Part One
A Historical Perspective
on the National Question
Chapter 1
The Origins of the National Question
THE ORIGINS of the Palestinian question go back to the beginnings
of the Zionist invasion of Palestine. The question was crystallized in
November 1917, when the Zionist movement extracted from the British Cabinet
the promise of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. But although we trace the
beginnings of the Palestinian question itself for little more than a hundred
years, we find an important point of reference a century earlier, in the
French Revolution of 1789. That upheaval shaped the concept of the "nation
state": that which unites diverse peoples, regardless of race or religion,
around two basic elements -- a geographical unit and a shared language
and culture.
The feudal powers whose economic basis was the agricultural unit, opposed
the nation-state ideology. The rising bourgeoisie, in contrast, strove
to unify the country around the cities, where peoples from different regions
would mingle to constitute one nationality. This coalescence would serve
the bourgeoisie's main aim, to facilitate its trade and to establish a
national market for the distribution of its manufactured goods. In the
main industrial centers, the bourgeoisie replaced the old feudal agricultural
regime with a new economic system, the capitalist system. The nation-state
ideology is, then, the ideology of the bourgeois class, and its essence
remains purely economic.
The Zionist movement: part of the colonial phase of the
European national movements
Through the Napoleonic Wars, the French Revolution exported the nation-state
ideology to different regions of the world. As the ideology diffused, from
1789 through the unification of Germany in 1871, it shattered the feudal
empires of Europe. In relation to feudalism, then, the nation-state ideology
was revolutionary. Socialist movements therefore adopted the struggle of
the nations to build nation-states; this seemed the best way to shatter
what remained of the feudal regimes.
The socialist movements did, however, distinguish between two stages
of the bourgeois class: the democratic stage and the colonial imperialistic
stage. The Zionist movement began in the late nineteenth century as part
of the bourgeoisie's colonial stage. It developed among the Jewish petty
bourgeois of Eastern Europe, who started to look for their own piece of
land to fulfill their national aspirations. In line with the secular nation-state
ideology, the Zionists strove to unite the Jews of the Diaspora, with their
many nationalities and races, by reviving Hebrew as a unifying language.
They also established a developed capitalist economy.
The Zionist national ideology reflected the great social and economic
developments that had taken place in Europe since the sixteenth century.
The Arab world of the late Ottoman Empire had developed no corresponding
theory. Despite the area's growing exploitation by both Europeans and Ottoman
officials, religion remained the dominant ideology. The Arab society of
peasants, landlords, and merchants was ill-prepared to resist the unified,
capitalist Zionist movement.
Outside the context of feudalism, the nation-state ideology does not
represent the interests of oppressed peoples; rather, it serves the bourgeoisie
in developed capitalist countries. This explains why revolutionary thinkers
like Marx, Engels, and Lenin were cautious toward the national movements.
Yet they adopted the principle of the peoples' right to self-determination;
Marx and Engels were highly aware of the revolutionary and mass nature
of the national movements that shook the European continent during the
1848 "spring of nations."
It was during these events, and due to workers' role in them, that Marx
and Engels produced the first program written for the working class, The
Manifesto of the Communist Party. The Manifesto defined the dividing line
between the interests of the bourgeoisie and those of the working class.
It also clearly stated that the workers had no homeland; its basic call
was "Workers of the World, unite!"
The Marxist view on the national question
Marxists clearly stated that national movements are led by the bourgeoisie
in order to establish a national state; they maintained that nationalism
is not a workers' ideology, even saying that workers have no homeland.
Do we have a contradiction here? No. As we mentioned, the national question
has two stages, and it is essential to distinguish between them.
In the first stage, which Marxists approved, capitalist development
and the national upheavals that came with it shattered the old reactionary
feudal regimes. The rise of the bourgeois class led to a parallel growth
of the working class: capitalism is, after all, a necessary historical
stage on the road to socialism. It was thus in the workers' interests to
support the bourgeois struggle against the old monarchist regimes. However,
the support they had given the bourgeoisie did not save the workers from
the massacres which the bourgeoisie perpetrated time and again once the
revolution was over. The aftermath of the French Revolution offers striking
examples of this callous brutality.
The national upheavals that characterized the bourgeois national movements
ended when the bourgeoisie succeeded in replacing monarchic regimes with
modern capitalist states. From then on, the bourgeoisie was free both to
exploit its local working class and to colonize Asia, Africa, and Latin
America. In modern capitalist countries, national sentiment became an instrument
of bourgeois competition. The bourgeoisie of each capitalist country used
national sentiment to incite the local workers against their counterparts
in other countries. The defense of the Fatherland was the bourgeoisie's
perpetual excuse for mobilizing workers to wars whose real purpose was
the defense of the national bourgeoisie's own interests. This is why Marx
warned workers against the trap of nationalism, alerting them to the unanimous
bourgeois hostility towards socialism and the underlying determination
to prevent workers from taking power. This unanimity was most apparent
years later, in the coalition of imperialist countries that invaded the
Soviet Union. Lenin's stand on the national liberation movements.
By the time Lenin was writing, a new phenomenon had appeared: national
liberation movements of oppressed peoples, which differed from the national
movements of the nineteenth century. These movements represented the colonized
peoples who were exploited by the developed capitalist countries. Capitalism
had reached its imperialist stage, in which the bourgeoisie expanded the
boundaries of the national state for the sake of building a world economy.
Colonialism submitted the peoples of the world to its search for raw materials,
such as oil, and its needs for cheap labor and new markets for the growing
production in the capitalist centers.
