Longshoremen walked off the job at 12:01 am October 1^st for a strike that lasted three days. The demands included a 77% pay raise over six years, maintaining ILA jurisdiction, protecting Container Royalties^[1], and no automation of ILA jobs.

Bourgeois Attacks on the Strike

In typical bourgeois fashion, the country was sent into a panic by the three-day strike as the media warned of empty shelves, and a shattered economy in the weeks leading up to the strike. After the devastating Hurricane Helene made landfall in late September, the capitalist-controlled media rushed to further fear-monger about how the strike would “block the recovery” for the hurricane’s victims.

Attacks on the strike escalated against the workers after the New York Post had a field day with the contradictions regarding the bourgeois lifestyle led by ILA President, Harold Daggett.^[2] The bloated salaries and lavish lifestyles of many business unionist bureaucrats, including Daggett, do not reflect the living standards of the rank-and-file members and are used to diminish the workers’ struggle. There will be more on this, what Lenin dubbed the “labor aristocracy,” later.

Fitting in their “exposé”, the NY Post article had no mention of the exorbitant salaries paid out to the CEOs of the port carriers, represented by the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX). USMX is a modern-day cartel aimed at monopolizing control of the East and Gulf Coast ports in the United States. USMX plays a similar role in the collective bargaining process that the National Carriers Conference Committee (NCCC) did in the railroad dispute in 2022.

We also saw the typical attacks from Conservative and Republican Party politicians, and even sections of the Democratic Party as the so-called “party of labor” had its share of attacks on striking dock workers.

Citing an article on the ILA’s website where Daggett showed empathy for Trump after his alleged assassination attempt, many Democratic Party operatives, including former Obama staffer Jon Cooper, attacked the strike as a stunt to damage the economy to get Donald Trump elected. This rhetoric lasted throughout the entire strike, refusing to take into account the union’s attempts at negotiating a new Master Contract well in advance of the prior contract’s expiration. In a statement the ILA released on the first day of the strike, the union noted how negotiations went with the USMX:

“Let’s be clear: the ILA has been fully prepared to negotiate a fair contract since two years before its expiration. USMX’s claim that they are ready to bargain rings hollow when they waited until the eve of a potential strike to present this offer. The last offer from USMX was back in February 2023, and the ILA has been listening to our members’ concerns ever since.”

We cannot also forget the role played by Daggett and the ILA leadership in securing the AFL-CIO endorsement for President Biden in the 2020 election. This endorsement was in doubt after the resolution passed by the AFL-CIO convention in 2017 ending labor’s support for the “lesser of two evils.”^[3]

The Ultra-Left, Objective Agents of the Bourgeoisie, Attack Striking Workers

To be clear, we cannot be surprised by bourgeois attacks on strike actions, even from political operatives of parties that claim to support the labor movement. Those attacks are expected. It’s the attacks by groupings who claim to be “fighters for the working class”, many of whom even call themselves Socialists and Communists who openly attacked the strike, boldly pronounced their position against it, all while claiming to push a “leftist” agenda.

Such a position can be described as nothing short of “left in form, right in essence,” a phrase many of us within the Party of Communists USA (PCUSA) use to describe the various elements of the ultra-left. To understand the nature of these attacks it is important to understand the petty-bourgeois nature of ultra-leftism, no matter what form it may take—i.e., Anarchism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Hoxhaism, generic “Leftism”, Sakaiism, etc.

It must be noted that the basic concept of class struggle has been rejected by the modern ultra-left. We can routinely see these forces attack actual Communists with the phrase “class reductionist” while hiding behind a hammer and sickle. In his work, “Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism”, former CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall noted:

“The very essence of capitalism is class exploitation. It is exploitation of people, again in mass. The essence of any struggle is the class struggle. The central moving force is the exploited class–the working class.”^[4]

He went on to say:

“Petty-bourgeois radicalism as a concept rejects the basic class nature of society and the class struggle as a pivotal element in the fight for progress. It rejects the role of mass movements because it does not see its basic ingredient–the working class. A class approach to struggle is of necessity a mass approach. The petty-bourgeois radical rhetoric is a sanctuary for those who have given up the possibilities of leading masses, and in the first place the working-class masses, in struggle. It is a way of keeping a radical image when in fact one has retreated and given up the struggle.”^[5]

The ultra-left attacks were aimed at the agreement made by ILA leadership to continue moving military cargo during the strike, a practice dating back to strikes as far back as the First World War. The current genocide being waged against the Palestinians by the Netanyahu regime was used as a reason to not back striking workers. The ultra-left even used a statement by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10, backing the blocking of arms shipments to justify their position.^[6] What they left out is that the ILWU, including Local 10, supported the striking ILA workers. This support was carried out in multiple ways. First and foremost, the ILWU respected the ILA picket lines by not unloading cargo diverted to the West Coast ports; the ILWU also sent a contingent of members to join the ILA picket lines.

