COMMUNICATIONS
There are many criticisms to be made of Stanley Diamond's "Eruption in the Middle East" in the Winter 1957 DISSENT. Two main points, however, seem to illustrate the failure of his argument....
...28, 1956...
...I am against dictatorship in any country in which there exists any tradition of parliamentary government, and indeed in any country where it can possibly be avoided—as it cannot, I think, always be under conditions of actual civil war...
...The Editors of DISSENT have asked me to give their readers my views on these questions...
...Then what does "fully" explain it...
...Diamond says„ is to be condemned because it was immoral and impractical, and because it "calculated the risk of a third world war...
...it is for them a question of how best to survive...
...The matters on which these, up to a point, repentant Communists and I chiefly disagree are very important...
...Empirical analysis attempts to balance incommensurable weights ("some things have gone terribly wrong but not everything has gone wrong"): but the "good" and the "bad" are not plus and minus sums, they are qualities forever disputing the moral realm...
...Cole is motivated by the view that some form of rapprochement between Socialists and Communists is necessary in order to promote working class unity in the fight for Socialism...
...If the growth of industry has created conditions to which they seek to adjust "by liberalization," this is not to their credit...
...Diamond writes that "Had Israel acknowledged that the refugee problem was the central problem in its relations with the Arab world, it would have been in a better moral and political position, and might have been able to neutralize the demagogic use to which the Arab leaders put the refugees...
...But, however strongly we condemn these practices, we need to set against them, not so much the vast advances that have been made in productive techniques as the immense cultural progress that has arisen out of mass education and the opening of social and economic opportunities to millions of persons to whom the displaced regimes of these countries offered no sort of chance of the good life...
...It is only now that Mr...
...I am against what is called "democratic" centralism, because I think it means in practice a most undemocratic imposition of policies from the top, instead of the building up of them from below, and because it leads inevitably to bureaucratization and opens the door to tyranny by an individual or group that succeeds in making itself master of the party machine...
...The purpose of my piece, explicitly stated, was to raise certain issues, usually neglected, not to explore the full range of the situation in the Near East...
...2) An irredentist situation was thus created which led to the possibility of keeping Israel off balance militarily...
...As for Mr...
...I have no wish to extenuate the appalling miscarriages of justice that have taken place under Stalinist rule or the extreme ruthlessness with which millions of innocent persons have been treated because they have been regarded as "class enemies...
...But its meaning cannot be in question...
...But they are of I96 great significance, even as possibilities...
...He charges me, therefore, with an intent that I was at pains to acknowledge...
...Cole's readiness to apologize and to contrive a false pattern of events so as to be better able to apologize, must lead to unworthy compromises in the struggle against totali...
...and I wish to make it perfectly clear that I am not advocating, and have not advocated, for any country either a fusion of Socialist and Communist Parties or an alliance between them...
...He also states that the decision of the Mapai Government to move blocked the rise to power of the "rightist Heruth party...
...Morality is only meaningful in a social context...
...It has been clearly and proudly stated by Nasser, it has been announced over Radio Cairo, in the Egyptian press, the newspapers of Jordanian Jerusalem, over Radio Damascus, and by the new leader of the Jordanian army, Ali Abu Nawar...
...and that these totalitarian regimes have used industrialization to enhance and strengthen the social and physical bases of their power...
...and I am glad to do so, though I do not think they admit of simple or universal answers...
...but some remained, and remain, in it because they dislike even more the sectarian self-righteousness that so often characterizes the leadership of the democrat Socialist Parties and the alliance of many of these parties with the imperialist and colonialist tendencies of the so-called "democratic" West...
...The Kafr Kassim curfew massacre—mitigating circumstances or not—was shock ing...
...Though evidence is fragmentary as yet, the lot of the Gaza refugees may well have been improved...
...and great power action must take place...
...for I see no good reason to suppose that such an alliance is practicable on satisfactory terms...
...One wonders what virtue a Social Democratic coalition possesses if it behaves in the fashion reactionary groups may be expected to...
