Party of one: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, April 2022

Four independent workers’ soviets operated concurrently in Moscow during the Russian 1905 Revolution. Proud Soviet historians were always quick to point out that the one aligned with the Bolsheviks operated a bomb-making operation out of Maxim Gorky’s apartment. Meanwhile, the more famous 1905 St. Petersburg workers’ and soldiers’ soviet, precursor to the 1917 Petrograd soviet, had puzzling gaps in its official Soviet history until the anarchist historian Voline published The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921 in 1947. In it he revealed that the soviet met in his St. Petersburg apartment.

Aside from the usual disputes over primary and secondary evidence or what constitutes historical fact, and before any arguments over what a particular history signifies, there are always the missing parts of history. What I mean is the things that happened and affected the course of history but that never got recorded in the historical record and thus were subsequently forgotten. The 1905 St. Petersburg workers’ and soldiers’ soviet met in Voline’s apartment and contributed to the development of soviet power whether or not that fact was entered into the historical record prior to 1947. So yes, if a tree falls in the forest, it makes a sound.

Joseph Trumpeldor: the man and his legacy

This article is a follow-up to my Maximum Rocknroll column on Jewish socialism vs Jewish nationalism and should be considered a non-canonical column.

UTOPIA ATTEMPTED

I call them “horseshoe heroes.”

I consider the assertions of horseshoe theorists—that far left and far right closely resemble each other like the ends of a horseshoe—to be utterly bogus. Yet I acknowledge that a select few individuals have become icons simultaneously for both the Left and the Right. I’m not talking here about Keith Preston’s pan-secessionist idiocy which likes to claim that everyone from Mikhail Bakunin to Julius Evola are default “horseshoe heroes” and therefore “go beyond Left and Right.”  I’m instead pointing to the vagaries of Third Positionist figures like Juan Perón who managed to be embraced by the political Left and Right through their actions and ideas.

One such individual was the early socialist Zionist Joseph Trumpeldor who achieved the status of “horseshoe hero” long before Third Positionism was a thing. In the process, Trumpeldor’s death-in-action became the inspiration for elements of Labor Zionism to transcend their Jewish-based ethnic socialism into true international socialism. Finally, Joseph Trumpeldor and his legacy gave rise to the utopian myth that a true social Zionism might have transcended the political Zionism that prevailed. If political Zionism meant the colonization of Palestine by any means necessary to establish a Jewish State—Israel—social Zionism intended the communal settlement of Palestine/Israel as a non-state binational commonwealth, with autonomous federations of Arab and Jewish communities residing side by side.

pt. 3: Jewish socialism vs Jewish nationalism: “What’s Left?” November 2019 (MRR #438)

LA’s Exposition Park, the northeastern meadows across from USC, were jammed with anti-Vietnam war protestors. The police estimated our numbers at between eight and ten thousand. The rally organizers said we had over twenty-five thousand in attendance.

It was October 15, 1969, the nationwide Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. I’d never seen so many people in one place for one purpose. I was elated. I’d declared myself an anarchist pacifist in 1968 under threat of eventually being drafted. That day I was a revolutionary anarchist who’d traveled with friends from Ventura to participate in the protest.

I couldn’t hear the speeches in the huge crowd. Instead, I perused the two-score-plus literature tables that bordered the rally, noting the alphabet soup of Leftist organizations present. There were political parties (SP, SLP, CP, SWP, SL, PLP), front groups (WPC, ASFC, FPCC), New Left (SDS), civil rights (SCLC, SNCC, CORE), Black Power (BPP), feminist (NOW), labor (IWW, UE, UFW), religious (AFSC, CW, UUA), countercultural (YIPpie!, HAFC) and many others. I couldn’t get along with two-thirds of them personally and disagreed politically with nine-tenths of what they stood for, but on that day I embraced them all. They were my people. They were the Left.

Israel and Palestine, confict without end: “What’s Left?” October 2014, MRR #377

The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.

Jim Hightower

I’m a middle-of-the-road moderate.

This feels like a stand up AA confession. Me, “Lefty” Hooligan, a moderate. But I’m middle-of-the-road when it comes to the whole Israel/Palestine conflict.

I grudgingly agree that Israel has the right to exist, but I vehemently oppose Israel’s military overkill, its collective punishment and massacre of Palestinians in pursuit of eradicating Hamas terrorism. I grudgingly agree that Palestinians should constitute their own nation, but I adamantly oppose Hamas terrorism, its indiscriminate targeting of Israelis and threats to wipe out the Jewish people. I think that Israel’s overwhelming military and economic superiority over the Palestinians, this massive day-to-day power imbalance, virtually guarantees the abuse of that power in the form of discrimination and slaughter, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.*

I wasn’t always such a reluctant moderate with respect to the bloody Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I know the subject deeply, but narrowly, and from one side only. As an undergraduate at UCSC, I studied Jewish history in general and Zionist history in particular, with a six month stay on an Israeli kibbutz (commune) in the Jezreel Valley with my Jewish girlfriend in the summer and fall of 1974. My grasp of the Arab side of things is glancing at best. Yet, like a shard of hologram properly illuminated, a slice of history properly studied will reveal the whole. What got in the way of my extremist sentiments, and what made me a moderate was what Israelis like to call “the facts on the ground.”

