The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 8

Except for a short period during its inception, when the Zionist state was backed by the USSR, on the basis that its terror campaign against British colonialism, in Palestine, was part of the global “anti-imperialist alliance”, the role of the Zionist state has been to act as a proxy for Western imperialism. The Zionist terrorists of the Irgun and Lehi, became the politicians and Ministers of the Zionist state. The terrorists that murdered British representatives, and blew up hotels, now sat down with representatives of the British and French states, in 1956, to plan the seizure of the Suez Canal.

The old European colonial powers, however, fell into a trap, much as did Saddam Hussein in 1990. Saddam had been assigned the role of US proxy against Iran, after the fall of the Shah, in 1979. His regime was provided with chemical and biological weapons (WMD) to use against Iran, as well as technical-military advice on how to best use them, by the US and Europe. But, after years of conflict, Iraq was unable to defeat Iran, despite all of this assistance. In 1990, as Iraq attempted to rebuild its economy, it, also, faced economic crisis. On the one hand, it had large debts to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, run up during the Iran-Iraq War, which they refused to cancel. On the other, the US and NATO was pressing OPEC to increase oil production to reduce global oil prices, as the 1980's period of stagnation dragged on, and as the USSR was sustained by its own global oil revenues. It was the subsequent fall in oil prices that put the final nail in the coffin of the USSR, and of Gorbachev's policies of détente and perestroika.

Iraq also saw the actions of other Gulf states as effectively “economic warfare” against it. That was exacerbated by the fact that Kuwait was “slant-drilling”, into Iraqi oil fields in Rumallah. In discussions with the US, Iraq was given the impression that the US was not concerned with disputes between Arab countries. Of course, once Iraq invaded Kuwait, that provided a basis for the US mobilising military forces behind it for its invasion of Iraq. Saddam had failed to be the US's effective proxy against Iran, and now paid the price. As the USSR collapsed, US imperialism, saw the possibility of forging new alliances in the Middle-East, with the oil rich Gulf states, especially as their petrodollars fed back into a developing financial market bubble that, eventually, led to the global financial crisis of 2008.

Similarly, in 1956, when Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt, to seize the Suez Canal, they saw their erstwhile ally, the United States, condemn their actions. Richard Nixon, later explained,

"We couldn't on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary and, on the other hand, approve of the British and the French picking that particular time to intervene against Nasser".

That has echoes of today's hypocrisy of NATO's position in relation to Russia's invasion of Eastern Ukraine, as against its position in relation to Israel's invasion of its neighbours, and the US war against Iran. But, although Eisenhower, also, later, argued that if the US had supported the invasion of Egypt, it would have swung the Arabs behind the USSR, the real motivation was that US imperialism used this opportunity to assert its hegemony, to tell the old European colonial powers, “You do not start wars, unless we tell you,” and it, also, meant that it put the nail in the coffin of those old European colonial powers in the Middle-East, introducing US imperialism to them, as the new sheriff in town.

To the Zionist state, in Israel, it also conveyed that message loud and clear. Its future depended on acting as the Deputy to the US Sheriff.

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The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 7

The ruling-class, its media, and the social-imperialists have continually tried to portray NATO as a “defensive alliance”, rather than what it actually is, which is the tip of the military spear of US imperialism. NATO was established prior to the Warsaw Pact, and numerous accounts show that, it was US imperialism, and its Western Allies that were quick, as WWII entered its closing stages, to bring an end to their connections with the advancing Red Army, which had born the brunt of the fighting in Europe. Similarly, in China, it was the US and its allies that ensured that Japan, handed over Formosa/Taiwan to Chiang Kai Shek, in order to keep it from the advancing forces of Mao's Peasant Army. Indeed, the US military engaged more openly in China itself, unsuccessfully, to support Chiang.

As every martial artist, let alone military strategist knows, there is no real distinction between defence and offence. One of the most obvious examples is the “tortoise”, used by the Roman army, in which it has the appearance of being a defensive shield, but is used to enable the ranks of centurions beneath it to continually advance. The “defensive” nature of NATO is exactly the same, as is the use, from 1947 onwards, of the claims of national self-defence by the Zionist state, which under cover of such hypocrisy, has continually expanded its own territory.

The Zionist state has had its own reasons for such expansion, on that basis, since it came into existence, in 1947, by seizing land from the Palestinians. As an ethno-nationalist ideology, Zionism is both inherently racist, and expansionist, and that is hard-wired into the Zionist state, whichever party is in office. It is Zionism, which is committed to extending the scope of Israel from the river to the sea, using the old biblical mythology, as its justification, and one, therefore, that sits, today, conveniently with the rise of the Christian Zionists, in the US, who see it as their duty to promote such a development, as the basis of Armageddon.

Of course, this mystical, religious claptrap is not believed by, or the basis of the motivation of, the ruling-class. Their interests and motivation are securely based on more earthly and material concerns, as previously described. For US imperialism, and its fraction of the global ruling-class, those concerns revolve around limiting the further growth of the global influence of China. It is simply that, in this context, the interests and expansionist nature of Zionism fits perfectly with the interests of US imperialism, and its subordinates in Europe. Everything that Trump has done in that regard, both in his first term, and now, his second term, was already begun under previous Presidents, both Republican and Democrat. Not for nothing did a, then, Senator Joe Biden say, “If Israel did not exist, we would have to create it.”

Biden and Hariis, as well as the likes of Starmer, and other European politicians, lied and lied again, in the most blatant manner, to deny that the Zionist state was committing genocide and other war crimes, and crimes against humanity, in Gaza, just as they have allowed the Zionist state, for nearly 80 years, to ignore, entirely, one UN Resolution after another, in relation to its expansionary wars, violence and occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands. On the contrary, they have ideologically defended its explanations for such occupation, on the basis of its right to "defend" itself. At the same time, they have armed and financed its occupations, and, now, its genocide and war crimes.

Dragged in front of the international courts that were only intended to prosecute the tyrants and butchers of states opposed to western imperialism, the Zionist war criminals have, of course, claimed that they should not be there, that the courts have no jurisdiction over them. And, they have largely been supported in those claims by the western imperialist states. After all, the Zionist state, which would have to have been created if it did not exist, was, in the words of Chancellor Merz, in Germany, “doing their dirty work for them”, in the Middle-East. The US has even imposed sanctions on the judges of the international courts themselves, so affronted are they that the rules based international order, and international law should be thought to apply to them and their proxies.

Like Louis XIV, US imperialism believes “L'etat, c'est moi”, when it comes to the global order. Thomas Hobbes argued that the Sovereign once appointed had absolute power, and appointed its own successors. The permanent state fulfils that role, irrespective of what government is in office, whatever the nature of the political regime, be it an Absolute Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy, Bourgeois-Republic, or Bonapartist regime. Trump sees himself as an Absolute Monarch, prompting the “No Kings” demonstrations across the US. But, King or no King, Trump or no Trump, the driving force of US imperialism, and of the imperialist state, would remain. Louis XIV, after all, on his death bed, said, "I depart, but the State shall always remain."

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Forward To Part 8

The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 6

Whatever the actual form of this monopolistic competition, the underlying reality was that it required expanding markets, and those expanding markets meant the creation of multinational states, such as is in formation with the EU, and the various similar blocs across the globe. Global imperialist competition, now, takes the form of competition between these various large, multinational blocs. As with the previous shifting alliances between nation states, so too these blocs form their own shifting alliances as they jockey for position.

For a long time, after WWII, as US imperialism was hegemonic, and as the other imperialist states faced the USSR, they subordinated themselves to US imperialism, and its determination of what constituted “international law”. The US created NATO, with its subordinated allies in Europe, prompting the USSR to respond by creating the Warsaw Pact. Superficially, NATO acted to “protect” Western Europe from the threat of invasion from the USSR. But, in reality, Western Europe was not under threat of invasion from the USSR. It sought only to hang on to its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, assigned to it, at the end of WWII, in the conferences at Potsdam and Yalta, to assuage its fears of itself being, again, a victim of invasion from the West, as it had been repeatedly.

