Socialist Standard March, 2006 Vol No.102: No.1219             website www.worldsocialism.org/spgb




MIDDLE-EAST DIARY


50 Years Ago

One of the most recent and rather curious examples to appear on the nationalisation scene, is the Israeli General Zionist (Conservative) Party. They want to nationalise the various Israeli water-schemes, the Health Service and the Labour Exchanges.


Strangely enough the Mapai (Labour) Party, who have been in power since 1948 are bitterly opposed. Through their domination of the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut (roughly analogous to the T.U.C. but also owning and controlling the major part of Israel’s industry) the Mapai control most of Israel’s economy and are extremely loath to give up their political plums!


The General Zionists, on the other hand, want nationalisation measures to break the Mapai Party's hold on the state machine, all of which we can well understand, sectional struggles amongst the Capitalist class being a regular feature of Capitalism. The tragedy is that Israel workers take sides in this struggle between these parties (both of whom are only interested in perpetuating Capitalism), instead of organising for Socialism.


Two Classes in Israeli Society


In March of last year the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review (25.3.55) informed its readers that


“Israel has become divided into two nations . . . an upper crust and a lower layer. The privileged crust is composed of a variety of substantial and mixed elements who enjoy a privileged position in the country. They are made up by the plutocracy of some three hundred families, by the Government ‘aristocracy’ which includes a wide range of officialdom, the Histadrutocracy with its manifold operations, the business pressure groups entrenched in the upper reaches of the General Zionists, the old Kibbutzim, such workers’ organisations as the Dan and Egged Bus Co-operatives, the upper reaches of such institutions, as the Jewish Agency and of the main political parties—Mapai, the General Zionists. . . .”


“The four per cent.: These are the people in the swim. They can get things - flats, cars, trips abroad, the comforts and conveniences of life, or the profits of business, or the positions of power, according to the category to which they belong. . . .”


“Newcomers since 1948 comprise 60 percent of the population and occupy one percent of all Government posts and virtually none in the high grades.”


The article goes on to point out that the personal consumption budgets of the above mentioned 300 families is “around £50,000 per year per family at a time when the income of the highest official is less than a tenth of this amount”.


All of which was pointed out by the Socialist Party of Great Britain years ago and only goes to prove our contention, that national struggles,whether of the Zionist (Jewish Home) category or otherwise, are not in the interest of the working-class.


(From an article by Jon Keys, Socialist Standard, March 1956)


 Meetings


Our Object and Declaration of Principles  (click on link for explanation with each one)
  
  Declaration of Principles
                                                                   




This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the
party in 1904, its original language has been retained.
Object
The establishment of a system
of society based upon the
common ownership and
democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds

1.That society as at present
constituted is based upon the
ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class,and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.

2.That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.

3.That this antagonism can be
abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common
property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the
whole people.



4.That as in the order of social
evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction
of race or sex.

5. That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.

6.That as the machinery of
government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken
from the workers, the working
class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.



7.That as all political parties are but the expression of class
interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.

8.The Socialist Party of Great
Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political
parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its
banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort,
privilege to equality, and slavery to
freedom.
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Socialist Standard  March 2006 Page 18