It must be noted that for the ILA strike to have been most effective, not just for the longshoremen themselves, but for the anti-imperialist struggle, it would have been necessary to block the shipments of military cargo. So this brings us to another criticism the ultra-left had, which was that the strike was merely an economic one. It is easy to criticize the strike for its failure to block the shipment of weapons from the outside, but what is being done to organize and educate these workers politically? The lack of seriousness in these attacks is demonstrated by the ultra-left’s use of J. Sakai’s abomination of a text, Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat.  (See Image )

It is also worth noting that within the framework of the ultra-left position is the rejection of working within the trade union movement. These forces reject the working class in the US as having any revolutionary potential (along the lines of the thesis of Sakai’s Settlers) despite the rise in militancy, and in spite of the fact there is no vanguard to lead the way. What this amounts to is a rejection of Lenin’s thesis that revolutionaries must work within reactionary trade unions to push them left, and to make them a leading force in a future dictatorship of the proletariat. As Leninists we must also remember the wise words of Comrade Lenin in his brilliant polemic against the ultra-left of his time:

“The Party must more than ever and in a new way, not only in the old way, educate and guide the trade unions, at the same time bearing in mind that they are and will long remain an indispensable ‘school of Communism’ and a preparatory school that trains the proletarians to exercise their dictatorship.”^[7]

Comrade Gus Hall further explained plainly why we should not take these attacks seriously:

“Concepts of struggle not based on the above reality will sooner or later come into conflict with it. The advocates of petty-bourgeois radicalism try to bypass this reality. They believe they can avoid the necessary and unavoidable consistent and sustained work, the work of organizing, educating, mobilizing and leading people in mass, of leading people on the level of their understanding, of their own self-interest, and in this sense reflecting the objective processes leading to a revolutionary struggle against capitalism. For this they seek to substitute radical rhetoric with general slogans, or advanced actions that have no relationship to struggles to which the masses do respond. Thus, when the concepts based on unreality meet the reality of class struggle they bounce back. If such tactics are further pursued they become an obstacle to struggle. They become a destructive and divisive force. Organized groups which pursue such policies not only tend to move away from the working class, but they reject mass concepts of struggle altogether.”^[8]

Are the Ultra-Left Correct?

It is worth noting that having the correct ideas is not enough; if they are not applied properly and you are unable to win over the masses, it means nothing. Gus Hall once again said it perfectly:

“The concepts, the ideas, motivating petty-bourgeois radicalism are not necessarily wrong in the abstract. Those who follow wrong concepts, in most cases, are dedicated and sincere individuals. The concepts are wrong when they do not reflect the specific reality of the moment. Therefore, the more determined such individuals are, the more damaging they can be. … [The workers] do not respond to ideas–even good ideas–if they do not see their self-interests involved in these ideas.”^[9]

With this in mind, the ultra-left position in the abstract is a correct one. It is up to the working class to take the fight to imperialism, and blocking military cargo in a time when US imperialists are arming the genocide of the Palestinian people would be at the forefront of this fight. What is missing is the state of the labor movement at present time; we are living in a time where we are working to rebuild our vanguard role in the working-class movement since the post-Gus Hall leadership of the old Party abandoned class struggle for tailism.

Without a Communist presence in the rank and file to build a class-oriented movement we cannot expect the masses, who lack class consciousness, to lead this struggle by themselves. For a strike to lead to a political strug­gle, we must embed ourselves in the rank and file to lead an edu­cation campaign to build the class consciousness of the work­ers.

In laying out the Comintern plan to “bolshevize” the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries, O. Piatnitsky laid out how the Bolsheviks worked within the trade unions:

“… at the very beginning of the development of the labor movement the Bolsheviks established a connection between the economic struggle and the political. When the sentiments of the workers in the factories became favorable towards a strike, the Bolshevik cells immediately placed themselves in the leadership. The strikes in single shops spread to all departments, a strike in a single factory spread to all the other factories, and the strikes of the factory workers, under the influence and leadership of the Bolshevik Party organizations (our emphasis—Ed.), frequently assumed the forms of street demonstrations, and in this way the economic strikes developed into a political struggle.”^[10]

In the immediate lead-up to the strike, Democratic President Joe Biden announced he would not enact the Taft-Hartley act which would have imposed a 90-day “cooling-off period” that would have forced the dock workers back to work until January. There is no doubt that if military cargo was blocked, Biden would have forced this Taft-Hartley cooling-off period on the longshoremen. At the dock worker picket line on the first day of the strike, several rank-and-file members did not express a prior understanding of how the strike can impact the political situation. After some discussion, workers seemed to confirm the idea that shutting down military cargo would have led to Biden enforcing Taft-Hartley on the striking longshoremen. This would have meant the total destruction of the strike itself.

On the ultra-left’s aversion to working within reactionary trade unions, we must note that it is unequivocally wrong for anyone who claims to be a Communist to hold this anti-Leninist position. In talking about the German “Left” in his day, Lenin made it clear:

“In their opinion, decla­mations, and angry ejacu­lations … against ‘reac­tionary’ and ‘counter-rev­olutionary’ trade unions are sufficient ‘proof’ that it is unnecessary and even impermissible for revolu­tionaries and communists to work in yellow, social-chauvinist, compromising, counter-revolutionary trade unions. …

“But however strongly the German ‘Lefts’ may be convinced of the revolutionism of such tactics, these tactics are in fact fundamentally wrong, and amount to no more than empty phrase-mongering.”^[11]

Improving Our Work on Industrial Concentration is Essential to Becoming a Vanguard Party

The ILA strike, in addition to other strikes of recent years, has demonstrated that the labor movement in the United States is ripe for the development of a higher class-consciousness. The ultra-left with their comments against the strike have shown that they will not be able to lead this movement. The vanguard Party which emerges to lead the American labor movement must instead be rooted in the working class through the policy of industrial concentration.

Since our Second Congress, the PCUSA has embarked on a plan of Industrial Concentration. This plan is important for multiple reasons, most notably to increase Communist cadre within the key industries. In order to be the vanguard of the working class, Communists must root themselves in the working class.

It is, however, not enough to push a policy of Industrial Concentration merely for Party building. It is imperative that we build these cadres within the key industries in the United States. Special focus must be made on the industries that have seen an increase of labor militancy within the recent strike wave. These industries include the railroad, automotive, shipping/logistics and specifically the longshore industry as these constitute the most essential foundations of the US imperialist order.

