Part 3. Stuck-in-the-box solutions.

Unfortunately, a degree of intellectual confusion and even bankruptcy extends to the left in most of its reformist and anti-capitalist shades. The best solution to the Israel Palestine problem that can be suggested by those on the modern centre and left who genuinely care about the problem is to propose a one or two state solution. The fact that in the 21st century every existing state – advanced capitalist or not – is in the midst of a series of existential crises of decay and oppression is studiously being overlooked. Even when they are not in crisis, military and police states everywhere have become the means for an elite to get obscenely wealthy whilst controlling the actions and thoughts of their increasingly impoverished citizens. Even the right to protest is being denied by the left, right and centre elites in control of modern states. These obvious facts are also not being considered as a present or future problem created by state elites now in power, or those budding new ones currently manoeuvring to replace them. The further fact that many states in crisis are becoming increasingly ruled by their ruthless military establishments seems not to be registering as a problem.

The other and arguably more crucially important 21st century factor being ignored by those advocating the continuance of a single state or the creation of a two-state solutions to the existing problems for Palestinian and Jewish (and the rest ) humanity, as well as life on earth in general, is the following. That all known or imagined types of elite directed states are creating, consuming, and disposing of so much production that the very essential inorganic and organic elements of the life on earth support systems, are corroding away and collapsing. The existing state design and function everywhere, is supporting and subsidising an elite strata to overproduce, over consume and over pollute land, air and sea. This has already led to large areas of ecological degradation, whole regions of climate change, huge pockets of ill health and continuous rounds of armed warfare.  Even a tentative acknowledgement of the protracted six symptom (economic, financial, social, ecological, climate change, pollution) death agony of the hierarchical mass society system is almost entirely missing, from all but a minute radical left consciousness.

So what people in Gaza and the West Bank are being urged to consider by their own Islamic elite, by Christian elites and by some Jewish elites, is to embrace their own form of outmoded, highly competitive, mass production-based, hierarchically-fragmented mass societies. This same type of advice was given to the masses and was followed during the Arab Spring uprisings when US and European left social democrats persuaded, Egyptians, Tunisians, Lybians, and assorted others that if they created a democratically chosen form of hierarchical mass society that all would be good for the Arab Street. Their own Arab elites (Islamic or not) of course agreed, because being in charge of a state-controlled, lucrative gravy train is exactly what they wanted and some of them have now obtained.

It is true, that when people are in dire straits, this bourgeois democratic ‘idea’ in theory seems better than any previous or existing circumstances, but theories based upon the same flawed model do not always turn out to be anything different. Proof? Just look at what the Arab working classes all over the Middle East have actually got out of the Participatory Politics social activist model they were persuaded to adopt! In Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, Syria, it is just more of the previous same with a slightly different form of male headgear being worn in some regimes. Islamic elites, Jewish elites, Christian elites and secular hierarchical elites are all treating their men and women workers no better than slaves or precarious wage slaves of a system already in an advanced stage of collapse.

So for a paragaph or two let’s just consider in a little more detail the current enlightened (!) suggestions by the intellectual bourgeoisie who recieve huge salaries and pensions for advising the international political elite on such matters – the two-state solution with the two age-old hiearchical constructs – the Abrahamic god and hierarchical mass society, still being the foundations of each state. As noted, over many thousands of years these two constructs have been used to set sections of humanity at war with each other – over what? Over increased land and resources – why? Because what ever resources a growing hierarchical mass society has already got is never enough for the hierarchy! And yet the socio-economic results of these societies have been claimed by its elites to be the best of all possible worlds.

The historic and contemporary reality, however, for the ordinary working people of both Jewish and Islamic (and later Constantine inspired Christian) hierarchical mass society forms and belief systems, has been consistently brutal and catastrophic, within those societies and between such societies. It is a verifiable fact that these three ideologically or nationally identified sections of the (Abrahamic monotheistic) human family, despite a passage of four or five thousand years have never achieved peace, justice and equality for the majority by adhering to these two elite-centred constructs. Quite the opposite!

