National resistance

I'm sure if pressed KDog would accuse you of a big-nation internationalism rather than Turkish nationalism specifically.

But being Kurdish or whatever would hardly disprove such an accusation unless you first accepted the nationalist line that every single Kurd wanted independence and every single 'White Turk' wanted a unitary state. And really not even most nationalists would make that sort of claim. It's the sort of arguments I'm used to seeing coming from nationalists, ie IRSP members will claim they can't be sectarian nationalists because some of their founding members were protestant or because they still have some protestant members.

Uh... an type of internationalism that ends up supporting the interests of big nations over small ones.

But hey, maybe he's accusing you of being a Turkish nationalist. We'll have to ask him.

yes it's amazing, it works like this, if you don't supported oppressed nations then you are supporting the status quo and therefore offering defacto support to oppressor nations.

like I said it's some sophisticated shit.

Absolutely.
I'm sure the majority of workers chose to avoid fighting with or alongside Hezbollah against Israel. And, as you say, were right to do so.
I'm pretty sure most of them also hoped Hezbollah would drive out the Israelis. And were again weighing their interests correctly.
Subtle, the workers.

You have failed to address an issue which, I admit, I only implicitly raised earlier, so I will repeat it more clearly this time:

Proletarians have no land to defend, since the land in which they live belongs to their landlords. But peasants do own the land in which they live. Therefore, they do have a land to defend, which makes your analysis less relevant to them.

Since most of the population in both Palestine and Lebanon is based around peasants (and, in fact, most of the work done by Israeli anarchist activists has to do with direct action to help peasants defend their livelihoods), doesn't this mean that the position taken by communists should be different? Or do you suggest that the only legitimate action that should be taken by peasants is to proletarize themselves (which is, in effect, what you are saying when you say that they should flee their villages, as many Southern Lebanese have done).

Are you aware of the history of the situation in the Palestinian area? Of the fact that one of the axes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to do with declassed Palestinian peasants vying for a lost paradise of peasanthood (the so called Right of Return business), while Jewish immigrants (both internal to Israel and outright immigrants from abroad) are given financial encouragement and military backing to become peasants (or landed bourgeoisie) themselves beyond the green line?

Yeah, sorry, meant to write your name explicitly, don't know why I forgot. I eagerly await your response (seriously, it's becoming very relevant, considering that the 40-year mark for the Israeli occupation of territories outside the Green Line, AKA "the Occupation" and the source of all social ills if you'd ask most local leftists )

Why would the labor of "peasants" be accurately reflected in the GDP?

But isn't that 12% figure only waged agricultural workers? Isn't the "workforce" the formal workforce? I might be wrong, but I'm just wondering.

There is a difference between a peasant and a farm laborer. The latter is a proletarian through-and-through (like the predominantly Thai migrant workers in Israeli farms), the former isn't.

Here I am missing a response to the rest of that portion of my post, the full quote being:

I think that the important factor here is not how much of the GDP comes from agriculture, nor how many Palestinians work exclusively or predominantly in the field of agriculture, but how many Palestinians (or Southern Lebanese) have a significant share in a peasant class. How many Palestinians, even those who have jobs in the cities or in Israel, are also from families who own and maintain agricultural land? It is my understanding that most, if not all, weekly laborers in Israeli construction who hail from the territories are of this sort. How many of the rest of the Palestinians are the progeny of former peasants displaced by the Zionists? I am pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of the refugees, those who are at least perceived as the central arena for most Israeli-Palestinian violence, whether through armed raids by the IDF or through supplying militants and suicide bombers to the various national liberation organizations, are declassed peasants, rather than being fully-socialized proletarians. Moreover, most direct and community action taken in relation to the Israeli occupation has to do with peasants via resisting the fencing off or the destruction of agricultural land used under peasant work relations.

As long as a significant majority of Palestinians hold a consciousness of being peasants, or being able to claim (or reclaim) peasant status, they will not act as proletarians, even if it is the case that most of them are, in fact, proletarians, and the whole of left-communist rhetoric will elicit a puzzled or hostile response, depending on whether it is deemed irrelevant to their situation, or as a cover for imperialist support, respectively. Simultaneously, the industrial sector in Palestine forming, according to the source you cited, a mere 13% of the labor force (incidentally about the same as the agricultural sector), it is highly difficult for purely proletarian struggles to take dominance there.

Well, it's not like we're going to miss the revolution if you don't respond promptly, so take your time.

No more than I was suggesting that the 54% in services weren't proles. But I have done construction work, and it is does not always require the kind of mass co-operation that is part and parcel of the way capitalism is supposed to build its own gravediggers according to Marx. My experience of it was of a very individualistic enterprise, though it could not have been representative.

Yeah, but, no, but... I know, but I think I've made my meaning clear.

Depends on what you mean by an agricultural society. I think that there are at least large remnants of peasant counsciousness there, due to the way proletarization took place, with Zionists considered as displacers, and this need to be taken into account.

A few points - "big nation nationalism" seems like a bollocks concept worthy of Third Worldists who'd accuse you of being "objectively pro-imperialist" for not hating America and supporting al-Queda.

Second - there is a world of difference between "defending the nation" and "defending yourself" isn't there? People defending their homes are quite different than people trying to liberate "their" nation.

Why?

It seems like a tag that can be applied to stiffle discussion. Maybe I'm wrong.

