To advance the Palestinian cause—and by extension the global class struggle—we need to choose a side in today’s geopolitical conflict. During the modern era, when only the U.S. bloc has an imperialist role, supporting the side of Washington’s challengers is essential for being effective at combating the designs of the imperial hegemon. To be neutral in this conflict has the same effect as being “neutral” on the first world war; which as Lenin described a stance that favored the imperialist ruling class.
Concluded Lenin about the “neither victory nor defeat” slogan that the compromised socialists of the time put forth:
On closer examination, this slogan will be found to mean a “class truce”, the renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent countries, since the class struggle is impossible without dealing blows at one’s “own” bourgeoisie, one’s “own” government, whereas dealing a blow at one’s own government in wartime…means contributing to the defeat of one’s own country. Those who accept the “neither victory-nor-defeat” slogan can only be hypocritically in favour of the class struggle, of “disrupting the class truce”; in practice, such people are renouncing an independent proletarian policy because they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to the absolutely bourgeois task of safeguarding the imperialist governments against defeat.
The only policy of actual, not verbal disruption of the “class truce”, of acceptance of the class struggle, is for the proletariat to take advantage of the difficulties experienced by its government and its bourgeoisie in order to overthrow them. This, however, cannot be achieved or striven for, without desiring the defeat of one’s own government and without contributing to that defeat.
Because our government is instrumental in making the continued genocide against Palestinians possible, contributing to that defeat is synonymous with contributing to Palestine’s liberation struggle. As citizens of the imperial center, what we have to contribute to the struggle has a particular nature, wherein we can cut off the financial and diplomatic support the Zionists absolutely need. And if we want to take these responsibilities seriously, we need to do the most transgressive thing at this stage in the struggle: work towards furthering the transition to multipolarity. Which means building alliances with all forces, whether around the globe or in our own countries, that are committed to helping end Washington’s dominance.
The reasoning behind this practice comes from a simple observation about how class struggle works: it’s all connected. Palestine’s fight against the occupier is inseparable from China’s fight against the global monopoly capitalist forces which seek to make it again be subjugated. Which are both inseparable from the struggles of Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Belarus, and the other countries that have broken free from the international monopolist financial system. All these things are connected to the effort by the people of the USA to defeat the monopolists which run our government, and which are working to economically crush us through inflation and austerity.
The way that this worldwide struggle’s participants have been aligning themselves indicates where their material interests are. The communist organizations in the USA that support both Russia and China naturally also take a majoritarian stance on their country’s people, choosing to build an anti-imperialist movement that’s inclusive across the ideological spectrum rather than being exclusive to left liberals. This contrasts with the insular view of the people that’s shared by the predominant strains of “leftism” within the imperialist countries. In accordance with the dividing barrier on geopolitics that the new cold war has created within the socialist movement, these strains also oppose multipolarity. They either oppose both Russia and China, or seek to separate Russia from China. Which are both stances that impede the Palestinian cause.
This is because in order for Palestine to have gotten as much of an advantage as it now has, there’s needed to be a shift away from the unipolar world order. When the United States was the undisputed ruler of the globe, Palestine was too isolated for it to represent nearly as much of a threat towards the occupier. It was so easy for Washington to coerce countries into obedience on the issue of Palestine that the main international hope for the Palestinians came from the few countries (the DPRK, Libya, Iraq) that remained consistent problems for the hegemon immediately after the USSR’s fall. It wasn’t until the 2000s, when the globe’s anti-imperialist forces gained great new strength, that the global balance of power significantly changed in Palestine’s favor.
In the new international environment that Russia and China have created the conditions for, countries can speak and act freely on Palestine. It’s now permitted to say the obvious: that Washington is facilitating a slow-motion genocide against Arabs, under the insincere guise of protecting Jewish people. Numerous countries, from Indonesia to France, have at least recognized that “Israel” isn’t justified in its actions against Gaza’s people. The only exceptions are totally Washington-tied countries like Britain, whose decision to align with the U.S. on Israel is now having the effect of making it profoundly isolated.
The pro-Zionist side has in many ways become marginal, while a strong and growing international community has come to exist that seeks to end the crimes against the Palestinians. The inescapable reality is that this wouldn’t have been possible if not for the acts of defiance against the hegemon by Washington’s central challengers from the last several decades. And the same is going to be true for crucial parts of the Palestinian victories that come in the future.
As the international community reacts to the crimes of the Zionists by increasingly working to bring about a Palestinian state, remember that the rise of the multipolar world order was absolutely necessary for this to happen. Without these great sources of opposition towards Zionism’s crimes, the genocide would be able to not just continue, but continue in a way where those seeking Palestinian statehood remain overwhelmed. The colonizing forces would have been able to keep murdering Palestinians with impunity, like the United States could do with the Native Americans or the Brits could do with the Irish (to name a couple examples of this).
None of the other peoples who colonialism has committed genocide against have had the advantage which the Palestinians now have: the advantage of being on the side of an inexorably rising geopolitical bloc. There was no anti-imperialist bloc during the centuries when colonialism was carrying on in its old form, and the Soviet Union proved unable to sustain itself. With the rise of the multipolar order, though, the forces of imperialism and colonization are becoming more and more isolated. And this process can’t be reversed.
When the Palestinians win, and they add onto the list of anti-imperialist states, many of the leftists who don’t start vilifying them for being “authoritarian” will celebrate their victory while ignoring the things which made their triumph achievable. If somebody is pro-Palestine while being anti-Russia or anti-China, they’re not a reliable ally to the cause. Nor are they willing to learn the recent lessons from Palestine’s struggle that we absolutely must internalize in order to get revolution in the core. We can’t separate ourselves from the anti-imperialist countries, and expect to successfully subdue the forces of monopoly finance capital where we live. This is both because we need the assistance of these countries; and because finance capital makes American socialist groups into controlled opposition by convincing them to be alienated from the global counter-hegemonic struggle.
They’re depending on us to be apathetic when it comes to supporting multipolarity. To undermine our support for Palestine by disavowing the countries that have been instrumental in bringing Palestine to this point. We can’t give our enemies what they want.
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