History of Opportunism in the Second International “Defense of the Fatherland”

Owing to the history of the development of the labor movement and revolution before both WWI and WWII there is a defining characteristic of parties in revolutionary periods. Contradictions between opportunist trends and Bolshevism are intensified, lines are clarified, and opportunist forces which had grown during peace time now try to smother revolution. The entire movement becomes engulfed in bitter conflict over the path forward for the class. Today we see nothing different. Thus, there is a direct connection between the at-present fractured Communist movement and the victory gained by opportunism in the west. As a consequence this requires revolutionaries to educate the working class on the importance of the conflict, its causes, and finish the split started by opportunists who will try by hook or crook to ally with the bourgeoisie.

But why, one might ask, do these opportunists who speak in Communist ways try to fight against revolution? Do they not speak of revolution themselves? Do they not follow Lenin and organize themselves into Communist parties? So how can there be “opportunist” Communist parties? How can opportunism have captured so many? And how are we sure who the real opportunists are today?

Remember that the parties of the Second International right up to the start of WWI had considered the looming war to be one of imperialist plunder. They understood that there was no progressive or just characteristic to the war at all, and the war was purely to divide markets. In 1912 the Ninth Congress of the Second International passed the Basle Manifesto which in words took a revolutionary stand against the coming imperialist war. Many socialists in Europe at the time could not see through the phrase mongering of the Second International leadership. After its passage Lenin remarked, “They have given us a large promissory note; let us see how they will meet it.”

The Basle Manifesto only passed because of the general anti-war atmosphere among the workers who had put pressure on their opportunist leaderships to adopt an anti-war position. The founder and most influential party of the Second International, the German Social-Democratic party, had shortly after passing the Basle Manifesto held a party congress in 1913 where it upheld Germany’s colonies. This clearly indicates that while the parties of the Second International were forced to adopt an anti-war position on the outside, they had every intention to support the war. The words of the Second International in the Basle Manifesto would not translate into deeds.

On July 28, 1914, Austria attacked Serbia. On August 3^rd the German Social-Democratic party voted 78 to 14 in the Reichstag in support of joining the war saying that Russia was soon to invade Germany and then declaring “in the hour of danger we shall not desert the fatherland.” The other European parties adopted the same justification and carried out the same line in their respective countries. The opportunists in the Second International had carried out the greatest betrayal to the working class in history at that time. They disguised their betrayal in a thin veil of “Marxism” saying that the German nation-state was threatened, that they must defend their workers against the invaders, and that Germany was the country with the most advanced Social-Democracy in Europe and necessitated defense. Of course, the parties in the Entente countries had their own social-chauvinism and raised the defense of their own countries to be paramount. Thus, these parties all fell into collaboration with the imperialists to wage an unjust war.

The German Social-Democratic party as the most influential party in the Second International played a large role in influencing other parties to follow suit in this greatest betrayal. It signified the ideological and political collapse of the Second International. The war had nothing in common with the interests of the working class. It was an unjust and reactionary war to loot and plunder.

The opportunists in the Second International cited the writings of Marx and Engels who had supported the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 where Germany was liberated from the oppression of Napoleon III who had kept Germany in a state of feudal decentralization. This act made the war a progressive one on Prussia’s part by allowing the growth of the bourgeoisie, and therefore the proletariat, in Germany. Yet nothing about the conditions of WWI would lend itself to being compared to a struggle for national liberation. The leaders of the German Social-Democratic party grasped at straws trying to justify the involvement of the German proletariat in a war of plunder.

Karl Kautsky, who was the most prominent Marxist of the time and member of the German Social-Democratic party, said: “The Situation is different with the great solidly-based national countries. Their independence is certainly not threatened but apparently their integrity is not threatened either.” This may appear to be an argument against supporting the war, but he then follows this with, “But from this follows also the further duty of the Social-Democracy of every country to regard the war exclusively as a defensive war, to set up as its goal only protection from the enemy, not his ‘punishment’ or diminishment”. Thus in order to consider the war “just” Kautsky considered it “defensive” and the duty of German socialists to “defend the fatherland”.

The Basis of Opportunism

In Lenin’s work “The Collapse of the Second International” he says in chapter I,

“If we would formulate the question in a scientific fashion, i.e., from the standpoint of class relations in modern society, we will have to state that most of the Social Democratic parties, and at their head the German Party first and foremost—the biggest and most influential party in the Second International—have taken sides with their General Staffs, their governments, and their bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. This is an event of historic importance, one that calls for a most comprehensive analysis.”[1]

This comprehensive analysis Lenin mentions is that the betrayal of the socialist parties in the Second International stems from the economic basis, and significance, of the ideologically and materially influenced labor movement within Europe by the bourgeoisie. This is possible through super-profit derived bribes given to parts of the working class who are outside of industrial production and primarily engaged in what the English economist J. A. Hobson—in 1902 reflecting on the emergence of imperialism—saw as the inevitable predominance of “personal or minor industrial services” and the “final stages of production” within imperialist countries.

But the roots of opportunism in the labor movement were first expressed in the colonial and industrial monopoly maintained by Great Britain from 1848 to 1892. The analysis of this period comes best from Frederick Engels who remarked that the skilled tradesmen of his time had become “an aristocracy among the working-class.” Conditions in Great Britain as a result of its industrial monopoly had produced a stratum of the working class who had become “comfortable” and in good relations with the capitalist class. So much so that Engels considered this section of the working class to have become “bourgeois” in its outlook. In other words, this bought off section of the working class had become perverted and itself perverted the labor movement and turned it social-chauvinist.

This perversion of the labor movement is substantiated economically by the conditions of imperialism. Here we do not speak of chance mistakes in tactics. Opportunism is adapting the labor movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie. There is an economic basis to this corruption of the labor movement which introduces bourgeois ideology. And there are two main forms in which this corruption presents itself. Firstly it manifests as those who enjoy a privileged position among the working class and seek to maintain that position, i.e., the AFL-CIO “Higher Strategy of Labor”. Secondly, those in the privileged stratum who as a result of pressure from monopoly have been cast down into the ranks of the lower stratum of the working class but bring with them the interests of the bourgeoisie in left-disguise regardless of intentions.

This privileged stratum of the working class both ideologically and materially influenced by the bourgeoisie did not remain a solely English phenomenon. The loss of Great Britain’s industrial monopoly and the emergence of imperialism among several European countries meant that this privileged stratum of the working class had become a condition of all countries with monopoly capital. The establishment of this privileged strata of workers in all the advanced capitalist countries is why in nearly all socialist parties within the Second International following the most influential and whose leadership was populated primarily by these “comfortable workers” went to the defense of their respective “Fatherlands” when the division of the world market could no longer proceed under peaceful politics and threatened the “comfortable” conditions of the social-chauvinists.

Certainly, today it is a fact of life that manufacturing in the advanced capitalist countries is no longer what it once was. Services are the predominant industries in all imperialist countries. Hobson was quite correct in that regard. A large portion of workers in the imperialist countries only facilitate the realization of commodities. This means that merchant capital has become predominant in the circulation of commodities. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries have become parasites on the oppressed countries of the world, which they have forced to surrender a greater share of the surplus-value of commodities produced to create super-profits for the imperialists.

In the rest of the labor movement, the domination of opportunism over the most advanced sections of the working class is a result of the industrial restructuring of the advanced capitalist countries. The party’s loss of a firm footing in the industrial centers is why the Central Committee of the PCUSA stated in its Industrial Concentration Strategy and Plan that, “the restructuring of the basic industries in the United States [as well as Europe] meant the decline and deterioration of the old industrial sector of the working class.” The decline of what we might call “blue collar” factory work today has had a corresponding decline in the proportion of party members who came from the lower strata of the working class and the domination of the privileged upper strata – what we call petty-bourgeois radicals today.

This is not unique to the conditions of the US, but one that affects all Communist parties in the advanced capitalist countries. The incessant, seemingly overwhelming problem of opportunism, left or right, is simply part and parcel of the conditions of building a Communist party in the belly of the beast. Meaning this restructuring, i.e., decimation of the organized industrial sectors of the economy, reflected itself in the party. 

