Thursday, April 12, 2018

Liberate humanity, not nations.

Scottish left-nationalists believe small state nationalism is internationalism from below and support the break-up of “imperialist” states. They claim the aim of getting rid of capitalism by class struggle is too abstract but it is not the class struggle between capital and labour that is abstract, but the concept of nation. What is a nation? There is no satisfactory definition and concepts of what constitutes a nation have changed throughout recent history. Is a nation a subjective feeling of identification? In which case, there could be endless fragmentation with any significant group of people declaring themselves a nation.  The working class has no nation. We cannot take from them something they have not got.

The main threat to peace between nations in the world today comes from nationalism. What is the alternative to patriotic flag-waving nationalism? Let us instead raise the red flags and banners of workers' solidarity across borders. Let us not unite with our so-called state leaders who, universally in the world today, have more in common with each other than they do with us. Let us not be duped by xenophobic or national chauvinist rhetoric and let Arab and Israeli workers fight together for what we all need. Let us be part of an international movement for an anti-racist, non-capitalist world. Do Palestinian and Israeli workers have more in common with their national exploiters and enforcers than they do with other workers in the rest of the world? A study of liberation movements reveals that this nationalist thinking has not led to the significant betterment of the lives of ordinary citizens. Instead, it has merely led to changing the ethnicity of the local exploiters, whose strings often continue to be pulled by former colonial powers. 

The West Bank is policed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA security sector in 2015 employed almost half of the 145,000 people on the PA payroll and consumes $1 billion of the PA’s $3.9 billion budget — roughly the same amount as health and education combined. A small Palestinian elite has continued to enrich itself by deepening its political, economic and military ties with Israel, often explicitly undermining efforts by Palestinian civil society to resist.

 The Masri family holds personal holdings that account for a third of the Palestinian economy. He has served as a minister in the cabinets of both the Palestinian National Authority and Jordan and has on multiple occasions declined both the presidency and the prime ministership of Palestine, although he retains an elected seat in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Much of his investments is held the Edgo Group, a holding company based in London which operates in contracting, industrial development, trading, distribution and representation, project development, operation, and maintenance. Masri is also the head of the Padico investment holding group, which controls 35 companies that include telecommunications (such as the Jawal mobile operator), construction, tourism (the Intercontinental Hotel Group), energy, environment, banking, finance, and agriculture.

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