Sing a Battle Song, page 38
The zionist government in Israel supported the US in Vietnam, supports the fascist junta in Chile and opposes all liberation movements in Africa. Since the 1967 war, 26 African nations have severed relations with Israel on the basis of Israeli occupation of Arab land. This is also a consequence of Israel’s attempt to penetrate and dominate African development. South Africa and Rhodesia continue ties with Israel.
Zionist colonialism has cultivated a worldwide image as the besieged victim, the heroic people holding off the barbarians, a semi-socialist state where strong and free sabras made the desert bloom, the refuge and guarantee against anti-semitism. The reality is very different:—The zionist state is clearly the aggressor, the source of violence and war in the Mideast, the occupier of stolen lands. The military solutions of periodic war and expansion, reprisal raids and constant preparation for war are the consequence of intransigent opposition to a politically cooperative future with Palestinians and Arabs. It is racist and expansionist—the enemy of Palestinians, the Arab people, and the Jewish people.
—Israeli society internally reflects this imperialist reality: militarized, commercial and competitive.
—The myth of socialism on the kibbutz is a powerful one, but the kibbutzim never contained more than 5% of the Jewish population of Palestine or Israel, and are no evidence for Israel being a socialist country. Many of the kibbutzim are on land which Palestinian peasants were driven from, some directly exploit Palestinian labor, and they are all subsidized by zionist funds.
—Zionism does not represent Jews. It is a racist ideology based on the claim that “God” chose a people superior to others. It has been consistently used as an alternative to class struggle and socialism for Jews, undermining Jewish progressive and working-class traditions.
—There is no basis for the claim that zionism is a bulwark against anti-semitism. The zionist state has allied with the most repressive and intolerant, racist and anti-semitic regimes in the world: Nixon, Thieu, South Africa, and the Chilean junta.
The white movement in the US has failed to give clear and open support to the Palestinian struggle. We have not taken on the necessary task of exposing the myths about Israel which cloak the true situation and disarm many people. The nature of the state of Israel is protected by intense passions and by the real memories of Nazism and anti-semitism. But despite ancestors at Auschwitz and relatives in Israel, we cannot escape the responsibility of opposing the crimes of the Israeli government and the consequences of zionist ideology.
From exile and despair, the Palestinians have slowly developed their resistance capability. They began to lead and define their own political and guerrilla movement, which accelerated after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war. Their brave battle at Karameh in 1968 helped make them the focal point of resistance to zionism and galvanized the national identity and yearnings of the whole people. The forces and organizations of Palestinian liberation trained thousands of Palestinians and began to mobilize their people, to provide health and administrative services, to reclaim their history. The active participation of Palestinian women in the struggle for liberation challenges the long history of women’s subservience and dependence which has been bolstered by religion and family. The Union for Palestinian Women is active within all the camps, with a primary focus on education and fighting the economic oppression of women.
The Palestinian strategy has been to carry out operations against the zionist state and Israeli-held territory and to remind the world of the Palestinian people’s cause. Their solution is a democratic secular Palestine that will accomodate all Palestinians: Jews, Moslems and Christians. The Palestinian Liberation Organization is the umbrella organization which coordinates policy of the liberation forces.
The Palestinian liberation movement is a most progressive force in the Mideast, as is the revolution of South Yemen—known as the Cuba of the Mideast. The Palestinians have educated masses of people, opened up the revolution to women and demonstrated fearless determination to win. Their proposal of a democratic secular state stands in marked contrast to rhetorical threats to annihilate the Jews or reactionary expressions of anti-semitism. The Palestinians make a firm distinction between zionism and Jews.
The presence of the Palestinian struggle is a touchstone for other contradictions in the Mideast. The Palestinian freedom fighters are a highly politicized group, a militant nucleus, scattered in five “host” countries. A principle of the liberation movement has been that the revolution is Palestinian in origin and Arab in extension. The dedicated fedayeen have stimulated wide support among Arab people. Their struggle and their determined independence from Arab governments in whose lands they live, train and organize, makes them a force for revolutionary change throughout the Arab world.
Often Arab governments have rhetorically used the Palestinian cause to maintain their own power and control, while consistently leaving the Palestinians out of negotiations and excluding them from a dignified life within their countries. These rulers are fully aware of the threat posed to their power by a vital liberation movement strategically located in their midst. Yet they are somewhat restrained by the immense popularity of the movement among the people of the Arab countries.
