Trotskyist Fraction Breaks With Matzpen
From The Bulletin, July 5, 1971
BY ISAAC FIELD
IN 1933, AFTER the Communist International and. the German Communist Party were exposed as the ones responsible for Hitler’s coming to power, the editors of the paper, Haor (The Light), organ ofthe Palestinian Communist Party, went over to the positions of the “International Left Opposition’’ led by Leon Trotsky.
But the ties between Haor and the Left Opposition remained rather loose. The Israeli group lacked a perspective, particularly the understanding that it was necessary to build a new International on the ruins of the defunct Third International, and a new revolutionary party in Palestine and the Middle East.
In November, 1938, the group sent a document to the Bulletin of the Russian Opposition, in which it criticized the Fourth International for preaching ‘‘revolutionary defeatism’’ and declared that it was necessary to support British imperialism against German imperialism.
Trotsky answered this letter in the July 1939 issue of the Bulletin. The Haor group moved closer and closer to the Shachtman group in the U.S. which spoke of a mysterious third force, which would not identify -either with imperialism or with the Soviet Union. Haor changed its name to "Third Force." After the Second World War it revealed that this ‘‘force’’ was made up of the colonial countries becoming independent.
Haor completely lacked a class analysis of Middle Eastern and Israeli society and sought substitutes to avoid intervening in the class struggle. It capitulated to the comprador bourgeoisie in the Arab countries. All these basic positions can be found today in the Israeli Socialist Organization (ISO) and its paper, Matzpen.
After the Haor group left the Fourth International, a new group came into being: ‘‘The Palestine Trotskyist Group,”’ under the leadership of Igal Glikstein, alias Tony Cliff, which put out a newspaper: in three languages.
The objective situation was difficult: the fight between Jewish and Arab communities was intensifying. The group lost forces. Some of the militants left the country faced with the absence of a real political solution, despite the first indications of a change with the alliance of Arab and Israeli workers in the strikes of 1946 and 1947.
In the winter of 1962-63, the group of ex-Trotskyists reunified with the members of the Israeli Socialist Organization (ISO) on the basis of an agreement on Middle Eastern questions while maintaining differences on international questions.
Matzpen’s analysis was reformist. It saw de-Zionisation as a separate stage from the socialist revolution, in which the social forces in the struggle would be different from the ones in the second stage.
In the meantime a crisis began to appear within Maki (Israeli Communist Party). Israeli Socialist Organization holds demonstration against occupation of Arab lands. It was the beginning of the Sino-Soviet split and also the period when Castroite ideology was developing, which said a revolution could be made without a revolutionary party. In the autumn of 1962 in the Jerusalem section of Maki, Akiva Or, leader of the 1952 seamen’s strike, and Moshe Machover were expelled as well as Oded Pilavski (former editor for union affairs on the paper Voice of the People) and Jeremie Kaplan, both from the Tel Aviv section. They were expelled for demanding explanations from the Central Committee about the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
"PRIVILEGED"
It was the influence of Oded Pilavski who got Matzpen involved in "work committees" which were created in 196l63 in a large part of the country and which _Sparked the savage strikes against the decisions of Histadrut. This the height of Matzpen’s ‘‘working class work.’ They quickly abandoned their attempt to penetrate the Israeli working class. The group contended that the Israeli workers were "privileged."
Social patriotic tendencies also appeared in the organization. Thus the December 1963 issue published an article in honor of Itzhak Tsadeh, head of Palmach - elite section of the Israeli Hagana Army who during the 1948 war refused to evacuate Abou Agueila and Rafia (in the Sinai) as Ben Gurion demanded, so as not to topple King Farouk. The members of Matzpen considered the 1948 war as an anti-imperialist war. Even if the positions have changed today the method of analysis has not.
The program of I.S.0. from 1964-1967 stated that the State of Israel is the bridgehead of imperialism in the Arab world and is opposed to the desire of the Arab people for unity and socialism. The anti-imperialist forces are concentrated around Nasser and are taking leaps and bounds towards socialism. In Israel, there must be an alliance of all anti-imperialist forces.
The theoretical void in the organization took different forms especially after it went from social patriotism to Nasserism. This is what appeared in an article by D. Said, member of the group of ex-Trotskyists of Haifa in an article in Matzpen (No. 24, February 1965): .
"Two years ago, we said that Nasserism in its present form could not exist and was full of contradictions. He tried to lean on the national bourgeoisie and on the working class, ignoring at the same time the impossibility of joining the was interests of the two classes. The Egyptian. regime had to choose: rely on. the working class within and on the socialist countries abroad, or adopt the orientation of the national bourgeoisie and the imperialist leadership."
That was how the first part of the article began. It ended as follows:
"The petty bourgeois leaders essentially rested on, at the beginning, the national bourgeoisie, then tried to balance between the national bourgeoisie and the masses. They will be forced in the years to come to turn more and more to the working class for support. It is an irreversible process. Despite everything, we cannot say that Egypt is a workers state but the social and economic changes are pushing it in that direction. Only the counter-revolutionary forces can reverse it."
This article represents all the errors and theoretical confusion within the organization. The’ position of D. Said is a Pabloite position. For Said, Nasser can carry out the tasks of the proletariat with the given objective conditions: and it is up to revolutionaries to support Nasser who is doing their work.
