I can explain how I'm a Communist because I believe in Collective Ownership of the means of production while working towards the goal of a Moneyless, Classless, Stateless Society. Or that I’m a Zionist because I support the Israelis right to self determination in their Ancient Homeland. And for every response that does attempt to engage with what I said I support there are far more that just go “look at the obviously evil things done by this Nation-State” which has nothing to do with those principals.
So let me make myself clear, I am no apologist for the actions of Israel especially not recently, or of Modern China or North Korea or the Soviet Union for most of its history. Now Cuba, Vietnam and Laos I do think are reasonably successful Communist experiments, but they aren’t hills I’m willing to die on either.
Many calling themselves Anti-Zionist have had what Zionism means defined for them by bad faith actors. The reverse also happens of course, I know most American Leftist self professed Anti-Zionists do not advocate the forced removal of the Jewish population currently living there. However they refuse to face the material reality that the dominant factions in the Palestinian Authority do want that.
If you support a Binational State where Jews and Arabs and other residents all have equal Citizenship and you're a Communist, then you basically have the same final goal as the founders of Labour Zionism like Aaron David Gordon and Ber Borochov. At a certain point the disagreement becomes a matter of semantics, whether the Binational State should be called Israel or Palestine. But I think the supposed Anti-Colonialists should stop wanting to be named after what Hadrian called the region.
Also as an American Citizen I firmly oppose the U.S. getting involved in any Middle East conflict on either side, in any way, either Military or Financially.
Even if a given Nation-State’s ruling ideology has no significant differences on paper from the specific form of Communism or Zionism I espouse, that would still not make every action that State took a reflection of the ideology.
However, that's not the case. I’m a Labour-Zionist, and yes a lot of Israeli Prime Ministers were too, but their Labour party was diluted not unlike the British Labor Party. Israel isn’t the only Capitalist State to ever have nominally Socialist Prime Ministers, even Japan had one briefly in the mid 90s. But now Israel has for nearly 30 years been dominated by Likud, the Israeli equivalent of the LDP, an Authoritarian Socially Conservative and Economically Capitalist Party.
And with Communism every Communist State has been not just specifically Marxist but more specifically Leninist. Lenin was actually already controversial within Marxism, both in Russia and outside of it, before even the 1905 Russian Revolution happened. So no Bolshevism didn’t become what makes it distinct from other Marxisms as a result of being a ruling party. Rosa Luxemburg predicted why Lenin’s Vanguardism would prove inherently corrupt and what happened vindicated her completely.
One of her main points was the innate spontaneity of a true Popular Revolution, something Lenin refused to accept after the February Revolution spreading conspiracy theories that it was an Allied plot (his "Revolutionary Defeatism” was always just an excuse for siding with the Central Powers, he was no true Pacifist).
Another of her main points was about Bureaucracy, which Lenin mocked people for being concerned about. This is why Trotskyism, as sympathetic to Trotskyists as I sometimes am also fails, you can’t pretend you are rejecting only Stalin not Lenin when Lenin mocked you in advance.
I don’t claim to have all the answers to figure out how to do either Communism or Zionism correctly. But I do know good Zionism needs to also respect the right to self determination of the other people living west of the Jordan. And any desire to expand Israel’s border East of the Jordan is unacceptable.