It is an important question to ask why the Communist Party of Germany failed to utilize the revolutionary situation. The Comintern considered the failure due to the lack of connection with workers in the factories, but why was this the case? Lenin’s answer to this question in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder calls attention to a few factors in the German CP. For one, the German party adopted very childish notions of purity, going as far as to refuse to do any party work in “reactionary unions.” Thus the party had willingly cut itself off from sections of the workers leaving these workers under the influence of traitors and the bourgeoisie.

Secondly, Lenin says,

“In Germany, as in other European countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and proper election of ‘leaders’ at regular party congresses, to the convenient method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary elections, mass meetings, the press, the sentiments of the trade unions and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure, it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution and the development of the civil war, to pass quickly from legality to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the ‘inconvenient’ and ‘undemocratic’ methods of singling out, or forming, or preserving “groups of leaders”—people lost their heads and began to think up some supernatural nonsense. Probably, the Dutch Tribunists who had the misfortune to be born in a small country where traditions and conditions of legality were particularly privileged and particularly stable, and who had never witnessed the changeover from legality to illegality, became confused, lost their heads, and helped to create these absurd inventions.”[2]

Since the German Communist Party had in part separated itself from the labor movement and did not have the experience to navigate the revolutionary situation, it failed to become a leader of the workers. How could it be that a Communist party is separated from the workers? Because the German Communist Party, like most Communist Parties of the west, were organized outside of the labor movement. Being outside of the daily struggle of workers was not the case for the Bolsheviks where out of the labor movement grew the Russian Social Democratic Party and then finally the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Some Reflections On The Issue Of Industrial Structuring

The history of how Communist Parties were developed in the advanced capitalist countries offers potential insight into why the CPUSA had such an issue dealing with the decline of organized industrial sectors. In 1931 the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted several factors which retarded the growth of Communist parties in the imperialist countries. I will quote the pertinent observations,

“The illegal condition of the Bolshevik Party prompted it to establish Party groups in the factories, where it was easier and more convenient to work. The Party structure of the Bolsheviks thus began with the factories, and this yielded excellent results both during the years of the reaction, after the February revolution, and particularly during the October Revolution of 1917, the civil war and the great construction of Socialism. During the reaction following upon 1908, when in places the local party committees and the party leadership (the C.C.) were broken up, there still remained in the factories and mills a certain base, small party cells which continued the work. After the February Revolution, when the elections to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies were held, the factories and mills also served as the basis for the elections. It is noteworthy that the elections to the municipal and district councils and the Constituent Assembly, which were based not upon occupational but upon territorial principles, were also carried out by the Bolshevik Party very successfully after the February and October Revolutions, despite the fact that the party had no territorial organizations [emphasis mine – ed.], and its agitation was concentrated in the factories and barracks. The cells and the district and city committees conducted the election campaign without creating special territorial organizations for the purpose. During all periods the lower party organizations of the Bolsheviks existed at the place of work rather than at the place of residence.

Abroad the situation was entirely different. There elections were not held in the factories but in the election districts, in the places where the voters lived. The main task pursued by the Socialist Parties was to gain electoral victories, to fight by means of the ballot, and the Party organization was therefore built along residential lines, which made it easier to organize the Party members for the election campaign in the respective election districts.

[T]he organizations of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries were built without permanent organizational connections with the factories. […]

That the absence of Party organizations in the factories strongly affects the work of the Communist Parties is shown by such an example, for instance, as that of Germany, in 1923, when the Party failed to utilize the revolutionary situation for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, this being due not only to the absence of a truly revolutionary leadership, but also to the absence of extensive and firm connections with the workers in the factories.”[3]

Most Communist Parties in the west were born from Socialist Parties who had no connection to the labor movement. Their primary source of membership came from cells that followed the same geographical-political party structure as bourgeois parties, i.e., city, county, state lines. As a result, the proportional share of cells within the party that are based in the factories are numerically outnumbered by geo-political cells which unify workers who are disconnected from large-scale production within the party. In other words, geo-political organization can be a boon to the white-collar city-petty bourgeoisie and corrupted workers within the party. 

As the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted above, in the illegal period of the Bolshevik Party they were a closed party and only admitted small numbers of candidates. Primarily due to oppression by the Tsar, trustworthiness was one of the main factors used to evaluate candidates. The core cadre of the party became steeled in experience and capable of teaching. When the party became legal after the 1905 Revolution it became a mass party and accepted many new members. Lenin remarked in Party Organization and Party Literature in 1905 that “We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements.”

As well, Lenin in 1916 in his article “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” very clearly outlines the importance of where the party focuses and draws its strength,

“Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the ‘defenders of the fatherland’ in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.”[4]

If we have a broader reflection on the experience of the Bolsheviks we find that at very few points in their history did they ever accept a mass of new membership into their ranks and that they had from the beginning been based chiefly on the factories. The issue of petty-bourgeois radicalism had scarcely been a problem within their ranks until periods of the intensification of the revolutionary situation in Russia. Later in 1920 in Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin remarks that the Bolsheviks at this point were now very apprehensive in allowing the party to grow too quickly during the October Revolution because of the fact that “careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably strive to attach themselves to the ruling party.”[5] This development signified a greater danger of the penetration of corrupting elements at that point in time.

The dangerous combination of petty bourgeois radicalism with a mass party structure is why the consequence of the policies adopted and implemented by the 7^th Congress of the Comintern in the pursuit of the Popular Front, which sought to bring together the broad masses and all progressive people against fascism, resulted in western parties which were ill-equipped to defend themselves from the sudden and large influence of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Western parties had not chiefly based themselves upon the factories, i.e., upon the lowest paid and unbribed sections of the working class. History has proven that all the western parties were unable to digest the “inconsistent elements” as they transitioned into mass parties. It is historical fact that only in the eastern European countries did the Popular Front result in the formation of Socialist Republics since this is where the parties were chiefly situated in the factories rather than along geo-political lines . Thus these parties could withstand allowing a certain portion of the higher stratum of the working class and petty bourgeois to enter the party.

In the 2021 issue of The Communist the General Secretary Angelo D’Angelo and I wrote that,

“What many call Browderism was in reality then a global right-opportunist phenomena which stemmed from imperialism and its effect on the policies of the international Communist movement during the war. Browderism is only how it manifested under the conditions of the US. This also explains why all the advanced capitalist countries fell victim to their own national variants of Browderism. Nevertheless, in essence, it can be said to have arisen in part out of an upward swing in conditions, a lull in the growth of the movement and from political immaturity. As well as the social composition of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries. Plainly, from opportunism.”[6]

It is evident from the experiences of the Bolsheviks and our own parties in the advanced capitalist countries that the predominance of cells organized along geo-political lines is a carryover from the Socialist Party, and that it can be self-defeating by allowing petty-bourgeois radicals to suffocate Bolshevism within the party. It is inevitable then that issues of daily conflict and splits occur over matters immaterial to the long-term goals of the Communist Party. This also means a greater chance for individuals (careerists and charlatans) who do not come from the lower-strata of the working class to rise to leadership positions within the party since the work of the party (i.e. its cells) is detached from struggle within large enterprises.

Marx was a thousand times correct to say that socialism is birth marked with characteristics of capitalism. It is also true to say that western Communist parties are birth marked with the characteristics of their former socialist parties. However, addressing the predominance of the geo-political method of organizing is only a small part of the struggle against opportunism within our party. It is through the geo-political organization of cells that renegades and opportunists are able to more easily gain leadership positions only to corrupt entire sections of the party. Primarily due to the fact that there are fewer workers connected to shops with thousands of other workers and because the work of the geo-political cells are not focused on the immediate needs of any one workplace. The work of these cells mainly revolves around periodical agitation in public places; in other words, no leading role in the labor movement or direct connection to it.

Yet, the struggle against opportunism does not end with fixing the method of cell organization. The struggle against opportunism within the CPSU is evidence that even in parties where shop cells are predominant that opportunism finds other ways to sap at the strength of the party. It is evident though that in today’s world all Communist parties have been affected by industrial restructuring. The industrial basis of western Communist parties has become weakened, and the opportunity for petty-bourgeois radicals to steal leadership of the parties has grown. It is not a coincidence then that like never before Communist parties have reached an impasse over very basic questions of socialist construction or the history and legacy of the Comintern.