I was and remain a communist. I was intrigued by Zionist socialism and I had an affinity for kibbutz-style communism, but I soon discovered how intrinsically rightwing they were. Zionist colonial society was dominated from 1920 on by the Histadrut labor federation—part trade union, part capitalist owner and employer, and part de facto state. The Histadrut ran close to 75% of the Zionist economy in pre-1948 Palestine until the newborn Israeli state nationalized half of that, and the labor federation’s social power has been on the decline ever since. The national syndicalism professed by the Histadrut and key to Labor Zionism shunned class struggle for Jewish national unity. It was a non-Marxist, even anti-Marxist socialism rooted in Romantic notions of organic nationalism and ethnic purity.

That’s where the supposed radical communism of the kibbutzim came from. Labor Zionism, often used synonymously with Zionist socialism, was first cousin to Stalin’s “socialism in one country” in promoting a “socialism for one people,” the Jewish people. And Zionist socialism transcended its nationalist socialist roots into true proletarian internationalism only in communist fractions evident within the halutzim (pioneers) of the third aliyah (settler wave). These communist fractions were tangential to the kibbutz movement led by the Hashomer Hatzair and then by the old MAPAM political party. They were central to the Gdud Ha’avoda (Labor Brigades) founded by members of the Crimean Commune who followed Joseph Trumpeldor, which were then deliberately destroyed by the Histadrut. As such, this international working class communism, which attempted to make common cause with the Arab workers in Palestine, was a minority of a minority within the Zionist colonial project. It was doomed to failure. Probably why I identify with it to this day. Ze’ev Sternhell’s book The Founding Myths of Israel makes these arguments most cogently. Israeli society has since moved inexorably ever rightward.

Then as now, I’m an anti-statist. I don’t like to see the building and proliferating of nation-states. I don’t like people aspiring to create them, and I certainly don’t like people butchering each other with them. Arthur Waskow once spun out a lovely libertarian utopia for the area of Israel/Palestine that entailed decentralized federations of autonomous Jewish and Arab cantons residing side by side in a fully binational society. Sure, and if the cat laid eggs, so goes a yiddish saying, it would be a chicken. I don’t think I was ever that naive to imagine anarchism taking root in the area anytime in the foreseeable future. I was disabused of such fantasies by having experienced reality in Israel. Part of that reality is the current demographics of the region. There are 6.1 million Jews and nearly 5.8 Arabs living in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

These facts beg for a creative reconsideration of the “one state solution” put forward by the old pre-Oslo Palestine Liberation Organization for a democratic, secular nation-state in the region of Palestine. Not quite as elegant was the call for a binational state in Israel/Palestine by Zionist socialism’s left wing, the aforementioned Hashomer Hatzair and MAPAM, that evaporated with the formation of Israel’s Labor Party in 1968. The chances for either a democratic secular state or a binational state in Israel/Palestine however are slim to none, not without a lot of violence and social disruption. Far more blood and chaos will accompany the least favorable but far more likely solution, the “two state solution” that creates a Palestinian nation-state in the Occupied Territories alongside a mostly intact state of Israel. Not only is the two-state solution the highly probable outcome of decades of suffering and war, but it is likely to reproduce the same power imbalance, a militarily and economically hegemonic Israel running roughshod over a string of poverty-stricken Palestinian Bantustans.

Which is a tragedy considering that, at least on the Jewish side of things, there have been imaginative ways for a people to live and thrive without the need for a nation-state. At the beginning of the 20th century, as youthful European Jews took to socialist ideas and movements of various stripes, Zionist socialism predominated in a nationalist Zionist movement that promoted the colonization of Palestine under the patently false slogan of “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Diametrically opposed to all forms of Zionism were the Jews who committed themselves to Marxist social democracy, specifically to the internationalist socialism embodied by the Bolsheviks and their Third International, which called for world proletarian revolution to bring about a classless stateless society. The Jewish Labor Bund positioned itself between these two poles to develop a hybrid socialism unique to the social situation of the Jewish people.