Also, where does it end? I mean, if you say English people are being "big nation nationalists" because they disagree with Irish, then Bretons should be able to call Saxons "big nation nationalists", Sxons should be able to call Normans "big nation nationalists" etc. I mean, it's not totally bollocks. William the Conqueror gave his norman pals all the land and *surprise surprise* those same families still got loads of it. should we be waging a national liberation struggle against those pesky Normans? The Diggers and the Levellers thought along those lines.

Similarly in the US - if "black power" is good, what's wrong with "white power"? Following that logic, it's just racist against whites. If black nationalism is okay then why isn't white nationalism? I mean, sure, many blacks came over as slaves. Well, funny that, cos most whites first came over as indentured servants and they weren't in no luxury cruisers! Black nationalism DOES divide the working class - liberals blame everything on evil white working class males. You get your black nationalists banging on about a seperate "black America" (like the Nation of I$lam) and guess what types support them - Maoists and the fucking NF!

Just some food for thought, tho i doubt anything productive can come out of a discussion on nationalism on these boards.

We were doing quite well before you came along.

Could you please pursue your bigging up of "big nation nationalism" vs "Third Worldism" on the NEFAC thread, where it belongs? We're trying to have a meaningful discussion here. As someone who lives in Israel, this issue has relevant practical consequences for me, so I don't want this thread degenerating into yet another stupid trans-atlantic cock-waving contest.

(Yeah, Lazy Riser, this is yet another example of my latent desire for sexual suppression, spare me)

here the issue is a bit wider than you fuck face, so don't be so fucking rude to Daniel considering he's talking sense.

you think you're the only cunt with an interest in national liberation or something?

Whereas saying "seems like a bollocks concept worthy of Third Worldists who'd accuse you of being "objectively pro-imperialist" for not hating America and supporting al-Queda." opens the door for discussion? But if anything you may be pointing out a general problem with shouting 'nationalist' at people in lue of serious discussion?

Seriously its obviously a category that exists (those small nation nationalists have to be opposing something) so what is the problem with acknowledging this?

I agree. I never called nobody nationalist and I didn't mean to be insulting, I was just (in my own crude way) saying I disagreed with something. I don't think such a category exists, or at least is useful, I'm sorry. I mean if Irish nationalism, Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Yorkshire nationalism, Kent nationalism, etc. etc. etc. etc. Where does it stop. Because nationalism can break down to the lowest common denominator whilst binding us to our national ruling classes. Blah blah blah - you know this of course and I don't want to insult your intelligence.

The two questions at the heart of the matter:

1) Is capital only reproducing itself through exploitation of waged laborers, or does it rely on ongoing primitive accumulation as well?

2) If the latter, is there a communist interest in resisting primitive accumulation, or does that inevitably lead to backward, proto fascist, and anti-cosmopolitan politics?

The "left communist" line on Question #1 seems to be, effectively, yes, the former is true, and primitive accumulation is a stage in the past.

I disagree. I think there is a range of resources "we" have outside of capital. Not just in terms of land and control of space: but in terms of knowledge, power over our bodies, sex, and reproduction, understanding of agricultural and ecological practice, and skills that have to do with creating and maintaining social groups (families, "communities," workplace groups, etc.). The inroads capital has been making into these frontiers has exposed their depths and made it quite clear that the proletariat is rarely some kind of idealized blank marxist slate of a subject with nothing to lose. All of these other resources we hold give us a stake in the path of overall social reproduction, and if the avoidance of revolution can be said to be a current class strategy it should be attributed to a fear that even these resources, as paltry and closely guarded as they are, will be swept away or seized in the process.

But I don't know the answer to #2. I certainly agree that the defense of particularities and fighting over both land and cultural terrain has often led to the most backward and dangerous kind of politics, and poses no real threat to capital as a system in any case. The "socialism" of "proletarian nations" is, ultimately, fascism. But is there any communist approach to resisting primitive accumulation? Or can communists only aim to gain control of the global system of the production and distrubution of commodities, and abandon every defensive battle?

Hi,

I'd just like to come back on a few points that were raised earlier in the thread, which need answering...

The advice of left communists is for the working class to fight the class war, not getting involved in imperialist wars, which is what these 'local' wars are, given that the 'oppressed nations' are generally backed by other first, second or third rate imperialist powers (Hezbollah/Iran etc.).

I guess you don't get the whole idea of principles. Rosa Luxemburg said that political opportunism only had one principle: to have NO principles. This seems quite apt here! For the working class, internationalism is a principle - that workers have NO country to defend, that workers of the world should UNITE across all boundaries. I'd like to see an example of a 'successful' national liberation struggle that has overthrown 'imperialism' and improved the conditions of the working class. Would Kdog care to give one?

Yes, there are no 'pure' struggles, but there are those that clearly have a much more proletarian content in that they are based around class demands. The struggles in Egypt are a striking example of this and are extremely significant given the geo-political context in which they are taking place. See:
Egypt: Germs of the Mass Strike
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/304/egypt-germs-of-mass-strike

Leftism has been and continues to be a recruiting seargent for one faction of the bourgeoisie against another. That's why it's so dangerous for the working class.

B.

Yeah, I forgot, we should only be rude to people revol doesn't agree with. Cock.

A bunch of people on this thread, notably Devrim, MJ and myself, are trying to have an actual discussion about national liberation, and the prennial question of what is to be done. Daniel represents people of another sort, who degenerated the NEFAC thread into pointless banter and shit-slinging, with various straw-man accusations of "big-nation nationalism" vs "Third-Worldism" being thrown around as a stand-in for meaningful discussion. Then he has the temerity to ever so innocently claim that there's not much that can be gotten out of the subject, as if he's nothing but an innocent bystander.