The Arab Revolution and the Central Role of the Working Class
A outline of the Trotskyist tradition
[In the early 1970s, Trotskyist organizations across the Middle East and Arab World co-operated to develop a resolution on the Arab revolution for the Fourth International. This article uses some revolutionary socialist documents from the 20th century, which align with that perspective, to give some broader context.]
The Arab revolution stands as a significant component of several waves of colonial revolutions. It primarily aims to abolish imperialist control over the Arab region and achieve the Arab nation's real, complete liberation. This unfolds as a permanent revolution, aligning with Leon Trotsky's theory. Underdeveloped countries like those in the Arab region cannot accomplish the revolution's essential tasks within the bourgeois state's framework. Instead, a socialist revolution, led by the proletariat's dictatorship and supported by the poor peasantry, offers the only alternative. The Arab revolution forms a massive component of the colonial revolution, confronting similar basic tasks and problems as other sectors of the colonial revolution.
Beyond national unification, key tasks for the Arab revolution include genuine, thoroughgoing land reform through revolutionary mass mobilisation of the rural poor, coupled with agricultural investments and programs for social and cultural advance. Other tasks involve completely emancipating women, winning democratic civil and political rights, vastly expanding toiling masses' rights through a workers' democracy, conducting a massive educational campaign against cultural and religious backwardness, and achieving genuine independence by breaking economic and political subordination to imperialist powers. Imperialist domination remains the central obstacle to Arab national unification and the Arab people's economic and social advance.
While immediate objectives include bourgeois-democratic tasks, these can only be achieved through permanent revolution: a revolution led by the working class at the head of a vast revolutionary mobilisation of the oppressed and exploited masses, chiefly the poor peasantry, culminating in establishing a workers' state. This revolution will necessarily be a socialist revolution directed against imperialism and its local agents, including the Israeli settler-colonial state, and against the Arab bourgeoisie and semifeudal remnants. The working class can rally the rural poor and oppressed masses behind its program by championing their democratic demands. The proletariat can also win over sectors of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie as allies, but the petty bourgeoisie, however radical, cannot play an independent historical role. The proletariat and its allies cannot subordinate their interests to the "national" or "progressive" bourgeoisie, which actively holds back, diverts, and betrays the colonial revolution.
The potential for mass mobilisation is significant. The working class, by fighting for its own interests and supporting society's most exploited and oppressed sections—women, oppressed nationalities, youth, religious minorities—can unite these diverse layers. Common class interests exist throughout the world proletariat. The struggle for oppressed nationalities' rights, including self-determination, constitutes a class struggle capable of uniting peasants and other toilers with the working class. The fight for bourgeois democratic demands today does not align with the national bourgeoisie's real interests; winning these demands rests with the masses, led by the working class, in a revolution directed against all enemies of this struggle. In the age of imperialism, the struggle to fully win these democratic demands merges with the struggle for socialism, not capitalism. This revolution's program will combine democratic and transitional demands directed towards creating a workers' state, implying unconditional support for carrying out democratic tasks. The revolutionary socialist party must emerge as the champion of the struggle for these democratic demands.
Socialists criticize bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalist leaderships (like Nasserism and Baathism) and Stalinist parties in the Arab region for their failures and betrayals. These forces cannot or will not break the chains binding Arab economies to world capitalism, overcome regional fragmentation, achieve Arab unity, or consistently fight imperialism due to their class interests and subordination to outside powers. They ultimately resort to repressing the working class and consolidating the bourgeois state. Bourgeois regimes in several Arab states turned to the USSR and other bureaucratic workers' states for military and economic aid, enabling Moscow to gain influence. Stalinist parties have held back the struggle by subordinating the class struggle to national multiclass unity.
The Palestinian struggle serves as a critical example within the Arab revolution. Achieving Palestine's liberation necessarily involves a revolutionary overturn of the established Arab regimes and requires working-class leadership for the entire Arab region, including revolutionaries fighting in Israel itself. The Arab revolution, viewed through the lens of permanent revolution, places the working class at its core. Success hinges on the working class achieving political independence, uniting the oppressed masses, rejecting collaboration with bourgeois regimes, and building a mass revolutionary-Marxist party capable of leading the revolution to a socialist victory across the region. Mass Leninist parties can and must be constructed in the Arab countries and in Israel. The development of such parties will be key to the socialist revolution's success in the Near East.
Revolutionary Marxists support the Palestinian Arabs' complete and unconditional right to self-determination, including their right to return to all territories from which they have been expelled. This necessitates the destruction of the Zionist state, which rests on racist foundations. The goal is not a temporary Palestinian statelet under the UN framework, which serves as a means of liquidating the Palestinian question. Instead, the aim is a national revolutionary, workers' and peasants' government linked to the struggle against Zionism, imperialism, and reactionary Arab ruling classes, ultimately aiming for the destruction of the Zionist state.
The Zionist state of Israel we characterize as a settler-colonialist and expansionist capitalist state, principally maintained by American imperialism and hostile to the surrounding Arab peoples. We see it as an imperialist beachhead in the Arab world that spearheads imperialism's fight against the Arab revolution. Israel could only be set up at the expense of indigenous peoples and maintains itself by relying upon imperialism, primarily U.S. imperialism. Opposing Washington's aims and actions in the Middle East forms a central task in defending the Arab revolution.