This precarious balance was shattered by “Black September.” Over half the population of Jordan was Palestinian when King Hussein unleashed a major military attack to liquidate the Palestinian revolution in September 1970. The US backed Hussein with a continuous flow of arms and the threat of intervention with the 6th fleet. Thousands of Palestinians were murdered, refugee camps were bombarded and destroyed, leaders executed. This was a severe setback. The Palestinians have since regrouped in Lebanon and Syria and rebuilt their forces.
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the US. The US-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve US imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat’s paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No “settlements” in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.
The US people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement—The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun;opposing US aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with US-backed aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE
PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
US OUT OF THE MIDEAST!
END AID TO ISRAEL!
V. IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS: THE HOME FRONT
In Vietnam the imperialist soldiers encounter the discom forts of those who, accustomed to the vaunted U.S. standard of living, must face a hostile land, the insecurity of those who are unable to move without being aware of walking on enemy territory, death to those who advance beyond their fortified encampments, the permanent hostility of an entire population. All this provokes internal repercussions in the U.S. and encourages the resurgence of a factor which was attenuated in the full vigor of imperialism: class struggle even within its own territory.
—Che Guevara
Message to the Tricontinental
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
WE ARE LIVING IN A HUGE AND NATURALLY beautiful land. The mountains, the deserts and the plains hold the riches of history from Indian tribes who dwelt here—places like Four Corners and the Black Hills, sacred land to the Navaho and the Sioux. Eagles fly overhead in some areas, and coyotes howl at the moon. Snow lands, river lands: travelled many times, seen by many people’s eyes.
No wonder we scream at the plunder, the wastefulness and wreckage. The streams and lakes float with dead fish, victims of industrial waste; the mountains are ripped apart for the wealth of strip-mined coal; the air is thick with pollution. Profit chases greed in a reckless race across the Earth.
Most people live in the cities, giant centers of commerce and production. The cities contain tremendous potential for human development and community, but the potential is mocked by the reality: burned and abandoned houses, dirty avenues and children living in cold apartments—this crowded up against extravagant wealth and the centers of imperial power. Still the culture of the many peoples grows tenaciously.
What kind of society is it? It is a class society, torn by contradictions: the heartland of a bloody empire built on the attempted genocide of Native Americans, the trade in African slaves, the lives of Chinese and Japanese and Filipino workers, the exploitation of successive waves of immigrant labor. It is an imprisoner of nations—Guam, Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Black and Chicano nations. Like other empires, it combines stolen lands, stolen riches and stolen labor.
—The Anarchy Of Production—
Stolen wealth—not Yankee ingenuity—is the basis of the tremendous concentration in the US of productive forces—large factories with advanced machinery, elaborate computer systems, highly extended organization, the labor of women and men from many nations—all contributing to an astounding productive capability.
This accumulated productive power is used for the most selfish and backward purposes. Whereas this wealth is produced by the people of the world, it is used to enrich the idle handful that controls it, and to subjugate the dispossessed with the destructive power of economic control and war.
Monopoly capital/imperialism is an irrational system. It is not organized to meet human needs. It is run by a very small ruling class whose only morality is the morality of the maximum profit.
This handful of white men control the enormous concentrations of wealth, the means of production, the government. These are the imperialists, the common enemy. They hog the wealth which the people produce. Thirty-two per cent of the personal wealth in the US is owned by 1.6% of the population.
Who are these enemies? Of all the imperial dynasties and major thieves of our time, the Rockefeller family stands out: the phenomenal growth of their clan’s influence and riches parallels the development of US imperialism. They are the richest people in the world, richer than anyone has ever been before, and they are getting richer all the time. Their wealth is about as much as all the Blacks, Chicanos, Indians, Puerto Ricans and forty million poor whites in the US have put together. Like the other imperial dynasties and families, their wealth has been dispersed into an invisible empire which has spread to every corner of the world. It is an empire which includes the world’s largest banks and industrial corporations—aerospace, computers, oil, insurance, telephones and television. The Rockefellers control 20% of banking in the US and 20% of all its industry. This vast empire of wealth and power is built to grow, to self-perpetuate, to entangle everywhere on earth that it can. It feeds on domination over the people; its social policies are welfare cuts, stop and frisk, drug detention laws. It dislocates whole populations from our cities for the construction of huge monuments to the god profit, to commerce and world trade. It meets rebellion—as at Attica—with the iron heel. The Rockefellers’ policies exist for the continued emmiseration of most of humanity and the continued spiral of concentration of power and wealth into their hands.
They are not the only ones. The heads of Ford and General Motors each receive yearly salaries of almost $1,000,000, yet one third of the US people are considered poor by the government’s figures. We measured the energy crisis by cold houses, sick children and lost jobs, while the oil companies increased their profits over last year by as much as 130%.