US imperialism stationed its troops in Europe for the same reason it created its military bases in 80 countries across the globe, not for any kind of altruistic, defensive reason, but to assert its own global reach, and interests. NATO was the means for US imperialism to spread the cost of its own military expenditure, to serve the interests of US imperialism, just as the US used the role of the Dollar as global reserve currency to pay for its expenditure with increasingly worthless, paper Dollars, which led to the inflation, and global currency crises of the 1970's. Europe acted as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and early warning system, against any nuclear missile attack from the USSR, the form that any actual war with the USSR would inevitably take, as against any significant, conventional ground offensive.

European countries in NATO, whose real protection against the USSR came from their higher living standards, were obliged to spend money on weapons and weapons systems they were never going to use in Europe, but only ever in support of US imperialism in its militaristic adventures across the globe, for example, in South-East Asia, or Africa and the Middle-East. More than 60% of European military spending goes directly to US arms manufacturers, directly subsidising and justifying the large-scale production of those US companies, and further subordinating European states to the US. Another reason for US imperialism's troops in Europe, was to deter the working-class in Europe from advancing its own interests.

For so long as US imperialism was hegemonic, the role of international law was to represent the interests of US imperialism, and, to a lesser degree the interests of its subordinates in Europe and Japan. The global para state bodies designed to plan and regulate global capitalism, such as GATT/WTO, IMF, and the World Bank also fulfilled that function. But, even within those constraints, as soon as US hegemony began to break down, as US industrial capital went into relative decline, in the face of the rising power of imperialist capital elsewhere, in Europe, Japan, and most notably China, the façade began to erode.

As early as 1971, when France demanded payment of US debts in Gold, at the official exchange rate of $35 an ounce, the US, ended convertibility of the Dollar, bringing the Gold Standard crashing down, and initiating a decade of global currency instability. A surging Japanese industrial capital, dominated world markets, replacing the once dominant US multinationals, and amassing huge trade surpluses with the US in the process, leading to the US using its remaining dominance as global superpower to impose measures on Japan to limit its expansion. Trump is not the first to engage in such actions.

Over the last 40 years, the US has repeatedly imposed tariffs on imports to the US, as its domestic industry has continued to decline relative to its global competitors in Asia, and Europe. Whilst, its actions have been referred to the WTO, it has largely ignored the international rules based order it created, as soon as those rules ceased to operate in its favour. When it comes to other global bodies that has been even clearer. The US, never backed the creation of the International Criminal Court, for example, because it clearly saw, in advance, that its own global military adventures, its own record of military and paramilitary actions, would be a hostage to fortune. It has been its subordinates in Europe that did sign up to the ICC, and ICJ, that again, have been the ones left trying to justify the hypocrisy of an international law that only sought to put defendants from third world countries in the dock, whilst giving worse war criminals from the imperialist states a free pass.

Back To Part 5

Forward To Part 7

Review of Predictions For 2025 - Prediction 4 – Zelensky's Regime Falls

Prediction 4 – Zelensky's regime Falls

Zelensky's regime has not, yet, fallen, but it is like a dead man walking. To use Trump's words, at the start of the year, as he politically disembowelled Zelensky in The Oval Office, Zelensky “has no cards.” It is a repetition of many similar situations in the past, described by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky that those who fetishize the formality of national self-determination, end up simply turning weak nation states into the vassal of some other imperialist power, with its own imperialist ambitions. In essence, its no different to those petit-bourgeois nationalists that backed Brexit/Lexit on the basis of regaining British national self-determination, and taking back control, only, inevitably to see its actual sovereignty and control decimated, as on the one hand, it has to abide by the rules, regulations and conditions of the EU Single Market, to continue trading with it, whilst, on the other hand, subordinating itself to an increasingly, reactionary US imperialism, in order to retain the illusion of having some remnant of its former imperial power, or even relevance. In reality, no matter how much Starmer licks Trump's arse, Britain is sidelined, and made to look ridiculous.

Social-democrats and other social-imperialists, particularly in Europe, who hoped that Trump would be cajoled by the combined forces of western imperialism to throw off his own petty-bourgeois nationalist rhetoric, when in office, and so provide the backing for Zelensky, were inevitably and predictably disappointed. When Trump and his gang eviscerated Zelensky, in the Oval Office, what they were actually doing was, also, eviscerating the likes of Starmer, as well as EU social democrats, who only days before had feted the vulgar and narcissistic Trump, with their snivelling, gut wrenching sycophancy, their visits to the palaces and trappings of 18th century, European colonial empires, and aristocracy. Whilst, radical social-democrats in the US rallied in their millions to declare “No Kings”, European social-democrats, simply offered up to Trump, their “Daddy”, the vision of such monarchical rule, and how much they are still in thrall to it, themselves.

That Zelensky's regime has not yet fallen seems to be a consequence of a number of factors. Trump in rhetorically pulling the plug on Zelensky, gained huge leverage over EU imperialism, which remains the main competitor to US imperialism, despite the rapid development of China. Trump was able to say to the EU, if you want to continue to support Zelensky, then you fund it, and by the way, we are fine with that, so long as you continue to buy US weapons. Its not considerably different to the way, after 1939, (or indeed 1914) US imperialism verbally supported Britain and France against Germany, selling them huge amounts of arms, destroying their economies (and that of Germany), and leaving them, in massive debt to US imperialism. Only towards the end, in both cases, did US imperialism join the fray, throwing its weight behind Britain and France, who by that time were all but defeated, indeed, in the case of France, actually defeated and occupied.

The coalition of the wilting has kept the war going, like keeping a dying man alive by artificial respiration, but with absolutely no chance of changing the eventual outcome. Every month that goes by provides additional evidence of the corruption of the Zelensky regime, and repeated changes of personnel within it. But, as the saying goes a fish rots from the head, and the head in Ukraine, remains in place. As with Iraq and other such adventures, billions simply disappears. Large numbers of fighting age Ukrainians have fled to avoid the high probability of dying in the service of NATO imperialism, in a hopeless war against Russian imperialism. In part, that is only sustained on the basis of a continual repetition of the lie that Russia seeks to occupy the whole of Ukraine. If that were Russia's ambition, it would represent a huge overestimation of its own capabilities that nothing in the last few years could validate. It would simply destroy Russia. In the meantime, Trump's colonial adventure in Venezuela, and his promises of further such adventures in Colombia, Panama, Greenland, Cuba and so on, simply validate the arguments put forward by Putin (and similarly Xi) that all the claims about NATO being a purely defensive, peace-loving military alliance were bullshit, and that its expansion up to Russia's borders was far from benign.

As Irish Marxism has also rightly pointed out, the corollary of this, the creation of a multipolar world, i.e. of multiple imperialist blocs, is not any great advance for the working-class. Only if you adopt a moralistic, “lesser-evilist” approach, in which you continually hitch your wagon to some latest, new hope could you imagine that the interests of the global working-class is served by the rising power of Eurasian imperialism, or EU imperialism, as an alternative to US imperialism. The loss of hegemony for US imperialism, globally, inevitably leads to its consolidation in the Americas.

Similarly, however, Russia has been able to consolidate its position in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, the brief adventure of Ukraine into Russia, lasted all of a few months, before being rolled back, at great expense to the Ukrainian military, whilst Russia, undistracted by it, simply took advantage of Ukrainian elite forces being tied up in that adventure, to press forward towards Pokrovsk and so on. Trump seems to understand the reality in a way that social-democrats and social-imperialists do not, which, given the moronic nature of Trump, says a great deal about the intellectual inadequacy and delusional state of those social-democrats. When Trump told Zelensky, “You have no cards”, he was absolutely right. The only cards that Zelensky and Ukrainian imperialism had were those stuffed into his hands by western imperialism, and even with them, they were inadequate.

