This article discusses:

• Why the confusion on the issue of individual terrorism is disastrous for socialism.
• The fundamental difference between individual terrorism and a genuine armed struggle.
• The classic Marxist position on individual terrorism.
• The complete failure of individual terrorism in Chile (1973), Iran (1979), apartheid South Africa (1980s) and how it often covered for reformism.
• The role of individual terrorism in the Palestinian struggle against ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
• The working class socialist and internationalist alternative.

Despite greater opportunities than ever in the last 75 years, the socialist movement is largely irrelevant in the U.S. Much of that is because many socialists see everything as being in different imperialist camps. That is known as campism.  Many socialists tend to defend anything that the opposite camp does. That includes the method of individual terrorism, including Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

For example, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) simply labeled the Oct. 7 attack as “resistance” and equated it to the struggle against apartheid by the black South African working class. Many socialists also equate the Oct. 7 attack to the Attica prison uprising of 1971. Either they have to oppose that uprising (in which the prisoners, by the way, killed not a single person) or they have to defend Oct. 7. These same socialists equate Oct. 7 to the Nat Turner slave rebellion. They falsely claim that that rebellion killed all whites. That is not true; the rebels killed the families of the slaveholders but not the poor whites.

top: Sandinistas; bottom: Vietcong
They engaged in true armed struggles

Many on the left parrot Hamas and call the Oct. 7 attack “the armed struggle”. The armed struggle is what was carried out by the NLF and Viet Cong against the French and then the US imperialist invaders. It is what was carried out by Fidel Castro against the Batista dictatorship. It is what was carried out by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Today, various rebel armies in Burma/Myanmar are fighting against the coup in that country. These were and are military struggles to gain power. Individual terrorism is individual acts to express anger, or to disrupt a society in order to cause chaos or even fear. They can be acts by a lone individual or by a group. They can be aimed at physical targets like a police station, or assassinations of prominent individuals (such as a hated police chief or politician or capitalist) or aimed at a population as a whole (such as a suicide bombing at a crowded bus stop). But in all those cases, they are decisively different from a genuine armed struggle.

We cannot allow the capitalist class to do our thinking for us and shrink from using the term “individual terrorism” just because the capitalists denounce it.

Lenin
Let’s start with the attitude of the central leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, V. I. Lenin. Many socialists and anarchists today don’t think much of Lenin. That’s fine, but his views still are important. Lenin sharply criticized the method because it drew those groups who engaged in such attacks away from the working class and the rural masses, which he saw as the motor force in overthrowing the Tsar. In 1902, Lenin wrote that terrorism draws its practitioners away from the working class and the rural masses. He explained that terrorist groups “have always kept, and still keep, aloof from the working-class movement.” He further explained that it was that mass movement that can overthrow Tsarism in Russia. Whatever one may think of Lenin, it’s difficult to disagree with his assessment of that issue.

This is the classic attitude of Marxism towards individual terrorism. Let’s see how this attitude has stacked up against struggles since then:

The MIR. No matter how courageous, their strategy was a failure.

Chile, 1973
In 1970, the social democrat Salvador Allende became president of Chile. This was at the crest of a rising wave of struggle by the Chilean working class, and Allende introduced many popular reforms. Naturally, this was resisted by the Chilean capitalist class and their number one ally, the US capitalist class. They moved to bring down the Allende government through disruption and eventually through a coup. That coup was carried out by Chilean general Augusto Pinochet in 1973. During these three years of struggle, the Chilean working class started to see the danger of counter revolution. They organized against it. The most important form of that organizing was the formation of what they called “cordones industriales”, which were committees of struggle set up mainly by industrial workers. Through the cordones, the working class actually challenged for direct power.

At that time, there was also a wing of revolutionary minded youth – mainly students – who had established a group called the Movement of the Revolutionary Left or in Spanish Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria or MIR whose strategy was individual terrorism. As early as 1965 the MIR had set up its own guerrilla training camp in Valdivia province in Chile. They drew their members away from the working class, exactly as Lenin had said terrorist groups do. The MIR engaged in actions like the assassination of former government official Edmundo Pérez Zujovic, who had been responsible for a massacre of workers. In preparation for a guerrilla war, the MIR also established their own arms cache. Their small arms cache was totally unable to overcome the power of the Chilean armed forces. However, by utilizing the methods of individual terrorism, the MIR isolated themselves from the mass working class struggle. Instead, any serious revolutionaries should have immersed themselves in that struggle, and in particular in explaining the potential role of the cordones and a new form of government, a workers government under workers democracy. Based on this goal, the cordones could have made a systematic drive to win over the rank and file of the armed forces – workers in uniform – and completely undermined the counter revolution.