This irrational and revolting system leaves much social wealth wasted and undeveloped. What is produced bears little relationship to what is needed. For this reason Marxist-Leninists speak of the “anarchy of production” when we refer to the way productive forces are organized under imperialism. The great injustice of this system is that it leaves its potential unrealized while maintaining scarcity for billions of people.
All economic activity that does not go to satisfy human need is waste. Advertising and marketing (a $30 billion a year business), useless consumer goods, planned obsolescence, bureaucracy, the military—all aspects of waste—add up to the social cost of maintaining this outmoded system. It is working people and the oppressed of empire who bear the cost.
The scale on which military spending consumes capital is staggering. The annual military budget is larger than the net incomes of all US corporations put together. With this the US maintains missiles, submarines, electronic warfare and chemical and biological agents, nuclear weapons, bomber forces and over three thousand military bases around the world. This dominance of militarization in the economy distorts every aspect of US life.
—The Conditions of Life—
The purpose of class analysis is to isolate the enemy and to identify our potential friends. Who will lead the fight? Who can be won over? Who at least neutralized? This framework is as important as battle plans.
Class analysis should not use the borders of the US like blinders on a horse. This deprives us of the full picture and throws strategy into chaos. Domestic class analysis must be integrated with the reality of US imperialism as a world economy. There is one system operating internally and externally; there is a unified strategy for power and control although the application and tactics vary greatly; there is one main class enemy. Class analysis must see the entire system and realistically take account of imperial plunder, the distorting culture of privilege and racism, and the realities of national division.
In the US the imperialists stand opposed to the huge majority of poor and working people who have no control over the fruits of our labor.
The ruling class divides us against each other by mechanisms of stratification and competition, and thereby maintains its own power. Some of these divisions are based on real differences in wealth, status, power, freedom, ability to survive and be happy. Some of them are imposed by school, by religious training or the family. We are imbued with the sense of differentness from other people in the world. The strength of the divisions among us measures only the effectiveness of control over all dispossessed people by the rulers of society. The revolutionary process will sweep these away, seize the transformation of society as a whole, and do away with privilege and advantage.
US society is corrupted by the values that necessarily accompany piracy—racism, greed, competitiveness, brutality, sexism, callousness. The ruling class calls the backward, criminal aspects of culture into being and sets them into motion. The society is the rat-race, marked by an anti-social premium on individualism. There is a stark poverty for masses of people materially and culturally, a poverty in the quality of life.
—Hunger and starvation are world realities. In the US over 30 million people cannot afford to meet basic nutritional needs. In spite of these facts, the US government pays farmers billions of dollars a year not to grow food. This keeps food prices high. The war of the rich and the poor has taken on terrible proportions—the face of famine, malnutrition, epidemic against the face of glut.
—Close to half the US population has one or more chronic conditions—diabetes, asthma, arthritis, heart diseases, high blood pressure. Medical care is inadequate and inaccessible to most people. Since 1960, medical costs have been rising twice as fast as the skyrocketing cost of living, and hospital costs five times. One night in a hospital costs a week’s pay for a worker. Health insurance companies are getting rich from the people’s pain. The horror intensifies for poor people; malnutrition is the great hidden cause of disease in the US. With humane priorities, the violence of socially unnecessary pain would be eradicated, women’s health would be a priority, people would not die from hunger or poverty-related illness.
—Illiteracy is increasing in the US. Schools systematically refuse to teach Black and Third World children to read; millions of people in this country are illiterate. Schools are minimum security prisons, geared to repression and control of the young, to teaching the lessons of competition, self-hatred, fear and loneliness.
—Work is hard to get: unemployment in early 1974 is running at 5.1% of the work-force. This is considered acceptable by capitalist economists. The government also admits that there are at least another 8-10% unemployed or underemployed who are not shown in the statistics. These low estimates add up to 12,000,000 US workers out of work or semi-employed. Women are chronically underemployed; large numbers of young people are marginally employed; Black people have twice the unemployment rate of the population as a whole.
When people do find work, it is alienating and oppressive under imperialism. Industrial accidents resulting in deaths or serious injury are astronomical. Speedup at plants like the Vega plant in Lordstown, Ohio, leave workers exhausted, tense and drained at the end of the day. Miners suffer from chronic lung diseases.
Factory discipline is rigidly enforced. Between 1960-1968, disciplinary cases doubled at Ford plants in the US. Absenteeism among workers is on the rise. Work in the US stifles and imprisons the worker. Production for war and waste turns the fulfilling aspect of work into its hateful opposite.