In the end, Ukrainian imperialism could only win against Russian imperialism if, in addition to the provision of those weapons, it also had the supply of soldiers to use them. It did not, but Russia, as in the past, has been able to continue to draw on its own resources, as well as drawing in forces from elsewhere. The only way that could have changed is if NATO had put large numbers of its troops into Ukraine, as well as the masses of weapons. NATO does have significant numbers of troops in Ukraine, particularly special forces, and the water is continually tested by European governments for the appetite to send openly much greater numbers of European workers to fight and die in Ukraine. So far, the working-class of Europe has shown no desire to do so, which would be an inevitable rapid march towards a new pan-European war, and inevitable descent into global thermonuclear destruction.

Trump has essentially signalled that he is reconciled to the idea of a return to the days prior to the hegemony of US imperialism on a global scale, to a multipolar world. Trump is stating openly, in what his mafia regime now describes as its “Donroe Doctrine”, that he is abandoning Europe and Ukraine, but demanding the right to exercise absolute control over the Americas, including Canada and Greenland. The EU coalition of the wilting cannot save Ukraine, even as it bankrupts itself in trying to do so. It is only a matter of time, before they openly admit that, and join with Trump in pressing Zelensky to sue for peace with Putin, on the basis of ceding Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. At that point, the “stab in the back” narrative will come to play in Ukraine, with Zelensky removed, and the likelihood of a far right, nationalistic regime based around the Right Sector/Azov Battalion seizing power. But, they have no solution either.

Ukraine, then, faces a difficult period ahead for decades, in which, to survive, it will have to cede control over much of its resources to foreign imperialist powers be that US imperialism, EU imperialism, or Chinese imperialism.

Back To Review of Prediction 3

Zionist Attack Destroys NATO's Narrative

The attack by the Zionist state, in Israel, on 100 targets, in Iran, has, in one fell swoop, destroyed the narrative presented, by NATO, and parroted by the social-imperialists. Firstly, no one believes the US claims that, it and its NATO allies, particularly Britain, were not involved in this attack on Iran. The Zionist state does not have the independent technological capability to do so, besides which, in the last week, the US openly withdrew personnel from the region, signalling that something was afoot. Both Trump and his friend Netanyahu have confirmed that they were fully informed, before the attack. Secondly, by engaging in such an attack, the Zionist state, its NATO sponsors, and the social imperialist apologists, have given the lie to the argument they have used in relation to Russia's attack on Ukraine.

The Zionist state has argued that “it had no choice”, but to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran, hitting 100 different sites, using 200 planes, and also, using MOSSAD special forces, inside Iran, to first take out Iranian air defences. In fact, with international nuclear inspectors already on the ground in Iran, and talks between Iran and the US, taking place, on Iran's nuclear programme, its not at all clear, why “it had no choice”, at this particular moment. There is no suggestion that Iran has a nuclear weapon, let alone the capacity to turn one into a warhead that could be delivered, nor, even that it is close to obtaining such a weapon. Even if it were, there are other channels that could have been used, before just launching such an attack.  Moreover, in international law, attacks on nuclear facilities are illegal, a fact that is repeatedly stated whenever explosions go off near Russian controlled, Ukrainian facilities, in Eastern Ukraine.

As many observers have noted, the likely result of the attack, is, in fact, that it will give Iran an excuse to kick out the international inspectors, end the talks with the US, and press ahead with the development of such a nuclear weapon, on the basis that, if it has one, the Zionist state would be less likely to undertake such violations of its sovereignty in the future. What, is more likely to have caused the Zionist state to feel it “had no choice”, at this moment, is that having implemented the strategy of US imperialism in carrying out the genocide in Gaza, and with that proceeding into the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, imperialist states, particularly in Europe, have begun to cover their backsides, and to apply pressure to the Zionist state, to give them more leverage in the coming years, and the geo-strategic developments in the region.

Even the UK, with its Zionist Prime Minister, and Foreign Secretary, backed by the Zionists of Blue Labour, have been led to try to pick up a fig-leaf of cover, by imposing modest sanctions on two of the most egregious Zionist war criminals Gvir and Smotrich, which only, all the more, begs the question of why only them, and not the whole Zionist regime, starting with Netanyahu? Even as they impose these sanctions, the UK, continues to supply the Zionist state with the weapons, the technical assistance, the high level intelligence and so on that allows that regime to continue with its genocide and other war crimes. But, the fact that the UK was led to adopt even that fig-leaf of cover, along with other EU countries, shows that the politicians are also worried about their own skins, as the reality of the genocide and those war crimes is aired in the courts, in coming years.

The Europeans never intended the ICC to be used to put them, and their allies in the dock, and, they should clearly have listened to the US imperialists, and the Zionists, who stayed well clear of any such entanglement, ensuring that they could be free to continue to commit war crimes, and crimes against humanity, unimpeded, without having to justify themselves to any such international tribunal. Not surprisingly, therefore, the US placed sanctions not on the Zionist war criminals, but on the international judges of the ICC, for having dared do their job, and bring the Zionist war criminals to the dock. Not surprisingly, US imperialism has also condemned its other NATO allies, for having imposed sanctions even just on Gvir and Smotrich.

Those disagreements, also, reflect the differing interests of US imperialism, and European imperialism, and the jockeying for position between the two, as the further geo-strategic, chess game in the region proceeds. But, that, also, is why the Zionist state really considered it had no choice but to strike at this time. It sees, the NATO alliance that stands behind it as fracturing, just as a similar fracturing of it has occurred as a result of the inter-imperialist war between the US and Russia in Ukraine, and between the US and China in the Pacific. The world's attention has been drawn to the genocide in Gaza, and its continuation in the West Bank. The US, first under Biden/Harris, and continued under Trump/Vance, promoted and enabled that genocide, and continues to do so. In the US, Biden/Harris violently suppressed any opposition to the genocide, utilising the now routine claims about any criticism of the Zionist state, being “Anti-Semitic”, using the definition of that term by the IHRA. Trump has simply picked up where Biden/Harris left off, in that regard.

But, the US was already becoming increasingly isolated in its stance, even under Biden/Harris, and is even more so, now, under Trump/Vance. For European politicians, as well as for liberal US politicians, Trump is a problem, because Trump is clearly a moron, but, worse for them, he is a moron who does not realise it, and who simply blurts out, and implements his reactionary agenda for all to see, much, indeed, as have the Zionist war criminals in Israel. Trump has separated US imperialism from the EU, as well as Canada and Mexico, as a result of his idiotic imposition of tariffs. Trump is just a US manifestation of the same petty-bourgeois, nationalist politics of Zionism, and of the likes of Brexitism (including "Left" Brexitism) of Farage, and Starmer.  He is bringing about the same kind of bifurcation in European politics that he has created in the US – a brutal, boorish petty-bourgeois, nationalist camp, versus the rest, which, in the absence of any organised working-class camp, amounts to an effete, liberal camp damned by its own previous actions, and with one eye, looking over its shoulder, in case anything it does provokes the working-class into action, which would quickly roll over it.

Trump's international isolation, and failures, the disaster his actions are creating for the US economy itself, his rupture with Musk, and so on, provoked his own invasion of California. In the same way that bourgeois liberals in Europe have had to raise, of course, in the mildest and politest tones their disapproval of the genocide being undertaken by the Zionist regime, so the bourgeois liberals in the US, have had to begin to criticise Trump and his regime for their invasion of California, and more significantly, have, now, openly, had to begin pointing out that Trump's behaviour is not part of some clever, negotiating and business skill, as part of “the art of he deal” (which Trump probably never even read let alone wrote), but are the consequence of him just being a boorish, ignoramus!