Industrial Concentration is the foremost task of any Communist Party, but it is obvious that this policy has not been carried out by the parties of the world who refuse to see the truth of what the war in Ukraine represents. There is no central world leadership to teach its importance. In the vacuum left by the CPSU, many parties have become aimless and have decayed into complacency over the years of industrial restructuring.

The CPUSA in 1949 as a matter of its party education instilled upon all party members that:

“The policy of concentration is not a policy for a special group of comrades, nor a special sphere of work which is carried alongside of other tasks. There must be no counterposing of industrial concentration as ‘one specific activity’ to other mass activities. Winning the workers in the big shops and working class communities is a political task (the struggle for the political policies of the party – which embrace both economic and political issues). Industrial concentration must be the heart and core of the work of all party organizations and all party leaders.”[7]

By regaining a foothold in the big shops the party will secure the social composition of the party as decidedly working class and offer an advantage to the party in its struggle against opportunism within the Communist movement.

The Ultra-Left and Ukraine

Grave issues within the international Communist movement have meant a major difference of perspective about support and non-support for the current Russian military offensive. To understand the current situation it is important to understand the class character of war in the modern age. The historical features of war have changed owing to the development of society and capitalism to its highest stage. By contrast during the period starting from around 1776 with the American Revolution and ending with the Paris Commune in 1871, the major wars and civil wars at this time were bourgeois-progressive and often had a national-liberation characteristic.

All honest socialists participated in the overthrow of feudalism. Most notable among them was Karl Marx who constantly gave guidance and clarity to the character of the US Civil War through the First International, the International Workingmen’s Association. Marx saw clearly that it was a progressive war which could overthrow the feudal Bourbon-Landlords of the South and end chattel slavery. By overthrowing the slave masters in the South the conditions for socialism, which was impossible beforehand, now existed.

Such a war to overthrow the backwards aristocracy was instrumental in allowing capitalism to develop, which was a progressive step, but capitalism most of all concentrates capital and industry. Today, US capitalism has reached its highest stage—imperialism. All the major industries are concentrated into the hands of billionaire associations, and all the major capitalist nations have divided the world amongst themselves. When “peaceful” diplomacy fails to satisfy its re-division, war and violence is waged. Making war in the age of imperialism is the result of fierce competition over markets. This means peace between capitalist countries can only be transitory, and peaceful diplomacy among them only stalls the impending outbreak of war which represents the continuation of capitalist diplomacy in a violent form. As well, the war will bring many changes to Russia which will develop further as a capitalist nation should it defeat NATO and Ukraine.

As analyzed in the PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference, the US is in a fierce competition with Russia and China for markets to export the highly industrialized commodities produced in the US. When Trump tried to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, it was explicitly done in order to offer Europe “Freedom” gas and oil, but at a higher cost than the EU was able to secure from Russia.

Immediately upon Russia committing to conflict in Ukraine, Germany indefinitely suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and the EU and US ceased importing Russian oil and natural gas. As much as 40% of EU energy was imported from Russia. The US had tried to capture this market by attempts to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia under Trump “peacefully”. Such a market is extremely important, which is why the US since 2014 had cultivated fascism and knowingly egged on NATO membership in Ukraine in order to get control over the energy markets of the EU and force Russia into a military response and subsequently isolate them from energy markets.

However, this maneuvering by the US has heavy costs. The PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference analyzed the situation in Europe and noted that a divide between the EU and US was growing. This still remains largely true, even with Germany forgoing trade with Russia to its detriment. As the crisis of capitalism deepens it strains the ability of the US to maintain its alliances in NATO, meaning there is a weakening unity among members given the heavy handedness of the US forcing the EU into subpar deals. Shortly before the conference last year, China had signed the “largest trade deal in history” with the EU to the exclusion of the US.

Forcing EU NATO members to accept greater costs, and have less of a share of global profits in order to pad the pockets of US imperialists will result in worsening diplomacy between the US and EU. Even as Germany once more does the bidding of the US, Germany has signed a historic military spending bill, as much as 10x its previous military spending after being forced to suspend Nord Stream 2 bringing their total spending to an astounding €100 billion[8]. Germany and the EU have begun to lose confidence in the ability of the US to protect their profits, with the US under Trump even outright trying to strong-arm the EU into paying more for NATO[9]. In order for the EU to finally shake off US control, it will require a historic build-up of military forces.

However, there is also a more serious implication of a growing schism in global capitalism trending toward the build-up of these military forces around the world for an impending global conflict which can bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation. This time is far more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis since Russia is no longer socialist and therefore is not guided by the same Communist morality.

As in 1914, all the American and European capitalists paint this war as one for the “freedom of nations.” In actuality, the capitalists egg on and cultivate this war for the oppression of nations, to fortify existing colonies, and to prolong capitalist rule. Though at the same time, as during WWII, the scourge of fascism walks the earth (cultivated by the US and NATO) giving an impetus to the growth of the grossest reaction the world over, and renders social revolution under such conditions as existing in Ukraine impossible. There can be no socialist revolution while the working class is kept under the thumb of fascism. Thus the defeat of fascism in the Ukraine is both essential and progressive.

This is why the PCUSA affirms its position that, because Russia has made it clear that its ambitions for the war serve to resolve the mounting crisis in Russia itself, that the ousting of the Bandera fascists and defense of the DPR and LPR can be used as a justification for a war of conquest, i.e. reclaiming the “common motherland” of the Tsarist Empire. Until the point when the actions of Russian capital move toward conquest, the PCUSA stands with all anti-fascist people in support of the Donbass and support the war against the Bandera fascists in Kiev. In our own country, we must remember that the American workers have no interest in waging a war for plunder, that it is forced upon them. The American workers are mentally ruined and physically worn out not only as a result of the growing intensification of their exploitation under US capitalism, but from decades of predatory wars, epidemics, and the acute suppression of their organization by a mass of labor misleaders. It is the  duty of all communists in the US during these times to build resistance against our country’s engagement in the cultivation of punitive fascist wars to re-divide the world market.

[1] Lenin, V.I., “The Collapse of the Second International” in Collected Works, Vol. 21; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974, pp. 207-208.

[2] Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, pp. 32-33.

[3] Piatnitsky, O., The Bolshevization of the Communist Parties By Eradicating The Social-Democratic Traditions; Workers Library Publishers: New York, 1932,  p. 15-17.

[4] Lenin, V.I., “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” in Collected Works, Vol. 23; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974a, p. 120.

[5] Lenin, Op. Cit., 2022, p. 42.

[6] Dirte, Timothy, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Third International” in The Communist, Vol. 1, 2021, p. 52.

[7] Study Course on The Communist Party, The Working Class, and Industrial Concentration: Outline and Guide for Schools, Classes, Study Groups; The National Education Depart of the Communist Party USA: New York, 1949, p. 18.

[8] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/

[9] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nato-trump/trump-says-nato-countries-burden-sharing-improving-wants-more-idUSKCN1RE23P

The post Imperialism and the Split Among “Communists” appeared first on The Communist.

The term “Cultural Marxism” is frequently used in political discussions, but its meaning is obscure. Those on the Right claim that it signifies the infiltration of Western academia by Jewish Marxists from the Frankfurt School. They argue that their goal is to undermine the United States and Europe by utilizing Critical Theory to advocate for feminism, multiculturalism, LGBTQ+ identities, anti-white racism, and other perceived societal problems. Conversely, the mainstream Left regards this as a baseless far-right conspiracy theory and draws a parallel to the term “Cultural Bolshevism” employed in fascist propaganda. While both sides offer some valid points about Cultural Marxism, neither provides a complete picture.

