I’m African, living in Britain. Baby socialist, only just started reading State and Revolution. I attended a meeting with other socialists two weeks ago where they discussed the fans of an Israeli team being banned from attending a football match in England due to their violent nature. It soon devolved into talks of “oh no, we shouldn’t ban the team cuz they’re working people like us”, and “I am uncomfortable with cultural boycotts”. None of them even knew anything about why the team was banned – sort of proving to me that they don’t even keep up with the news. That isn’t even my biggest issue. It’s that none of those sitting around that table had ever experienced what the people of Gaza have had to endure; they haven’t had a family member sniped out of existence by an IDF soldier, they don’t have a brother who’s been disappeared and now currently in an Israeli jail having god knows what done to them, all of us there had a home to go back to, unlike you know, the people of Gaza and the shocking part is that you could tell that they were totally oblivious of this fact and how it might have subconsciously influenced their soft and “rational” opinions on the crisis.
Then last week, we had a Muslim lady who I think has a deep connection to Palestine give a talk on the issue going on and the role of socialists in the crisis. She gave a fantastic, deeply personal speech. I saw this as my opportunity to come in and speak my mind on what/how I felt about the last meeting and how our lack of a personal connection to the crisis softens our opinions, and that we needed to realise this. They all agreed on the spot, only for the leader of that meeting to revert to type talking about how this conflict is a crisis of capitalism and how the “working class of Israel” need to attain consciousness as the reason they want Gaza is because the rent in the major cities in Israel are all so expensive which is what is encouraging expansion into newer lands, and once we raise class consciousness on both Israeli and Palestinian sides, they’ll all live happily ever after. The girl even asked again that what can we do to help now, and he went back to the same “yea, we just gotta, you know, keep spreading the word on class consciousness”. That same day, in the face of a ceasefire, loads of Palestinians have been killed and many more will die. But no, we should keep working to raise class consciousness among a people who have gleefully documented their hatred for the Palestinians for all to see. The USA is more likely to become a socialist state before Israel does, and what are we supposed to do while we wait? Keep reading theory and spreading the word? While literal kids get killed?
Is this what reading theory does to people? Unable to see and experience the world as it is, but every single event must be passed through the lenses of what Marx said over a century ago? This reminds me of Christians who see everything going on in the world today through the lenses of some biblical prophecy or a sign of the end times. What can we do to help people like us in Gaza? Lets read theory and tell the people suffering that everything happening to them is due to capitalism and once we reach the nirvana of class consciousness, everything will be hunky dory. No more hatred, all bombs will disappear, even Americans will all submit their guns etc. Totally unable to see reality and adjust our mindsets to what is going on with the realities of people like us. I am writing this out of frustration because the one people I expected total solidarity from are talking exactly like liberals but with Marxist language, and they seem totally oblivious of this. I am fully aware that ultimately, they’re kind of right; class consciousness is vital to kicking out imperialism and uprooting capitalism, but for fk’s sake what are we doing for the people currently dying or being starved to death right now through the evils of the system? Surely, we can do more than telling them to sit down and listen to theory.
You are completely right about this, and unfortunately this liberal garbage is probably something you will run into a lot. Anything and everything that has genuine revolutionary potential is constantly being coopted by liberals, either through literal covert infiltration with intention, or unintentionally by useful fools who have fallen for the radlib lines and mistaken them as socialism. You may still be a relatively new socialist without much theory under your belt yet, but you already hold a more principled and revolutionary position than the leader of the meeting you described, who is carrying water for the zionists whether that person realizes it or not.
No, it's what failing to engage with or refusing to understand theory does to people. Any of the good theorists make it clear that theory is nothing without praxis (and praxis is just blind flailing without theory).
Depending on which particulars of your post you're referring to, I would say that no, those who were disagreeing with you were not kind of right. Yes, class consciousness is vital to eventually being able to smash capitalism and end imperialism, but playing nice with fascists will never benefit the spreading of class consciousness. Class consciousness is not the "be all and end all" of socialist organizing, it is something that comes as a result of hard work and actions taken, and people seeing what that really means. Like... What was the better method to raise class consciousness in people concerned with the situation in Gaza, was it passing out pamphlets to the Zionists who like you said are gleeful to watch Palestinians die, or was it seeing working class people become heroes on a flotilla trying to bring food and medical aid to starving masses of children, then getting illegally kidnapped at gunpoint off their boats and held in torture-detention centers because of their efforts to bring aid? That is what helps radicalize people which in turn is a major fount of class consciousness. Tell your dipshit meeting leader that if they want to spread class consciousness, they need to take some action that has a genuine material chance to help the Palestinian people, or at the very least express solidarity with them especially in ways that show some smidgen of willingness to make personal sacrifices. Tell them that no matter how much you try to get Zionists to read Marx, it is going to do fuckall so long as those Zionists want to eradicate the most systemically oppressed people on earth and steal the now empty homes of the mass murdered. We will never get anywhere trying to appeal to the last shreds of humanity (the "better angels") of settler-colonialists, let alone the genocidaires. Ask your meeting leader, Why did the communists fight to liberate the concentration camps in 1945 when they could have been appealing to the Nazi's sense of worker solidarity?
Anyone who would say that's what we should be doing has not understood the fucking purpose of theory in the first place.