These are dangerous developments for the bourgeoisie, because what does it say about the narrative it has always presented about capitalism being a meritocratic and democratic system, in which hard work and ability is rewarded, and the cream, thereby rises to the top? And, not just in respect of Trump. The liberal, bourgeoisie, in the US, via their media, now openly ridicule nearly all of Trump's Cabinet as intellectually defective. Rather than Trump being some kind of business genius, and negotiator, the facts about his serial business failures and bankruptcies are laid out, and he has acquired the epithet of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).

In Europe, Trump had the acolytes of Farage and Boris Johnson, in Britain, pushing Brexit, as well as the likes of Le Pen, Wilders, and so on in the EU. That division is sharpening. Those Trumpist, petty-bourgeois, nationalist elements continue to drive in that direction. In Britain, Farage has simply supplanted the Tories, and vies for the support of that large, reactionary petty-bourgeois mass with Starmer. In the meantime, the bourgeois liberals (Blair-rights, soft lefts) inside Labour are silent, and cowed, as he sucks up to Trump and his increasingly authoritarian, Bonapartist regime, whilst the bourgeois-liberals inside the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats appear like rabbits caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, about to run over them, incapable of understanding the changed conditions they face.

So, the decision of the Zionist state, to engage in this attack on Iran, has taken advantage of those conditions. If Iran responds, besides the fact that its response will be ineffective, it will provide cover for US imperialism, to focus only on the response as it has done on previous occasions, rather than the attack, but, will also draw in NATO to counter the Iranian response. If Iran fails to respond, it will simply emphasise its own weakness.

The argument used by the Zionist state, is, basically, the same argument used by the US for its encirclement of Cuba, in 1962, and threat to start WWIII. It is, also, the argument used by the Zionists and social-imperialists of the AWL, twenty years ago, when they set out the arguments to be used to justify any Zionist bombing of Iran. Unfortunately, for imperialism, and for the social-imperialists, that argument immediately undermines the argument they have made in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine.

Of course, if you view the world from the perspective of nation states, or alliances of such states, the argument that every state has the right to defend itself, to assert national independence, and self-determination, is legitimate.  What is more, as Lenin described, no sensible state would simply stand by and allow other states to encircle it, or build up forces on its borders, accumulating weapons ready to strike. On the contrary, it would seize the initiative, and strike first.

“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?””

(Trotsky – Lenin On Imperialism)

That is what the US did in threatening nuclear war in response to the deployment of soviet missiles on Cuba, its what the Zionist state has done in attacking its neighbours on numerous occasions, and now with Iran, and it is, also, what Russia has done in response to the continued expansion of NATO up to its borders, and threat of Ukraine joining NATO. So, those who view the world from the perspective of states, and specifically of bourgeois states, can legitimately set out their case for such pre-emptive strikes, but, in doing so, the hypocrisy of their argument in relation to Russia's invasion of Eastern Ukraine, is fully exposed.

For Marxists, however, we do not view the world from the perspective of states, least of all bourgeois states, but from the perspective of classes. In doing so, we proclaim ourselves as militant champions, not of any state, but of one of those contending classes – the working-class. So, having set out the hypocrisy of the Entente, in WWI, in their argument against Germany, for having started the war, Lenin and the Bolsheviks found no reason, either to defend or justify Germany and its allies. Our interest, in that case, lay with the workers on each side, thrown into a meat-grinder, not for the furtherance of their own interests, but the interests of their own ruling classes.

Similarly, whilst Marxists highlight the sheer hypocrisy of NATO imperialism, and of the social imperialists, in attacking Russia for an “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine, that is no reason for us to back Russia either. Our interest, and our solution resides in the action, not of states, but of the working-class, as a global class, and the building of the maximum unity of that class, across borders. Our principle is “The Main Enemy Is At Home”. It is the bourgeois ruling class, and its state. On that basis, as Lenin and Trotsky set out, we give no credence to the claims of a right of states to defend themselves, or as it is presented “defence of the fatherland”. We support only the right of the working-class to defend itself against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, and its state. Our means of achieving that is via international working-class solidarity, opposition to all standing armies, and foreign wars, and the creation of workers' militia, under the direct democratic control of workers councils.

Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 4 of 27

As I wrote recently, the social-imperialists have led workers to disaster once more, and no Marxist should have had any problem in anticipating what lay ahead for Ukraine, or Palestine. As Trotsky wrote, in the 1930's, in relation to Ukraine.

“Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score...

The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”

(Problem of the Ukraine)

The reality is, of course, as Trotsky infers, above, that any deal in relation to Ukraine will be done between the US and Russia, and the lines of that deal, which amounts to, basically, carving up Ukraine once again, are already to be seen in outline. Whatever the petty-bourgeois nationalists and idealists might think ought to be the case, according to their morality, and belief in abstract, absolute and eternal rights, US imperialism and Russian imperialism will settle those details between them, and present the result as a fait accompli to both Ukraine and the EU alike.

No such deal will have any place for NATO “peacekeepers”, dressed up as British and EU forces, because there is no reason that Putin would accept such a condition, and as Trump needs to get a deal as quickly as possible, there is, also, no way he will insist on it. The reality is that, if not Trump, then his advisors, know that, despite all of the propaganda to the contrary, there is no reason why Russia would want to expand out of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, into the rest of Ukraine, militarily, and couldn't even if it wanted to. It would be the kind of overreach that NATO has been trying to draw it into. The same is true about the even more ridiculous claims about Russia preparing to invade the rest of Europe, which are being used simply to ramp up military spending in the EU and UK, even as those countries cut welfare and other spending to finance it. One of the most ludicrous examples of that has been the French government sending out leaflets to households about how to prepare for an invasion!

That is what Trump's regime is already saying, and in the process destroying all of the hot air being put out by Blue Labour, Brexiters and the British Brexit media, about its special relationship, its unique position between the US and EU, and so on. Just as with the Nordstream pipeline, the US has blown up Brexit Britain's Bridge to nowhere, leaving it even more isolated somewhere in mid-Atlantic. Already, Britain's mini-Trump has had to row back on his statements about leading (of course not him or his children) brave young British and European soldiers into danger, by putting their “boots on the ground”, in Ukraine, as Trump made clear what he thought about it. The face-saving idea about, instead, having aerial or naval presence, is equally absurd. For one thing, most of that technology for those forces depends on US support. For another, if Russia shot them down, what, then?

Back To Part 3

Forward To Part 5

Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 6 of 6

History has repeated itself. The social-imperialists sold the workers into the bondage of US/NATO imperialism, as their only saviour against Russian imperialism, the underlying but unstated reality, of course, being that US imperialism would, at some point, demand its pound of flesh from Ukraine's workers themselves, as Trump is now setting out. Indeed, I pointed out, some time ago, that the, now, fundamentally misled and demoralised workers of Ukraine, will not just be easy pickings for western exploiters, but also, for Russian and Chinese exploiters. Trump's deal does not exclude the possibility that the Ukraine's mineral resources might actually be dug out of the ground by Russian or Chinese based companies, but that the US will still get 50% of the revenues from them having done so, as payment for all those weapons that the social-imperialists misled Ukraine into believing were being offered freely and generously by rapacious western imperialists! Had they not read how US imperialism acted in that respect, in relation to WWI and II?

Of course, the “anti-imperialists” have been no better. In the Middle-East, they have sought to align themselves not with the workers of the region, as the means to provide a solution, but have simply repeated the error of those that backed the Zionists. The only difference is that they seek to back a different bourgeois nationalist horse, i.e. a Palestinian rather than Zionist horse. And, having sought a bourgeois nationalist solution, they inevitably align themselves with all sorts of anti-working-class, reactionary nationalist movements, and states to that end. Their solution does not lead to a revolutionary, proletarian conclusion, via the process of permanent revolution, but, inevitably, limits itself to a simply bourgeois nationalist solution that pits Palestinian and other Arab workers against each other, rather than against the real enemy, the Arab and Jewish ruling classes, and the imperialist powers that stand behind them. It is the same approach as that used by the likes of Rosa Luxemburg and Josef Pilsudski, in relation to Polish independence, attacked by Lenin.