It seems we are still in a stage where Communists do not grasp the importance of an Industrial Concentration policy. We need to increase this understanding, which is why we held the recent Peoples School for Marxist-Leninist Studies class on Industrial Concentration. Also, the PCUSA Labor Commission is working with the Jones-Foster School for Party Education to develop a class to be included in its cadre ascension curriculum.

To help build this understanding, we must look to the former CPUSA Organizational Secretary Henry Winston, who said it best in 1948:

“What is the essence of a concentration policy?

“First of all, it requires a fundamental understanding of the role of the workers in the basic industries, in relation to the working class and the life of the country as a whole. It is precisely these workers employed in the huge plants by the tens of thousands who, as Lenin pointed out, become educated to understand the need for unity, collective action and solidarity by the very process of large-scale production itself. One cannot conceive of successfully building the Progressive Party [or the labor-led anti-monopoly coalition of today—Ed.], of organizing an effective fight against the Draft [conscription], or in defense of civil liberties, a successful fight against war and fascism, unless this section of the working class is fully mobilized. And, of course, one cannot speak of winning the American workers for Socialism without winning the majority of this section of the working class. It is necessary to permeate the entire Party with this consciousness.

“Secondly, such a policy requires the selection of the points of concentration where a base must be secured, if we are to set in motion the entire labor movement. This means knowing which districts must be given major national attention, which industries are key and what plants are decisive. … While we must strengthen the Party in all basic industries, we must particularly select for major concentration such industries as steel, auto, mining, maritime, electrical and railroad. Within these industries we must pursue a policy of concentration in key industrial towns and key plants and departments—with special consideration to the most underpaid sections of the workers, the unskilled and semi-skilled. …

“Thirdly, the full mobilization of the Party is required to achieve the objectives of our concentration policy. Concretely, this means that all Party clubs must have a share in the responsibility for work at the concentration points. Communists in the mass organizations, trade unions, etc., should try to convince these organizations similarly to pursue a concentration policy.

“Fourthly, beginning with the national and state leaderships, the entire Party must be involved in planning, guiding, and assuming systematic control and check-up of concentration objectives. All political and organizational problems must be discussed and reviewed from the standpoint of how to realize them in concentration industries. Systematic discussion of the problems in concentration industries must be organized in the top political bodies of the Party. Our leadership must be unsparing in the allocation of capable forces, finances, literature, and other material assistance.”^[12]

This excerpt comes from Winston’s speech to the 14^th CPUSA Convention. It must be understood that this took place during the early stages of the second “Red Scare” in the United States. Specifically, it came a little more than one year after the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was passed forcing labor leaders to sign affidavits stating they were not members of the Communist Party. To go along with this campaign the business unionists within the CIO worked with the Truman’s Democratic Party administration to purge all militants from their unions under the guise of anti-Communism.

When the CIO was not successful in their purging of Communists in member-unions they purged the unions themselves as they did with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU); International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (Mine Mill); Food and Tobacco Workers (FTA); International Fur and Leather Workers Union (IFLWU) and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union (UE). The CIO even went so far as to work with the State Department and Westinghouse Corporation to create the International United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union (IUE) as a dual union to raid the membership of the UE.^[13]

The Party’s policy of Industrial Concentration has been aimed at rebuilding the influence the Communists once had in the American trade union movement. To this point neither the PCUSA nor the CPUSA has yet been able to reclaim this great legacy. It has not been all failure though, as the CPUSA, under the leadership of Gus Hall, was involved in the expansion of the rank-and-file movement in the 1970s. This involvement started with the Rank and File Conference in Chicago on June 27-28, 1970 which set up the National Coordinating Committee for Trade Union Action and Democracy (TUAD).^[14] Today, the trade union movement is just now beginning to emerge from the lowest point since its inception. Communists now have the opportunity to take the militant rumblings and develop them into a class-oriented force capable of taking on the stranglehold of modern monopoly capital. A well-implemented policy of Industrial Concentration is the only means with which this historic task can be accomplished.

[1] Container Royalties—special payments made to longshoremen to compensate for a decrease in employment opportunities caused by the use of containerized shipping. These payments are calculated based off of tonnage.

[2] https://nypost.com/2024/10/02/business/harold-daggetts-sprawling-nj-mansion-has-bentley-5-car-garage-and-guest-house/

[3] https://aflcio.org/resolutions/resolution-2-independent-political-voice.

[4] Hall, Gus, “Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism”, The Communist, Vol. 2; PCUSA Ideological Department: Seattle, 2022, p. 44.

[5] Ibid., p. 48.

[6] https://www.internationalist.org/ilwu-local-10-calls-for-labor-boycott-arms-to-israel-2405.html.

[7] Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, p. 46.

[8] Hall, Op. Cit., 2022, p. 44.

[9] Hall, Op. Cit., 2022, pp. 43-44.

[10] Piatnitsky, O., The Bolshevization of the Communist Parties in the Capitalist Countries: By Eradicating Social-Democratic Traditions; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2024, pp. 13-14.

[11] Lenin, Op. Cit., 2022, p. 41.

[12] Winston, Henry, “For a Fighting Party Rooted Among the Industrial Workers”, Selected Works of Henry Winston, Vol. 1; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2024, pp. 92-94.

[13] Sears, John Bennett, The Electrical Unions and the Cold War; International Publishers: New York, 2019, pp. 67-72.

[14] Morris, George, Rebellion in the Unions: A Handbook for Rank-and-File Action; New Outlook Publishers: New York, New York, 1971, p. 145.

