The Marxist analysis of women’s oppression

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Review of Lise Vogel, “Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory” (Leiden: Brill Aca­ demic Books, 2013; Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013).

In the late 1960s, more feminist theorists than not assumed that Marxism offered the main analytical tools necessary to understand women’s oppression and, in turn, to chart the strategic course to its elimi­ nation.

At the center of their theoretical efforts was the “do­ mestic labor debate.” This debate opened with the publication of a 1969 article by Margaret Benston, titled, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation.” The work that women performed within the house­ hold became a subject of analysis; this work was un­ derstood as “productive,” necessary for the reproduc­ tion of capitalist society as a whole.

For the next 10 years, feminists who were socialists began studies to fully theorize domestic labor as an integral part of the capitalist mode of production. As Susan Ferguson and David McNally write in their in­ troduction to the new publication of Lise Vogel’s 1983 text, “Marxism and Oppression of Women,” in dozens of journals they “probed Marxist concepts of use value and exchange value, labour-power, and class for what these might reveal about the political-economic sig­ nificance” of household work.

In the main, the debate hung up on a few central questions: What kind of value does domestic labor produce? Is it the kind of value produced by work­ ers in capitalist production, i.e. surplus value? If not, and if, according to Marxist theory, domestic labor is not central to the workings of capital in the same way that the work in an auto plant or steel mill is, does this mean that Marxism by its very nature is incapable of providing the central framework for understanding the oppression of women?

There were three main responses to this question. By far the most influential one was “yes.” The most famous articulation of that position in the United States was Heidi Hartmann’s “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism,” which launched what be­ came known as the dual systems approach, a thesis that posited that capitalism and patriarchy merely functioned alongside each other. Over time, patriarchy began to be treated primarily as the realm of ideology, creating space for non-materialist post-structuralist approaches to women’s oppression.

Other debate participants like Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Sylvia James responded by questioning the weight that Marxist theory placed on surplus value and the strategic approach that flowed from this weight. Con­ 6 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2014 Vesiel Marcelino / Reuters temporary autonomist Marxists who work within this general theoretical approach charted by Dalla Costa and James, such as Sylvia Federici, elevate the social power of unwaged labor and see it as central to the overthrow of capitalist society.

The third major grouping of responses was ex­ pressed by individual Marxist feminists who insisted on the strategic importance of waged labor, and re­ mained optimistic about the possibility of Marxist theoretical advances that would more adequately explain women’s oppression. These voices, however, were generally lost in the great void created by the waning of the mass feminist movement that nurtured previous such theoretical work, and a corresponding lack of attention from within the socialist movement.

One of those voices, that of Lise Vogel, has recently been given the attention she deserves. A new version of “Marxism and Women’s Oppression,” updated with essays by Vogel from the 1990s, has recently been is­ sued in hardback by the academic publishing house of Brill and in paperback by Haymarket Press.

The republication of Vogel’s book is both reaction and stimulus. The current crisis of capitalism—char­ acterized by the most extreme attacks on the social wage, an increasing awareness of the role of women in global capitalist production, and an ever more ob­ vious shift in the way that the reproduction of labor is organized in the United States—has created a new sense of urgency regarding such theoretical work. The rediscovery of Vogel by sections of the socialist movement, in turn, has provided a basic foundation on which Marxist feminist theoretical work can more easily begin again.

Vogel’s book is divided into four sections. Part One reviews the theoretical debates that took place during the second wave of feminism (ca. the 1970s) in a kind of chronological and thematic organization, summa­ rizing critiques of Juliet Mitchell’s iconic work “Wom­ en: The Longest Revolution,” Margaret Benston’s “What Defines Women?,” Peggy Morton’s “Women’s Work is Never Done, or: The Production, Maintenance (Left) At 2013 National Meeting of Rural Women in Brasilia, marchers protested violence against women.

and Reproduction of Labor Power,” Mar­ iarosa Dalla Costa’s “Women and the Sub­ version of the Community,” and the work of Nancy Holstrom and Maxine Molyneux. She also notes the contributions and weaknesses of radical feminists such as Shulamith Firestone and Kate Millet. She argues that the work of this period did sev­ eral important things. It firmly established the project of analyzing women’s oppres­ sion as having a material, and not just po­ litical or ideological root. Secondly, they exposed how inadequate were economic determinist approaches by highlighting the psychological and ideological factors enacted in the family.