Critical Theory vs Marxism

“Critical Theory” refers to a social theory practiced by intellectuals from the Frankfurt School, associated with the Institute for Social Research in Weimar Germany.[1] These theorists expressed dissatisfaction with both capitalism and communism, leading them to develop a new ideology aimed at societal development. Max Horkheimer, in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory,” first defined Critical Theory as a social theory that goes beyond explaining society as it is and instead seeks to critique and transform it. Horkheimer outlined the fundamental principles of Critical Theory, which include the criticism of societal flaws, identification of agents capable of effecting change, and the provision of goals for social transformation.

According to Critical Theory, ideology serves as the primary driver of oppression,[2] and the objective is to analyze and overcome these ideas that hinder human freedom. In contrast, Marxism utilizes dialectical materialism to understand that these ideas merely reflect reality rather than determine it. In pursuit of the goal to liberate humanity from all forms of oppression, additional critical theories have emerged alongside various social movements, including the civil rights movement, feminism, and the gay and lesbian movement. However, a question arises: Do these critical theories genuinely aim to emancipate the oppressed masses, or do they in fact work to fragment the working class and divert revolutionary momentum?

Every successful socialist revolution has resulted in better material conditions for the entire working class, including women and ethnic minorities. However, a contrasting situation has unfolded in the United States, where critical theories have thrived within academia while capitalism remains the prevailing mode of production. Instead of progress, the majority of Americans have experienced a decline in their living standards, coupled with an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few. Despite its pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, Critical Theory has consistently served the interests of those who perpetuate human enslavement, while suppressing the achievements of Communist movements that have genuinely established societies oriented towards meeting the needs of the working class.

First, they came for the Communists …

Initially, when the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the Institute for Social Research chose to refrain from openly criticizing the government. Theodor Adorno believed that the regime would primarily target “the orthodox pro-Soviet Bolshevists and communists who had drawn attention to themselves politically”.[3] This observation was indeed accurate at that time, as the Communists were the first group to be sent to concentration camps. However, it didn’t take long for the Nazis to extend their persecution to the Jewish population. In the late 1930s, several Frankfurt intellectuals, including Horkheimer, Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, relocated to the United States to escape persecution due to their Jewish heritage. Walter Benjamin, on the other hand, did not join them. Benjamin relied solely on the Institute for his income, and one might expect that his colleagues would have taken his financial situation into consideration and made efforts to help him escape Nazi terror. However, evidence suggests that his fellow scholars had ideological motivations behind their decision to relocate to the US without him.[4]

Benjamin maintained a close friendship with Bertolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright who openly criticized the Frankfurt theorists. Adorno harbored resentment towards Brecht due to his ideological influence on Benjamin. In a letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, Adorno referred to Brecht as a “savage” and expressed his belief that Benjamin needed to be freed from his influence.[5] Two years later, Horkheimer informed Benjamin that he should anticipate a loss of funding from the Institute. Furthermore, Horkheimer claimed, shortly after transferring $50,000 to one of his own accounts, that he regretfully couldn’t provide financial assistance for Benjamin’s steamship ticket to escape to the United States and seek safety from encroaching fascist forces. In 1940, Benjamin tragically took his own life at the border between France and Spain, facing almost certain capture by Nazi forces. The leading Frankfurt intellectuals depicted his suicide as a tragic and incomprehensible personal decision, and claimed that they had tried to help him escape.

If Horkheimer were to rewrite Martin Niemoller’s famous poem, it would read something like this:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I hated Communists.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I fled to the United States,
leaving my more Marxist-aligned Jewish colleague to die.

It is possible that the Frankfurt intellectuals harbored animosity towards Brecht because he recognized their compromising stance, as summarized by Stuart Jeffries, as “prostitutes in their quest for foundation support during their American exile, selling their skills and opinions as commodities in order to support the dominant ideology of oppressive U.S. society”.[6] When Horkheimer became director of the Institute in 1930, the Frankfurt School shifted its research focus away from comprehensive analyses of class struggle towards abstract investigations of culture and authority.[7] This approach aimed to appease future donors by refraining from suggesting alternatives to capitalism or an end to imperialism. Upon Adorno’s initial emigration to the US, he worked for the Princeton Radio Project, which received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to investigate the impact of mass media on society.[8] Marcuse, meanwhile, served in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, during which he authored critical works on the Soviet Union,[9] which were later published in his 1958 book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis.

Supported by generous funding from the US government and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Frankfurt scholars were able to sustain their work throughout the early Cold War, eventually relocating the Institute back to West Germany in the late 1940s. The funds for this move were administered by John McCloy, who served as the US High Commissioner of Germany. In his earlier career as a Wall Street lawyer, McCloy had worked with various corporations operating in Nazi Germany, including IG Farben, the manufacturer of Zyklon B gas. Following the conclusion of World War II, McCloy granted clemency to several Nazi war criminals,[10] enabling them to retain a significant portion of their former wealth and influence. With the transition from a fascist regime to a US-supported anti-Communist government, West Germany provided a favorable environment for the Frankfurt School to continue its work and engage in new anti-Communist endeavors, as will be explored next in this series on Cultural Pseudo-Marxism.

*    *    *

After the Institute for Social Research relocated to Germany, its significance persisted just as it had in the United States. Fortunately for the Frankfurt intellectuals, they chose not to settle in East Germany. This decision stemmed not only from the government’s intolerance towards their counter-revolutionary activities but also from their desire to avoid encountering Bertolt Brecht, a close friend of the late Walter Benjamin, who had moved to the German Democratic Republic to contribute to socialist endeavors. Brecht continued his pointed critiques of the Frankfurt School in his play “Turandot” (The Whitewashers’ Congress), a satirical take on academics who compromise their intellectual integrity to manipulate reality in favor of the ruling class—referred to as “Tuis” by Brecht.[12]

Many assert that the Frankfurt Tuis were Marxists, driven by either ignorance or anti-Communist sentiment. If this were true, why were they embraced in West Germany while shunned in the GDR?

This misconception may have arisen from the fallacy that liberal democracies are in fact free and inclusive societies where individuals of all ideological stripes can freely express their convictions. In reality, the case of West Germany reveals that these principles of liberal democracy were, at best, selectively-employed. One could for example openly advocate for pedophilia,[13] but any praise for Stalin was met with contempt. The anti-Communist puppet government in the U.S.-occupied western region of Germany outlawed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) distanced itself from Marxism, and U.S. intelligence decided to use the Institute for their next big operation.

The “Compatible Left”: A CIA Creation

In June 1950, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was established in West Berlin.[14] Its members were mainly anti-Soviet leftists[15], but there were conservative participants too, like Irving Kristol[16], later known as the “godfather of neoconservatism”. With CIA backing, the CCF employed varied methods to spread anti-Communist propaganda: hosting conferences globally (primarily in Western Europe), publishing political and artistic journals, and awarding artists and musicians aligned with their goals. The CCF, guided by CIA agent Thomas Braden, cultivated what he called the “compatible”[17] Left—a faction rejecting Marxist analysis and criticizing actually-existing socialist countries.

As evidenced in Theodor Adorno’s correspondence, he worked closely with Melvin Lasky, the founder and chief editor of the CIA-backed publication Der Monat, and an original member of the CCF steering committee. Lasky offered to work with the Institute in any way possible, telling Adorno that he would quickly publish any works or statements from the Institute. Adorno took him up on this offer, going on to publish in Der Monat as well as Encounter and Tempo Presente. Given the backdrop of their prior collaboration, Lasky and the CIA were fully aware that the Frankfurt scholars were eminently suited for this role. Setting aside Herbert Marcuse’s career in US intelligence, the very ideology of the Frankfurt School was effective in neutralizing leftist sentiments while preserving somewhat of a revolutionary veneer.

Starting in 1930, when Max Horkheimer assumed the directorship of the Institute, the Frankfurt School shifted away from class analysis and instead delved into discussions on authority and culture.[18] Neglecting the crucial inquiry into which class holds authority, the CCF employed liberalism to narrow the focus exclusively onto individual freedom. Socialist realism in the Soviet Union was presented as “totalitarian” because it mandated artists to propagate constructive conduct within the working class. Conversely, in the US, an artist possessed the liberty to fling paint onto a canvas and deem it “art.” This contrast disregarded the reality that an artist’s success within capitalism rests entirely on the unpredictability of the market.

