In the Spirit of Jaurès and Luxemburg ###PRINT###



Only a new type of conflict management can put a stop to the violence in the Middle East.

By Peter Wahl (attac Germany)

In the German left in general and amongst a few members of attac in particular, the debate concerning the conflict in the Middle East on a small scale concentrates on the same things as it does on a large scale in the conflict itself: it reduces the entire, highly complex problem primarily, even if not exclusively, to the questions:

Who is responsible? How can I gain a victory? How can I point out that I am right?

Both sides feel themselves to be morally and emotionally unshakeably in the right as far as these questions are concerned. One side has the Holocaust behind it. In front of it a picture of the enemy as apocalyptic riders from Hezbollah/ Hamas/ Iran/ Al Khaida. The other side, is backed by pictures of dead children from the debris of Beirut and the enemy as a resoundingly superior Israeli military with its ruthless acts against the civilians of Lebanon and Gaza. If only one side is taken notice of, then the polarisation is easy to understand. Both are highly respectable when taken separately, but only when taken separately. And then one only glimpses half the truth.

Attacs co-coordinatory circle has passed a declaration which follows a different logic. The central passage of the declaration says: “violence, terror and the law of the fist are no solution, on the contrary, they will only create more problems. It is high time to abandon the logic of vengeance and retribution. In a conflict that threatens the lives of the people in the Middle East on a daily basis, those who back victory as opposed to compromise, bank on one-sided partisanship as opposed to mediation, will stay caught up in the spiral of violence.” The important question is not who is to blame, how to win, and who is right, but: how can the never ending spiral of violence, revenge, the allocation of blame and the retribution be broken. And then: how can one put a stop to fear, terror and death for the people in Beirut and Keirat Schmona?

This is not a cheap “both for and against” answer, or a lazy compromise in the interest of the organisation, so that attac is not torn apart. Neither is it about comfortable equidistance, nor about balance per se. On the contrary, this is the only satisfactory approach with which a conflict of such complexity can possibly be ended. Conflict theory has identified this as the only promising approach to complex conflict constellations. This is applicable, when seen from the point of view of problem structures, to the hopelessly failed marriage as well as the conflict in the Middle East.

This position is ethically anchored in humanism, or for those who prefer, in the concept of Christian brotherly love. For those amongst us who feel an affinity with Marx, in a radical critique of the situation in the Middle East. Critique does not mean grumbling, but is derived from the Greek “kritein” which means to differentiate, to distinguish. And radical means, after a famous Marx quotation: “to grasp the root of the matter”. “But, for man, the root is man himself”, so the quotation continues.

A glance at a historically educational example may help to take a step back from the emotional involvement in the present conflict. Despite the concrete historical differences, this example highlights the basic structure of attacs approach: in 1914 there existed between Germany and France what was rightly described on both sides as “inherited hostility”. A century old conflict, from the Thirty Years War and the destruction in the Rhineland by Ludwig XIV’s mercenaries, to the Napoleonic campaigns, and to the Prussian- French war in 1870/71, which ended with the founding of the German state in the hall of mirrors in Versaille (!!!). Alsace Lorraine changed ownership several times; the left Rhine was intermittently a French department. Most intellectuals in both countries played the barbaric game. Even Goethe said “was ein echter deutscher Man mag keinen Franzen leiden”(real Germans can’t abide a Frenchman). Even the musicians partook in this irreconcilable hostility. Debussy truly believed that he composed French music, which is about as believable as the evangelical freight depot. Wagner warned in his Mastersingers of the “wälschem Tand“(the foreign vanities). This referred to the Grande opera of the German French Jew Giacomo Meyerbeer.

There is therefore no reason for Europe to turn ones nose up at the irrational dimensions of the Middle East conflict, since this mess continued until 1945. The conflict was in any case no less dogged, lengthy, morally charged and complex than the present Middle East conflict. The crimes which were reported by either side about the other in the press, military bulletins and government statements were not always less gruesome than those heard about the Israeli or Arabic sides today. As is usual in such constellations some of this was correct, most was exaggerated and some simply a lie: just as is the case in the military bulletins of Israel and the declarations of the Hezbollah.

The left in both countries, represented mainly by the SPD in Germany and the SFIO in France decided in 1914 to side for national imperialism; the SPD for wilhelminian fundamentalism and the SFIO for “Eretz France”, the “Grande Nation”.

This is where it becomes interesting: a minority in the SPD and SFIO, in the SPD under the leadership of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and in the SFIO under Jean Jaurès decided against the binary logic of the majority and against the pressure of taking sides and howling with the wolves. Their argument was that the war was illegitimate on both sides. For them a third interest was more important than the defence of the fatherland, victory or one side or the other being right. Rosa Luxemburg and Jean Jaurès had, without being aware of modern conflict theory, understood that military confrontation was not only not emancipatory but also through and through anti-emancipatory and that it harmed the emancipatory movement which was until then predominantly represented by the workers movement.

Jean Jaurès was murdered on 31st July 1914 by a French nationalist shortly before the beginning of the war. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered after the war by German reactionaries.

August 1914 is not 2006. But analysing 2006 in the spirit of Rosa Luxemburg and Jean Jaures means first of all letting go of the primitive black and white logic, here the good and there the bad and to advocate the third emancipating option. This means siding neither for Israel nor for Hezbollah & Co.