In the end, while most were certain that the concept of “reproduction” linked wom­ en’s oppression to the Marxist analysis of production, a truly unitary theory that embedded women’s oppression in Marxist theory of capitalist production remained undeveloped.

Part Two focuses on the views of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels over time and in their historical context. She easily dis­ misses facile or dishonest mis-readings of the two giants of socialist thought and traces the development of their thought on this ques­ tion but does not hesitate to pinpoint moments when the thoughts of Marx and Engels on the place of wom­ an in class society is incomplete or contradictory.

Vogel reviews the theoretical importance of both Marx’s “Capital” and Engels’ “Origin of the Family Pri­ vate Property and the State,” but devotes a consider­ able amount of space to some of the inconsistencies of the latter owing to Engels’ rush to get out a mate­ rialist rebuttal to August Bebel’s “Women and Social­ ism.” Marx’s work in “Capital” on social reproduction, which becomes the anchor of her own theoretical work, she finds especially suggestive and useful for the coming effort construct unitary theory.

In Part Three, Vogel shows how the weaknesses of Bebel’s 1879 work, stemming from his incorporation of some of the ideas of utopian socialist Charles Fou­ rier and liberal individualism, led to great confusion in the era of the Second International. Then, as in the 1970s, the “woman question” and the class question were treated more often than not as parallel rather than intertwined phenomenon in capitalist society.

The Bolsheviks attempted to correct these reformist tendencies, as they did other errors of the German so­ cial democracy, but their theoretical work was shaped by the crisis and challenges of their specific historical moment.

Vogel concludes this section by stating, “In the long run, the experience of the Russian Revolution raised at least as many questions about the relation of women’s oppression to socialist transformation as it answered. … history had posed a specific woman-question, dis­ tinct from those thrust forward by capitalist relations of production.”

Unfortunately, Vogel suggests, the more advanced positions of Clara Zetkin and Lenin on the root of women’s oppression failed to make a lasting impres­ sion on the Left as a whole, and the weak legacy of the Second International remained dominant.

The basis for continuing to advance Marxist theo­ retical work on women’s oppression, Vogel argues, is stepping beyond the bounds of the domestic labor de­ bate as it unfolded during the 1960s and 1970s.

To begin, she says, we first have to look at Marx’s Capital and the notions of labor-power and the repro­ duction of labor power. From the theoretical point of view, the reproduction of labor power is not invari­ ably associated with private kin-based households, as the old domestic labor debate assumed.

Child rearing and the private care of workers in families is only one way that capitalism organizes the reproduction of labor power. At certain moments, (continued on page 7)

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hansk city government said.” hansk city government tions. This reflects the antiwar sentiment expressed by working-class people throughout Ukraine. Many protests have taken place by parents and relatives of young men who were drafted into the armed forces under Ukraine’s July 22 conscription law. Women can be seen in photos and videos holding signs reading test in the village of Voloka (see slavyangrad.org), one man states, We don’t want war, we want peace. There is no need for our men to go fighting. For what?” A woman says, “We did not want war. Let those, who were protesting at Maidan go to fight. We did not seek for war. We all are one village, one big family, and we will let [the military] take neither my husband nor into Russian territory after appealing for help to the ence in the Swedish Army and Home Guard. He said that he is currently serving as a sniper with the Azov as many as 438 soldiers—crossed the Russian border. Battalion, and that he is also called on to “clear out The army men “were tired of the war and wanted no further part in it,” one of the Russian border guards told Reuters. The Ukrainian Security Council has said not mix. He says the Jews are not white and should not mix with white people. His next project is to go fight for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad because he cluding Der Spiegel, have published reports for several mi (formerly Xe Services, and Blackwater before that) are operating in eastern Ukraine. But whether or not sociated with ultra-nationalist and fascist forces. This nian background who came from Canada. Lemko, she is consistent with the fact that the military operation vision goggles, $8 million for Ukraine’s State Border viewed by reporters, indicated that although they Guard Service—plus radios, helmets, medical and were fighting on the side of the Kiev government, they bers of the Social-National Assembly, the Right Sector, strongly disagreed with the government’s economic ington sent a squad of military advisors to Ukraine, and other far-right organizations. The Azov Batallion, agreement with the European Union. Lemko told Al estimated in June to have had over 600 fighters in its Jazeera that joining the EU would destroy Ukraine’s national identity, just as it destroyed countries in the nal approval to send U.S. troops into Ukraine to train rest of Europe who admitted immigrants who had and equip its National Guard. The plan, as outlined by the Pentagon, would make use of soldiers stationed in Assembly declares its aims to be the “liberation of the Europe or members of the California National Guard to train and equip four companies and one tactical tionalist speculative capital” and “to punish severely ism here. Ukraine must protect its cultural and ethnic sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lion from the Global Security Fund, a source of money was illustrated by the remarks of Vasyl Arbuzov, an terview members of the Azov Battalion—including volunteers from foreign countries. The responses are ince, Sergei Taruta. “The country is quite radicalized on both sides now,” he told the Al Jazeera interviewer demands ever more loudly: Stop the U.S.-supported in reference to the Azov Battalion. “These aren’t the slaughter in eastern Ukraine! No to the U.S.-backed, kind of guys I hang out with on the weekend, but at fascist-led coup! No to U.S./EU-imposed austerity in SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2014 7 (continued from page 12: “U.S. aids brutal attack on eastern Ukrainian cities”) market, and several multistory apartment blocks, Lu­ said.”