Anyone with the time and resources can confirm that the history of the ordinary Jewish, Islamic and Christian masses has been one of generation after generation being exploited, oppressed and controlled by their own secular and religious elites, before being periodically urged or commanded by their respective totalitarian and sectarian elites to go to war against the masses of other hierarchical mass societies – for more land and resources! As noted earlier, a two-state resolution to the competition between the Jewish elites and the Islamic elites for enough land to rule and tax their populations in the former Ottoman near and middle east, is not going to happen. Moreover, if by some means it did, it would be of no advantage to either of their working populations.

Therefore, should class conscious anti-capitalists and revolutionary humanist activists really be advocating or supporting a one or two state solution on the territory of historic Palestine? Futhermore, would a Hamas or Fatah-led state be any different for the ordinary working people of Palestine than the Islamic-led Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey or Iran? Already the Arab street in all these countries, particularly the female half, is groaning under the brutal sectarian domination of a ruling patriarchal Islamist elite who savagely control their populations and incarcerate, beat, torture and eliminate any opposition – however headscarf mild – whether they are men, women or children.

Are the ordinary Jewish working people any less alienated from the rest of humanity by being controlled by a sectarian, Zionist elite who exploit them and perpetuate and prepare a warmongering present and future for them and their children – irrespective of whether the Jewish street agrees with that or not? Is there any guarantee that since hierarchical mass societies following the capitalist model need Capital, Labour, Raw Material Resources to produce and Markets to sell production, that the proposed solution of one or two states would not involve a continuation of war against their own citizens and war with each other over resources – anyway?  The only guarantee is that war and killing for land and resources would continue.

And given the impotence of the United Nations who would stop them from tearing into each other as is currently occuring in many parts of Africa, South America and the Middle East? Considering the condition of the world’s hierachical mass societies and their constant competitive human species self-harming against their own citizens (in Europe, America, Syria, Iran, Russia, Saudi, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Yemen etc.) and each other (as in the Iran/Iraq war; and the current Russia/Ukraine war; etc.). I suggest it is utterly naive to think that a Islamic and Jewish state on the territory of Palestine would magically solve the needs of the masses of Jewish, Islamic or Christian influenced working people within them. Nor would this solution lead to an alternative to the continuance of the pro-capitalist consumer entitlement based war against nature for water, land, labour and essential raw materials.

It is equally naive (or intellectually lazy) to imagine that a Jewish pro-Zionist elite who are prepared to bomb everyone in Gaza into oblivion in order (they say) to kill off those Palestinions still loyal to Hamas, would even allow a second state – of any kind – on what they imaginatively consider is ‘their’ God-given territory. Furthermore, the oxymoronic idea by the Zionist elites that you can kill a widespread idea of resistance to oppression and exploitation by killing some of the people who feel that way is equally information-deprived thinking. Resistence to exploitation and oppression is as old as the phenomenon of exploitation and oppression. The fascistic and surreal idea that you can classify members of the human species as animals in order to justify killing them in thousands and then be considered intelligent and rational, demonstrates how severely hierarchical mass society living has almost totally destroyed the humanity and intellectual profundity of some of its citizens.

Throughout history the same pattern has been true of those hierarchical mass societies dominated by the Christian elites since the days of ancient Rome, whose working people have been treated in the same fascistic way. They too are suppressed, exploited and forced to pay taxes for military so-called ‘defence’ which is a form of obfuscation because armies, navies and airforces are designed to attack and/or invade anyone they deem to be interfering with their economic or financial wellbeing. Even after the colonial era, the western Christian sectarian elites have brutally bombed and invaded Vietnam, Korea, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan in attempts to set up puppet regimes favourable to themselves.

