official figures show more than 40,000 people killed, whilst the real figure, even before we consider those about to die from disease, famine and so on, is more like 100,000. No serious person is in any doubt that the vast majority of those killed are innocent civilians, with the figures themselves showing around 70% are women and children.

The same kinds of figures are being seen in the attacks on Beirut, by the Zionist state. So, what, then, could Biden say, if the families of those innocent civilians in Beirut, and in Gaza, were to look at the murder of their relations at the hands of Zionist state terror, backed by and made possible by US, UK and EU imperialism that provides the bombs, missiles and planes, and were to draw the same conclusion. What Biden's statement means, is that those Palestinian and Lebanese families could look at any assassination of Netanyahu, Biden/Harris/Trump, Starmer and so on, and conclude that, at least, it gave them too, “a measure of justice”. That is what the sham of bourgeois-democracy, and of its rules based order really comes down to, not order and justice at all, but simply an application of mafia-style vendetta.