...I was not prepared to do so, though I had personal experience of the impossibility of working in a friendly co-operative way with Communists who had no scruples about stabbing me in the back under party orders, and regarded the defense of the Soviet Union against its enemies as a sufficient excuse for any amount of lying (often, but not always, unconscious) and back-biting misrepresentation...
...Many democratic Socialists, I am aware, do take this view...
...But Mr...
...It is for this reason that I suggested Israeli pressure on the international level...
...But I have to add that I have always known, and remained on friendly terms with, Communists who did not engage in such practices...
...I think that Israel's action involved no self-deception in this respect...
...THE Two FINAL practical consequences of the Israeli upsetting of the status quo are by no means certainties, at this writing...
...Short of this "solution," only the Israeli conquest of Gaza makes it possible for the problem to be resolved...
...That the Eisenhower Doctrine will improve matters, either to the best interests of Israel or the Arabs, seems, however, very doubtful indeed...
...COMMUNICATION—!1 On Relations Between Socialists and Communists G. D. H. Cole What attitude should democratic Socialists, who reject Communism and abhor the abuses of which Communist Governments have been guilty, take up towards Communist Parties and towards individual Communists in the light of recent developments in the Soviet Union and in the "party line" in other countries...
...the fact is that the war in the Near East was not per mitted to spread...
...For one thing, the situation differs quite widely from country to country...
...We have every right to insist that in our own societies, with their better traditions of democratic government and toleration, we will have nothing to do with practices that involve the destruction of these civilized values...
...All I am saying at present is that, whereas the answer is obvious in the light of the British situation, it is much less obvious in countries where a large part of the working class at present follows the Communist lead...
...These people are rotting away in an irredentist no-man's land, and most of the border incidents are rooted in their disaffection...
...The Arab riots of 1936-39 were certainly not a result of a problem which did not exist until a decade later...
...Be that as it may, the important thing is that a genuine soluion is now conceivable...
...Stanley Diamond replies: I agree with Dan Wakefield to this extent: it is difficult to "put a tornado into a nutshell...
...but that does not carry with it a right to wipe out of consideration the positive achievements of men who had no such tradition to build upon and could certainly not be expected to carry through their own revolutions by means which require these traditions as a foundation for orderly change...
...These are terrible enough, and are not to be fully explained by the legacy of pitiless oppression which most of the Communist States have inherited from an evil past...
...and, up to a point, I agree with them...
...inspection teams)—with which I am in agreement—can be taken, an unlikelihood prior to October...
...I should merely like to indicate what seems to be a contradiction in his state ment...
...Diamond's suggestion that it was very slight is correct .. I repeat that no one claims that Israel's action solved any of the funda mental problems...
...They relate to the theory and practice of dictatorship, to single-party rule, to the policy called "democratic centralism," and to the scant regard paid in the Soviet Union to the claims of economic or even social equality...
...I do, however, believe that a time may come when, in some countries, an alliance may be both feasible and desirable, though I can see no country in which it is either possible or desirable at present...
...If Israel had displayed more public and genuine concern about the refugees, instead of its characteristic legalistic and defensive posture...
...All this may be admitted, and it may yet be held that the differences between Communism and democratic Socialism are so fundamental and unbridgeable that no sort of unity or mutual accommodation can be thought of as even possible...
...Secondly, it upset —albeit perhaps not permanently—the military timetable of the Arab high command...
...I think the present position of the French Socialists illustrates this danger very clearly...
...This ties in with my final point—re: practicality...
...But at what cost...
...Nor is it reasonable, even if we see signs of the development of a much too unequal distribution of incomes in the Soviet Union, or even of the emergence of a new ruling class, to ignore the fact that similar "managerial" tendencies are strongly at work in our own societies, or that the Communist countries have at any rate got rid of a vast amount of obsolete feudal domination and of the dead hand of inherited income derived from private ownership...
...inherited from an evil past" cannot "fully" explain it...
...This trend is implicit in the emphasis he gives to the "positive achievements" of the two regimes...
...I do, however, believe that many individual Communists are becoming increasingly doubtful about all of them, and that it is well worth while to discuss them frankly without losing one's temper...