The post The International Longshoremen’s Association Strike, the Bankruptcy of the Ultra-Left, and the Need for a Policy of Industrial Concentration appeared first on The Communist.

“Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership. … Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.”

For the past few decades, American electoral politics has been shifting evermore rightward while pitting working-class Americans against one another. Today, we see that, just as FDR predicted, the American people have chosen the side of reaction as a result of the worsening economic realities they face.

As Communists, we have a duty to explain the general crisis in the capitalist society and how that creates the conditions for a sharpening of reactionary politics. Furthermore, we will present the labor-led anti-monopoly coalition will be the path for Communists and all progressive Americans to work towards an administration which will be beneficial to the American working class.

Trump: Representative of Monopoly Capital

On November 5, 2024, real estate billionaire Donald Trump was elected as the 47^th President of the United States of America. Trump was elected based on a belief that he would bring about a more prosperous economy for working people who have suffered under the post-COVID inflation of the Biden administration. However, as shown by his previous term, Trump, as a  member of the reactionary monopoly capitalist class will not come close to satisfying any of the criteria which Communists put forward for support of a candidate, namely, support for labor, anti-racism, and anti-imperialism.

In terms of organized labor, while the leadership of almost all AFL-CIO unions endorsed the Democratic Party in the 2024 election, the reality among the rank-and-file was significantly different. Many American workers think that Trump’s anti-immigrant policies will make the job market be more in their favor, making it easier for them to find and keep work.

In reality, Trump has been, and will be, as antagonistic to organized labor as any monopoly capitalist would be expected to be. Donald Trump has refused to guarantee that he will veto right to work legislation, as the Teamsters have called for. His appointees in the Supreme Court are likely to rule the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) unconstitutional in the pending Amazon v. NLRB case, which would be a massive step backwards for labor’s right to organize in America. Recently, Elon Musk, who has sued to throw out the NLRB, has been named to the leadership of Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency.” This organization will likely push deregulation, including labor standards like OSHA and NLRB regulations that protect labor unions.

On the issue of oppressed peoples, Trump has already made openly xenophobic comments during the 2024 presidential race itself. In his speeches, Trump has attempted to stir reactionary anti-immigrant sentiments by falsely stating that Haitian immigrants were “eating pets.”

Furthermore, on the issue of LGBT+ rights, Trump has promised that his administration will rescind federal policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and will assert that federal civil rights laws do not cover anti-LGBT+ discrimination. Already, Trump has stated he will introduce a day-one bill recognizing only male and female genders. He has stated, “We will promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique.”

There are some on the Left who claim that Trump will be better than Harris would have been when it comes to the issues of war and imperialism. However, the reality is that Trump shows many of the same issues in this area.

On the issue of Israel-Palestine, Trump is a good friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently waging a genocide on the Palestinian people in Gaza. Trump has called for the recognition of the whole of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and he has derailed the road to a US-recognized Palestinian state by unilaterally moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This is contrary to the UN position of including East Jerusalem in Palestine. Furthermore, Trump has stated that he will install Mike Huckabee, a prominent Christian Zionist who is fully opposed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, as the ambassador to Israel.

Furthermore, Trump has already signaled that he will be just as hawkish on People’s China as the Democratic Party would be, which is particularly important in the context of the potential upcoming conflict involving the Chinese province of Taiwan. As a representative of monopoly capital, his interest is in removing America’s dependency on the Chinese semiconductor industry.

There are some ultra-left forces in the US, especially the so-called “MAGA Communists”, which have, through their actions, objectively endorsed Trump as “the lesser of two evils” for President in 2024. However, the reality is that a Trump Administration would be just as, if not more, detrimental to the cause of labor, anti-imperialism, and anti-racism as the Democratic Party will be.

Despite all of Trump’s drawbacks, he was still elected over the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. The American people indicated through their vote that they were unhappy with the Biden administration, and that they were looking for a change. Because no viable progressive Democratic Party alternative was presented, the people instead moved to the right, towards Trump.

What is to Be Done?

The International Communist Movement throughout its history has been successful when it was able to identify the primary contradictions in society. From these contradictions the communists then clearly forge a path that exploits the divisions within the camps of the working class’ enemies.

From 2016 onward, we have seen such a division within the big bourgeoisie. The conservative bourgeoisie has a desire to shift American politics to the extreme right whereas the liberal bourgeoisie is struggling to hold onto old methods to preserve the status quo. We can see that while liberal Democrat voters may have a desire to preserve democracy, it is clear the Democratic Party leadership will not be willing to do what needs to be done to preserve the Union. Communists must understand this while helping to lead the Anti-Monopoly coalition. Through a well-organized leadership of the American working class, the pro-democratic sentiment that liberal Democrats hold can be preserved.

As the rank-and-file of the trade union movement begins to understandably turn away from the Democratic Party, Communists must work to halt and reverse the growth of reactionary politics (i.e., extreme conservativism) within the American working class and steer them in a progressive direction. In order to do this, we will need to return to the days of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) when all American unions had a class-oriented political education.

This also means the creation of independent political action in the form of the anti-monopoly coalition led by organized labor. The heart of this movement will be a rank-and-file-led class-oriented trade union movement uniting all progressive elements of society.

Communists have historically been instrumental in the development of independent, progressive political action in the United States. This has been exemplified with Communist participation in the Progressive Party and Henry Wallace’s campaign for President in 1948. The Communist Party activity within the Progressive Party demonstrated the commitment to coalition building with all progressive forces. This was also called the Center-Left Coalition, especially under the leadership of Comrade Gus Hall.