The MIR’s strategy of individual terrorism was a total failure.

The revolutionary Iranian workers: shoras in action

Iran, 1979
In 1979, the hated Shah of Iran was overthrown by a mass movement of the Iranian working class and youth. (Note: Except where otherwise noted, the following quotes and information comes from the excellent short book Revolution and Counter Revolution in Iran, by Phil Marshall. Completely aside from the valuable information it provides, it is the answer to the book on the same revolution by Medea Benjamin, who supports the Iranian theocracy.) On May Day of 1979 there was a huge mass march in Tehran estimated at 1.5 million. Many factory delegations and large groups of unemployed workers participated with banners with slogans such as “nationalisation of all industries”, “there is no kind capitalist in the world,” “equal wages for women and men”, “work for the unemployed”, and “Long live real unions and real shoras”. This last slogan referred to the committees of struggle the Iranian working class had established which were similar to the Chilean cordones.

Nearly 15 years earlier, a group of revolutionary minded students had set up the The Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). Similar to the MIR in Chile, the MEK engaged in acts of individual terrorism such as the 1970 attempt to kidnap and assassinate the US ambassador to Iran, Douglas MacArthur.
We quote Marshall at length here: “Belatedly recognizing the significance of the workers’ movement, some guerrilla activists attempted to influence the shoras…. [They did have some isolated successes with some individual workers,] but these were the exceptions which proved the rule: nowhere did the guerrillas have a firm base in industry and nowhere did they have an opportunity to influence the direction of the shoras movement. But this was only half the problem – the real difficulty was that the left did not understand the significance of the shoras. As Bayat comments: ‘almost all the left was surprised by the sudden emergence of the shoras. Almost all the left-wing organizations, as well as the shoras themselves, were confused [about] what to do and about what kind of possible role the shoras could play politically.’

Marshall continues: “Even where the left had contact with worker militants it had little to say about the direction of the shora movement. On the most important development of the revolutionary experience the left was silent – or worse, offered negative advice. For the left did have ideas about the way forward for the mass movement as a whole – ideas which soon proved suicidal.”

The result of was similar to that in Chile: a counter revolution but in a more disguised form. The reactionary mullahs came to power and established a theocracy under which the Iranian working class and the oppressed, including but not limited to women and LGBTQ people, suffer to this very day. As for the MEK, it experienced several splits but still carries on as an ally of US imperialism! 

South Africa
Before turning to Hamas, let us consider the struggle in the 1980s against apartheid in South Africa. At that time, the black South African working class was leading the world. During those years I was involved in an international socialist group called the Committee for a Workers International (CWI). The CWI had a group in South Africa. In London I met and was strongly influenced by those comrades. One thing they explained to me that always stuck with me was the role of the South African Communist Party (SACP). As the representatives of the Soviet Union, the SACP was seen as the real revolutionary wing of the movement and of the African National Congress (ANC). The SACP played on that role to establish “guerrilla training camps” outside of South Africa. My South African comrades in the CWI explained to me that the SACP recruited the most revolutionary-minded of the black South African youth to go to those training camps and then brought them back into South Africa to conduct acts of individual terrorism such as the bombing of a police station or the assassination of some particularly hated police officer. By playing that role, the SACP isolated the revolutionary-minded youth from the movement of the powerful South African black working class.
And what was happening in the black working class?

The black South African working class in struggle against apartheid

The most critical thing was that they were forming new, independent unions and going on strike as well as getting directly involved with the struggles in the communities. An excellent view of what was happening in the working class is this video made about the founding conference of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). The video is well worth watching in and of itself. It shows not only the conference itself but also the power of the black South African working class. It also shows the connection that many black workers made between the hated apartheid system and capitalism itself, and how that connection was playing out through the workers struggles.
The video shows that this was what really put fear into the capitalists’ heart. Around 30 minutes into the video, they show one such capitalist saying that capitalism must be “opened up more dynamically…. [We must] rid the system of the image that the capitalist system only has a white face, because if that perception was to persist, then I, myself, do not believe that the private enterprise system will last in South Africa.”

It is no accident that while pursuing the method of individual terrorism, the SACP in effect agreed with this capitalist in that they viewed the struggle against apartheid and for democracy as being a totally separate stage of the struggle, as having no direct connection with the struggle for socialism. Nor is it an accident that according to my comrades the SACP actually opposed the formation of the new unions.