...and as long as he takes the attitude that he does toward the Communists, there can be little profit in discussing with him the genuine problem of how socialists should respond to the crisis within the Communist world...
...I will not here dispute this view in the abstract since what matters are the concrete political conditions of such a rapprochement...
...1. Mr...
...But there is little doubt in my mind that the Israeli action was essen tial to Israel's survival and, all things considered, is to be approved...
...Diamond seems to care to discuss...
...Many of these dropped, or were thrust, out of the Communist Party because they refused to comply with its demands...
...The entire complex of problems involved in Israel Arab relationships has much deeper roots than Mr...
...Several thousand Egyptian and some 170 Israeli soldiers were killed...
...The Hungarian uprising posed great questions in starkly simple forms...
...0 find it unfortunate that the only commentary on the Middle East crisis in DISSENT was a brief (3-1/2 pages), superficial ("The crisis itself.., cannot be fully explored here") and disjointed attack on the Israeli action...
...When I wrote that "most of the border incidents are rooted in their [the refugees'] disaffection," I did not imply that these were necessarily casual, spontaneous incidents...
...I have Communist friends who have been quite as shocked as I have been by the revelations about what went on in the Soviet Union and the satellite countries during the Stalinist epoch and are now busily asking their consciences on what terms they can remain within their Communist Parties...
...Lastly, Mr...
...But the analysis cannot stop at the ethical plane...
...They are not likely to liberalize themselves out of existence...
...It troubles me that Israel's major ally is France, its hands bloodied in Africa...
...But the fedayeen were organized...
...There will and should be no end of discussion and search for the history, prospects and implications of this uprising...
...They are organized, government-sponsored actions by government-trained guerrillas and soldiers...
...I am glad to hear that Mr...
...that is a matter I shall proceed to discuss...
...I believe that Israel's action not only did not intensify human suffering, but may actually have begun a process of its relief...
...All will agree that the most burning problem of the Middle East is constituted by the Arab refugees in the Gaza enclave, a population deliberately kept there by Egypt until the day when the last Jew could be driven into the Mediterranean...
...Also in error is the part of the statement by Mr...
...He does so confusedly, but his lengthy prefatory reservations only serve to emphasize the trend of his argument...
...Thirdly, the Egyptian military and political machines have suffered a great loss, both in their arms stores and, what is of greater ultimate significance, in the puncture of the self-imposed myth of Arab military might...
...One might also say that the behavior of the Mollet Government in North Africa checked the development of French fas cism...
...For these reasons, though I always detested Stalinism and regarded the entire Communist doctrine of one-party dictatorship as utterly inappropriate to Western conditions, I was never prepared to join in the great anti-Communist crusade...
...Wakefield's parting contention, I doubt whether my article did any disservice to plain Israelis and Arabs, although it was meant as a disservice to Israeli and Arab propagandists...
...Most of them are ready to agree that the mere discarding of the "cult of personality" is not nearly enough to correct what is wrong in the Soviet Union, and are trying hard to think out what more needs to be done...
...THE PROPOSAL I have been making for some time past is not for an alliance between parties, but for more and more free and open discussion between individuals across party frontiers...
...I think it was clearly wrong in the Russia of the years after 1917 to suppress either the Mensheviks or the Left Social Revolutionaries...
...I do, however, agree with Mr...
...Can anyone look back over the last fifty years and make a statement that the refugee problem, which came into existence in 1947, is the "central problem" of a conflict which has been going on ever since the first Zionists came to Palestine in the 1890s...
...The deed has been done, and the faster ameliorative action leading to a permanent settlement occurs, the better...
...20I A Rejoinder by H. Brand The importance of Mr...
...Diamond condemns the Israeli attack because it contained the risk of a third world war...
...Diamond says that "The indicated immediate solutions seem rather obvious...
...If he means that the attack and subsequent events did not resolve the fundamental problems involved, I am certain that everyone would go along...
...Such a statement is only possible on the premise that the history of the Middle East began in the year 1947...
...Yet one page later, he writes "both Russia and America immediately exerted all possible pressure towards their [the hos tilities'] cessation...