The Communist Party also worked with and supported Congressman Vito Marcantonio, a member of the American Labor Party from the State of New York. Marcantonio was the only elected representative in Congress who stood up and voted against US interventionism in the Korean War. The Communist Party also backed Marcantonio because of his pro-Puerto Rican immigration policies which reflected his progressive ideology.

As the Third Congress of the Party of Communists USA affirmed:

“We call for the formation of an Anti-Monopoly Coalition as the specific form that the Popular Front will take in the USA. This will be composed of all democratic and anti-imperialist forces, including the progressive elements of the labor movement, the anti-war/peace movements, local progressive forces, and emerging third-party electoral formations which oppose US imperialism and monopoly capital.”

In today’s world, new opportunities are emerging to work with organized labor outside of the two-party duopoly. The United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Worker’s Union of America (UE) has recently condemned the anti-labor activities of the picks of the Democratic and Republican Parties, and called for the creation of a labor party in the United States.

Furthermore, the Teamsters, the Firefighter’s Union, and Local 3000 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) have all chosen to not endorse either major presidential candidate. This behavior marks a shift away from the support for the Democratic Party as a party of labor, and a realization that it has become a party of big business. Now, some in organized labor are going to begin to realize that they need a party of their own. What can be clearer than to see Trump flying the unelected billionaire Elon Musk, who represents only himself and his own profits, out around the world to meet with foreign leaders on the behalf of Americans? We have seen that the people are no longer interested in following the two-party duopoly. The American people are now beginning to see that there is in reality only one major American political party, and that is the money party of monopoly capital. From November 6, the day after the election, onward, the job of American Communists is to work tirelessly and start building the anti-monopoly coalition based in organized labor.

The post The 2024 Presidential Election: Where Do We Go From Here? appeared first on The Communist.

There are differing factors that led Trump to win the 2016 election, such as the unpopularity of the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton and the perception that Trump was an “outsider” from DC-Beltway politics (though Trump is a member of the capitalist class, don’t think otherwise). However, Trump’s rhetoric continued beyond his election.

The phrase “MAGA” came to represent an idea of bringing America back to a former greatness which is exemplified by an idealized vision of America’s past. This nostalgic vision forgets that America’s past has included the following: slavery, Jim Crow, indigenous genocide, McCarthy-ism, concentration camps for the Japanese, repression of LGBT+ and Women, and more. In short, though America has had progressive ideas, it has never been “great.”

In reality, the MAGA movement under Trump’s first term led to the emboldening of reactionary, quasi-fascist movements, including the march of white nationalists in Charlottesville, a rise in reactionary thought movements like Q-Anon, and a further shifting of politics to the right where religious white nationalists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who initially found their footing in the Tea Party movement, became acceptable public figures.

But how did Communism get mixed up in this? MAGA Communism has its origins in online areas where right-leaning streamers took the ideals of “MAGA” and dressed them in a veneer of Communism and began to spout the idea that “Communism will make America great again”. Its origins include online personalities like Haz Al-Din and Jackson Hinkle, later promoted by other terminally online groups like the Midwestern Marx Institute and others.

A few threads tie them together. All of these groups and people have an uncritical view of present-day capitalist Russia, underlying socially conservative ideas like believing women should be stay-at-home mothers and slandering of the LGBT+ movement under the guise of so-called “family values.” All speak positively of Russia, but hardly ever the Soviet Union. They praised Maduro, including when he attacked opposition groups which included the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). There is nearly zero mention of either Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin. These groups are social chauvinists who opportunistically tail the masses, and their ideology appears closer to Strasserism and National Bolshevism than Communism. Finally, they ideologically praise right-wing demagogues like Alexander Dugin and Lyndon LaRouche.

Strasserism and MAGA Communism: Two Peas in a Pod

This new obscure political trend, MAGA Communism, through its reactionary policies and vague platform, leads the working class into supporting billionaire populists like President Trump against sections of the working class and the downtrodden masses. In fact there are parallels between MAGA Communism and the so-called National “Socialism” of the Strasserist variety.

Strasserism draws its name from its founders, the brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, who were seen as the “left-wing” of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), also known as the Nazi Party of Germany. To understand the comparison drawn between Strasserism and MAGA Communism, we need to understand what Strasserism was in its essence.

Strasserism as a political movement was the expression of the dissatisfied petty-bourgeoisie (small entrepreneurs), who after WWI were unable to sell their goods, as wages for the working class had dropped to poverty levels and inflation made the German Mark basically worthless. Workers were permanently removed from industry and thus relegated to the underbelly of society as de-classed to the status of lumpenproletariat. These de-classed workers, reduced to fighting for their daily survival, became a breeding ground for the radicalism of this reactionary movement. Even certain sections of the proletariat, being driven from Marxism-Leninism due to the prevailing anti-Communist sentiment and suppression, were also absorbed into the reactionary radical movement. Strasserism purported to build a “socialism” that rejected the proletarian internationalism and materialist philosophy of Bolshevism in favor of an emphasis on the spiritual superiority of the Christian Germanic values.