Striking miners killed in cold blood at Marikana

As a result of this strategy, the ANC came to power accepting capitalism. They made one concession after another to the capitalists. Under the domination of the ANC, the Cosatu leadership came to be dominated by a bureaucracy that is not that different from the union bureaucracy in the United States. In 2012, South African miners rebelled against this bureaucracy and moved to form a new union. They went on strike in Marikana. The ANC government moved in and conducted a massacre of those miners very similar to the massacres the former apartheid government had carried out. The SACP played a powerful role in both the ANC and Cosatu and bear some of the responsibility for the Marikana Massacre.

Palestine: Fatah/PLO and Hamas

The Palestine general strike of 1936.

We have dealt with the criminal role of Zionism many times, including here, and here. The original main means of struggle against Zionist oppression were the classic methods of the world working class – mass struggle, including general strikes, such as the 1936 Palestinian general strike. That general strike and what led up to it are described here. That general strike was crushed by British imperialism, with the collaboration of the British Labour Party. Such defeats combined with the traitorous role of Stalinism, which supported the creation of the racist State of Israel after WW II. So we have to be very clear who is  responsible for the rise of organizations that rely upon the method of individual terrorism in Palestine: It is Zionism, “Western” imperialism and Stalinism. But rise such organizations did, and with the support of the reactionary Arab capitalist states of the region. So we also must be clear on who they are and what role they play.

Fatah was formed by a layer of professionals in 1959, eleven years after the founding of the State of Israel. After a second defeat for the Palestinians – the “Six Day War” of 1967 – Fatah became the dominant group of the Palestinians. Its means of struggle was not the mass struggle such as the 1936 Palestinian general strike; it was individual terrorism. For example, according to Wikipedia in 1969, Fatah carried out 2,432 “guerrilla attacks”, which were really just rocket strikes into Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

Wikipedia writes: “In the 1960s and the 1970s, Fatah provided training to a wide range of European, Middle Eastern, Asian, and African militant and insurgent groups, and carried out numerous attacks against Israeli targets in Western Europe and the Middle East during the 1970s.”
This accomplished nothing – at best – towards Palestinian liberation. As a result, by the 1990s, Fatah and the broader Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which it dominated were drawn into the Oslo “peace process”. Out of this emerged the Palestine Authority (PA). Mahmoud Abbas consolidated his power by being the leader of Fatah, the PLO and the PA all in one. Today, the Palestine Authority is pretty much regarded as collaborators with Israel and US imperialism.

The collaboration and corruption of the PLO/PA left a vacuum which was filled by a new and seemingly more militant organization. That was Hamas. We have detailed the history and role of Hamas here. Without going into detail, we should just point out that the origins of Hamas lie in the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood. The Islamic Brotherhood played no role in Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation of the West Bank following the 1967 Six Day War. 

The result of a 2006 Hamas suicide bombing in the West Bank

True to its origins, Hamas never played a role in helping build the mass movements known as intifadas. Instead, like the earlier days of Hamas and the PLO, Hamas always based itself on acts of individual terrorism. These included assassinations and suicide bombings in public places. Tarek Baconi has written a thorough history of Hamas called Hamas Contained. In it, he explains that prior to the Oslo Accords, Hamas was committed to a single Islamic-based state throughout the region. Following that, Hamas’s commitment basically collapsed, especially after it came to power in Gaza. Baconi quotes a Hamas spokesman as saying “there is no conflict between participation in governing and the armed struggle [aka individual terrorist acts].”

In fact, that is exactly where Hamas was headed: towards “participation in governing” as the Palestine Authority was doing in the West Bank. However, Israeli aggression prevented that through its long term siege of Gaza whose aim was (as an aide to then Israeli Prime Minister Olmert put it) to “put the Palestinians on a diet, but not make them die of hunger.” A Hamas spokesman complained, “We are a government under occupation…. We [do not] have a government similar to others in the world.” 

Despite the continued drive to “put the Palestinians on a diet”, by 2008 Hamas “turned its attention to domestic governance [in Gaza] and reconciliation talks” with the PLO, according to Baconi. In that year, it reached a “ceasefire” agreement with Israel on condition that Israel lessen its siege of Gaza. Israel, however, reneged on its side of the bargain so the rocket attacks resumed.

Top: aftermath of Oct. 7 attack; bottom: result in Gaza City. It is easy for those in the US to defend Hamas’s individual terrorism. They don’t have to suffer the consequences.

Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack is just a continuation of its method of individual terrorism but on steroids. It has nothing to do with the armed struggle. That armed struggle was defeated in 1946-8 and again in the Six Day War of 1967. In any case, those armed struggles were mainly carried out by various reactionary Arab states. That stands in contrast to the armed struggle of the NLF in Vietnam, for example. Nor does Oct. 7 have anything to do with the mass struggle from below, such as the 1936 Palestine general strike or the various intifadas in more recent history.