“See to what monstrous conclusions this monstrous logic leads, even from the viewpoint of the programme demand for Poland’s restoration. Because the restoration of Poland is one of the possible (but, whilst the bourgeoisie rules, by no means absolutely certain) consequences of democratic evolution, therefore the Polish proletariat must not fight together with the Russian proletariat to overthrow Tsarism, but “only” to weaken it by wresting Poland from it. Because Russian Tsarism is concluding a closer and closer alliance with the bourgeoisie and the governments of Germany, Austria, etc., therefore the Polish proletariat must weaken its alliance with the proletariat of Russia, Germany, etc., together with whom it is now fighting against one and the same yoke. This is nothing more than sacrificing the most vital interests of the proletariat to the bourgeois-democratic conception of national independence. The disintegration of Russia which the P.S.P. desires, as distinct from our aim of overthrowing Tsarism, is and will remain an empty phrase, as long as economic development continues to bring the different parts of a political whole more and more closely together, and as long as the bourgeoisie of all countries unite more and more closely against their common enemy, the proletariat, and in support of their common ally, the tsar.”

(The National Question In Our Programme)

When the Zionists in Israel, now, state openly to Palestinians, “who is going to save you, now”, they speak only a brutal and brutish truth of where the bourgeois nationalist solutions sought for the Palestinians, and advocated by social-imperialists and “anti-imperialists” alike, have led that benighted people. The response to the question of the Zionists should have been, "the revolutionary proletariat, including revolutionary Jewish workers will save us, and themselves", but the collapse of the global socialist movement into petty-bourgeois moralism and nationalism has made that impossible. Imperialism, and its poodle, the United Nations, was never going to save the Palestinians, and nor were the bourgeois Arab States for whom the Palestinians were also an encumbrance and inconvenience, as they sought to further their interests and alliances with imperialism, and so, necessarily with the Zionist state, as its proxy. The workers in Ukraine can expect no better outcome.

Back To Part 5

Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 5 of 6

Inevitably, as Marx and Engels wrote, in relation to the European “non-historic peoples” in the 19th century, and as Lenin and Trotsky wrote about such small nations in the 20th, the Palestinians turned to other more powerful states, creating yet again divisions within the global working-class along national lines, and causing them to fall in behind the ruling classes of those states, lines and divisions themselves determined by imperialism. The reality of the supposed Two Bourgeois States solution was always that it could only be brought about, not only over the heads of the workers in the Middle-East, but also over the heads of the ruling classes of Israel and Palestine, and the surrounding states. It would require US imperialism, probably in conjunction with EU imperialism to impose such a solution on those ruling classes, and they had no reason to do that, rather than continuing to support the Zionist state as their proxy, and have it implement their agenda in the region.

The same is true in relation to the imperialist solution imposed from above on Ukraine. In the 1930's, Trotsky noted.

“Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score...

The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”

(Problem of the Ukraine)

Back To Part 4

Forward To Part 6

Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 4 of 6

When the working-class and its leadership fail to insist on their independence from the ruling-class, and cease fighting for its own interests, by subordinating itself to the interests of the ruling-class, based only on some moralistic conception of backing the lesser-evil, that is the inevitable result. It disqualifies itself from any say in the historical process, and as the workers in Ukraine will, now, find, as I predicted at the start of the conflict, will have fatally undermined themselves in the struggle that follows. What is more, as the world hurtles towards WWIII, and the extinction of humanity, the working-class, everywhere, has also been fundamentally undermined, by the moralising, and class-collaborationist policies of the social-imperialists, most disgracefully some of whom call themselves Trotskyists.

As Trotsky had noted in some of his last writings,

“... the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism.”

And,

“The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. Interested in winning the sympathies of the Arabs who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has sharply altered its policy toward the Jews, and has actually renounced its promise to help them found their “own home” in a foreign land. The future development of military events may well transform Palestine into a bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews. Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system.”

(On The Jewish Problem.)

In fact, Jews themselves arrived at the same conclusion. Despite all of the racist laws in Israel to give Jews ethno-religious privileges, only 40% of the world's Jews live in Israel, with as many living in the US. Increasingly, it is not Jews that provide the support for Zionism and its project in Israel, but Christian-Zionist zealots seeking The Second Coming, and Armageddon, and, in the US, they play a significant role within the Republican Party, along with other racists and white nationalists.

The social-imperialists abandoned class politics, and the primacy of proletarian struggle, in relation to the resolution of the problems of Jews, not only in favour of a reactionary, bourgeois nationalist solution – Zionism – which was no solution at all, and has, in reality fermented even greater anti-Semitism, the more so as the Zionists equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, but have done so, in relation to the consequence of that non-solution – the denial of rights to Palestinians. Having established the new, bourgeois Zionist state at the expense of the Palestinians, the social-imperialists then have sought to inadequately compensate the Palestinians for that consequence, by offering them the prospect of a bourgeois state on just a part of Palestine, in other words, again a bourgeois nationalist solution. But, unlike the bourgeois nationalist solution offered by Zionism, the bourgeois nationalist solution offered to Palestinians has had no chance of being fulfilled. The Palestinians have not had the backing of powerful international forces, be it at one point the USSR, and later US imperialism, that the Zionists have enjoyed.

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Forward To Part 5

Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 2 of 6

As Owen Jones and others have extensively shown, western media, let alone the totalitarian, Zionist media inside Israel itself, has systematically covered up the atrocities committed by Zionist settlers, and by the IDF, day after day, both before and after October 7th, the most obvious atrocity that began the process being that of the violent creation of the Zionist state, itself, in 1948, which led to more than 700,000 Palestinians being forced from their land and homes, many of whom were driven to become refugees in Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan, and who are refused the right to return. As Marxists, we do not act as moralists seeking to right historical wrongs such as that, but seek to act in such a way as to best further the interests of the working-class in the conditions of today, and, invariably that means seeking to build the greatest possible unity of workers across national borders. Indeed, those national borders, in the age of imperialism, are an anachronism, a fetter on the rational development of capital itself, let alone the goal of creating international socialism.

As Lenin had put it,

“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 National Question In Our Programme)

Consequently, although Marxists could never have justified the creation of the Zionist state in 1948, we deal with the reality of its existence. To seek the destruction of that state by the same kinds of violence that saw its creation, would be as reactionary as that act of creation itself, simply winding the film of history in reverse. The question, for Marxists is always focused on the agent of change, and the only progressive agent of change is the working-class, a class which itself has no nationality, because it is a global class, fighting a global capitalist/imperialist ruling class. We seek the destruction of the Zionist state, only in the same way that we seek the destruction of all other capitalist/imperialist states, not at the hands of some other class state, or exploiting class, but at the hands of the revolutionary proletariat.

The project of Zionism, as a reactionary, racist and colonialist ideology could never be supported by Marxists, precisely because it places race and nationality above class, and focuses on the former rather than the latter as the basis upon which the fundamental divisions of society are based, and which must form the axis around which history is driven forward. So long as that is the case, then all such struggles will lead to class being subordinated to race and national identity, and consequently, the objective reality of the unity of the working-class as a global class, and of the actual fundamental antagonism – the contradiction between capital and labour – will become secondary. It means that the working-class will be repeatedly divided on the basis of race and national identity. The struggle for its own interests will repeatedly be postponed until some future date, after it has already weakened itself via a popular front with its real enemy, the bourgeois ruling-class.

As again, Lenin put it,

“That is why the proletariat confines itself, so to speak, to the negative demand for recognition of the right to self-determination, without giving guarantees to any nation, and without undertaking to give anything at the expense of another nation.”