The base of MAGA Communism is not as well-known as of now but what is known is that the origins of MAGA Communism reside in a group of online personalities such as Haz Al-Din whose infamy is derived from his YouTube platform, Infrared, and Jackson Hinkle, known for  being host of the YouTube channel Deep Dive with Jackson Hinkle. These individuals developed their platform by appealing to the backwards views (as Lenin called them) of the dispossessed. Such rallying points include their anti-LGBT+ scapegoating, going so far to say the LGBT+ movement is the new Nazi movement. Further discussion of the reactionary social policies of the MAGA Communist movement will be in another section. In a debate on the male chauvinist podcast called Fresh and Fit^[1], MAGA Communist leader Haz Al-Din claims that private enterprise is compatible with Communism so long as it “benefits the goal of the country or ultimate goals of the Party.” This is reminiscent of an excerpt from Otto Strasser’s Germany Tomorrow:

“The exchange will not be effected in accordance with the arbitrary wishes of the individual producers, but in accordance with a plan drafted to suit the needs of the State, and this will involve the existence of a State monopoly of foreign trade. Such a State monopoly will not (as does the Russian) aim at itself conducting the foreign trade, but will merely supervise, and give licenses for export to such persons as may need them..” ^[2]

Strasserism, though rejecting the racial theories of the Hitlerites, manifested anti-Semitism in the form of “economic anti-Semitism.” The anti-Jewish sentiment of the Strasserites was based on the idea that the Jewish people were inherently bourgeois and financial elites who were the cause of the economic crisis that shocked Germany and the capitalist world in general. According to Gregor Strasser himself:

“Down with the slavery of capitalism! Down with bloodsucking international world finance! Down with their leaders, their spokesmen, their henchmen: nationally-poisonous Judaism! [Our emphasis—Ed.] Long live the National Revolution! Long live the Social Revolution! Long live their common goal: The common front of productive national labor as the community of all productive German folk-comrades, united in the coming, salvation-bringing National Socialist state.” ^[3]

It is clear from this quote that the Strasserites believed that the Jewish people were a financial elite that were by their nature a parasitic class. This idea of Jewish elitism “pulling the strings of society” is not new and has its origins in the myth that the Jewish people as a collective killed Jesus Christ. Today, even MAGA Communist leaders such as Jackson Hinkle echo these scapegoating views. In the tweet shown below, while criticizing the Israeli government for its war crimes, he could not help but take a jab at Jews, which is obvious to deduce given that Zionism did not exist at the time of Jesus Christ.

Though these elements claim to pursue a socialist end, it could never come to fruition with their base among the dying petty-bourgeois class. As Karl Marx clearly stated in the Manifesto of the Communist Party:

“In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange, within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.”^[4]

In essence, Marx shows that the petty bourgeoisie, being an appendage of the bourgeoisie, can only serve ends that restore capitalist property relations. For this reason, and for the reason that the petty bourgeoisie is a class that is condemned to vanish as contradictions in capitalism sharpen, Strasserism and MAGA Communism can only serve the interests of the big bourgeoisie, in this case the most reactionary elements of finance capital, i.e., fascism. This is seen in the example of the Nazi Party, which started as a grouping of disgruntled elements and later served as a vehicle for the Monopolists and a hotbed for their reactionary methods.

Lyndon LaRouche: Ideological Father of MAGA Communism

The MAGA Communist movement from its inception has worked closely with followers of Lyndon LaRouche and its Schiller Institute organization, despite LaRouche’s history of blatant anti-communism.

Jackson Hinkle, MAGA Communist leader, spoke at the Schiller Institute Conference in October of 2022, where he stated:

“Lyndon LaRouche, for those of you who don’t know him, was a great visionary, ran for President, a great thinker … He was involved in many presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, in advising them on complex foreign policy matters. He envisioned a world in which … we would, as humans, tap into our unlimited potentiality for growth, and creativity, and build a brighter future by working with the economic powerhouses of the world, the commodities producers of the world, to produce a more prosperous environment for all.”^[5]

Furthermore, Haz Al-Din of Infrared has stated that he considers LaRouche to be “one of the most, if not the most, profound theorist and thinker [sic] of policy in the modern age.”

These are strange views indeed from people who claim to be Communists, given the views which were brought forth by LaRouche and the history of his organization and its activities.

LaRouche began his political life as a Trotskyite, joining the Socialist Workers Party in 1948. Later, he briefly joined the Spartacist League (another Trotskyite organization) before announcing his intention to build a “Fifth International.”

In the 1970s, LaRouche organized the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). This group was initially closely associated with the New Left – and thus petty-bourgeois radical – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). After being expelled by the SDS, the NCLC abandoned any pretense of Marxism-Leninism and quickly became explicitly anti-Communist and anti-Soviet.

The NCLC was, beyond being just a political organization; it was a cult, where members gave up their jobs to devote themselves totally to the cause. They believed that the NCLC would imminently take over the trade union movement and from there proceed to overthrow the American government.

The NCLC membership’s cultish devotion to LaRouche soon manifested in physical violence against their opposition. This began with fights that broke out against Mark Rudd’s faction of Students for a Democratic Society, and later culminated in the infamous “Operation Mop-Up.” Operation Mop-Up was an attack intended to dispose of the “stinking corpse” of the Communist Party USA, whereby Jewish members of the CPUSA were targeted and physically assaulted with lead pipes wrapped in newspapers by members of the NCLC. This act highlights the anti-Semitism which is present within both the LaRouche movement and within MAGA Communism as a whole.

In addition to these acts of physical violence, LaRouche also endorsed “psywar techniques” to be used against his detractors and opponents on the Left. It was a common tactic for targets to be accused of homosexuality in an attempt to ruin their reputation. This is reflected in the chauvinism and homophobia of the modern MAGA Communist movement, which tails many of the most reactionary views against LGBT+ liberation found today.