As noted earlier, the hierarchical mass society system having set much of humanity at war with itself over several thousand years has over the last 200 years been engaged in a savage war of one way extraction from nature. Wood, Coal, Oil, Minerals have been ripped up and its residue dumped. Land and sea animals hunted to extinction. The very existence of the hierarchical mass society system by its endless pollution and resource extraction is undermining the very ecological foundations of not only the human species, but the key soil microorganisms and photosynthetic plant species essential for all life on earth.

And it is these non-human species which the elites exploit every bit as as ruthlessly and thoughtlessly as their own citizens which provide the food, air, water and soil fertility that life on earth – as a whole – needs to survive and reproduce. The taken for granted 20th century perspective that each branch of humanity needs to create and mould it’s own benign form of hierarchical mass society in order for there to be peace, justice and wellbeing on earth for everyone, is patently wrong. It is no longer tenable and is clearly ecologically unsustainable.

Throughout history, working people of different religious beliefs, in different geographical locations and over successive generations have laboured to keep themselves alive whilst the additional wealth they have worked to create has been appropriated by the elites who dominate their societies. Each countries working people have all been periodically persuaded (or forced) by their respective sectarian, monotheistic religious elites, to go to war against the ordinary working people of another mass society until one side forces the other to surrender. That pattern is still recurring and possibly increasing. One recent study found that globally there were 55 active conflicts in 2022, with the average one lasting about eight to 11 years.
Does that not tell us ever so much about the present and the future – if we find the time to stop to think about it?

To work and die in order to support an elite totalitarian prone system which exploits them mercilessly whilst treating them as slaves and wage slaves, is hardly something worth the working masses to kill and die for. Yet this is still occuring in the 21st century and not only in Israel and Palestine, but in Russia and Ukraine and elsewhere. But now there is also the additional doom laden twist due to the petro-chemical fueled capitalist mode of production. It is becoming so over productive that its productive agents are polluting and exhausting the planets organic and inorganic resources.

This continuing failure of the multi-ethnic hierarchical mass society model to fulfil the basic needs of a majority of their citizens, led in the 20th century to many of those experiencing and most conscious of this failure, to fall back upon earlier forms of identity and solidarity, such as religion or ethnicity. Shunning the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious hierarchical mass society capitalist forms,  many  hoped to find ways to rectify the pofoundly felt insufficiency of food, water, shelter, peace, fairness and justice.  Zionism, in the form of Israel was an attempt at creating a capitalist tribal form of hierarchical mass society or nationalism, as were the various Islamic Monarchies and Republics, such Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, Soudi Arabia, Qatar etc.

Predictably, these forms of religious based capitalist hierarchical nationalisms have also overwhelmingly failed to deliver the full range of six essentials to all and all have failed to deliver, peace, fairness and justice – even if some have supplied adequate food, water and shelter.  Just as the ordinary working masses of most multi-ethnic hierarchical mass society capitalisms have been failed by their hierarchical mass society systems, those working masses of single religion or ethnicity led hierarchical mass societies have also been failed by their systems, even as the systems have enriched a few among their elites and middle ranks.

Given the power and influence that the elites are able to exercise over the intellectual understandings and responses to this continuing failure of the elite preferred model of social living, confusion dominates practically every elite discourse which is searching for future moderation. Technological solutions dominate elite thinking just as technological conflict dominates every practical measure taken by national elites. Below the elite strata, many  working people know the system is in crisis, yet something crucial has yet to dawn on the masses of working people and be effectively understood by them. It is that the entire hierarchical mass society form of living needs changing, not this or that capitalist aspect of it or the people in charge of it.

The reason the lives of the working and non-working poor are still deficient in food, water, shelter, peace, fairness and justice, is not because this situation is inevitable, or because it is impossible or unnatural. Nor is it because no one has yet discovered the magic solution to making a hierarchical system functionally acceptable to all its members. Such rationalisations are delusional. The fundamental reasons are hiding in plain sight. It is because no hierarchical mass society system, whoever controls it, can deliver enough to everybody while it is delivering the excess amounts demanded and exacted by the ruling elites and their supporters in the middle ranks. Hierarchical control and influence is what is unnatural, unsustainable and is what ultimately needs changing. The egalitarian dream of old has become an existential necessity for a sustainable future.