Lenin supported the peoples' right to self-determination. At the same
time, he conditioned this support on the contribution of a national liberation
struggle to the working-class struggle for socialism. He, too, warned the
working class against adopting nationalism, because of its corrupting effects.
Lenin explained his attitude to the national question in Critical
Remarks on the National Question: "The principle of nationality is
historically inevitable in bourgeois society and, taking this society into
due account, the Marxist fully recognizes the historical legitimacy of
national movements. But to prevent this recognition from becoming an apologia
of nationalism, it must be strictly limited to what is progressive in such
movements, in order that this recognition may not lead to bourgeois ideology
obscuring proletarian consciousness." (V. I. Lenin, Critical Remarks
on the National Question, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress
Publishers, Moscow, 1964, Vol. 20, pp. 17-51.)
In this monograph Lenin clarified the nature of the support the working
class should give to the national movement. "It is the imperative duty
of the proletariat as a democratic force to throw off the feudal yoke,
all national oppression, and all privileges enjoyed by any particular nation
or language. It is certainly in the interests of the proletarian class
struggle, which is obscured and retarded by bickering on the national question.
But to go beyond these strictly limited and definite historical limits
in helping bourgeois nationalism means betraying the proletariat and siding
with the bourgeoisie. There is a border-line here, which is often very
thin."
The Palestinian Left: national ideology prevails over class ideology
Today, after the collapse of the Palestinian National Movement (PNM),
it is clear that the dividing line that Lenin was talking about, between
the working class and the bourgeoisie, has completely disappeared from
the relationship between the Palestinian Left and the Palestinian bourgeoisie
(represented by the Fatah movement). Palestinian national ideology has
prevailed over class ideology, and national culture proved much stronger
than internationalist working-class culture. This has strengthened the
influence of the national bourgeoisie over the Palestinian working class.
The Fatah movement traditionally promoted the theme of the unity of
the Palestinian people, refusing to recognize the existence of classes
and the class struggle. It claimed that anyone who divides the Palestinians
into classes weakens their national unity. "National unity" became a meaningless
slogan recited as a precondition for ending the Israeli occupation. The
Palestinian Left accepted this concept without reservation.
At the beginning of the struggle, the Palestinian bourgeoisie had revolutionary
characteristics and was ready to make sacrifices for the sake of building
a Palestinian state and an independent economy. This era came to an end
as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeat of Iraq
in the Gulf War. The balance of power in the world and in the region changed
radically. In response to this transformation in its position, the Palestinian
bourgeoisie looked for a way to integrate itself into the new capitalist
order led by the USA and renounced its national militant program. The Palestinian
working class was then exposed to dual exploitation, by the dependent Palestinian
bourgeoisie as well as by Israel. The Oslo accords rendered the economy
of the Occupied Territories dependent on the Israeli economy, while the
role of the new Palestinian Authority (PA) was restricted to repressing
democratic rights and the activities of the opposition by way of fulfilling
its pledge to take care of Israeli security interests.
The collapse of the Palestinian national program is not purely a consequence
of the bourgeoisie's defection to the camp of colonialism and Zionism.
It also stems from the breakdown of the program of the Left, which opposed
the Oslo agreement. The two main Leftist organizations -- the Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) -- remained part of the national consensus.
They thus failed to offer a class alternative to the dead end to which
the bourgeoisie, as represented by the PA, was leading the Palestinian
people.
Once the Soviet Union had collapsed, the world and local scenes were
radically changed. The Arab regimes had joined the new American order,
and the Palestinian bourgeoisie had renounced its national program. Yet,
the Palestinian Left continued to participate in the national unity led
by the PA. The Left acted as though nothing had really changed, or as though
any apparent change was of no real significance and could be overcome by
a "national dialogue" that would convince the PA to shift its position.
While Marx and Lenin supported the national movements, they never for
an instant forgot the central revolutionary goal of the working class:
to seize power and build a socialist state. It was also clear to Marxists
that the social and economic aim of the national program is to establish
the capitalist state, which will strengthen the bourgeoisie's position
and its culture. They understood the inevitability of this historical stage
on the way to socialism, they also saw the necessity of introducing the
working class to the revolutionary socialist culture by stressing its differences
from the national bourgeois culture. This kind of education helped the
Russian Bolsheviks under Lenin to keep their independence, conquer power,
and establish the Soviet Union. The other socialist parties, among them
the Russian Mensheviks, adopted the program of the bourgeois republic;
they ended up in the counterrevolutionary camp which struggled against
the Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Palestinian Left, too, linked the liberation struggle to alliance
with the bourgeoisie on the basis of the so-called "common denominator".
According to their view, class contradictions were secondary to the contradiction
with the Zionist enemy. This idea opened the way to building a broad coalition
that included the different political currents under the umbrella of the
PLO; it also facilitated the penetration of the pragmatic bourgeois ideology
into the ranks of the Palestinian working class. Palestinian workers came
to regard themselves as parts of a single national block, completely losing
their class-consciousness and independence from the bourgeoisie.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the world's Communist
parties hurried to rid themselves of the revolutionary heart of the Marxist
program. They came to regard the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat
-- the annihilation of the bourgeoisie as a class and the control of government
and the economy by the working class -- as obsolete. The Palestinian Left
was affected by this ideological retreat. It lost its revolutionary program
and ideology, taking up the obsolete national program that the bourgeoisie
itself had recently discarded.
After the Palestinian bourgeoisie chose the alliance with Israel, thus
resolving its contradiction with the occupier, the Palestinian Left had
no excuse for continuing its alliance with the bourgeoisie. The contradiction
between the vast majority of the people, including the working class, on
the one hand and the PA on the other became the main contradiction. n
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