(The Right of Nations to Self-Determination)

Back To Part 1

Forward To Part 3

Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 1 of 6

Social imperialists have, again, led the working-class into disaster. At a time of an evident and growing drive to global imperialist war, which, this time, would inevitably, and quickly, become a thermonuclear war, destroying humanity, the social imperialists have disarmed the working-class both physically and politically, by subordinating them to their own respective ruling classes, and making them simply foot soldiers in the interests of those ruling classes, rather than an independent third camp of the proletariat, fighting for its own class interests, against those ruling classes. The most obvious example of that, now, is in Ukraine, but the same can be seen in Palestine.

That, short of a direct military confrontation between US imperialism/NATO and Russian~Chinese imperialism, i.e. World War III, Ukraine could never defeat Russia, no matter how much weaponry NATO provided, should have been obvious to any intelligent person, let alone Marxist. As I have set out before, part of the reason for them believing it could, or was even about to do so, was not just that the social imperialists, and other apologists for NATO, swallowed their own propaganda, as part of a moralistic act of wishful thinking, but that, from the start, they committed to the false narrative that Russia wanted to annex the whole of Ukraine, and had launched a full scale invasion to that effect. The reality always was that Russia knew it could never conquer the whole of Ukraine, didn't need to, to achieve its aims, and so never did launch such a full-scale invasion.

US imperialism/NATO did not need to occupy the whole of Serbia to achieve its aims. It only needed to occupy Kosovo, and split it away from Serbia. It didn't mean that, in the process, it didn't also bomb Serbia itself, and so on. In the same way, Russia did not need to occupy the whole of Georgia in 2007, and, despite claims of NATO, and its apologists, that it would, it didn't do so, even though it clearly could have done so, easily, having driven its tanks right up to Tbilisi. It only needed to occupy the ethnic Russian areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and did so using the same justification that US imperialism/NATO had done on many occasions, including in Kosovo, of preventing genocide/ethnic cleansing etc. Its amazing how many times imperialist powers have used this pretext as the basis for their own military adventures, and yet the social-imperialists continue to ask workers to swallow it.

Trotsky, writing as a war correspondent, during the Balkan Wars, not only noted, and searingly exposed, the lies and hypocrisy of the European imperialists and their media, which recounted, in gory detail, the atrocities of the Turks, whilst not only failing to report the equally grisly atrocities of those fighting against them, but, also, deliberately censoring any such reports made by journalists and socialists such as Trotsky. Trotsky wrote to Miliukov, who had been a prominent, liberal, Russian advocate for “national liberation” of the Balkan Slavic peoples, and advocate of liberal interventionism to achieve it,

“Recently, during the period of the armistice, you made a political journey to the Balkans; you visited several centres and, what is of particular importance, you went to the regions recently conquered by the allies.

Did you not hear during your travels – it must be supposed that this would be of interest to you – about the monstrous acts of brutality that were committed by the triumphant soldiery of the allies all along their line of march, not only on unarmed Turkish soldiers, wounded or taken prisoner, but also on the peaceful Muslim inhabitants, on old men and women, on defenceless children?”

(The Balkan Wars p 285-6)

The same has been seen in every such military conflict, with domestic populations being led into support for the actions of their own ruling class, by lurid claims of the bestiality of those they are fighting, whilst scrupulously avoiding any suggestion of their own atrocities. The justification of the genocide in Gaza on the basis, not of the already abominable nature of Hamas' attack on October 7th, but of a systematic and torrential series of lies, about babies being beheaded, women raped and so on, during those attacks, is a recent example. Trotsky, continued,

“Would you not agree that a conspiracy of silence by all of our 'leading' papers.... that this mutual agreement to keep quiet makes all of you fellow travellers and moral participants in bestialities that will lie as a stain of dishonour on our whole epoch?

Are not, in these circumstances, your protests against Turkish atrocities – which I am not at all going to deny – like the disgusting conduct of Pharisees: resulting, it must be supposed, not from the general principles of culture and humanity but from naked calculations of imperialist greed?”

(ibid)

Forward To Part 2

Blue Labour Zionists Take The Piss On Arms Ban

Blue Labour has spent the last year acting as apologist for the Zionist state in Israel as it openly committed genocide in Gaza, and continued to violently steal land from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including the use of organised rape and torture of Palestinians. When the ICJ ruled that there was a prima facie case that genocide was being committed by the Zionist state, Starmer and Blue Labour continued to deny it, and that holocaust denialism was emphasised by their suspension, and subsequent expulsion of Labour candidates and members for merely stating the truth about that genocide already announced by the ICJ, and subsequently ICC, as it issued arrest warrants for the main Zionist butchers, hopefully to be followed with warrants for the arrest of its accomplices in the governments of the US, EU, and Britain.

Its no doubt with this latter possibility in mind that the facilitators of that genocide in the US, EU and Britain have, more recently, tried to provide themselves with some fig-leaf of cover against future prosecutions and incarceration for their part in what is the worst atrocity, so far, of the 21st century, and, on a proportional basis, already ranks as one of the worst atrocities committed in the last hundred years, exceeding those in Rwanda, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Kenya and elsewhere. 

The US, of course, simply used its power as world hegemon to attack and sanction the ICJ and ICC themselves, illustrating that its so called “democratic imperialism”, and international rules based order, is just a mask covering the iron fist of its own global interests, and intent on enforcing them, militarily, irrespective of any concept of freedom or democracy, or morality. Like the absolute monarchs of previous centuries, it believes that, when it comes to global relations, it is the law, it is the state, and “apres moi, la deluge”. It is why, the US never accepted the jurisdiction, and never signed up to the ICC.

But, it is clear that these holocaust deniers in the governments of the US, EU and UK, and even more those that may soon be ejected from those positions, recognise that, across the globe, they are in an increasing minority, and, now, at risk of having some other country, slap the bracelets on them for their nefarious acts, and drag them in front of the world's court, in a way they thought they had so structured things that it would only be the politicians of their enemy states that faced such action. The pictures of that happening to one of their favourite dictators of the last century – Pinochet – must flash before their eyes, as they go to bed at night.

So, Biden/Harris have tried to give themselves a fig-leaf of a court defence, by claiming that they have pressed the Zionist state to accept a ceasefire. But, that is as meaningless as their statements, over the last 50 years, that they were seeking the chimera of the Two State Solution. Without the support of the US, the Zionist state would collapse, and so, if they really sought a Two State Solution, they would simply have told the Zionists to stop preventing it.

There are already two states on the territory of Israel-Palestine. It has proven no solution, simply because the more powerful Zionist state, militarily prevents the Palestinian state from functioning, and it is supported in doing that by US imperialism, backed by British and EU imperialism, and their hangers on in NATO. No Marxist can have any excuse for not understanding that that was inevitable, because it is the way imperialism works, of the bigger more powerful states, inevitably dominating the less powerful states, just as larger capitals dominate and eventually eliminate smaller capitals.

As Trotsky put it more than a century ago.

“Capitalism in its international relations pursues the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. Competition is the means of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of Big Capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and the greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital, and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the Great Powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps.”

(The Programme of Peace)

But, of course, the US and Western imperialism, has no interest in a two-state solution, and it has used it simply as a sop to bourgeois, Palestinian and Arab politicians, and to gullible liberals and moralists in the West. The Zionist state is its vehicle in the Middle-East, alongside its other client states in the Gulf, and yet, even they, as well as those in Egypt and Jordan, have shown themselves not to be dependable, not least because of their lack of stable support from their own populations, as seen in the downfall of Mubarak in Egypt, and election of Morsi, requiring yet another military coup to remove him.

And, in the Gulf, as the BRICS+ imperialist bloc rises in significance, with the driver of Chinese industrial capital, opening up the world, so too those Gulf economies are being lured away from the US, and towards that alternative pole. As I noted recently, its why Trump has merely said openly what the policy of US/western imperialism is, in that regard, when he called for Netanyahu to be left to finish the job of exterminating the Palestinians, much as European settlers did against American natives, and Britain did against the aborigines in Australasia.