The Palestinian resistance movement, especially after the 1967 war, advanced over Nasserism, Baathism, and similar currents in its extensive efforts to win international support and center its propaganda against Israel and imperialism. During the 1970 civil war in Jordan, it garnered great mass support and posed an objective threat to bourgeois regimes, spurring tendencies toward independent mass action where popular assemblies emerged as embryos of dual power. However, we also point to errors in the Palestinian resistance leadership, such as a policy of noninterference in Arab states' internal affairs, failure to organise the Palestinian working class independently, and the "revolution in stages" theory, which subordinated the class struggle to national multiclass unity. These reflected a theory of "primary" and "secondary" contradictions, leading to unpreparedness for confrontation with bourgeois Arab regimes. The call for a "democratic state" with unspecified class character potentially covered up the goal of establishing a bourgeois state. A revolutionary-socialist leadership would have differentiated between a "democratic, secular Palestine" and a "democratic state in Palestine," clarifying that democratic objectives could only be achieved through a socialist revolution culminating in a workers' state. This experience confirms the validity of the permanent revolution theory for the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Revolutionary Marxists differentiate their attitude towards imperialism, Zionism, and the Israeli state on the one hand, and the masses of Israeli Jews on the other. We consider Israeli Jews a nationality, confirmed by their language, culture, and consciousness. However, in relation to the Arab people, particularly Palestinians, they are an oppressor nationality, and recognizing this fact provides the starting point for addressing their status within a socialist Arab East. After the destruction of the Zionist state and the reestablishment of Palestinian rights, we can recognize the Jewish national minority's right to self-determination in Palestine.
The socialists reject the demand for Israeli Jews' right of self-determination because they are currently the oppressor nationality. Raising this demand is tactically wrong because it reinforces racist fears fostered by imperialists and Zionists, making it unlikely that Israeli Jews would support destroying the state of Israel based on a promise of a future state. Instead, revolutionists should show Israeli Jews that Zionism works against their interests and that their future lies in aligning with the Palestinian and Arab liberation movements. We see Jewish workers' real interests as lying in participation in anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist (and thus anti-Zionist) struggles alongside the Arab masses.
Within a socialist Arab East, the Hebrew-speaking Jewish masses have the right to live with their democratic rights guaranteed. An integral part of the program supports full civil, cultural, and religious rights for all nationalities in the Middle East, including Israeli Jews. This aligns with revolutionary socialism's norms. While we cannot theoretically exclude the possibility of future oppression of Israeli Jews, we do not consider this danger real. Arguments suggesting the need for Israeli Jewish self-determination to protect against future oppression appear abstract and speculative, failing to address present oppression's reality. Revolutionary internationalists stand as the best and most consistent fighters for Jews' rights wherever they suffer oppression. We explicitly differentiate opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state from anti-Semitism. The Trotskyist movement has historically campaigned against anti-Semitism and for Jews' rights, for example demanding that US borders open to Jewish refugees from Nazism before World War II.
Revolutionary Marxists intervene in mass struggles, supporting immediate demands while also raising transitional demands and advocating for forms of mass self-organisation like workers' councils, peasant councils, and neighbourhood committees. These organisations provide a practical apprenticeship for the masses and pose the question of dual power, aiming for a workers' and peasants' government based on such councils.
Further Reading
To deepen understanding of this perspective on the Arab revolution, the Palestinian struggle, and related issues, the sources recommend various texts. Here are up to four suggested items for further study:
THE REVOLUTION IN THE ARAB EAST SINCE 1967: Draft Theses, by Gus Horowitz: This document, initially a contribution to a discussion in the Fourth International, presents theses on the revolution in the Arab East, covering the period roughly from 1967-1971. It details the political line based on the SWP resolution on Israel and the Arab Revolution and explores broad general questions concerning the dynamics of the revolution, permanent revolution, the Palestinian resistance, Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish question.
Palestine and the Arabs’ Fight for Liberation, 1989 by Fred Feldman and George Sayad: This text chronicles the struggle for Arab Liberation from the Ottoman Empire through British and French domination to the post-WW2 American control. It discusses the struggles for liberation that Israel was used to counter, the economic drives of capital requiring super-exploited labour enforced by expulsion of Palestinians, and presents the view of a democratic Palestine for all its inhabitants regardless of religion.
On the Jewish Question, 1942 by Abram Leon: An important book, this work by a Jewish revolutionist provides an understanding of Jewish history as a socio-economic "people class". Using class analysis, it explains the form anti-Semitism took during the decay of capitalism and argues for world socialist revolution in opposition to Zionism.
Socialism and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism; An Answer to the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League, 1973 by Peter Seidman: This document chronicles the defense by the US SWP of its position calling for a democratic, secular Palestine against charges that this was an anti-Semitic position. It clarifies the historical record of organisations that supported restrictive immigration policies during the Nazi era. It also discusses the SWP's opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel, arguing that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism and that Zionism poses a threat to Jewish people.