Despite recent military successes by Kiev troops, however, reports have surfaced of increased deser­ “Stop the Slaughter!”

In TV video taken of an angry anti-conscription pro­ other’s ones, neither sons nor fathers for war.”

On July 27, over 40 Ukrainian army soldiers crossed local rebel militia. And on Aug. 3, another grouping— that it is keeping in touch with the men “through dip­ lomatic channels” and that some would be repatri­ ated; others, apparently, are seeking asylum in Russia.

With little doubt, the most “reliable” (and most fero­ cious) troops are found within the reconstituted Na­ tional Guard and other armed units that are often as­ in the east is overseen by Secretary of National Secu­ rity and Defense Andriy Parubly, a founder of the fas­ cist Svoboda party.

In particular, the top leaders and many of the ranks of the elite Azov Battalion have been identified as mem­ ranks, is allegedly financed by multi-millionaire oli­ garch Igor Kolomoisky.

In one of its on-line publications, the Social-National entire White Race from the domination of the interna­ lead to the extinction of the white man.”

In late July, several media reporters were able to in­ quite typical of the racist rhetoric spewed out by fas­ cist ideologues.

In a July 16 interview, BBC reporter Dina Newman spoke to Mikael Skillt, a man with seven year’s experi­ ... France (continued from page 5: “French activists overcome ban on Palestine protests”)

that if we weren’t there things could have gone a lot worse.

Then the protest kind of got divided because of the chaos, and some pro­ testers were beaten up and arrested. Last week, one guy took a plea bargain for resisting arrest and was given four (continued from page 6)

for example, capitalism can choose to import immigrant labor, enslave them, house them in barracks, work them to death and import more, etc.

The system of using a kin-based unit to reproduce labor power is clearly advantageous as it has been normative at moments of capital­ ist stability. At the same time, the countervailing tendency of capital­ ism to reduce necessary labor in favor of surplus labor is always at play. In our own time, the reduction of domestic labor through techno­ houses” in civilian neighborhoods.

onism.’”

right groups in Canada.” come for economic reasons.

integrity.” months in jail! Saturday night, almost 50 people were in custody.

SA: The French government and oth­ ers have made accusations that anti-Se­ mitic chants have been heard at recent demonstrations in Paris, and protesters have attacked synagogues and Jewishowned shops. How does the NPA react to these charges?

STAN: First and foremost, while all left political organizations condemned the ban, the NPA was the only one calling logical means offers capitalists the hope that profit-making can in­ crease.

If these theoretical assertions about capitalism provide at least some of the tools with which we begin to do concrete historical in­ vestigation and contemporary eco­ nomic exploration, Vogel argues, we will be back on the route toward a unitary theory of Marxism and women’s oppression.

