The League for the Revolutionary Party of the United States collaborated closely with the Internationalist Socialist League of Israel/Occupied Palestine from 2008 and 2012, after the group’s founding members initiated contact with us indicating that they had become convinced of many of our ideas. During that time the ISL joined us in issuing a number of joint statements on important events in the class struggle, especially the ongoing wave of revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. We remain proud of these statements, despite the ISL’s subsequent abandonment of the principles upon which they were based and their break from collaboration with us.
In a joint “Report on Political Discussions” that announced our collaboration, we explained that beyond a shared dedication to the cause of Palestinian liberation through the revolutionary overthrow of the Zionist state, our two groups agreed on key ideas, in particular that working-class self-emancipation is the only road to the liberation of humanity from imperialist capitalism. In this spirit, we opposed illusions that Stalinists, “Third World” nationalists or Islamists can represent a genuine alternative to capitalism or imperialism.
At the same time, we also explained that abstract agreement on such principles must be proven by an active commitment to them in practice, over time. So we began our collaboration with the ISL aiming to test whether there was political agreement, before moving to form a common organization. The correctness of our cautious and practical approach was confirmed when the ISL abruptly abandoned its revolutionary principles early in 2013. They surrendered the difficult fight for a perspective of working-class-led revolution as the only answer to imperialist capitalism, first by declaring their unqualified support for military struggles of reactionary Islamists like Al Qaeda and the Taliban against imperialism regardless of their oppressive role. Soon thereafter the ISL decided that Stalinism, which they had previously regarded as a counterrevolutionary ally of capitalism, could actually play a revolutionary role; and they then explicitly declared that action by the working class was not necessary for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. The LRP issued a detailed response to the ISL’s bizarre degeneration, which can be read here.