...How ever, it was the existence of the refugees on the border, in a state of disaffec tion, which turned the borders into bases, and, incidentally, provided much of the manpower for the raiding gangs...
...I am against the rule of a single party, excluding the existence and effective activity of opposition parties— though here, again, under actual conditions of revolution and civil war it may be impossible to avoid the temporary suppression of clearly counterrevolutionary parties...
...While crediting the Russian and Chinese regimes with "cultural progress," Cole implicitly absolves them from responsibility for imposing their terror * See also page 157.—Ed...
...How can Israel make an attempt at ameliorating the plight of the refugees when the leaders of the countries where the refugees are living will not consent to speak with Israel's leaders...
...There was such a risk, which, I hope, was not lightly dismissed by Israel...
...The masses of Egyptians were unaffected...
...The lives of Israelis are now much less subject to terrorist raids...
...Cole sees the intervention by the Russians as facing socialists "with an appallingly difficult problem of judgment," i.e., a judgment as to whether the Russians did or did not act to prevent Fascism...
...The action created an open situation, in which the search for solutions can be pursued...
...On the contrary, I have a great deal in common with them and hope, by continual converse, to narrow our disagreements still more, until we reach a point at which I and they can find common ground for an attempt to induce our several bodies of supporters to come nearer together...
...it was a response to a no longer bearable situation, and it may prove to be a first step toward solution...
...But I think that Mr...
...Two main points, however, seem to illustrate the failure of his argument...
...My personal experience and contacts, which have been fairly wide, simply do not bear out the view that, as far as individuals are concerned, a sharp dividing line can be drawn between democratic Socialist sheep and Communist wolves...
...And these are several, each of some import...
...Immoral public behavior, if it is to mean anything, refers to social action which intensifies the suffering of the human beings involved...
...These political conditions are defined as soon as a position on the character of the Russian and Chinese regimes has been taken...
...But it does not follow from this that the French Socialist Party is right in taking the same line...
...tarianism, to the surrender of the critical faculty and the betrayal of libertarian ideals...
...and it is unreasonable to let ourselves be blinded to them in the Communist countries, because we disapprove of the political behaviour of their ruling parties...
...They still believe that the Soviet Union and China, in their own ways, are engaged in building up Socialist societies, though they are much less sure than they used to be that the Soviet way is the best way for countries with widely different institutions and traditions...
...In doing so, it removed the danger of a rise to power of the rightist Heruth party...
...There is certainly no arguing with the importance of relieving the suffering of Arab refugees...
...But to claim that this should be a first step in the solution of the Arab-Israel dilemma is not so sound...
...Nor, again, does it follow that what is right for Great Britain, or for the Scandinavian countries, is right for India or Burma or for the Socialist Parties of the Arab world...
...Any attempt to simplify it and put a tornado into a nutshell can only be a disservice to both Israelis and Arabs...
...My proposal, then, is that rank-and-file Socialists who take their Socialism seriously and are prepared to think about its problems as objectively as they can should try to get together much more than they have done hitherto for the free discussion of fundamental Socialist issues, not as representatives of their Parties or of particular groups but as individuals...
...There are many criticisms to be made of Stanley Diamond's "Eruption in the Middle East" in the Winter 1957 DISSENT...
...Again, this question can only be answered if one is willing to relate terror and "progress" in a totalitarian collectivist society...
...and I believe this type of attitude to be much more frequent among rank-and-file Communists than among their leaders, who have hitherto been picked largely for their readiness to follow unquestioningly the official party line...
...If, in turn, there are strong "managerial tendencies" in our society, they exist in a framework of relatively free political and social institutions...
...This does not merely entail the acceptance or rejection of these regimes but their analysis on either principled or empirical grounds...
...Long ago, in the 1920s, I ceased to attempt to work with persons who behaved in this way...
...But this is to accept— half-heartedly, but still accept—at face value the slanders by which the Communists have sought to whitewash Russian action in Hungary...
...Antonovsky's points are considered above...
...First, it alleviated the intense strain under which a beleaguered Israeli population had long labored, given the economic blockade, fedayeen attacks and a growing inbalance of arms...