All people who are striving for so­ cial change should take advantage of the road map created by this pio­ neer of Marxist feminist thought. n “Mr Skillt, wrote Newman, “believes races should believes Mr Assad is standing up to ‘international Zi­ In a July 24 article in Al Jazeera America, reporter Sabra Ayres spoke to Lemko, a volunteer of Ukrai­ wrote, “said he was a national socialist—though he re­ jected the term neo-Nazi—and was a member of farLemko, like other Azov members who were inter­ “Ukraine should be for Ukrainians,” Lemko said. “We don’t need the European idea of multicultural extrem­ The Kiev government’s dependency on the fascists aide to the Kiev-appointed governor of Donetsk prov­ the moment they are the kind of guys we need be­ to protest it. There is nothing like an “unlawful” protest to put things more in perspective about how you choose to define yourself in regards to the state.

Also, I think our position derives from our general understanding of the situa­ tion: many protests in a period of eco­ nomic crisis can take religious and na­ tionalistic—if not sometimes racist— undertones, and it can be the case in pro-Palestinian protests as much as in any protests. Recently, there were fights against layoffs in Brittany in the meat­ packing industry; not only were bosses taking part in the protests but one of the slogans was: “Keep foreigners from taking our jobs!”

Most of the left and unions boycotted it, but we went there and tried to chal­ lenge this nationalism. In this Palestine protest we tried not only to help the protest take place but also put forward our demands and effectively counter the reactionary slogans put forward by radical religious groups. It is not by de­ serting the protests that we will achieve anything. (NOTE BY THE INTERVIEWER: In a recent statement the NPA had this to say in response: “The NPA condemns, as it has always done, all anti-Semitic acts and ideas. ... Neither the NPA nor (Above) A woman points to bomb damage on an apartment block in Slovansk in early July, before Kiev troops retook the city from the rebels.

cause they are willing to fight.”

An additional factor is that the German media, in­ months that foreign mercenaries employed by Acade­ undercover mercenaries are participating in the fight­ ing, the Obama administration is doing its best to di­ rectly maintain Kiev’s military forces in the field.

U.S. aid includes the appropriation of $23 million for defense security, $5 million for body armor and nightfood supplies, and other equipment. In June, Wash­ which will now be augmented.

On Aug. 1, President Obama requested Congressio­ headquarters of the Ukrainian National Guard.

The deployment would be financed with $19 mil­ that is tapped jointly by the Defense and State depart­ ments in order to fight global “terrorism.”

Antiwar and working-class activists must raise our Ukraine! End all U.S. aid to the coup regime! n the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people confuse the Jewish population, here or in Israel, believers and non-believers, with the defense of the colonial policy of the Israeli state. ... The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a religious one, it’s an entirely political one.”)

SA: How can the Palestinian solidar­ ity movement both in France and in­ ternationally help win freedom for the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza? In your opinion, what is the way forward for the Palestinian movement in France and around the world?

STAN: The Palestinian solidarity movement both in France and interna­ tionally definitely needs to win momen­ tum in order to put pressure on our gov­ ernments, which are clearly supporting and collaborating with the Israeli crimi­ nal state. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign is another tool to raise awareness.

In a general framework, Palestine is not isolated from what is happening in the whole region. From Morocco to Bahrain, people are challenging their government and also standing in sup­ port of Palestine. However, Arab lead­ ers give lip service to the Palestinian cause but do not really help. n

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(continued from page 1: “Stop U.S. aid to apartheid Israel!”)

Gaza’s medical facilities are “on the verge of collapse,” after a third of its hospitals, 14 clinics, and 29 ambu­ lances were damaged.

Here’s an on-the-scene account from Dr. Mona ElFarra in Gaza City, written in the early hours of July 19: “The Israeli tanks and air force are bombing con­ tinuously. They are targeting Al-Shajaiya neighbor­ hood in the eastern part of Gaza City. The air force is flying planes very low and they are shelling houses. They are shelling everywhere, hitting many houses. People are dying. The Israeli occupation dehumanizes us by killing us while we are sleeping.

“The ambulances are trying to reach the dead and injured and transfer them to hospitals but many am­ bulances couldn’t pass.

“Tens of wounded people, old and young, are strand­ ed. The ambulances can’t reach them to help. Tens of bodies are in the street or buried in the rubble. My friend Hani is a father in Al-Shajaiya and his wife is pregnant. He called me and told me that it’s not pos­ sible for the ambulance to reach them. He is scared that they will die there before the ambulance reaches his family because there is bombing everywhere.

“The number of people killed is increasing every minute because medical teams can’t reach the area and people are bleeding. People are running, terrified in the streets. Many families, many children are leav­ ing the Al-Shajaiya neighborhood coming to Gaza’s city center. Women, men, children are walking and running. I can see a woman carrying her baby and ter­ rified children around her. They are running to escape the smell of death.