The Bund operated in eastern Europe, in the territorial ghetto known as the Pale of Settlement to which the Jewish people were confined and in which the Jews often comprised a sizable minority of the population. The socialism advocated by the Bund aligned with the international working class movement while defending the national characteristics of the Jewish people in the Pale of Settlement. The Jews of the Pale lived separately (in urban ghettos and Jewish villages called shtetls), had their own language (yiddish), religion, customs and culture, and shared various autonomous social institutions (schools, community councils, and mutual aid societies). From these facts the Bund derived a form of Jewish nationalism that downplayed any united sovereign Jewish territory for one based on Jewish community control of local schools, police and government. As such, the Jewish Labor Bund’s program prefigured the program of the Black Panther Party in the United States.

The Third Reich’s “Final Solution” put an end to the aspirations of the Jewish Labor Bund by liquidating the Jewish people in eastern Europe. I got to know some Bundists who had immigrated to New York City after the second World War. When they didn’t entirely assimilate, they became either ardent Communists or soft Zionists. Few remained affiliated with the Jewish Labor Bund, which like yiddish has recently experienced a revival in interest.

The spectrum of Zionist socialism/ Jewish Labor Bund socialism/ international socialism parallels a broader spectrum within the Jewish people at large, generated by the question over the nature of the Jewish people. There are those who would argue that the Jews aren’t a people at all, among them outspoken jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, and academic Shlomo Sand whose book The Invention of the Jewish People summarizes this position clearly. Then there are those at the opposite end of the spectrum like the Jewish Defense League who believe that the Jewish people are a nation, even a race, chosen by God and given the land of Israel as their inalienable birth right. Most who weigh in on the subject, including most Jews, hold a middle position, that the Jewish people are some amalgam of race, nation, ethnicity, tribe, culture or religion which cannot be clearly fixed. The point is moot however, given that Jews consider themselves Jews, and define themselves as Jews no matter the argument or the circumstance.

The Jews have existed as a self-identified, dispersed people at least since the Babylonian destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE. Thus, the Jewish people have survived partly or entirely without a nation-state for over 2,500 years. The Roman destruction of the second temple in 70 CE forced the Jews to adapt with the development of the synagogue as a temple in absentia. Yet whether this Jewish dispersal is termed exile or diaspora, it took more than the institution of the synagogue to hold it together. Vibrant centers of Jewish culture and learning overlapped concentrations of Jewish population first in ancient Babylonia, then in Moorish Spain, and finally in Medieval Poland.

These dynamic social/cultural/religious centers provided guidance and cohesion to the Jewish people as a whole, throughout the eastern hemisphere and eventually the world, and were crucial to Jewish survival. It can be argued that this core/periphery structure of Jewish existence was in crisis by 1850, with the rise of the modern nation-state. But what can’t be substantiated is the Zionist assertion that without a Jewish nation-state, the Jewish people will always be threatened by discrimination, harassment, murder, pogrom and holocaust. One of the most dangerous places in the world for a Jew to reside today is in Israel. All it would take is for Israel to lose just one war in order to raise the very real specter of Jewish genocide once again.

Between the wholly inadequate two-state solution and Waskow’s anarchist idyll, there are a number of quite possible, favorable resolutions to the Israel/Palestine conflict. I’ve highlighted as viable examples leftwing Zionist socialism’s binational state, the one-state solution of the PLO’s secular democratic Palestinian state, the Jewish Labor Bund’s socialist program for Jewish territorial autonomy, and the non-state core/periphery structure so critical to Jewish survival as a people over the millennia. This middle ground is quite broad, providing a wide political middle-of-the-road from which true moderation can arise. And a moderate, just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict would be wonderful. In this instance, I would dearly love to refute Barry Goldwater when he said: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

*I rely on Max Boot’s exhaustive study Invisible Armies for the distinction between formal military action and terrorism.

Of raccoons and terrorists: “What’s Left?” October 2013, MRR #365

I regularly do a little gardening, more so when I was living in San Francisco’s sun belt south of Market, but still a little now that I’m up in Eureka Valley, just in the tomato zone west of Twin Peaks. Tomatoes are my specialty. But whereas I used to grow tons of heirlooms in SOMA, I haven’t had very good luck up here in the hills. I haven’t gotten the hang of gardening up here yet. The climate hasn’t helped. This past spring and summer it’s been incredibly cold and foggy, unusually so even for San Francisco’s clammy climate. My zebras simply did not make the grade this season. But my stupice tomatoes, well, they are incredibly sweet and abundant, perfectly suited for the climate. When tomatoes are this good, it makes you realize that tomatoes are truly fruit.

Now the problem is raccoons. We have a family of raccoons living in the immediate neighborhood, and once the initial score or so of delicious tomatoes were picked, they wised up and started grabbing the rest as soon as they got remotely ripe. I tried timing matters to outfox the raccoons and pluck the crop ahead of them. No dice. Then I rigged up some chicken wire in ever more sophisticated arrays hoping to protect the plants. The raccoons kept breeching my fences and security, always getting my ripening tomatoes. Finally, I enclosed the remaining tomatoes, still incredibly productive, behind a half inch steel mesh fence, modifying the security so that now it looks like I have a chance of getting a few tomatoes out of the deal. I’m getting indications that frustrated raccoons skirting the perimeter so far have been unable to figure out how to penetrate my tomato enclosure. So far.

