A debate on the IP-leaflet on Gaza

We recently published a leaflet denouncing the war in Gaza. The intention was to distribute it at demonstrations as a means of engaging participants in discussion. After it was published on our website, it was criticized by some of our members and by others in the milieu for not being clear enough about the fact that the inter-imperialist nature of the war in Gaza is paramount, and that only proletarian class struggle can impede and break the inter-imperialist conflicts and wars endemic to capitalism.

Whereas we agree on these last points, a revision of our leaflet has led to a disagreement centered on the role played by the increasing number of proletariats who have become superfluous to capital, in the unfolding of capitalist crisis and war; and this war in particular.

We believe that it is important to have political debates in the open and the reader may expect more articles on these subjects forthcoming.

In the meantime we publish a string of texts that were produced in the immediate wake of the leaflet. Our hope is that by making available our discussion and openly showing the nature of our debate, others will be encouraged to contribute.

IP

The Gazan Inferno

For revolutionaries, the two most important statements to be made about this butchery are: that this is but the latest murderous eruption of global inter-imperialist antagonisms, and that the only solution for the proletariat is through class struggle.  

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IP LEAFLET

No War in Gaza! Fight the Nightmare Which Haunts Us All!

War is the climax of the nightmare in Gaza. We hear the numbers rise every day, but the losses are immeasurable. Like many of the past 50 years, it is an asymmetric war, which in this case means that one side’s troops first enter a home to kill an entire family, while the other can rain down bombs to the same end. Asymmetry means that many more Gazans have been murdered than Israelis, as they are the collateral damage whose lives each army has written off as an acceptable cost. We call for an immediate end to the war, the release of hostages and prisoners, an end to the blockade. We call to build international solidarity against warmongers and nation-builders.

We refuse the language of right to the land, of border legitimacy, and of national security. The rallying cries and waving flags hide the truth: we are being tricked, bribed, or forced into the wars of our masters. We refuse to excuse mass murder in the name of “justice”, “resistance”, or “defense”. War can never bring peace or freedom beyond the peace of a graveyard and the freedom to pillage the dead.  

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WARMONGERS LEFT AND RIGHT

The world watches in horror as one of the most advanced armies on earth is destroying a mostly defenseless enclosed urban zone, like shooting fish in a barrel. No wonder there is widespread outrage and a worldwide demand to stop this madness. But rather than to stop the war, many leftists want to continue it, on the side of Hamas. And they want us to ignore the violence against innocents committed by their side because it was done for a good cause. Was it?

The apologists of Hamas claim that its army are indigenous freedom fighters rising up against a colonial power and that the history of colonial wars shows that these conflicts are inevitably brutal, with many innocent victims on both sides. It is up to the ‘freedom fighters” to decide how they wage their struggle, they claim, and those who support the liberation of “the Palestinian people” should not question their methods. Especially not if they are white and living in countries which had colonies themselves. Shame about the past or present behavior of “their” countries should silence any critical thought on the tactics and goals of the “anti-colonial” struggle. They are not well placed “to hand out moral lessons to the resistance.”  

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CAPITALISM’S DEATH WORLD

A Banksy mural in Gaza

On the very first day of Hamas’ sadistic rampage, the Israeli authorities took to the microphones to declare to the world that this was Israel’s 9/11. And indeed, there are some striking similarities. Between the tactics and goals of Al Qaeda and Hamas, as well as between the imperialist opportunities their actions created for the US and Israel.

Both Al Qaeda and Hamas attacked civilians indiscriminately. Both are guided by an Islamist ideology1, based on myths of a glorious past and an even better future in heaven, feeding on the anger and resentment that poverty, repression, and discrimination amply produce. What do they want? A real state, a vast territory under their control, ruled not by “the people” but by themselves, a state that imprisons and tortures anyone who dares to disagree (as Hamas does in Gaza), claiming their authority cannot be challenged because it is sanctified by religious dogma. They have utter contempt for human life, including sometimes their own. They are a clear expression of the death culture that capitalism in this epoch produces. They are racist, not in the strict sense of classifying people on the basis of skin color, but in the broader meaning of dehumanizing people on the basis of their “otherness”, the conditions under which they are born, like their ethnicity or culture.  

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NAUSEA

Sculpture by Tania Font

We publish below a text that originally appeared on the French website Lundimatin. Not because we agree with everything its author writes: we reject in particular her biological-determinist view “that perhaps the root of the problem, and of all the violence that shakes the world, is masculinity”. But we share the nausea she so passionately expresses. Her voice must be heard.

Nausea

The Israeli government is a shameful entity, a shameless colonial and imperialist power that has been committing heinous war crimes on a daily basis for 75 years. It kills, humiliates and arbitrarily imprisons children and civilians whose only crime is to dare to be Palestinian. Nausea at every demand of the government, its army and its fanatics. Anger and grief at every Palestinian death.

The Israeli government and the massacres it has committed since 1948 are the real enemy, the criminal – and therefore the one that must be destroyed. THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT.

Now I’m feeling sick again. The assimilation of an entire population, within which class struggle, racial discrimination and political differences exist, as they do in every country in the world, the assimilation of this entire population to its government, to its ethnic identity, is fascist, harmful and murderous thinking.  