“The bombs and the shrapnel are falling like rain on us. They are made by your governments: England, USA, Australia, etc. It is better to use these funds for health and education.

“What kind of humanity is this? What kind of mod­ ern society is this? This is what the Israeli occupation is doing and all the while using propaganda to try to hide the truth. I call on everyone in this world; don’t say that you didn’t know. I am telling you right now and you can hear me. This occupation, this massacre, is protected by a silent world. Wake up. Don’t remain silent.”

What limited infrastructure existed in Gaza before this new Zionist war is today being systematically tar­ geted, destroyed, or severed by Israel, including basic water supplies, sewage systems, and electricity gen­ eration. Even before the July 17 attack, 90 percent of Gaza’s water supply, heavily salinated and saturated with poisonous chemicals stemming from ground water seepage of fertilizers, was deemed by world ex­ perts as unfit for human consumption, if not for basic agricultural irrigation. Today, most Gazans are largely without any regular supply of water—and now elec­ tricity!

The people of Gaza have been subjected for decades to an Israeli embargo/blockade wherein even basic foodstuffs are frequently denied entry, as are essen­ tial medical supplies. More than half the population has been dependent on UN relief agencies for elemen­ tary health care, education, and related social servic­ es. Today, 95 percent of the food available in Gaza is from UN relief agencies. No other source of support is available or permitted by Israel.

Directly addressing the plight of Gaza’s people, Hamas spokesman Ismail Haniyeh listed 10 demands 8 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2014 Tony Savino / Socialist Action as conditions for a ceasefire. “We’ll never go back to the slow death,” Haniyeh said. “Our demands are fair and they are humane. Our people have decided.” The demands, all rejected by the Israeli government, are as follows:

• Withdrawal of Israeli tanks from the Gaza border.

• Freeing all the prisoners that were arrested after the killing of the three youths. (Some 800 were ar­ rested by Israel police and IDF forces.)

• Lifting the siege and opening the border crossings to commerce and people.

• Establishing an international seaport and airport which would be under U.N. supervision.

• Increasing the permitted fishing zone to 10 kilo­ meters.

• Internationalizing the Rafah Crossing and placing it under the supervision of the UN and some Arab na­ tions.

• International forces on the borders.

• Easing conditions for permits to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque.

• Prohibition on Israeli interference in the reconcili­ ation agreement.

• Reestablishing an industrial zone and improve­ ments in further economic development in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli officials and media, pre-prepared with a canned rationale aimed at blaming the victims for the Zionist terror, insist that their main targets are tunnels—some from Gaza into Israeli territory and others into Gaza from Egypt (which had brought in essential supplies). Yet, every report indicates that the real Israeli targets, in addition to Palestine’s vi­ tal infrastructure, are anyone that moves, including Palestinian children sitting on rooftops and children playing on beaches, not to mention entire residential communities.

According to the July 18 New York Times, General Moti Almoz, the chief Israeli military spokesman, stat­ ed, “I will now, uncharacteristically, ask the residents of Gaza to move away from the areas our forces are operating in—they are operating with extreme force” [emphasis added]. The “generous” murderers sent robo-style phone calls to 100,000 Palestinian homes, informing them that they had minutes to evacuate be­ fore mass bombings commenced.

Israeli officials insist that while they take precau­ tions to avoid civilian casualties, this is difficult be­ cause the pea-shooter rockets are often fired from residential neighborhoods. This rational didn’t fly well with the relatively conservative British-based Human Rights Watch, whose representative, Peter Brouchaert, responded, “We don’t need statements of regret from Israel. We need investigation and an end to the killing.”

Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, speaking of a claimed tunnel from Gaza that suppos­ edly led to an Israel border settlement, stated in a July 17 interview that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ne­ tanyahu showed great “restraint” and paid a high “po­ litical price” for not invading sooner. Oren added, “Es­ sentially Hamas,” the elected governing party of the Palestine Authority in Gaza, “invaded Israel first.”(!)

A week later, it was revealed by Israeli sources that the saturation bombing of Gaza had been planned months earlier. Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group observed in The New York Times that “the current escalation is a direct result by Israel and the West to obstruct the implementation of the April 2014 Palestinian reconciliation agreement [between Hamas and Fatah].”

