Since I have previously written about Marxist anti-Semitism, I should acknowledge an example of an exception that I have encountered. At the city council meeting, I encountered Laura Garza, who is running for the Senate as part of the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP). They are Trotskyites, who reject the Soviet Union. They do, though, uphold Cuba as a model.
The SWP platform includes the following:
Defend Israel’s Right to Exist. Condemn the Jew-Hating
Pogrom Organized by Hamas and the Iranian Government.
The capitalist regime in Iran and the reactionary forces it
backs in Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are enemies not only of the Jews,
but of working people of all nationalities. So long as capitalism exists, in
times of crisis the rulers will turn to scapegoating Jews to smash the working
class as they did in Nazi Germany. The fight for workers power and socialism is
the only solution to end the anti-working-class poison of Jew hatred.
What I find interesting here is that the traditional Rousseauian
leftist revolutionary logic of the People and those who are not still applies. Jews
are now an embodiment of the People. Even if you are not Jewish, you can join
the struggle against anti-Semitism and, by doing so, become part of the People.
By contrast, Iran is not part of the People but is a
“capitalist regime.” On the surface, this sounds strange as there is nothing
particularly free market about Iran beyond their willingness to tolerate the
selling of organs. What should be understood is that capitalism, from a leftist
revolutionary perspective, only incidentally has something to do with the
philosophy of Adam Smith. The primary meaning of capitalism is simply any “reactionary”
ideology that stands in the way of leftist revolutionaries.
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