The entire hierarchical mass society history of the human species has been primarily conducted within the boxed off sub categories of tribes, classes, cities, nations, religions, ethnicities, and genders, with only intermittant positive connections between them. Human Identity has been experienced concretely at individual, and local level and only intellectually, vaguely and abstractly at a universal species level. Moreover, humanity has only lived for the shortest amount of its long evolutionary existence, primarily as an individual Jew, Muslim or Christian first; and a Palestinian, Israeli, English, French, American a close second; and as a species human being only indistinctly and always trailing third and last. In evolutionary terms these counter-productive identity affectations are recent and dangerous.

Furthermore, it is only for an even shorter period of its evolutionary development that humanity has had the technological and scientific ability to mass kill it’s own species and other key species as well as mass pollute air, sea and land. These relatively modern ‘abilities’ (sic) now constitute a considerable part of what Marx classed as ‘the muck of ages’, which he sensibly argued humanity needed to be rid of. Although often plagerised and frequently misunderstood and distorted by the various self-proclaimed sectarian ‘Marxists’, Marx, the revolutionary-humanist saw the significance of our species and its alienation from itself and nature and suggested that;

“Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself, the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being – has become a species being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation….only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.”(Marx. Collected Works Volume 3, page 168.)

Let me attempt to  reproduce the essence of the above extract by Marx, but minus its 20th century gender biased language and with due regard to a 21st century biological understanding of life on earth.

“Only when individual human beings consistently think and act as species beings in their everyday life (in their work and leisure) and organise their energies and skills in a genuinely, voluntary collective way, will humanity have realised its evolutionary potential.” (RR)

Humanities really amazing evolutionary achievement lies not in its technology of production and destruction, but in its becoming a highly developed social species in which – only as a functioning collective – can humanity out perform each individuals ability. Only when a critical mass of individual humans begin to see themselves as members of a species of life on earth first; and all other categorical definitions second or third and act consistently as a species, will humanity begin to really fulfill its potential. Letting go of the muck of ages (racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, nationalism, religious and political sectarianism) is a necessary prerequisite to saving the planet and it’s amazing variety of inter-dependent species.

Only when individuals and groups of individual human beings finally view themselves as (and act as) inter-dependent species beings first and location based collectives second or third, will humanity cease to be self destructive. Only then will humanity be able to not only continue to do amazingly powerful things collectively, but more importantly also to decide collectively to refrain from doing things which intentionally or unintentionally undermine life on earth in general or certain species in particular. Consciously not doing things which are possible to do, but counter-productive, requires reflective wisdom, whereas doing self-indulgent things which are possible to do – irrespective of their effects – just requires a childlike impatience and curiosity.

Until the above realisations dawn generally upon a sufficiently large critical mass of humanity, it is still possible to campaign for and support people in struggles against oppression and exploitation such as Palestinians, women and Gay rights etc. However, the ever present danger of reinforcing any pro-capitalist illusions or delusions they have been fed by their elites and the elites professional enablers in the wider community, should be avoided. So rather than encouraging working people to continue to sacrifice their lives and energy in attempting to defend a crumbling system or in some devastated places to ‘new build’ an outmoded and self-destructive hierarchical mode of social living, we revolutionary-humanists and anti-capitalists should argue for a clear alternative.

We should be encouraging people, whilst supporting them, to dare to think out of the box, to become consistently critical of all current systems and ideologies and to discard outmoded reactionary identities. To begin at least to think about constructing small scale non-hierarchical social forms of living which are neither at war with each other nor at war with the rest of life on earth, as something to welcome not as temporary therapeutic releases from hierarchical mass society alienation, but as precursors of a new phase of responsible human living on the planet we call earth. Forming local groups to consider how this might be done and sustained would be a welcome start.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2023)