I’ve spent perhaps ten times what I originally invested into the garden trying to get some payback. I guess I’m pissed at being outwitted, time and again, by these crazy-assed raccoons. I mean to say, crazy smart raccoons. These wild little fuckers are urban born and bred, intelligent and resourceful as all get out, capable of making meals of someone’s koi pond or backyard garden or unsecured garbage cans, willing to intimidate your pet cat or dog or yours truly if need be. Raccoons have opposable thumbs, and the acuity to outwit most traps set for them. I fully expect my local family of raccoons to continue giving me grief over those tomatoes.

Raccoons are far too wily, far too ingenious, far too brilliant to be limited by that updated adage: “build a better mousetrap, evolve a better mouse.” The anthropomorphic version of this saying is: “build a better lock, train a better thief.” And while the latter is slightly less insulting than the former, both rely on comparisons to common undesirables (mice, thieves). Unfortunately, I’m stuck using these analogies and their unfortunate use of aphoristic lowlifes, to illustrate my point.

Humans are obsessed with their own security, and for finding ways to combat threats to their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. At the most basic, our battle against disease exemplifies these maxims at work. We are constantly throwing antibiotics against bacterial-based infections, killing off good bacteria as well as bad, until the antibiotics no longer work and we breed more powerful, drug-resistant bacteria. The use of antibiotics in the raising of livestock only exacerbates the problem. Superbugs, and the threat of uncontrollable, worldwide plagues, are the potential consequence.

Our response to so-called “vermin”—insects, mice, rats, even raccoons—has been to throw every possible means—chemical, biological, physical—in order to exterminate them. In the short term, this produces massive ecological disruption as creatures thoroughly integrated into the natural environment are killed off. In the long term, the results are super insects genetically immune to pesticides, super mice and super rats genetically immune to standard poisons, and super raccoons genetically immune…well, okay, for once, the raccoons seem to be one step ahead of the game. They’re smart enough to be able to outwit most things that humans do to kill them off, flourishing despite everything we do to eradicate them. Short of hiring a pest control company, setting elaborate traps, and immediately exterminating them, raccoons are a fact of urban life in San Francisco.

So, how does this all relate to the most obnoxious pest humans have to deal with—other humans? Ever since 9/11, the US government has geometrically escalated its anti-terrorism measures hoping to keep us, the American public, safe and secure. From FBI surveillance activities, CIA drone programs, and NSA PRISM and XKEYSCORE programs, the Federal government has actually done a halfway decent job of preventing another Twin Towers attack from occurring. But smaller acts like the Fort Hood assault or the Boston Marathon bombing can and do happen, despite the best, most extensive, thorough and encompassing efforts to prevent them. That’s because terrorists are always looking for ways to circumvent whatever anti-terrorist steps the government takes in order to prevent them from initiating terror. No matter how sophisticated a counter-insurgency program put in place by the state, insurgents can and do manage to succeed in foiling that program.

Just look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From Palestinian guerrilla infiltration and warfare, through plane hijackings and hostage takings, bus bombings and suicide attacks, to intifadas and rocket attacks—the Israelis are engaged in a war without end where the casualties for the Jewish state are modest but by no means insignificant despite high technology, overwhelming armament, social isolation and geographic internment. The Israelis have never taken to heart the historical truth that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” much as Americans have failed to understand Benjamin Franklin’s saying: “Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.”

REVISIONS:

#1: Several columns ago, I alluded to some of the tenets of Buddhism, which I didn’t quite accurately depict. Buddhism has nothing to do with belief in a god, or lack thereof. When one of his followers asked the Buddha whether there was a god, or how many gods exist, Buddha replied that he had no opinion on such questions. All the Buddha concerned himself with was the inevitability of suffering in life, and the way suffering might be ended. One can be a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, even an atheist, and still be a Buddhist. Technically. Of course, there are many millions of Buddhists who would contend otherwise, who believe in various gods and goddesses, who have deified the Buddha despite his request not to, and some of whom have engaged in sectarian terrorism against Muslims in the name of religious purity. As for suffering, I identified old age, sickness and death, just three of what Buddhists consider the four great causes of human suffering. I left out birth. Not because childbirth has become painless, thanks to medical advances. It hasn’t. The birth in question has to do with the Buddhist belief in rebirth and reincarnation, a belief I don’t share. Despite attempts to medicalize, anesthetize and pharmacize our ills and fears, the basic forms of human suffering will continue to be with us.

#2: The BYOB Youth Movement ’82 gig was not held at the Hollywood Bowl, but at the Hollywood Palladium. Thanks to Ryan Timothy for the heads up!