The Israeli Genocide of Palestinians: Made in the USA
For decades the fight for liberation of the US working class has been hamstrung by dependence on and support for the Democratic Party within the two-party capitalist system. The belief in the ability to slowly turn bourgeois democracy into democratic socialism is still considered “realistic” by many on the left. Unfortunately, that ignores the reality that working class people have no voice within the capitalist political system and no power within the capitalist parties.
Karl Marx argued in the Communist Manifesto that socialism could only be achieved by the working class itself—through its own self-emancipation. He believed that the existing state, which was essentially an outgrowth of the class system, functioned as the “executive committee” of the capitalist class. This type of state, therefore, had to be overthrown to end capitalism as the governing system. He didn’t believe bourgeois capitalist politicians, whose positions were contingent upon how well they served the capitalists—would write legislation that would redistribute wealth from the tiny minority to the vast majority. In fact, they work against any such action, and vehemently oppose socialism.
Capitalist, or “bourgeois” democracy, starts with the fact that the capitalist class owns and controls the means of production, i.e., the land, resources, factories, offices, machines, tools, technologies, intellectual properties, etc. This type of private ownership is set up to generate profits through the exploitation of the working classes, whose underpaid labor is the basis for the extra, or “surplus” value; that which is then taken by the owners as their “income”.
In a “democracy” in which the ruling capitalist class holds all formal economic power, controls, and administers both political parties, owns and operates the mass media, there can be no real democratic participation or accountability. Like in the workplace, the bosses determine company policy without democratic input from their workers, since the interests of capitalists and workers are fundamentally at odds, as the bosses’ well-being is directly dependent on their ability to exploit workers for the lowest pay possible. To overcome the will of the workers to resist exploitation, typically the vast majority inside workplaces, they leverage their power and ownership to dictate wages and working conditions. This also applies in national politics, as the ruling class dictates its political interests as those of the whole “nation”, even if these policies only represent their interests as the ruling minority.
Nevertheless, this form of capitalist “democracy” creates the illusion that workers can choose their representatives. This sleight of hand occurs when most workers are allowed to vote in local, state, and federal elections, creating the impression they’re deciding who governs them. The funding, vetting, and pre-selecting process that plays out before the election process enables the capitalist class and their auxiliaries to produce acceptable candidates long before working people get to vote for these “chosen” candidates.
This phony democratic process ensures that the class of politicians vetted through this process are not accountable to the people, but rather to their funders and backers inside the ruling power structures at the local, state, and national level of the capitalist system. These “elected” representatives of capital, are then enabled to appoint and direct unelected bureaucracies and rule in conjunction with other non-democratic echelons of capitalist state power including the judiciary, the military, and law enforcement agencies. The capitalist media serves as a private arm of the capitalist state, promoting the viewpoints and interests of capital in every event and situation. Taken together, these institutions serve and are accountable only to the ruling class. When the interests of the capitalist class diverge from those of the majority of the working-class population, their political representatives, appointees, and allies do not hesitate to move as one to serve their masters, regardless of what the rest of the population may want, think, or feel.
This can explain why at this very moment, millions of people across the country are shocked and outraged because the US government has funded the Israeli military and settler-colonial process in the sum of $38 billion over the last decade, and is currently arranging another $14 billion to deliver weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli state as it conducts a genocide against the Palestinian people. Over the last 38 days the US-backed, Israeli state has murdered an estimated 14,000 Palestinians and wounded at least 28,000, including more an estimated 5,000 children, and displaced 1.5 million others from their homes. They have bombed homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, mosques, churches, refugee camps, and flattened whole neighborhoods. Zionist settlers in the West Bank have murdered least 190 Palestinians as part of a brutal land grab carried out with the backing of Israeli troops. US politicians from the far-right Trump Republicans to moderate, liberal, and even self-described “socialist” Democrats from Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Tammy Baldwin, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have all signed on in support of Israel amid its current genocidal onslaught against Palestinians. The maintenance and expansion of US capitalism’s interests in the Middle East—whether to access and control the vast reserves of oil or to weaken and defeat oppositional Arab governments and popular social movements—depends on arming and enabling the hyper-militarized Israeli settler-colonial project.
That is why it is imperative that we be loud and clear in our opposition to what the US ruling class is doing in Palestine. The collective power of protest, disruption, strikes, and on-going and relentless acts of popular dissent is the only force we can wield to stop those in power. The fact that the whole world is watching means international, anti-colonial Marxists have the chance to expose how the capitalists and their lapdog politicians have been orchestrating this disaster over the last seven decades, not to defend Jewish people, but to defend oil profits and maintain the the United States' dominant status over its rivals and opponents.
As working people, socialists, revolutionaries, internationalists, and humanitarians we must take action to disrupt this genocide being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people that is wholly enabled and encouraged by the US government. It is also imperative that we understand that the capitalist politicians from the Republican and Democratic parties—even those Democrats that call themselves “progressive” or “socialist”—will never stand against US empire and the prerogatives of the capitalist class. They will never be our allies in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, as they are the perpetrators of this heinous crime unfolding before our eyes. While millions stand up and protest across the world, they are the ones upholding and administering the dictatorship of capital that is currently orchestrating the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.
Kim Gasper-Rabuck is a former middle school teacher and full-time parent. She has been an activist and organizer who has worked to stop wars, defend abortion, fight police brutality, support strikes, and fight for socialist ideas and organization for the last 35 years.
