The Marxian Perspective

This chapter employs the historical materialist method to analyse proletarianization under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. It examines the causes of the accelerated transformation of the Arab semi-proletariat into a proletariat. The depletion of the agricultural sector and the shift in employment from subsistence to wage labour is a mechanism that may be tied to changes in the Israeli economy and its growing demands, or to broader US-led imperialist objectives. At first, it appears proletarianization relates to both objectives. However, everything is bound to everything and the world of appearances makes for a loose theoretical construction. What is not known is which of the two social classes, the narrowly defined Israeli formation or Euro-American imperialism, holds determinacy. Who calls the shots in order to arrange what is best for global capital? The answer to which of these two classes’ objectives the West Bank proletarianizes holds the key to understanding the geopolitical dimension of the theory of labour migration.