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HOT AND COLD WAR

1. THE STARK PRESENT

The summer of 2023 has drawn to a close. The pandemic is in the lull, ‘normality’ has resumed but the grim atmosphere has not disappeared. The climate crisis is getting worse, disasters attributed to “Mother Nature” dominate the news. But the economic crisis also proliferates. What both crises have in common is that they affect people very unequally. They show that we live in a class society.

The Dow Jones, the so-called barometer of the US economy, has been doing quite well. Those with a lot of money can still make it grow. The rest of us are doing less well. Inflation is eroding wages. Millions of Americans are currently losing their health insurance. There are increasing numbers of homeless people. The gap between rich and poor is widening in every country, but globally, the gap is deepening between countries capable of playing a competitive role in the ultra-productive information economy and all the others.

Mass flight from poorer countries is the result. The information revolution has unified the global economy but at the same time it is expelling many. The deeper the global crisis sinks and the more the information technology increases productivity, the more ‘superfluous’ people there are.  

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An Anti-War Assembly in Milan

On September 15th the Centro di Documentazione Contro la Guerra organized an open assembly called “La Guerra in Ucraina non va in Vacanza” (The war in Ukraine doesn’t go on holiday) to which IP participated. The venue was located in a central nerve of Milan at the COX 18, an occupied space since 1976, also home to the well known Calusca City Lights, now the Archivio Primo Moroni, an extensive archival project of leftist literature. The purpose of the assembly was to denounce the barbarism that is still underway in the Ukraine after 19 months from its inception, with still no end in sight.

The assembly lasted about two and a half hours and the format was very open: after a concise introduction given by the organizers, in which they restated their position of “revolutionary defeatism”1, Sandro Moiso who writes for the journal Carmilla spoke for about 45 minutes delineating the current “world disorder”; afterwards, the floor was open to discussion.

Many people intervened without any formal restraints, stating their positions, adding nuances and posing questions. The tone was never academic and many voices were heard. According to the organizers the modest turnout of about 30 people was a bit disappointing since the aim was to open the discussion of the war to a wider audience and not only to “few experts who are already certain of everything ”.  

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A CONFERENCE OF LEFT COMMUNISTS

Last May, at the invitation of Internationalist Perspective and Controversies, some left communists from six countries gathered in Brussels to talk and listen to each other.1 Aside from IP, Controversies, and a few unaffiliated comrades, activists of the following were present:

Old Mole Collective

ex-FOR (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario)

Collectif Smolny

AAAP (Association Archives Anton Pannekoek)

AFRD (A Free Retriever Digest)

Bilan et Perspectives

Cercle de Discussion de sympathisants et sympathisantes de la Gauche Communiste de Paris,

Critiques Grand Large

For logistical reasons, we were not able to invite all those we would have liked to invite. Some whom we did invite were not able to come but sent written contributions (like the Spain-based group Barbaria). Some others declined our invitation, fearing that the debate would degenerate into hostile confrontation, or that the differences in positions would be too big to make meaningful discussion possible. Even some who did come to the conference had the same fears. Fortunately, among all the participants there was a willingness to hear what others had to say. Nobody tried to “win the debate”. Rather than a confrontation in which participants seek only to reinforce their own positions, there was exposure to different ideas.  

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The Titan and the Migrant Boat: A study in Contrasts

Fort Europe

June 22

Since its disappearance Sunday morning while diving to visit the Titanic’s resting place, the story of the Titan submersible has seemed like a movie we’ve all seen. A group of plucky adventurers or explorers are trapped in a seemingly inescapable situation and running low of air, food, water or whatever they need to survive. Sometimes it’s on a mountain. Sometimes in space. In this case, it’s at the bottom of the ocean. Somehow, due to their own ingenuity, the gang survive, although not all of them, and at the very last minute.

But this is not a movie. And no one is really expecting that miracle rescue. According to official reports, the air would have run out sometime between 6 and 8 AM this morning. That is, if they even survived that long. It’s cold at the bottom of the ocean with an ocean pressure of about 6,000 psi (about two tonnes), and the craft was essentially a cigar shaped vessel the size of a mini-van with a window that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush (who is currently on the titan) admits he broke rules to make. He then charged passengers $250,000 dollars to ride in what now seems like a cheap death trap which reportedly uses a Logitech gaming console (retailing for about $50 on Amazon) to pilot it.  

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AND THE WAR DRAGS ON

15 months have passed since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and still the war drags on. Hundreds of thousands are killed or maimed, is that enough? No, it is not enough. Not for the capitalists of both sides in the conflict, locked in their power plays, callously sending the children of the working class to the killing fields while checking their overseas bank accounts.

There is no end in sight to this war. Both sides prepare a spring offensive. It seems the slaughter can only end when one or both warring parties run out of cannon fodder. That is becoming a problem for them. Hundreds of thousands have fled both countries to avoid being forcibly enlisted. In Ukraine there are special apps circulating which send warnings on where the recruiters are on the prowl. Russia still has hundreds of thousands of soldiers in reserve but the Kremlin doesn’t trust them. Why else is it not sending them to the battle? Or is it to maintain the illusion that this is not a war, just a “special military operation”? Instead of using these trained battalions, the prisons are skimmed and all those willing to join the mercenaries and the young recruits (most from distant provinces) at the front, get a ‘get out of jail free card’.  

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