From 1944 to 1945, the Institute conducted a study titled “Anti-Semitism in American Labor”, concluding that the most anti-Semitic groups were Communist-led trade unions in the United States.[19] While Nazis received backing from capitalists for their genocidal acts, the Frankfurt scholars deemed certain American workers’ anti-Semitic views as a more urgent concern. The study served as an egregious example how identity politics can be employed to target Communists, a strategy still utilized by the Compatible Left. Furthermore, the Frankfurt School’s criticism of the notion of “authority” effectively discredited Communist parties and organized labor movements. The absence of authority renders revolutionary forces chaotic and vulnerable to counter-revolutionary assaults, aligning with capitalists’ desires to undermine the Left and uphold the bourgeois dictatorship of capital.

Critical Theory perhaps has some merit in scrutinizing ideology as a tool of domination. But the Frankfurt School deliberately obfuscates the role of class in analysis and portrays Critical Theory as immune to ideology. The capitalist class crafted Compatible Leftism as an ideological weapon to safeguard their control over the working class, neutralizing the Communist threat and upholding capitalism. It’s our duty as Communists to uphold the revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism and consign the regressive ideology of the Compatible Left to its proper place in the dustbin of history.

*    *    *

Some may be quick to believe that the New Left is entirely to blame on the Frankfurt School, with its identitarianism and “Anything But Class” analysis. There is a point to be made here, but the Frankfurt theoreticians had differing views on the New Left which emerged in the 1960s. Theodor Adorno believed that the progressive student movements at the time could lead to “left fascism,” going as far as to call the cops on students who protested at the Institute for Social Research, including one of his own students.[20] Herbert Marcuse, however, was much more openly sympathetic to the social movements of the ‘60s and had influenced various noteworthy left-wing activists of that time period.

Many supporters of Marcuse willfully overlook his involvement in United States intelligence, focusing instead on his supposedly revolutionary advocacy. An article published in CounterPunch titled “What’s Behind the Recent Attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” described Marcuse as “a staunch advocate of movements for revolutionary change, a Marxist critic of capitalism, and firm supporter of African American liberation and feminism,” going on to praise him for being “[h]ated by both Soviet Communists and the Vatican, [and] adored by revolutionaries around the world”.[21]

Following the logic of Marcuse and his fans leads to some particularly reactionary conclusions. It’s ironic that For Marcuse to work for the precursor to the CIA—the US Office of Strategic Services—and trash the greatest threat to US imperialism at the time – the Soviet Union – is “revolutionary.” But for the USSR to ensure the full participation of women in society, to call on the international community to condemn the horrendous acts of racism against Black Americans, and to participate in the African decolonization struggles are all acts of “totalitarianism.” It is no surprise that capital and its faithful servants continue to push such propaganda.

Marcuse and Petty Bourgeois Radicalism

After the Black Panther Party split into factions, one headed by Huey P. Newton and the other by Eldridge Cleaver, Henry Winston (CPUSA national chair and an African-American) wrote “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” as a criticism of the ultra-left ideological trends within the Party and their destructive effects.[22] Winston pointed out that the capitalist media had “popularized the caricature of Marxism-Leninism, appearing in the writings of Mao, Trotsky, Marcuse … and others,” and that many New Left radicals had adopted characteristics of this exaggerated image of what a “revolutionary” should be.

Published in 1971, Winston’s description of the ultra-leftists in the Black Panther Party is still quite relevant to the western Left in 2023:

“These Black and white radicals, including Cleaver and Newton, dismissed what they called “orthodox” Marxism. Taking a different direction from [Dr. Martin Luther] King [Jr.] (who promoted working class solidarity, as well as a popular front with the Church and with progressive elements of the middle class), they disdained the working class and glorified the super-”revolutionary” tactics of confrontation by an anarchistic elite. In this way, ultra-”revolutionaries” helped create an atmosphere in which the racist monopolists could falsely portray violence as coming from the Left—and cover up the fact that they themselves are the source of it.”[23] (Our emphasis—Ed.)

CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall wrote “The Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in 1970, highlighting many of the same issues which Winston describes.[24]

This article explained how as class conflicts intensify and the masses become more revolutionary, petty-bourgeois radicalism redirects this energy into futile, short-term endeavors, leading to frustration and demoralization. While not explicitly naming Marcuse, Hall implies that many prominent activists who were influenced by Marcuse introduced his “radical” ideas into revolutionary groups.

Angela Davis: We Remember When You Were A Marxist

Angela Davis, renowned for her feminist and anti-racist activism, studied under Marcuse before joining the Communist Party USA. Both right-wing critics and left-wing Marcuse supporters emphasize this fact to assert Marcuse’s radical Marxism. However, both sides often overlook crucial nuances in Davis’s activist career.

In contrast to many petty-bourgeois radicals, Davis did not overtly reject Communism, but her anti-communism had a subtler, more insidious character. During the era of Glasnost and Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Davis, following Marcuse’s lead, championed the pro-Gorbachev faction within the CPUSA. However, her motivations may have leaned more toward personal gain than Marcuse’s specific grievances against Soviet “totalitarianism”. Gorbachev’s policies were simply more financially appealing than those of Stalin which Marcuse vehemently criticized, and the activism of Davis in following decades has mainly centered around her career in academia. From selling her books and speaking at liberal college campuses, Davis has amassed a net worth of approximately $800,000 as of 2023.[25]

The Committees of Correspondence, formed during the 1991 CPUSA Convention, represented this faction but ultimately failed to steer the CPUSA away from Marxism-Leninism, eventually splitting from the party.[26] They emerged in opposition to Gus Hall and Henry Winston’s “conservative” stance of supporting efforts to preserve the Soviet Union against Gorbachev’s counter-revolution. This group attracted various liberal and “democratic socialist” elements within the CPUSA,[27] prioritizing surface-level identity politics over meaningful class analysis. Supporters of the Committees of Correspondence often point out their leadership’s greater diversity,[28] as if meeting arbitrary diversity quotas automatically translated into tangible benefits for their “represented” demographics.

Angela Davis’s alignment with the left wing of capital is evident in her history, ranging from supporting market liberalization during the Soviet Union’s final days to urging leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020.[29] She further demonstrates this alignment through her ongoing advocacy for ultra-left ideas, which may be less appealing to the working class but find favor with those who have trust funds and see the hammer and sickle as nothing but a trendy accessory. An example of this is advocating for prison abolition[30] without giving genuine thought to the victims of violent crimes.

Conclusion

Despite the Right’s belief in a radical Marxist takeover of academia, the concept of “Cultural Marxism” fundamentally contradicts Marxism itself. Critical Theory seeks to shift the discourse from class analysis to discussions of authority and culture. Key figures in the Frankfurt School played roles in producing and spreading anticommunist propaganda. And Marcuse’s influence on the Western Left has perpetuated the misconception that communists are elitist and disconnected from the working class. Today, we face a critical juncture in history. Western living standards are declining, multipolarity challenges US hegemony, and capitalists hope to confine communism to academic and niche social media circles. It is imperative for Communists to avoid repeating the New Left and modern CPUSA’s mistake of embracing a carefully crafted “revolutionary” ideal propagated by the ruling class and academia.

[1] Critical Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). ( March 8, 2005).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

[2] Geuss, Raymond, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1981.

[3] Müller-Doohm, Stefan, Adorno: A Biography; Polity: Cambridge, 2005, p. 181.

[4] Fries, U. (2021). “Ende der Legende Hintergründe zu Walter Benjamins Tod” in Germanic Review, 96(4), 409–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/00168890.2021.1986802

[5] Adorno’s letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, in Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 110.

[6] Jeffries, Stuart, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School; Verso: London. 2016, p. 136.