At the same time every discussion on the Zionist or privileged character of the working class became a theoretical justification for the impossibility of finding a road to the working class. Revolution, the I.S.0. contends, is impossible in Israel.
OPPORTUNISM
The opportunism of their positions on the Middle East was coupled with their opportunist analysis of the internal situation in Israel. After trying to explain to the ‘Semitic Action’? group (anon-Zionist petty bourgeois group) that ‘‘scientific”’ socialism was better than ‘‘free’’ socialism, they began common work for the 1965 elections and then unified with the Holam Haze movement.
The union with Holam Haze flowed from their theory that de-Zionisation was an important step towards socialism. The alliance between the members of ISO and the "men with capitalist ideas but firmly anti-Zionist" lasted a year and a half. In November 1966, at the first conference of Holam Haze the members of ISO split, not because the platform included recognition of private property and recognition of the frontiers prior to 1967 (within which 250,000 Palestinians were nationally oppressed) but because a paragraph of the statutes of the movement demanded ISO to dissolve itself and join Holam Haze (Matzpen No. 31).
The positions of the ISO on the international crisis, the construction of the International and on Stalinism were very vague. The leaders of Matzpen never analyzed the problems which were posed to the working class movement.
From 1964 to 1967 they explained for example, in their paper that the advanced capitalist countries played the role of world exploiters while the underdeveloped countries represented the world proletariat (‘‘National and World Revolution’’ by Israel More, Matzpen No. 22 July 1964). This was the extent of their positions on world revolution. The sources of these theories lay in Pablo and the Maoists.
In its analysis on Stalinism, the ISO was content to reject the personality cult and dogmatism and recognize that certain communist parties did not have a correct strategy. At Tel Aviv they denounced a member of the Trotskyist fraction who called the bureaucracy Stalinist.
At the same time Oded Pilavsky published for the 30th anniversary of the "beginning of the fascist overthrow in Spain" (Matzpen July 1966) an article praising the Spanish Republic and the Soviet Union who "offers concrete if rather modest help." This Spanish Republic which, with the active help of the main "workers unions" - reformist, Stalinist or anarchist, crushed the 1936 peasant revolts as well as the revolt of the Barcelona workers in 1937. Stalinism is responsible for the arrest of the best revolutionaries (Trotskyists, anarchists, Poumists) and massacred enormous numbers of militants who were in the forefront of the Spanish revolution. The Stalinists opened the door to the victory of Franco.
This capitulation to Stalinism had repercussions even in Israel. Rakah (pro-Arab communist party). is thought of as a party which is wrong but not as counter-revolutionary instrument of the Soviet bureaucracy. Matzpen says: "Any attempt to describe the leadership of Rakah as traitors to the interests of the two peoples of Israel in a conscious way and out of Soviet phobia is only a lie." (Matzpen, No. 55).
The leaders of ISO did everything possible to hold joint actions with Rakah against the Vietnam war with slogans which fully satisfied Rakah. It was never mentioned that the origins of the imperialist war came from the 1954 Geneva accords where the representatives of Russia (and China) pressured the Viet Minh representatives to giving up their demand for re-unifying Vietnam.
The same is true in Israel. In 1967 a coordinating committee was set up including a representative of Rakah and one from the ISO to pressure the Israeli government into accepting a peace initiative. It was clear that Rakah meant the Security Council Resolution; and the ISO followed along like a benevolent advisor of the State of Israel as if the government and the Israeli bourgeoisie did not know where their interests lay.
TROTSKYIST
During this whole period there was an attempt by a group of comrades who would later form the Trotskyist fraction, to analyze all these problems. The group fought against Said’s theories that "Nas- ser’s Arab Socialist Union is the form of Soviets in Egypt," and against Pilavski’s theory that "Trotskyists are capable of making alliances with imperialism."
After splitting with the ISO, the Trotskyist fraction began publication of a regular theoretical organ, Vanguard. This publication will provide a framework for debate and will link Vanguard to the revolutionary elements. In the joint crisis of world capitalism and the Stalinist bureaucracy, Vanguard will give a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist alternative to the petty bourgeois radicalism of Matzpen which never prevented the Jewish proletariat from lining up behind Zionism.
Today the Israeli Trotskyist Fraction is gaining ground through the distribution of leaflets within the working class, through the theoretical training of new cadres, through active participation in demonstrations with its own banners.
The Israeli working class is faced increasingly with the necessity to organize itself to defend its living standards which are under attack. In this area the Israeli Trotskyist group must link up with the working class and fuse it with the international workers movement.
The best allies of Zionism are the petty bourgeois ruling classes of the Arab countries. Only the proletariat of the region can give an answer to the social and national problems.
After the collusion of Stalinism and imperialism whose massacre in the summer of 1970 in Jordan will be neither the last nor the bloodiest of their exploits, only the working class of the Near East can lead the fight for socialism and peace which the people of the region aspire to. The Israeli Trotskyist group will fight to build links with the revolutionary Arab forces, towards constructing a revolutionary party of the Near East.
The struggles of the proletariat in the Near East are part of the struggle of the world proletariat. Consequently the construction of the revolutionary party is part of the reconstruction of the Fourth International.