The “political price” paid by the “civilized” Ne­ tanyahu meant that he had to endure the mad calls from fanatical right-wing Israeli groups that demanded even more blood. Mobs have gathered in the streets of Israeli cities, chanting slogans like “Tomorrow there’s no teaching in Gaza; they don’t have any children left” and “Gaza is a grave­ yard.”

Here’s a July 15 article by Israel’s Deputy Speak­ er of the Knesset (parliament) Moshe Feiglin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya­ hu’s ruling Likud Party (see Israeli news website Arutz Sheva): “Israel must attack Gaza even more mercilessly, expel the population and resettle the territory with Jews.” And here’s Feiglin’s program on how it must be done: “Ultimatum—One warning from the Prime Minister of Israel to the enemy population, in which he announces that Israel is about to attack military targets in their area and urges those who are not involved and do not wish to be harmed to leave immediately. Sinai is not far from Gaza and they can leave. This will be the limit of Israel’s hu­ manitarian efforts. Hamas may unconditionally surrender and prevent the attack. “Attack—Attack the entire ‘target bank’ through­ out Gaza with the IDF’s maximum force (and not a tiny fraction of it) with all the conventional means at its disposal. All the military and infra­ structural targets will be attacked with no consider­ ation for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage.’ It is enough that we are hitting exact targets and that we gave them advance warning.

“Siege—Parallel to the above, a total siege on Gaza. Nothing will enter the area. Israel, however, will allow exit from Gaza. (Civilians may go to Sinai, fighters may surrender to IDF forces).

“Defense—Any place from which Israel or Israel’s forces were attacked will be immediately attacked with full force and no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage.’

“Conquer—After the IDF completes the ‘soften­ ing’ of the targets with its fire-power, the IDF will con­ quer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.

“Elimination—The GSS and IDF will thoroughly eliminate all armed enemies from Gaza. The enemy population that is innocent of wrong-doing and sepa­ rated itself from the armed terrorists will be treated in accordance with international law and will be al­ lowed to leave. Israel will generously aid those who wish to leave.

“Sovereignty—Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Liberation of parts of our land forever is the only thing that justifies endangering our soldiers in battle to capture land. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel. The coastal train line will be extended, as soon as possible, to reach the entire length of Gaza.”

Feiglin’s final solution concludes: “According to polls, most of the Arabs in Gaza wish to leave. Those who were not involved in anti-Israel activity will be offered a generous international emigration package. Those who choose to remain will receive permanent resi­ dent status. After a number of years of living in Israel and becoming accustomed to it, contingent on appro­ priate legislation in the Knesset and the authorization of the Minister of Interior, those who personally ac­ cept upon themselves Israel’s rule, substance and way of life of the Jewish State in its Land, will be offered Israeli citizenship.” In truth, Feiglin’s proposal differs little, if at all, from Israeli’s official policy. Origins of the Israeli settler state Israel did not exist before 1948, when the World War II imperialist victors, meeting at the United Na­ tions, decreed that an Israeli state was to be carved out of historic Palestine, then a British “Mandate,” a polite imperialist word for colony. The Zionist colo­ nizers were granted 56 percent of the country.

Great Britain originally “acquired” Palestine fol­ lowing the World War I conflagration and worldwide slaughter that resulted in the victors’ division of the vanquished Ottoman Empire. England and France, which in the 19th century had partaken in the colonial subjugation and division of Africa, set out to do the same in the Middle East. Pencils and pens in hand, a host of diplomats divided up the Ottoman Empire and assigned the sections outside Turkey itself to the French and British imperialists.

Previously, in 1917, the Zionist movement, prom­ ising to be Britain’s colonial overseers in Palestine, had reached an accord with the British Empire, via the Balfour Declaration. Signed by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour and the British Zion­ ist leader, Baron Walter Rothschild II, the agreement (continued on page 9)

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Tony Savino / Socialist Action (continued from page 8) read in part: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best en­ deavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any oth­ er country.”

The latter portion of this declaration was included to portray the British Empire and its associated Zion­ ist colonizer allies as merely living side by side with their Palestinian “neighbors.” However, 90 percent of the population of Palestine at that time was made up of Palestinian Arabs.