So, as the Zionist state implements that genocide and extermination of the Palestinians, and as western imperialism not only stands by and watches, but provides it with the weapons, finance and technology to do it, those politicians in the governments of western imperialism, also, need to keep a weather eye on their own necks, and potential for being hauled before the world court at some future time. The epitome of it was the action of Blue Labour at the point where its continued opposition even to a ceasefire was becoming untenable and an albatross around its neck ahead of the General Election. It could not be seen to be backing the SNP motion that called for a ceasefire, on the basis of noting the genocide being committed by the Zionist state, and so used its muscle over the Speaker, to have him prevent the SNP motion being discussed, and have the watered down Blue Labour motion discussed instead, which made no reference to the genocide.

That bureaucratic method is typical of the Bonapartism of Blue Labour. Blue Labour is a representative of the same reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist interests and ideology that stand behind Zionism. As Marx set out, in The Eighteenth Brumaire, the petty-bourgeoisie are too amorphous to become the ruling class, but they are large in numbers, even today. As I have set out recently, since the 1980's, in Britain, they have grown by around 50%, reversing a two century trend of relative decline.

It is that increase in their relative social weight that is the material basis of the movement of the Conservative Party from being a conservative social democratic (neoliberal) party, based on the petty-bourgeoisie, but representing the interests of large-scale, socialised capital, to being a petty-bourgeois, nationalist party, representing the interests of that petty-bourgeoisie, as indicated by Brexit. That same process is seen with the Republicans in the US, and similar parties across Europe.

Blue Labour has sought to also occupy that ideological and electoral space. But, precisely because the petty-bourgeoisie cannot form the ruling-class, and because the interests of petty-bourgeois nationalism are antagonistic to those of large-scale, socialised capital, the petty-bourgeoisie can only govern on the basis of Bonapartism. It requires that the main classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat are themselves weak and divided. Bonapartism itself can take numerous forms on a spectrum of superficial democracy that looks a lot like bourgeois democracy, to at the other end outright military rule, and dictatorship. Those features are seen in Starmer's approach inside the Labour Party, and are, now, transferred into the realm of government itself.

So, when Blue Labour's David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, announced the pitiful restriction of just 10% of Britain's arms sales to the Zionist regime, it was no surprise that he spent most of the time reiterating his own Zionism, and support for that Zionist regime, even as it carries out that internationally recognised genocide, as well as trying to pretend that the lack of equivalence between that Zionist state, and Hamas was all on the side of the Zionist regime!

Of course, there is no equivalence, but contrary to Lammy, it is the Zionist state, a huge permanently mobilised, military regime, a clear manifestation of Bonapartism, backed by the world's most powerful military machine, which has all of the power, and which has used it continuously, over the last 80 years to impose itself on the Palestinians, and surrounding Arab states! To try to claim some lack of equivalence, based on the false notion that this reactionary, Bonapartist regime is “democratic” is ludicrous, and were it to be true, would only demolish completely the old argument that “democratic” states do not carry out genocides! Lammy's argument is, not surprisingly, the same argument of non-equivalence that Farage, and the other reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalists used in relation to the policing of the recent riots by far-right thugs, of two-tier policing.

Blue Labour is a manifestation of those class relations. It represents the interests of reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism. That petty-bourgeois nationalism is antagonistic to the interests both of the ruling class of speculators, whose revenues ultimately depend upon the profits of large-scale socialised capital, which itself depends on the free movement of that capital, as manifest in the growth of the EU, and of the process of globalisation, and of the working-class, which is the collective owner of that socialised capital. The ruling class is itself tiny, amounting to only around 0.1% of the population, and its power comes from its ownership of the vast majority of fictitious-capital, and control of the state, through which it also controls the real industrial capital. The working-class, is currently weak, having suffered a severe defeat in the 1980's, and relative diminution in its social position, from which it is still recovering.

But, the petty-bourgeoisie represents only around 30% of the population, and is amorphous. Blue Labour required the vote of the working-class, and professional middle-class, at the same time as seeking to attract to it the votes of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, symbolised by the “white van man”, and its attendant layers of lumpen proletarians, visible in the ranks of those that turned out on the streets to riot in the recent weeks. The multiple contradictions it faces in trying to hold that electoral coalition together are more than obvious. And, in the election itself, it was apparent in the fact that Blue Labour got less votes than Corbyn's Labour obtained in 2019, and only around the same share of the vote, whilst its share of the vote, and number of votes cratered compared to Corbyn's Labour in 2017.

Yet, the propagandists of Blue Labour have continued to present this as a landslide of historic proportions. That is only true if, like a good Bonapartist, you are not ashamed to achieve those results on the basis of what amounts to an electoral system based on ballot-rigging. So, its also no surprise to see Zionists and right-wing Labourites such as Eric Lee, defending Blue Labour's performance against criticism from consistent democrats and Marxists, as he set it out in the Zionist rag of the AWL. He wrote,

“American astronauts did not set foot on the Moon in July 1969. In 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were brought down by a controlled explosion, and not by hijacked airliners that flew into them. Russia did not invade Ukraine but merely launched a “special military operation” in self-defence against the threat of a Nazi regime in Kyiv. Climate change is not real. The earth is flat.

Let’s add one more to that list: the Labour Party did not win the general election last week.”

Even Lee can't claim that critics of Blue Labour do not recognise that, in terms of Britain's corrupt undemocratic electoral system, it won the election. But, his whole argument is based upon the defence of that lack of democracy of the system! He rightly criticises Trump for claiming that he didn't lose the 2020 election, but, on that basis, you might also justify the election of George Bush against Al Gore, even though Gore obtained more votes in total, or the election of the Tories in 1951, even though they polled fewer votes that Attlee's Labour Party, and won a smaller share of the vote.

Lee tries to justify this by claiming that it was all about utilising the system effectively, even though, as I've shown, that argument is flawed, also, because even where Blue Labour was supposed to have targeted its efforts in particular seats, it still didn't improve its support over 2019, in most cases, and in pretty much every case, did worse than in 2017. In reality, Lee's argument is that of every Bonapartist, or bureaucratic, basing themselves on manipulating the system, rather than building real majority support. It is the method of Stalin, who said its not the casting of the votes that determines elections, but who counts them.

This is a house of cards that has been built on rotten foundations. Its collapse is inevitable.

Zionist State Extends Its War of Annexation

The Zionist state, in Israel/Palestine, has extended its war of annexation, as I said it would. Zionism, as a reactionary nationalist, racist and colonialist ideology, of itself is forced to continually seek to expand the territory over which it exercises its remit, much as European colonialism did in the Mercantilist period from the 17th to the end of the 19th century. But, the Zionist state, in Israel/Palestine, is not just such a reactionary nationalist/colonialist state, it is, also, an imperialist state, based upon large-scale monopoly capitalism, closely tied to the state, and to global imperialism, primarily US imperialism. It serves a similar purpose, for US imperialism, in the Middle East, that the Ukrainian imperialist state serves in Eastern Europe.

In both cases, the interests of EU imperialism coincide with that of US imperialism, and yet, also, differ from those of US imperialism. US imperialism is concerned with its global strategic hegemony, exercised via its huge military machine that dwarfs every other military on the planet, and via its NATO imperialist alliance, through which it, also, exercises its domination over those subordinate imperialist allies in Britain, the EU, Japan and elsewhere. It is concerned to limit and control the expansion of Chinese imperialism, and its imperialist alliance with Russia, and the other imperialist and sub-imperialist powers within BRICS+.