So, it’s clear that from its inception and up until this very day, just like Fatah and the PLO, the methods of Hamas were aimed at pressuring the racist State of Israel to lessen its oppression rather than actually seizing power. Had Israel not been so intransigent, and had the PLO/Palestine Authority not already occupied that political space, Hamas would have ended up where the PLO/Palestine Authority is today.

The end result of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack has been an enormous intensification of racist reaction inside Israel and genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. From putting the people of Gaza “on a diet”, Israel is today moving to “starving them to death”. There are reports of even former liberal Israeli Jews justifying the slaughter of Palestinian children on the grounds of what Hamas did on Oct. 7.

The working class socialist alternative
There is no chance that Israel will be overthrown by a real armed struggle from outside. All the Arab states are willing to abandon the Palestinians at the drop of a hat. That’s what the Abraham Accords proved. And even if they were not, Israel will fight to the bitter end, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons, and United States capitalism and the US military will help them. And even if there were any chance that the State of Israel could be militarily overthrown from outside (which there is not), what sort of state would result? How much different would it be from the reactionary state of Saudi Arabia or Taliban rule in Afghanistan?

Given Israeli racism and repression, even the traditional working class methods of the mass mobilization and mass strike seem almost impossible. That does not mean that all is lost. On the contrary, the way forward lies in the best of socialist traditions. Ten years ago, the entire region was ablaze with revolution – the Arab Spring. Those revolutions were limited in scope, however. On the one hand, while the revolution in one Arab country helped set off a similar revolution in another, there was not a systematic drive to coordinate the revolutions through a regional leadership. On the other hand, while the economic conditions formed the backdrop to the revolutions, the economic demands were not made clear. Had they been, it would have led to the discussion of capitalism itself. This means it would have opened the door to a discussion of socialism.

top: Iran revolution of 2022; bottom: protest in Idlib, Syria April 2024

The future
Two countries may be key to a future potential renewed Arab/SWANA spring. First is Iran, which has had an ongoing (although now repressed) revolution for several years now. Some Iranians complain that people in the Arab world do not really support them and their struggle. It would be a natural for the Syrians to break through that barrier since the Iranian theocracy has been central to keeping Assad in power. Also, the masses in both countries have had their taste of rule by Islamic fundamentalists (ISIS and now HTS in part of Syria). A final common point is that both peoples would be more immune to Russia’s influence. While there may be a general prejudice against socialism in Syria due to the fact that Assad has associated himself with that term, that can be overcome. We must look beyond what exists at present. 

Today, seeing the unchecked barbarism of the Israeli army, it’s difficult to imagine any positive movement inside Israel. However, just as we must look beyond the present in the region as a whole, we must look beneath the surface inside Israel. The Israeli daily Haaretz published a fascinating article on April 15. It explained how the rabbinical hierarchy whipped up a barbaric war frenzy among the soldiers. But it also described reactions of some Israeli soldiers to that barbarism. “It disgusted me,” said one. “It broke my heart,” said another. Another reported the following: “On the first day, a friend of mine from the crew, who is very right-wing, was angry that I gave [the Gazans] water and bread. On the second day, he broke down and gave out bread and water too.”

Another said “Gaza gives you a different perspective: you realize how people live there, and how they lived before. You feel empathy and compassion for people because of the lack of water or basic means of existence, but also anger and hatred. It does leave a mark on the soldiers. Some deny it, others acknowledge it.”

These soldiers did not directly rebel. It takes extremely unusual circumstances for that to happen anywhere. The deeper problem is that those inevitable human reactions had no political space to express themselves. Were there a new, internationalist, liberatory and socialist “Arab Spring”, some of those soldiers – and others inside Israel – would gravitate towards it.

The method of the world working class

Conclusion
The rise of Hamas flowed from the historic defeat of the Palestinian people and the world working class. In this, it is similar to the rise of Zionism.

The methods of individual terrorism are not the methods of the working class. Where they have been taken up, it has been by middle class student types (Russia, Chile, Iran), or by Stalinists (South Africa) or due to long term serious defeats of the working class (Palestine). We must see beyond the present and underneath the surface. We must translate a genuine mass working class struggle into the potential for socialist internationalism. The only other alternative is Gaza style genocide writ large.

For further reading, see:
What is Hamas? How did it originate? Should socialists give it any support?   

also:
What is revolution – what is a revolutionary situation? How do we prepare for it?