[7] Solty, I. (February 15, 2020). “Max Horkheimer, a teacher without a class.” Jacobin.

https://jacobin.com/2020/02/max-horkheimer-frankfurt-school-adorno-working-class-marxism

[8] Cavin, S. Adorno. Lazarsfeld & The Princeton Radio Project, 1938-1941.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/151660755/Adorno-Lazarsfeld-The-Princeton-Radio-Project-1938-1941#

[9] Herbert Marcuse official website. https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/

[10] John J. McCloy. (August 25, 2023). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._McCloy#US_High_Commissioner_for_Germany

[11]Saunders, F. (October 22, 1995). “How the CIA used modern art during the cultural Cold War”, Sott.net.

https://www.sott.net/article/413324-How-the-CIA-used-modern-art-during-the-cultural-Cold-War

[12] Script for Turandot by Bertolt Brecht. https://www.scribd.com/document/389599206/Turandot-Bertolt-Brecht-pdf#

[13] Gebhardt, W. (June 17, 2020). “The dark legacy of sexual liberation in Germany”, dw.com.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-allowed-pedophiles-to-foster-children/a-53839291

[14]Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949-1950 – CIA.

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-38-no-5/origins-of-the-congress-for-cultural-freedom-1949-1950/

[15] Saunders, Francis Stoner, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters; The New Press: New York, 2013, Chapter 3.

[16]Ibid., p. 148.

[17] Braden, Thomas W. “I’m Glad the CIA is ‘Immoral’.” The Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1967, pp. 10, 12, 14.

[18] Rose, Gillian, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno; Columbia University Press: New York, 1979, p. 2.

[19]Collomp, Catherine, “Anti-Semitism among American Labor: a study by the refugee scholars of the Frankfurt School of Sociology at the end of World War II”, Labor History, 52(4), 2011, pp. 417–439.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2011.632513

[20] Romano, Carlin,  “The Agitation of Adorno”, The Chronicle., June 20, 2008.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-agitation-of-adorno/

[21] Katsiaficas, George, “What’s behind the recent attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” CounterPunch.org, December 15, 2021. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/17/whats-behind-the-recent-attacks-on-herbert-marcuse/

[22] Winston, H. (1971, August). “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” in The Communist, Vol 2, 2022 pp. 17-37.

[23] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[24] Hall, Gus, “Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in The Communist, Vol 2., 2022, pp. 43.-51.

[25] https://pennbookcenter.com/angela-davis-net-worth/

[26] Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line. (February 1, 1992). CPUSA breaks apart (P. Saba, Ed.). Marxists Internet Archive.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/mlp-cpusa-split.htm

[27] Struggle for Democratic Socialism. (July 23, 1994). [Video]. C-SPAN.org.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?59374-1/struggle-democratic-socialism

[28] Marquit, E., & Marquit, D. G. (1992, February 19). Party survives, but as a shell.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070311011756/http://www.mndaily.com/daily/gopher-archives/1992/02/19/Party_survives%2C_but_as_a_shell.txt

[29] Telusma, B. (July 14, 2020). Angela Davis backs Biden because he ‘can be most effectively pressured’ by the left. TheGrio.

https://thegrio.com/2020/07/14/angela-davis-backs-biden/

[30]            Kelly, K. (2019, December 26). What the Prison-Abolition movement wants. Teen Vogue.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-prison-abolition-movement

The post On The Frankfurt School appeared first on The Communist.

The lack of class-oriented trade unionists stems from the capitalist led McCarthyite purge of Communists and class-oriented unionists within our unions after WWII. The vacuum left by the purges was filled with a terrible swarm of charlatans,  mobsters, and reactionary elements who descended on our unions and did everything they could to make sure that American labor would not regain the strength it once had. With no strong Communist guidance our unions floundered and decayed, culminating in their absolutely pitiful representation of just 10.8% of American workers. A figure which is nearly the same as in the period of American labor history before the creation of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This low figure is not from a lack of interest in union representation (in a recent Gallup poll, 67% of Americans supported unions), but from an inability to achieve it. That means that the momentous achievement of union representation backed by federal legislation and recognized as a constitutionally protected right has been all but neutered.

Federal recognition meant increasingly stronger federal oversight and interference in unions. The bosses were forced to recognize our unions but since they still control the government, they knew that in the long run they would take control of the unions away from class-oriented workers and render them toothless.

Once unions were federally recognized and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed,  the State Department began to support right-wing candidates for union leadership, ultimately resulting in the expulsion of class-oriented trade unionists from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO right after WWII. The State Department did this so that it could use the unions as tools of US Foreign Policy, and prevent the unions from being influenced by foreign unions. This change in the leadership of the unions prevented US labor from affiliating with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), of which the CIO was a founding organization. This change in leadership was accomplished through the passage of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, more commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, which among other anti-union statutes, forced union leadership to sign anti-Communist affidavits effectively banning Communists from union leadership. Unions who refused to honor this stipulation were expelled from the CIO. In the case of the United Electrical Workers (UE), the CIO in conjunction with the State Department, General Electric and Westinghouse corporations led a dual-unionist campaign to replace UE as the union representative in their factories.

Today, with such close connections among  the AFL-CIO, US State Department and the Department of Labor, many “leaders” of labor were quick to announce support for the fascist government of Ukraine. The US State Department is using our unions to give a veneer of union backing to those thugs, who have led a massive anti-union campaign in the Ukraine, including the notorious House of Trade Unions massacre that took place in Odessa in 2014.[1]  We believe that the rank-and-file see through all those maneuvers. US involvement in Ukraine is an imperialist attempt to privatize Ukraine and balkanize Russia.

Many groups in the labor movement today claim to be trying to win back our unions from the entrenched and corrupt leadership that is primarily supported by the US State Department. Tragically they parrot the same language as the State Department. As reactionaries took leadership of the unions, the government cultivated “left” groups who they knew would promote instability and confusion in the labor movement through operation COINTELPRO.[2]

The effect of COINTELPRO is still felt today. Many of these “leftists”  are just reactionaries turned inside out. They are two sides of the same coin. They promote sectarianism, a holier than thou attitude and a general disdain for discipline, organization, and the working-class generally. They end up being useful tools for the bosses. Take for example the “Reform Caucus” in the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), who sued their own union with frivolous accusations. This caused Amazon to file against ALU in order to invalidate the election at Amazon warehouse JFK8, using the Reform Caucus’ lawsuit as evidence. The difference between the right-wing shills working with the State Department and the “left-wing radicals” is that the right-wing shills are getting paid for their treachery. The “left-wing” fools are wrecking the labor movement without pay.

It is up to all honest hard working people to approach the current situation with class-oriented trade unionism. Don’t let the “left-wing” sectarians gossip and weaken our unions, and don’t let the right-wing stifle democracy either. Now is a time of reflection, of learning, and growth for all of us to find the pathway to bringing a class-orientation back to our unions. It all starts with getting back to the basics, to the fundamentals of why we have unions in the first place, and then fighting for the burning issues of labor today.

History has shown that the only way to achieve these goals is to organize and educate a vanguard of the working-class movement. Willam Z. Foster explains this clearly in “The Principles and Program of The Trade Union Educational League”:

“One of the latest and greatest achievements of working-class thinking … is a clear understanding of the fundamental proposition that the fate of all labor organization in every country depends primarily upon the activities of a minute minority of clear-sighted, enthusiastic militants scattered throughout the great organized masses of sluggish workers. These live spirits are the natural head of the working-class, the driving force of the labor movement. They are the only ones who really understand what the labor struggle means and who have practical plans for its prosecution. Touched by the divine fire of proletarian revolt, they are the ones who furnish inspiration and guidance to the growing masses. They do the bulk of the thinking, working and fighting of the labor struggle. They run the dangers of death and the capitalist jails. Not only are they the burden bearers of the labor movement, but also its brains and heart and soul. In every country where these vital militants function effectively among the organized masses the labor movement flourishes and prospers. But wherever, for any reason, the militants fail to so function, just as inevitably the whole labor organization withers and stagnates. The activities of the militants are the “key” to the labor movement, the source of all its real life and progress.”[3]

[1] see “Ukrainian workers living standards have declined under Fascism,” also in this issue.

[2] COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was an illegal secret FBI operation to infiltrate and disrupt American political organizations, e.g., the CPUSA, labor organizations, the civil rights movement, the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, the New Left and others.

[3] Foster, William Z, “The Principles and Program of The Trade Union Educational League” in The Labor Herald, Vol 1, Issue 1, March 1922, p. 5.

