Zionist Colonization is Not 'Exceptional': A Marxist Viewpoint
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- Published on Thursday, 04 May 2017 12:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1408 .... May 4, 2017
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Zionist Colonization is Not ‘Exceptional’: A Marxist Viewpoint
Tikva Honig-Parnass
This article aims to challenge the rather widely accepted claim that the nature of Zionist settler colonization is exceptional and even "defies appeal to any precedent that can usefully be invoked as to its evolution and eventual revolution."
My challenge will focus on Moshé Machover's 2016 article, "The decolonization of Palestine" which is the third of a series of three articles published in Weekly Worker. It deals with the typology of colonial projects and its implication upon identifying Zionist colonization and the struggle for its downfall. I have chosen to critically examine this third article precisely because Machover argues that his analysis is based on a Marxist observation. On this very observation however, I... establish my contrasting position -- namely, that Zionist colonization is not unique. The class analysis of the colonial group itself, reveals features of Zionism to be similar to those of other colonial projects, including apartheid South Africa, with which comparisons are often made. These projects seek to dispossess and subdue the indigenous people, and whenever needed, exploit their cheap labour for the benefit of capital. Capitalist class interests dominate the colonial states' "peaceful resolution" of the conflicts with the colonized, aiming to retain the rule of capital and, in the globalized era, to enable economic neoliberalism.