The Ukrainian imperialist state enables US imperialism to fulfil that function in Eastern Europe, using it as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, with an endless supply of Ukrainian workers blood, to keep Russia tied up on its western border. Its aim, though one it has not been successful in achieving, was to undermine Putin, and open the door to further insurgencies, within the Russian Federation itself, to break it apart, and, thereby, to put in place its own client regimes, much as it thought it had done with Yeltsin, so as to have access to the vast resources of Russia.

The Zionist imperialist state in Israel/Palestine, is used by US imperialism to check the growing influence of Chinese imperialism in the Gulf, and to an extent in North Africa, as well as the influence of Russian imperialism, with its historic links to Iran, Syria, and the role it is playing via the Wagner group in Sudan, Mali and elsewhere.

The interests of EU imperialism are somewhat different. EU imperialism is primarily concerned with creating, a large single market, which is why it created the EU in the first place. It seeks to continually expand the size of that single market, to meet the needs of capital in the EU, which must operate on an ever larger scale, to compete with the mammoth imperialist capitals in the US and China. But, a single market requires the states within it to all operate on the basis of common laws and so on, which requires them to be free of the kinds of corruption that many states in Europe suffer. Before, being allowed to join, states in Europe have had to go through a probationary period in which they became more aligned with the EU. It means that the EU could have closer relations with a range of states on its periphery, without them being EU members, and yet, from which EU imperialism gained advantages, as with its deals with Russia, for the supply of cheap oil and gas.

EU imperialism has gradually expanded its single market Eastwards, with Ukraine being the next state to be drawn into its orbit, though, as with Turkiye, it was never likely to gain membership of the EU any time soon, given its huge levels of corruption. The EU had the potential to continue that course of imperialist expansion via increased trade and cooperation, including with Russia, but such an expansion would not have been in the interests of US imperialism. It would have strengthened both EU imperialism and Russian imperialism, at the expense of US imperialism, and would have weakened the ties and subordination of EU imperialism to US imperialism. It is EU imperialism that has borne the cost of the imperialist war in Ukraine, not only via the huge costs of arms and other aid supplied to Ukraine, but also as a result of its reduced trade with Russia, and a huge rise in its energy and food costs resulting from its boycott and sanctions against Russia.

The effect of that on European workers, with social-democratic parties, and even sections of a social-imperialist “Left” backing such imperialist war, has provided the material conditions for a further expansion of the far-right, whose forces had already grown as a consequence of the 50% growth of the petty-bourgeoisie over recent decades.

The EU had, also, developed similar economic relations with the economies of MENA that they had done with the economies of Central Europe, following the collapse of Stalinism. That created a corresponding path of economic development, and eventual expansion of the single market into the Middle East and North Africa. It is again clear why such a development would not be in the interests of US imperialism, as it further strengthens EU imperialism, and establishes closer ties with those oil rich states that the US had dragged away from the old European colonial powers, after WWII.

The Iraq War, fought on the basis of an obvious lie about WMD, was fought by US and UK imperialism, and opposed by most of the EU, to the ire of the US. It led to chaos in Iraq, and rise of the jihadists, which spread into Libya and Syria, destabilising the region and its economic development, and along with it the relation to the EU. As with the war in Ukraine, it was the EU that bore the cost, not the US, as not only did it result in this economic dislocation, but large numbers of refugees found their way into EU countries, providing yet another bit of grist to the mill of the far-right.

But, as I wrote, some time ago, the interests of both US and EU imperialism coincide in seeing the need for the Zionist state in Israel/Palestine to deal once and for all with what it sees as the Palestinian problem. The EU, in order to get back to those kinds of relations it sought to develop prior to the Iraq War, and the chaos it spread across the Middle East and North Africa, needs Israel to establish “normal” relations with its Arab neighbours, as the basis of forming some form of common market. US imperialism, also, seeks such a development, because, with its client state, Israel, being the most powerful, and dominant state in any such common market, and with closer ties to the EU, it draws those states away from the growing influence of China and Russia.

The fact that the Zionist state has been able to cross every red-line supposedly put down by the Biden regime, with impunity, that it laughs in the face of “the international community”, and its “rules based order”, not only ignoring the rulings of that “community's” courts, the ICJ and ICC, but has done so with US backing, which has similarly supported the ridiculous claims that the courts rulings were a result of it being “anti-Semitic”, shows just how much the genocide being committed by the Zionist state is being done with the full support of US and EU imperialism. Its no wonder that when the reactionary nationalist regime of Starmer and Blue Labour, found itself losing Muslim members and voters, as a result of its own support for that genocide, it responded, in typically racist and colonialist fashion, by describing it as simply “shaking off fleas”!!!

The genocide being committed, in Gaza most visibly, but also underway in the rest of Palestine, exposes the sham nature and hypocrisy of the calls for a two-state solution. The reality is that two states have existed in Israel and Palestine, but it provided no solution. The Palestinian state is recognised by 145 countries, representing 75% of UN members. What those who talk about a two-state solution mean is actually, US recognition of that state of Palestine, and of course, although US imperialism, itself, continually talks about such a solution being the only way forward, it continually prevents such a solution, by voting against recognition, and by continuing to support the Zionist state in refusing to accept the existence of such a state.

Palestine is a state, and another state, the Zionist state in Israel, has simply acted to impose itself on it, via its military might, a military might made possible by, and supported by, US and EU imperialism. The existence of a state, can no more provide a solution for Palestinians than could the existence of a state for Poland prevent Hitler's armies invading it, and annexing it! To believe otherwise, in the age of imperialism, is to believe in bourgeois-liberal fairytales. As Marx put it,

“They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their “constitutional State.””

(A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy)

The Zionist state, with the full support of US, UK and EU imperialism, has carried out genocide in Gaza, it rapes and tortures Palestinians across the whole of Palestine, and publicly defends such rape and torture, and it backs and promotes Zionist settlers in annexing further Palestinian land in the West Bank, as it also, rapes and murders Palestinians to drive them from that land. As I wrote previously, it is carrying out a similar process of extermination of Palestinians to that conducted by European colonialists in the Americas, and Australasia. But, that is only the start of the planned annexations by the Zionist state, as I also noted. It is already beginning the process of expanding that war of annexation into Lebanon, and Syria.

For months, it has been attempting to provoke Hezbollah into a more overt attack, but without success. Its bombing of Beirut, which signifies a qualitative stepping up in those attempts, and the assassination, thereby, of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, was justified on the basis of a claim that Hezbollah had launched a missile strike on Majdal Hams, in the Israeli occupied, Golan Heights, which killed twelve people. There are a number of points to raise about that. Firstly, as the Syrian representative to the UK noted, the Golan Heights are Syrian, not Israeli territory. The Zionist state illegally occupies that territory, just as it has illegally occupied Palestinian territory. As an occupying force, the Zionist state has no right of self-defence.

Secondly, those killed, not only were not Israeli citizens, but Syrians, they also, were not Jewish citizens, but Druze Christians. In fact, when Netanyahu turned up in Majdal Shams, those Druze residents heckled him, and gave him a hostile reception, because they see him, and the Zionist state as the occupiers, and responsible for their plight. 

Hezbollah have also, from the start, rejected the Zionist claim hat they fired the rocket, and its not clear why they would do so. It has, however, given the Zionist regime a pretext to hugely expand its war in the region. Similarly, its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran for the inauguration of the new Iranian President, not only breaks international law, but also shows that the Zionist regime backed by US imperialism has no intention of negotiating a ceasefire, as it continues its genocide.

The Zionists are seeking to expand the war, and provoke a response from Hezbollah and Iran, in order to step up the scale of the war, and draw in US imperialism, which, as well as UK imperialism, has already been drawn into active military involvement, as well as providing the weapons required by the Zionist regime. Those claiming that US imperialism does not want such an escalation have not been paying attention. At every stage, they have claimed not to want an escalation of the war in Gaza, and yet, each red line crossed by the Zionist regime has resulted only in further backing, further arms, further justification of its actions, and more US and British war ships being sent to the region ready to back it further when such escalation occurs.