After the failure of the NCLC, the LaRouche movement formed a front group called the US Labor Party as a platform for La-Rouche’s Presidential ambitions. LaRouche’s characteristic cult methods continued, and even intensified, in this formation. Members were subject to “ego-stripping” and brainwashing sessions, and they were made to place their savings and possessions in the hands of the party to increase its control over them. While the US Labor Party initially preached “Marxist revolution”, it quickly shifted to the far-right, rubbing shoulders with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the rightist Liberty Lobby. The Liberty Lobby defended the US Labor Party on the basis that it had “confused, disoriented, and disunified the Left,” just as the MAGA Communist movement stands to do today.

Later, in the 1980s, the Schiller Institute formed in West Germany to spread LaRouche’s ideology even further. The Schiller Institute continued LaRouche’s anti-Sovietism, going so far as to accuse the 1984 Democratic Party presidential candidate Walter Mondale of being a “Soviet agent.” The Schiller Institute also supported Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (often called the “Star Wars program”), which sought to develop laser weapons to be deployed to space to further pressure the Soviet Union, in addition to the nuclear arms race which was instigated by the United States government.

LaRouche would later claim to have invented the Strategic Defense Initiative, and this was extended to his so-called “Biological Strategic Defense Initiative”, whereby he proposed quarantining people who had been infected by HIV in the 1980s. LaRouche’s unscientific claim that HIV could be spread as easily as the common cold was a thinly veiled pretext for the rampant homophobia expressed by his initiative.

Today, the Schiller Institute is alive and well, having recently ran Diane Sare as their candidate for New York Senator in 2024. MAGA Communist figures like Jackson Hinkle continue their association and praise of the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche movement to the present day.

The history of the LaRouche movement is marked by chauvinism, anti-Semitism, anti-environmentalism, and anti-Communism. The fact that the leaders of the MAGA Communist movement have given such praise to LaRouche and the Schiller Institute should be taken as a warning to the true nature of their ideology.

Strange Bed-Fellows: Alexander Dugin and MAGA Communism

In addition to their idolization of LaRouche, leaders of the MAGA Communist movement have also identified themselves as followers of Alexander Dugin, supporter of the Russian Tsarist monarchy who endorsed the anti-Communist propaganda of Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Again, an examination of Dugin’s thought, as stated in his own words, will be enlightening as to the actual ideology of the MAGA Communists.

The Fourth Political Theory by Alexander Dugin claims “there is no difference between capitalism, socialism, or communism”. All require rules and regulations that can run over “traditional values” in their wake. “The way out of this dilemma is to achieve freedom. But not a freedom confined to one set of rules and regulations or constitutions.”

Dugin considers liberalism a culprit in the degradation of current social forces by “repudiating practically all social political institutions, right up to the family and sexual differentiation”. Another culprit is the “theory of progress” that “has caused the loss of traditional values sacrificed on the altar of progress, and thereby have just created another form of social and economic slavery”. This shows that the MAGA Communists  are an American branch of Dugin’s reactionary thinking.

The MAGA Communists also consistently preach of social conservatism^[6], similar to this passage from Dugin himself:

“We must also abandon the philosophy of development and propose the following slogan: life is more important than growth. Instead of the ideology of development, we must place our bets on the ideology of conservatism and conservation. However, we not only require conservatism in our daily lives, but also philosophical conservatism. We need the philosophy of conservatism.”[7]

Haz Al-Din has openly praised Dugin as “one of the most powerful minds of our era,”^[8] going as far as saying that “Marxist theory in the West is meaningless without the aid of Dugin and Heidegger’s [a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party] thinking.”^[9] The same Dugin whose goal is to remove materialism from Socialism:

“If we free socialism from its materialist, atheistic and modernist features, we arrive at a completely new kind of political ideology. We call it the Fourth Political Theory, or 4PT. …”[10]

Dugin continues with his anti-Communism with:

“… (The first being liberalism, that we essentially challenge, the second being the classical form of communism, the third being national-socialism and fascism). Its elaboration starts from the point of intersection between different anti-liberal political theories of the past (namely communism and the Third way theories). So we arrive at the national-bolshevism that represents socialism without materialism, atheism, progressivism, and Modernism …”[11]

MAGA Communists have thus far focused their attacks on liberalism and other progressive movements including the LGBT+ movement, Starbucks union organizing, and others. Given their parallels to Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, we wonder who they’re going to attack next.

Alexander Dugin concluded with, “I sincerely believe that the Fourth Political Theory, and its secondary variations, National Bolshevism and Eurasianism, can be of great use for our peoples, our countries, and our civilizations.” This would be in line with the common thread among MAGA Communists who largely are active in support of the non-Soviet Russophile movement based in the concept of Eurasianism.^[12]

Though Dugin claims to transcend all other political ideologies, Lenin made it clear that:

“Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is — either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a ‘third’ ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.”[13]

MAGA Communism: Center of Social Chauvinism

Leadership of the movement such as Haz and Hinkle, along with their followers, are very anti-LGBT. They justify their bigotry by claiming that acceptance of LGBT people is a sign of “western bourgeois decadence” and compatible with fascism. They ignore socialist countries which have pro-LGBT policies, such as Cuba, Vietnam and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Instead, they focus on instances of LGBT people being repressed in socialist countries. For instance, Hinkle posted a video of a Chinese police officer berating a man for wearing a skirt with the caption “China is a moral nation.”[14]

Women are hardly represented in the MAGA Communist movement, apart from the “Hegelian e-girls,” who could hardly be considered followers of socialism as they tout Hegel, not Marx. Prominent figures of MAGA Communism do not advocate for the rights of working women. Instead, they push a regressive position on the traditional role of the woman as a homemaker and child bearer. They obsess over masculinity and speak as guests on podcasts of right-wing figures who tout misogyny to promote “traditional masculinity” (such as Fresh and Fit, mentioned above).

