Zionism as a Failed Cultural Revolution

Abstract

This article argues that Mao’s writing on contradiction and cultural revolution allows us to understand Zionism in a unique Marxist perspective, as a failed cultural revolution. The author first presents Mao’s writing on contradictions, and the historical interactions among them, and then elaborates Mao’s understanding of cultural revolution, emphasizing Fredric Jameson’s appropriation of it as the second moment of revolution: the transformation of human practice after the seizure of power. The article argues that Zionism can be understood, first, as a Maoist intervention into a primary political contradiction: the exclusion of Jews from European capitalist society. Once Zionism becomes a hegemonic power, its failure to achieve socialism can be considered a failure of cultural revolution. Such understanding of Zionism makes it possible to see it as part of global predicament: a result of capitalism’s continued existence rather than an arbitrary colonial evil.