Perhaps the leading ideological forbearer of “Re­ visionist Zionism” was Vladimir Jabotinsky, who au­ thored the benchmark essay for the entire Zionist movement, “The Iron Wall.” (The earlier form of Zi­ onism, with pacifist and socialist tones, nevertheless contemplated establishing a Jewish homeland to be carved out of some conquered nation with the ap­ proval of its imperialist conqueror. South Africa and Uganda were among the nations that had been con­ sidered for this project.)

In 1923, Jabotinsky spelled out the Zionist credo without equivocation: “Whether through the Balfour Declaration or the [British] Mandate, external force is a necessity for establishing in the country [Pales­ tine] conditions of rule and defense to which the local population, regardless of what it wishes, will be de­ prived of the possibility of impeding our colonization, administratively or physically. Force must play its role—with strength and without indulgence. In this, there are no meaningful differences between our mili­ tarists and our vegetarians. One prefers an Iron Wall of Jewish bayonets; the other an Iron Wall of English bayonets.”

Jabotinsky continued: “To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer, ‘abso­ lutely untrue.’ This is our ethic. There is no other ethic. As long as there is the faintest spark of hope for the Arabs to impede us, they will not sell these hopes— not for any sweet words, not for any tasty morsel, be­ cause this is not a rabble but a people, a living people. And no people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions, except when there is no hope left, until we have removed every opening visible in the Iron Wall.” (For a comprehensive overview, see Socialist Action’s pamphlet, “The Hidden History of Zionism” by Ralph Schoenman.)

European Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically following Hitler’s coming to power in 1933. Jewish land purchases and new Jewish settle­ ments rapidly ensued. Palestinian resistance to Brit­ ish control and Zionist settlements climaxed with the massive Arab revolt of 1936-39, which Britain brutal­ ly suppressed with the help of Zionist militias.

Within days of the 1948 partition of Palestine, Zion­ ism’s terrorist armies, this time with British weapons in hand, declared war on the Palestinian people, in­ side and outside of the new Zionist state, as well as on all surrounding Arab nations that rejected the UN’s imperialist partition. Three hundred eighty-five Pal­ estinian villages were razed to the ground, renamed, and reconstituted as Israeli towns. In the course of this 1948-49 war and expansion of Israel, 726,000 Palestinians were driven from their land, with many moving to Gaza and the West Bank (of the Jordan Riv­ er) or dispersed to refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere. With the destruction of their towns and villages, “vacated” Palestinian land was de­ creed Israeli state property under the 1950 “Absentee Property Law.”

Until 1947, Jewish land ownership in Palestine was 6 percent. The rest belonged to the Palestinian peo­ ple. Today that figure is essentially reversed. Pales­ tinian lands have been systematically stolen by force. By 1949 Israel occupied 78 percent of Palestine. Fol­ lowing the 1967 Six-Day War, the percentage was in­ creased to 100—that is, Israel occupied all of historic Palestine.

The so-called Occupied Territories of 1967 were and remain subject to the systematic construction of Israeli settlements, despite the vague 1995 “Oslo agreement,” wherein Gaza and the West Bank would be under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian Authority, whose leaders were to be elected by Palestinians in that 22 percent of the original Palestine. But Israeli settlements in the West Bank continued without in­ terruption, as they do to this day.

The three million Palestinian occupants of Gaza and the West Bank are essentially banned from leaving their new and now “legalized,” and re-occupied, ter­ ritory. These economically and socially unviable Ban­ tustans are daily subject to Israel military control, in­ cluding militarized checkpoints, walls, separate roads for Israelis, and other measures that render them little more than prisons regulated by Israeli troops, guards, and financial interests. With regard to Israeli’s relentless construction of settlements, UN resolutions and/or “international laws” that supposedly regulate relations between states and people and that prohibit such land seizures have been ignored with impuni­ ty—and always with total U.S. complicity. Zionist vs. S. African apartheid Zionist colonization differs significantly from the classical European form, in which the conquered in­ digenous population is subjected to near slave-like conditions aimed at providing a near-free labor force for European industry and agriculture. In contrast, the Israeli variant was and remains based on the physical exclusion of all Palestinian labor and its replacement with Jewish workers and settlers from all over the world. The latter are granted immediate citizenship based on their Jewish heritage, as opposed to Pales­ tinians, whose rights are largely restricted regardless of how many generations their forbears lived in Pales­ tine. Israel is formally a “Jewish state.”