The post Present Day Leadership Bankrupts the American Trade Union Movement appeared first on The Communist.

Furthermore, the Zelensky regime’s Law 5371, passed in 2022, will drive workers’ living standards down even further: it destroys workers’ rights. The International Labor Organization charged that the new legislation “weakens labor protection, narrows the scope of labor rights and social guarantees of employees, in comparison with the current legislation,” in contravention of Ukraine’s obligations to Brussels under the terms of its EU Association Agreement.[2] Andrey Reva, Ukraine’s former minister of social policy, has leveled similar charges: “Employees will no longer have any protection against arbitrary dismissal. Upon hiring, the employee will be asked to sign an employment agreement, which will allow the employer to obtain unilateral advantages during its conclusion and deprive the employee of any legal opportunities for his defense.”

[1] World Bank data. For more discussion of this statistic, cf. Gallagher, Robert L., Aristotle’s Critique of Political Economy; Routledge: London, 2018, chapters 13 and 14.

[2] https://www.sott.net/article/471638-Hidden-Western-hand-behind-new-British-style-Ukraine-anti-worker-laws-exposed-in-leaked-documents?fbclid=IwAR0nA6OmFlojh7yHAQrikUgjafMpL0BkW7AOWaMvukhTvVrDyOiovJQmfKw

The post Ukrainian Workers Living Standards Have Declined Under Fascism appeared first on The Communist.

If the factory construction boom is real and not just hype, it may explain the surprising development that US inflation has receded in the past year though the Federal Reserve Board (hereafter, “the Fed”) has not raised its interest rates above the rate of inflation, the usual requirement for taming inflation and the one employed by Fed chief Paul Volcker in bringing down the rampant inflation of the 1980s. Inflation that was as high as 9.1% last year has declined to 3.2% though the Fed raised rates only as high as 5.25%. In this period, the factory construction boom, already taking off, was injecting real value into the economy; moreover, the anticipation of increased manufacturing output may also have contributed to calming inflation.

As of August 2023, the Fed’s program of increasing interest rates—now holding at the highest rates in 23 years (5.25%)—has strangled annual price inflation down from last year’s high of 9.1% to 3.2% as of July 2023.[2] Happily, the strangulation of credit has not had much effect on jobs, except to slow job growth, especially in manufacturing[3] (though that may turn around with the factory construction boom). At the same time, wages are going up, though not enough to make up for inflation. In July, actual average hourly earnings by “production and non-supervisory employees” rose at an annual rate of 5.5%,[4] after workers were starved by last year’s 9.1% inflation. Nonetheless, Fed chair Jerome Powell says that with inflation coming down, “real wage growth has been increasing.”[5] With interest rates higher, home sales have plunged. In July 2023 actual home sales were down 18% versus a year ago, and mortgage applications also fell which mean sales will fall further next month.[6]

With inflation down near 3% at no cost to jobs, it would seem the crisis of 2021-2022 is over. Why hasn’t the Fed lowered interest rates?

First of all, inflation is expected to accelerate later this year. ^[7] July’s 3.2% increase in the consumer price index (CPI) was the first acceleration in CPI inflation rates since June 2022. The reason for this is that “core CPI” is now increasing faster than the CPI overall. “Core CPI” increased 4.7% in July, higher than the 3.2% increase in CPI overall, and Powell expects it to accelerate more.[8] Core CPI is a measure of underlying inflation that excludes the prices of food and energy products, which gyrate wildly in both directions, says Wolf Richter. “Core CPI” reveals the actual state of affairs: more inflation to come. In addition, energy prices which had been falling, are now on the rise again. Their decline since June 2022 had masked CPI increases. Now that energy prices are on the rise again, they are driving up the CPI.[9] So, Powell is considering another interest rate hike.

We showed in the last issue of The Communist how prices in the USA are lower than they should be due to (imperialist) exploitation of raw materials and labor from other countries.[10] For example, the US Army has been stealing oil from the Syrian Arab Republic since at least 2019, 14.5 million barrels in the first half of 2022, approximately 83% of Syrian output.[11] “We’re keeping the oil, remember that. We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month,” said President Trump in 2019.[12] The Army is also stealing wheat. These commodities enter the US market, whether directly or through the Army, and lower US prices for comparable goods as a result. So, from 2009 to 2020 annual inflation remained below 2.5% per year. In fact, from 1992 to 2020 inflation didn’t go above 3.8% per year.

The US is also looting Europe. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić told Tucker Carlson “that the war in Ukraine, the NATO-led war against Russia, has destroyed the economy of Europe, that the Biden administration’s destruction of Nord Stream is directly or indirectly destroying the German economy, Europe’s largest economy. The consequences of one NATO country effectively attacking another are being felt across Europe,” Carlson paraphrased Vučić’s remarks.[13] As a result, over the first half of the year [2023], 50.6 thousand German companies have already gone bankrupt, Zeit Online reported.[14] A preliminary survey showed that in August 2023 German business activity contracted at the fastest pace for more than three years. The HCOB German Flash Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index, compiled by S&P Global, fell to 44.7 from July’s 48.5, hitting its lowest since May 2020 and confounding analysts’ expectations. A reading below 50 means recession.[15] In the European Union, sanctions against Russia have “killed European competitiveness,” shrinking the EU’s share of global GDP to just 17% – five points down from where it was in 2010, said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto at the Bled Strategy Forum in Slovenia in August 2023.[16]

All this looting of foreign economies causes problems. One result of wrecking the German economy, the former economic powerhouse of Europe, is that Russia’s economy has surpassed Germany’s in size (see Table 1). The simultaneous reemergence of Russia as a world power threatens to cut off US access to raw materials around the world (e.g., Africa, Middle East): the expectation of that happening will raise prices in the USA. This does not mean inter-imperialist rivalry as some have claimed is the nature of the US-Russia relationship. Rather, Russia is simply defending itself and its allies, such as Syria and Ethiopia.

[1]  https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/unpacking-the-boom-in-us-construction-of-manufacturing-facilities/; and also https://wolfstreet.com/2023/09/03/construction-spending-for-factories-soars-after-decades-in-the-doldrums/#comment-540375/

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi; https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/10/end-of-disinflation-honeymoon-cpi-accelerates-yoy-core-services-cpi-accelerates-mom-durable-goods-prices-normalize-at-nosebleed-levels/

[3] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/07/07/long-view-of-job-growth-by-industry-some-gained-jobs-at-others-jobs-got-crushed/

[4] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/21/powells-inflation-nightmare-job-seekers-incl-the-employed-suddenly-expect-massively-higher-wages-in-job-offers/

[5] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/25/powell-smacks-down-calls-to-raise-2-inflation-target-2-is-and-will-remain-our-inflation-target/

[6] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/22/home-sales-plunge-further-as-demand-vanished-at-these-prices-even-cash-buyers-pull-back-supply-keeps-rising/

[7] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/10/end-of-disinflation-honeymoon-cpi-accelerates-yoy-core-services-cpi-accelerates-mom-durable-goods-prices-normalize-at-nosebleed-levels/

[8] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/08/25/powell-smacks-down-calls-to-raise-2-inflation-target-2-is-and-will-remain-our-inflation-target/

[9] https://wolfstreet.com/2023/09/05/gasoline-prices-rise-year-over-year-for-first-time-since-feb-2022-cpi-inflation-to-feel-the-heat-this-year/

[10] Daly, Dr. Robert, “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire” in The Communist Vol. 2, 2022, pp. 62-63.

[11] https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-occupying-forces-steal-more-80-cent-syrias-oil-ministry-says/; https://english.news.cn/20220817/437cb1bd33ea40999cda96c521f31d21/c.html/

[12] https://www.bbc.com/news/50464561/

[13] https://t.me/Slavyangrad/59622

[14] That’s 12% higher than the same period last year.

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/2023-08/statistisches-bundesamt-betriebe-gewerbe-aufgegeben/

[15] https://t.me/rtnews/46647/

[16] https://www.rt.com/news/582058-eu-bad-shape-hungary-ukraine/

The post Factory Construction Boom May Pull US Economy Out of Crisis appeared first on The Communist.