...Diamond really believes, as he writes, that practical politics is "the art and science of human survival," he must see that the superficial analogy of military action per se to "ineffectual [ 19th century] political behavior" obscures the practical aspects of the Israeli action...
...On the one hand, he talks of the "puncture of the self-imposed myth of Arab military might...
...Cole's attitude towards the Hungarian events must serve as the touchstone of his attitude towards Communists generally...
...The problem facing Socialists in Hungary is not one of "judgment," but one of the modes and possibilities of continued resistance to the Russian tyranny and its Hungarian agents...
...Diamond saying that "Most of the border incidents are rooted in their [the refugees'] disaffection...
...However, Cole's unprincipled approach to the question of the nature of these regimes has not led him quite that far...
...With these Communists I find much common ground, as well as much to disagree about...
...The Sinai debacle may well lead to an internal Egyptian struggle which might open the way to social change far more effectively than American economic aid...
...I think that I am fully aware of the recalcitrance of the "Arab" leaders on the refugee question, as well as on other problems...
...This view rests of course on a belief that it is wrong to judge the achievements of the Soviet Union—or of China or other Communist countries—simply by what they have done amiss, without taking due account of their positive achievements...
...12, 1957...
...The border incidents are not the result of casual, spontaneous outbreaks of personal discontent...
...Cole's article lies not in his discussion of the relations which should exist between Socialists and Communists, but in his setting forth of the political basis of the discussion.* The attitude he proposes contains fundamental concessions to Communist dogma...
...Was Israel's attack immoral...
...the former is a "positive achievement," the latter appears to be historically inescapable, even if "the legacy of pitiless opression...
...Cole doesn't say so, assures us that he thinks the Russians were "wrong"—but, by postulating a pattern of events which could only lead to "in effect Fascist rule," he makes Russian intervention, if not acceptable, at least palatable...
...I am, in particular, perturbed by the continuing failure— in part quite possibly Israel's fault—to find a way to the Arab masses...
...Diamond's modest proposals for steps toward a solution of the Middle East problem (refugee resettlement, economic aid, and a military embargo enforced by U.N...
...In regard to the Russian and Chinese regimes an empirically based position, by affirming what it regards as "good," necessarily leads to the acceptance of these regimes since they, after all, father the "good" as well as the "bad...
...The present French Government, under a Socialist Prime Minister and with Socialists holding the key offices in international affairs, is pursuing an utterly wrong policy in relation both to Algeria and to the Suez crisis, and is bringing the whole Socialist movement into the utmost discredit...
...First, the Arab refugee situations must be quickly ameliorated...
...Granted that this would have required the sort of moral imagination rarely displayed in national behavior, still it would have been an appropriate counter-part of some of Ben-Gurion's more messianic utterances, and an impressive display of what Zionists have learned on the battlefield that has been Jewish history...
...In China and Russia "liberalizing" tendencies exist in the context of an oppressive managerial state...
...for it is evident that in France there can be no real advance towards Socialism without the support of a great many persons who are at present members of, or vote for, the French Communist Party...
...Wakefield acknowledges the depth of the Is raeli-Arab problem...
...It may be that in all these cases there are valid reasons against any alliance, or friendly dealings, between democratic Socialist Parties and Communist Parties...
...Analysis from principle involves an organic approach: Police terror and repression on the one hand and industrial progress on the other are inseparable constituent elements of Russian and Chinese society, they stamp its basic features...
...This, it seems to me, makes any discussion of the real problems illusory...
...Intervene to save Hungarian democracy...
...IF I AM ASKED whether I see any sign that the Communist Parties, either in the Soviet Union or elsewhere, are now prepared to give up these disagreeable dogmas, the answer of course is "No...
...It is less obvious because a high degree of working-class unity is a sine qua non for advancing towards Socialism and because, under such circumstances, a refusal to have anything to do with the Communist Parties is apt to throw the Socialist, even unwillingly, into alliance with anti-socialist and even with reactionary elements...
...I recommend, in this connection, a sketch of what might have been had Israel waited until the spring of 1957: see Israel Speaks, Dec...