In this sense, South African apartheid also differed significantly from its Israeli variant. The South Afri­ can colonists, less than 10 percent of the population, maintained the fiction that South Africa was “legally” for whites only. Blacks were relegated to non-citizen status and required pass cards to work in the “new” South Africa. Others were held in artificially created and isolated Bantustans (“Black homelands” or “Black states”), geographically separate and apart from South Africa, as with Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei.

No nation except the apartheid South African gov­ ernment recognized this “legal fiction.” No one denied that these “homelands” operated merely to provide a reserve labor supply for South Africa’s capitalist enterprises, especially its mining industries. South Africa’s colonial settlers, with their ingrained racist/ colonialist mentality, deemed these poverty-stricken (Above) Destruction of buildings by Israeli bombs.

enclaves “independent nations.”

In Israel, Palestinian labor barely exists, with the Zi­ onist regime’s needed labor force, not including Jews, largely consisting of immigrants from poor nations. Jabotinsky’s conception is fully operative. The Pales­ tinian identity is to be eradicated. Palestinians are to be driven out! Israel is for Jews only!

This is not to detract from the horrors created by European colonization. In Africa’s Congo, for exam­ ple, King Leopold II of Belgium murdered 12 million Congolese in the 19th century, the largest genocide in history. The French, British, Spanish, Italian, German, and Portuguese imperialists similarly murdered tens of millions while enslaving and exporting countless millions of others.

It is in this broad colonial context that the June 13 disappearance of three Israeli teenagers, which is still unexplained, must be evaluated. Without proof, the Zionist government immediately declared Hamas, the Islamic current that formally represents Palestinians in Gaza, guilty—despite Hamas denials.

A “revenge” campaign was immediately launched in the West Bank. Entire towns were sealed off by Israeli government forces. Palestinian homes were systemat­ ically broken into. Some 800 people were instantly ar­ rested and charged with being supporters of Hamas. (In fact, Israel is continuing to hunt down alleged Hamas supporters in the West Bank and in Israel it­ self.) And yet, Hamas, declared by the U.S. to be a ter­ rorist organization, is held responsible for starting yet another war with the “peace-loving” and “democratic” Zionist and colonialist Israel.

This government-created hysteria resulted in three far-right Israelis, including two teenagers, taking ac­ tion. They kidnapped, clubbed, doused with gasoline, and burned alive the innocent Palestinian youth, Mo­ hammed Abu Khdeir. These murderers were soon captured by Israeli authorities and charged with “ter­ rorism.” The same day, however, war was declared on the Gaza Strip, with death and destruction wrought on the innocent civilian population ever since.

One can only recall Hitler’s rounding up hundreds of civilians in Nazi-occupied cities, and ordering one person shot each minute until someone stepped for­ ward to reveal the names of the resistance fighters who had courageously challenged and killed a hand­ ful of Nazis soldiers.

In a similar vein, any Palestinian who resists Israeli oppression, occupation, and confiscation of their land and property, and the slaughter of their people is deemed a terrorist. Nelson Mandela and Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta, resistance fighters who became presidents of their nations, were similarly declared terrorists.

George Washington, who resisted British colonial occupation and oppression in the 18th century, and who used force and violence to win America’s free­ dom, was also deemed a terrorist. Before Washing­ ton was able to form regular armies to resist British rule, he too employed guerrilla tactics and primitive weapons to challenge the British Empire’s occupying armies.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration, like all oth­ er U.S. administrations before it, swears allegiance to Israeli state power, which it arms and finances to the tune of $3.1 billion yearly, the largest sum gifted (continued on page 11, in “NDPers petition to remove Ontario Leader Horwath”)

SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2014 9

Scan page 10

News and views from SA Canada website: http://socialistaction.ca the country, with rallies, pickets, and town hall meetings. Many municipal governments, including Toronto’s City Council, have voted to oppose the replacement of home mail delivery with collective mega-mail boxes. Sept. 20 is part of that resistance. The message to Eg­ linton-Lawrence MP Joe Oliver, the Tory Minister of Finance, is that his Conservative federal budget, which aims to slash jobs and kill vital public services while pampering the corporate elite, is unacceptable.

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Vogel easily dismisses facile misreadings of Marx and Engels but pinpoints moments when their writings on women were incomplete.