For the late Hassan Nasrullah-Finkelstein’s “Islamic Lenin”-Israel was a spider’s web. “He knew Israel like the back of his hand,” Finkelstein added. However, for some it is also a web for the US, trapping its presidents and forcing them to invade countries, plunder them, and expropriate their resources for the benefit of the US and Israel. The latter helps the former impose meek and compliant leadership on the vanquished. In the interests of metropolitan capital, Israel functions as dead labour sucking the blood of living labour.
The entire process is carried out through constant, unending, relentless wars. A great deal of blood and tears is shed. Destruction and devastation ruin countries-not only those in the peripheral regions bearing the brunt of aggression, but also the aggressors themselves. As the immediate targets, the subaltern classes of oppressed nations suffer the most. The difference is qualitative, because every attempt is made to push them back into primitive times. In some cases, however, the countries representing capital receive a rude shock. The aggression against Iran by the centre-the US-Israeli nexus-is one such example.
Imperialist wars are not fought to win landslide victories. If such a victory occurs, it becomes a dilemma for the centre-the aggressor-because it then has to revive old slogans to find a new enemy that can last longer. That is why the CIA was not keen to see the Soviet Union liquidated. A weak Soviet Union could be presented as both an ideological and an immediate threat to people in the US, keeping them in check. However, former Hollywood actor Reagan was not interested. Like Trump-a reality-TV man-he wanted an absolute victory. Yeltsin was eager to enter the neoliberal market, and men like Jeffrey Sachs were keen to plunder Russia’s maximum wealth through shock therapy. What followed resembled a Shakespearean tragedy-the predictable outcome of capitalism. Putin was the ultimate fruit of democracy and freedom; even the political farce was left waiting.
The shock doctrine turned the Soviet Union-then Russia-into a peripheral country. The Eastern European economies were sold off to their Western counterparts, who expropriated them with savagery. The rest is part of history. However, that moment became a watershed in history. With no real threat in sight, imperialism began to extend further into the periphery to plunder its resources. A long list of those hapless countries is memorised by all and sundry. The total demolition of those countries through direct invasion, threats, and kidnappings merely recalled the history of nineteenth-century colonialism.
As leftists, we must learn the lessons of our defeats, but we must also be fully aware that we are breathing in far more challenging circumstances, when bourgeois violence has reached its acme through technology.
The liberal lobby thinks that if Hamas had not committed its adventurous folly on October 7, Gaza-whatever that now means-would still exist, Syria could have avoided balkanisation, and Iran would not have had to face US-Israeli wrath. It tries to teach the Left-whatever of it is left-that the freedom of women suffering under the Ayatollahs in Iran is more important than keeping a country united, sovereign, and independent, if not liberated, which under imperialism is itself a vague concept.
The freedom of women is inextricably connected with the freedom of men from class-based society. Freedom is not a toy that one can obtain by shouting one’s objective despair on the streets, led by Western-sponsored NGOs. It is a basic human right and must be won through a protracted struggle against a system rigged against the majority, by joining hands with the oppressed. If the consciousness of servitude is a precondition to liberation, as Marcuse suggests, one must also know and feel unfreedom before knowing freedom-and, like the liberals, many do not. They end up in self-preservation, which they mistake for freedom.
The lobby reminds us of Israel’s “right to exist,” a slogan that invokes nothing but lethargy. After seventy-eight years since its carving out of Greater Syria through the gory crimes of ethnic cleansing, the entity’s “right to exist” is still in doubt. Why else is this jargon pushed onto our tympanic membranes so vociferously that we have begun to lose our hearing-and perhaps that is the ultimate objective? The Left is accused of not conducting an objective analysis of the Middle East but instead applying ideology. Yet applying objectivity in an inferno is like finding a virgin in a brothel. What is objectivity, if not a tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie to bludgeon people through its apparent neutrality when it is imperative to take sides?
We know, as Rosa Luxemburg said, “Imperialism is not the creation of a group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisibly whole, recognised only in all its relations, from which no nation can hold aloof.” And the Left knows that no matter what Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad, and even the Iranian ruling class did to escape the capitalist curse-which brings death and devastation along-they could not have avoided it.
Even among the Left, the tendency to blame leaders akin to Maduro for betraying socialism is common. Yet the question of introducing socialism requires the material conditions necessary to build a society based on socialist tenets. “Socialism will not be and cannot be created by decrees,” Rosa warned. “Socialism must be created by the masses, by every proletarian.” Socialism requires the overthrow of the entire old system and its replacement with a new one. It requires a new sensitivity among the proletariat. A “new man,” as Che Guevara said, must be born. He is not Nietzsche’s Übermensch, but a human being conscious of freedom from the necessity of recreating the world every day through his labour.
Surrounded by US imperialism and facing crippling sanctions, with its mighty army equipped with the latest technology barricading and patrolling international waters, a country such as Venezuela could not have introduced socialism even if it tried. Its limits were exposed when, after the failed military coup, despite returning to power, Chávez could not dismiss the army generals who had conspired against him.
The twentieth century is now part of history. Trying to exhume it from its grave would be like pursuing a shadow-a ghost long lost or eclipsed. The historic personalities of the Soviet Revolution played their respective roles-both terribly obnoxious and remarkably great. People make history, Marx says; circumstances make men as men make circumstances. In the Soviet Union and in China, people made history and circumstances, but tragedy struck when, as Rosa had forewarned, “the dictatorship of a class” turned into “the dictatorship of a party over a class.” Individuals became taller than the proletariat and Marxist philosophy itself. It was not merely a setback; it was the beginning of defeat, paving the way to perestroika.
As leftists, we must learn the lessons of our defeats, but we must also be fully aware that we are breathing in far more challenging circumstances, when bourgeois violence has reached its acme through technology. The tradition of going underground was once rife among Marxists; perhaps in the age of developed artificial intelligence it may no longer be possible. Yet if Hamas could invent means to survive the Israeli onslaught for more than two years, why cannot the Left devise its own tools to confront these new challenges?
Until now, this century has been the century of imperialism. Communists are in disarray; it appears as if capitalist anarchy has struck them far more than it has struck capitalism itself. A majority of the young population, indoctrinated by the West, is unfamiliar with Marxism. It is concerned with bread, circuses, and survival. In Western countries, the technostructure has maintained comparatively high standards of living, and the power structure is completely beyond people’s control. No wonder people are apathetic toward-or even hostile to-socialism. Yet dialectical theory will find its way out of this moment of deep crisis.
In this critical moment, the Left must support whatever remains of the periphery-its struggle to survive against the onslaught of capital. As we support Cuba, we should also support Iran, Yemen, and above all Palestine, believing that their wars against imperialism are ultimately class wars. If they are not yet such wars, they may turn into them. National wars of such proportion may stir the US working class to set its sails to the wind and ignite a revolutionary upsurge. After all, decades can happen in weeks, and as Marx noted, battles often midwife revolutions.
The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work, “God’s Republic Making & Unmaking of Israel & Pakistan”, is available in Pakistan & on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi @hotmail.com