...if a portion of the energy which has gone into the presentation of the Zionist "case" had been diverted to a fully responsible airing of a tragic situation, then there might have been, at least, a chance that the sting of this issue could have been pulled...
...LEST I BE REPROACHED for reading too much into Cole's communication, I refer to his "Reflections on Hungary" (New Statesman and Nation, Jan...
...When I talk to such Communists, though I may disagree with them on many important points, I find it quite impossible to regard them as enemies with whom, as a democratic Socialist, I have nothing in common...
...I do not believe that any united action is possible between democratic Socialist and Communist Parties without much greater changes than seem yet to have occurred in Communist ideologies, except perhaps in Yugoslavia and possibly in Poland...
...Antonovsky that the situation is fluid...
...He says "immoral, read impractical...
...At this point he merely apologizes for them and their actions...
...They are reluctant to abandon these parties, unless they must, because they are deeply dissatisfied with the attitude of the democratic Socialist Parties, especially on such matters as colonialism and the "cold war" alliance with the United States, and because they feel a deep sympathy with the great struggle of the Russian and Chinese peoples to catch up with the techniques of the advanced countries and to improve their standards of living and culture...
...Stanley Diamond replies: Some of Mr...
...If one does not do this but ascribes the terror to "history" and the "progress" to "free will," as it were, one evades the issue, one apologizes...
...After regretting the scarcity of "facts" available about this most widely and thoroughly reported of all revolutions, he comes up with some otherwise strangely neglected "facts": namely, that many reactionary and Fascist groups were about to take over the leadership of the Hungarian masses, that "civil war" threatened, that therefore Nagy was unable to consolidate his government and that—well, that perhaps the Russians had no choice but to intervene...
...Until this recognition and this willingness to talk is shown by the Arab leaders, it is impossible to start settlement of the refugee problem—or any other problem— on a lasting basis...
...For me, an Englishman, it would be quite ridiculous to suggest that the Labor Party ought to come to any sort of agreement with a Communist Party that has no significant following and no claim to be taken seriously as a political party...
...The first step is the acceptance of the existence of Israel by Arab leaders and their willingness to carry on negotiations of some sort—at least to sit down at a table—with Israel's leaders, as Israel's leaders have urged ever since the signing of the "temporary" armistice agreements between the Arab states and Israel...
...We are ready enough to take credit for achievements of this order in our own countries...
...Finally, I am against large disparities of income or social prestige, beyond what are necessary as incentives to work, because they inevitably result in something remarkably like a new structure of class-distinctions and stand right in the way of advance towards a really classless society...
...This must be contrasted to the far greater number who would have lost their lives with a continuation of the former state of affairs and an eruption at a time of Egypt's choosing...
...I am not saying that the proper remedy is for the French Socialists to ally themselves with the Communist Party...
...But I am pointing out that the division in the French working-class movement condemns it to sterility as a force for Socialism, and at least threatens to condemn the French Socialist Party to a still worse fate...
...12th, 1957...
...Many were...
...Israel's attack, Mr...
...On the other, he speaks of the Arab "military timetable," quoting a sketch from Israel Speaks of what would have happened if Israel had not attacked last October...
...If Mr...
...This fact is not a product of the Israel leaders' fears or imagination...
...Of these achievements Cole rates "cultural progress" highest, neglecting to notice that the kinds of cultural progress he enumerates are concomitants of industrialization, not ends in themselves...
...For these reasons: 1) The sheer existence of the refugees symbolizes the displacement of Arabs by Zion ists, of Asians by Europeans...
...I am personally impressed by Richard Crossman's proposal for an administration by a U.N...
...That is precisely why I stand by my shorthand state ment that the Arab refugee problem is central...
...The status quo ante—a festering sore—can no longer be restored...
...High Commissioner for five years, set forth in the New Statesman and Nation (Jan...
...They recognise that some things have gone terribly wrong in the Soviet Union, but not that everything has gone wrong...
...Diamond shifts his ground quickly...
...2. Mr...
Vol. 4 • April 1957 • No. 2