We, the participants in the International Anti-Fascist Forum from the countries of Asia, America and Europe, have gathered in Minsk to say a firm “No!” to war and reaction, neo-Fascism and oppression.

We have met in the land of Belarus, every inch of which has been washed in the blood of millions of the victims of Hitlerism. It is here that in June 1941 began the sacred war of the whole Soviet people against the Black Plague. One in every three citizens of the Byelorussian SSR was killed or tortured to death as a result of the German Fascist aggression.

Nazism was the direct result of the crisis of capitalism. It grew out of the lust of Big Capital to preserve its power over the working people at any cost. To further their selfish ends the imperialists have embarked on the road of supporting the darkest forces.  They brought to power Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and their ideological accomplices. The Nazis turned from a political fringe into makers of destinies of millions of people.

The peoples of the world have no right to forget the experience of the struggle against Fascism. In 1936, with the support of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a civil war broke out in Spain. The people’s power was supported by the USSR and many progressive forces. But at the time Fascism turned out to be stronger. This paved the way for the most horrible war in human history. The final decisive steps were taken towards the furnaces and gas chambers of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, Dachau and Sobibor, Majdanek and Oswiecim. 

The tragic lessons of the past should be well known and always remembered! The world has paid a huge price to rid itself of Nazism. The heroes of that struggle have covered themselves with undying glory: soldiers and officers of the Red Army, Allied warriors, fighters of the People’s Liberation Army of China, member of the French and Italian Resistance, participants in the German anti-Fascist underground, Yugoslav and Korean partisans, Polish and Czechoslovak patriots.

The Red flag over the Reichstag in May 1945 is not only a special fact of the past. The meaning of the Great Victory over Fascism reaches out to the future. It sounds like a tocsin appealing to the hearts of new generations.

Today, like in the 1930s, the black smoke of fascism is spreading over the planet. It overcasts the horizon more and more. People of goodwill must show unity and courage in their decisive struggle.

The situation is extremely alarming. Neo-colonialism is rearing its head in Africa and America. The imperialists are whipping up tensions in Asia. Blood is being shed to the roar of cannon in Europe and other corners of the planet. The misery and suffering of people are multiplying. Once again the moaning of the wounded and croaking of the dying are heard. Sorrowful tears of mothers are flowing. Before our eyes the world is about to fall into a gaping abyss in which the sinister outlines of the swastika are emerging.

The treacherous destruction of the USSR, the country which vanquished Fascism, has stirred the world predators. Global capital sensed total impunity. It is imposing its dictatorship by hideous means. The deadly threat of a Fascist revenge is growing every day. The Nazi beast has licked up its old wounds and is fast gathering strength. Emboldened, it is creeping out of its den in search of new victims.

The world evil came back in a neo-liberal guise. It has created a global system of plundering entire countries and peoples. It has stained itself with aggression against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Attempts have been made to overthrow the legitimate governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Byelorussia. Sanction pressure has been unleashed against the peoples of Russia and China, Cuba and the DPRK. Military threats and political blackmail are resorted to.

On the eve of World War II Hitler’s storm troopers were directed by financial capital. In the 21^st century it is guided by the latter-day Nazis. Fascism, which was vanquished 78 years ago, has not disappeared from the face of the earth because the world oligarchy badly needs its services. That is why Nazi riff-raff march in Vilnius and Tallinn. Books are being burned in Kiev. Monuments to Soviet liberator warriors are pulled down in Warsaw. Euro deputies in expensive suits initiate wicked resolutions trying to equate Hitler’s Nazism to Soviet socialism. The Fascist scum is set to take a historical revenge. Direct support of the USA and its NATO allies has elevated Nazi ideology to government level in Ukraine. For many years, Bandera ghouls have been having a bloody ball in Kiev, tormenting the popular masses. They have: turned Ukraine into a concentration camp for dissenters, have shut down media outlets they do not like, banned opposition activities and launched persecution of communists. Reprisals target all those who have preserved the ideal of the brotherhood of peoples and loyalty to the Great Victory over Fascism. The Nazis burned people alive in Odessa, blew up and shot people from behind the corner. Year in and year out the Azov thugs with a wolf hook on their chevrons terrorized Donbas. Its courageous citizens rose up in a liberation struggle against militarism and neo-Nazism.

Western governments are pumping Bandera Ukraine full of weapons. Zelensky already says he wants to have the nuclear weapon. But NATO has failed to slap him on the wrist. On the contrary, it says it is prepared to transform the Ukrainian army according to its standards. And the imbecile people in London are themselves ready to put shells with depleted uranium in the hands of the neo-Nazi regime.

NATO countries are not only spreading deadly weapons. They have deployed their military bases throughout the world. Four hundred biolaboratories in the USA and other countries are conducting experiments with deadly viruses and bacteria. The consequences of these actions may upset peaceful development of entire states. Moreover, they threaten the whole mankind as a biological species.

The communists have always warned that “Fascism is war.” The course of events confirms this. The answer of the peoples can only be one: the Fascist monster must be destroyed. The bacilli of the brown plague are too dangerous. They should be neutralized confidently and swiftly. The price of unconcern may turn out to be extremely high. The atrocities, condemned in Nuremberg, must not be repeated. We have no right to allow the world reaction to perpetrate new bloody crimes.

The acts and intentions of the imperialist West are soaked in vicious hatred of everything progressive, sovereign and free. Biden and Scholz, von der Leyen and Borrel, Duda and Morawiecki and their ilk are but auxiliary personnel in the system of global dictatorship. Their career prospects are directly determined by their readiness to serve the interests of the world financial oligarchy.

The globalists cover up their actions by pseudo-intellectual studies. They pluck the most reactionary ideas from the theories of Nietzsche, Chamberlain and Gobineau about the “superman” and “race superiority.” They brew their grim cocktail from neo-Malthusianism and post-humanism. They put forward man-hating nonsense about the “priority of technological progress over social development.” They pass off for humanism praise of vices and perversions. Klaus Schwab and his ilk pack the old ideas that inspired Hitler and his accomplices in pseudo-scientific “bioengineering” wrapping.

All this sham “innovation” is hostile to the peoples. It is promoted by those who are afflicted with ethnic and race prejudices, those who desire to take revenge on peoples for the victory over Fascism and colonialism. These circles are possessed by the idea of total control over humankind. Declaring that they cancel the Great Russian culture, they seek to destroy the humanistic culture of the whole world and to throw us back to the times of untold savagery and an electronic concentration camp.

Neoliberalism is a vicious enemy of any independent development and democratic norms. The political forces in the West have degenerated into absolute autocracies. The bourgeois elites have lost touch with the values of freedom and humanism. Their behavior is opening ever wider the doors for neo-Fascism.

Writhing in agony, capitalism is clinging to life at all costs. It is not afraid of a reincarnation of Fascism. The world reaction merely encourages the heirs of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco and Salazar, Antonescu and Mannerheim, Pilsudski and Quisling. They are furiously destroying the memory of the Second World War and falsifying historical facts.

The plans of “a new world order” end up in aggression and conflicts, neo-Fascism and neocolonialism, and the threat of a new world war. The whole world is becoming a battlefield. It is our duty to win this battle in the name of all the best that has been created by world culture, in the name of a worthy future for humankind!

The key to success is the unity and cohesion of the peace-loving forces of the planet. A victorious resistance to world reaction can only succeed if it is worldwide. We are deeply convinced that our international solidarity can safeguard humankind against the Fascist threat and the slide into the abyss of a world war. We declare it firmly here in Byelorussia. On this sacred land the sense of inseparable link between the past, present and future is particularly acute.

Dear friends, in the flaming days of the Second World War a great militant alliance was formed against Fascist barbarism – a union of communists and patriots, fighters against tyranny and democrats. It was created in spite of social and ideological differences, and different political and religious views. This is the bidding of the time. The new era of trials calls for unity of actions of all the people of goodwill.

Let us then unite in the struggle against neo-Nazism, reaction and militarism!

Long live the united front of progressive forces!

Long live the solidarity of the working peoples and nations in the struggle against Fascism!

Do not allow the world to be blown up!¡No pasarán! They shall not pass!

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