The movement is led by overtly anti-Semitic individuals. Many claim to be pro-Palestine, though they focus less on the Palestinian liberation movement and more on directing hatred towards Israel and Jewish people. Online posts in these circles about the topic of Israel have anti-Semitic dog whistles. One such dog whistle is the “clown world” conspiracy theory, claiming that the government (or the world) is run by Jewish people. They spout the rhetoric of the Catholic church, that “Jews killed Christ.”

All of this is MAGA Communism, a movement that is left in form, right in essence. MAGA Communism furthermore appears to have, as Comrade Gus Hall would say, a “whiff of fascism”, and while Communist Parties worldwide shout “Workers and Oppressed people of the World Unite”, MAGA Communists are petty-bourgeois radicals who through an opportunistic approach to organization confuse the working class and disarm them against fascism. We see that MAGA Communism has many similarities with right-wing, even fascist, forces while using revolutionary phrase-mongering. Time will tell if such “Communist” demagogues will fall into the “Graveyard of [so-called] Communist groups” splattered across the landscape.

[1] https://youtu.be/iww_kD6ZQhA?t=3314

[2] Strasser, Otto, Germany Tomorrow; Jonathan Cape: London, 1940, p. 139.

[3] Strasser, Gregor, “The Slave-Market of Capitalism”. August 23, 1926.

[4] Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick, The Communist Manifesto; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, p. 41.

[5]https://larouchepub.com/pr/2022/20221102_hinkle.html

[6] https://x.com/InfraHaz/status/1495363547240538118

[7] Dugin, Alexander, The Fourth Political Theory; The Eurasian Movement: Moscow, 2012, p. 62.

[8] https://x.com/InfraHaz/status/1766211760770429035. (See Image 3)

[9] https://x.com/InfraHaz/status/1672279455732215809. (See Image 4)

[10] Ibid., p. 205.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Eurasianism — is a socio-political movement in Russia that emerged in the early 20^th century under the Russian Empire, it states that Russia does not belong in the “European” or “Asian” categories but instead to the geopolitical concept of Eurasia and the “Russian world”, forming an ostensibly standalone Russian civilization. The goal of the Eurasianists was the unification of the main Christian churches under the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.

[13] Lenin, V.I., What is to Be Done?; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2023, pp. 51-52.

[14] https://x.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1842506425639297315.

The post “MAGA Communism”: A Whiff of Fascism appeared first on The Communist.

Careening down narrow mountain roads, you are a passenger in a vehicle driven by a madman whose every move brings you closer to disaster. That’s the West’s economy and its stewards in a nutshell. Maybe collapse will be avoided by the time this article appears, but it’s not guaranteed.

The US Federal Reserve (hereafter, “the Fed”) has been increasing the money supply at a fantastic rate since the year 2000 to fund banks and investment houses to buy stocks, bonds and other financial assets and real estate for themselves and their wealthy clients under the Fed’s outrageous “Wealth effect” policy.^[1] In October 2019 this game produced yet another crisis in the “Repo” financial market, like the one that brought down the economy in 2008. The Fed tried to bailout the Repo market but the market kept exploding (see Figure 1). Finally, in March 2020 the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) together with the lockdowns calmed markets as the Fed flooded the world with still more trillions, rapidly, in the biggest bank bailout ever. The flood of money has brought inflation to the US and the rest of the Western world, measured in July 2022 as 8.3% in the USA,^[2] 10.9% in Germany,^[3] the sort of inflation normally restricted to developing countries. This inflation is the smoke from the raging fire of a severe economic crisis still in progress. Let’s review the background.

The top curve of Figure 2 shows the fantastic growth in wealth of the households of the top 0.1% of USA millionaires and billionaires since the year 2000. This expansion in their wealth caused the crisis. Wolf Richter writes:

“What kind of outrageous gift they got from the Fed’s money printing and interest rate repression…It was also the greatest economic injustice committed in recent US history over such a short period of time. These monetary policies are largely responsible for the worst inflation in 4 decades that is mauling the “Bottom 50%” of households because they have so little, and spend all their money on necessities…”^[4]

The top 0.1% rode the huge balloon in the US money supply from 4 trillion in 2000 to 22 trillion now (see Figure 3). Karl Marx warned in Capital:

“If the quantity of paper money represents twice the amount of gold available, then in practice £1 would be the money-name not of 1/4 of an ounce of gold, but of 1/8 of an ounce…The values previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2.”^[5]

The reason for the doubling of the price is that there is twice as much money demanding the same quantity of use values, that is, useful goods or services that people are interested in purchasing. For as Marx says, “Use values…are the material bearers of exchange value,”^[6] or price. Between 2000 and 2022, the US money supply increased four and half times. Based on Marx’s reasoning, which is shared by many other economists, prices would be expected to increase 4 and a half times or 450% during such a period (2000—2022), all things being equal. But the consumer price index (CPI) increased only 75 percent from 169 in January 2000 to 296 in August 2022.^[7] The index didn’t even double. If somehow during such increase of the money supply additional use values entered the market and became available, the inflation would be less, since there would be additional real goods to correspond to the increase in demand for goods in the form of the increase in the money supply. Did US industrial production increase during this period to produce the needed use values? Table I says No: It shows that industrial production declined in several core areas. No, sufficient use values did not enter the US market from internal production, but rather from abroad. Under the regime of imperialism, use value is brought into the US economy from abroad at very low cost and this use value supports the American currency and retards or prevents inflation. One clear mechanism for this moderation of inflation is the ‘importation’ of raw materials from developing sector economies, such as the oil that the US Army has looted from Syria during its ongoing occupation of the eastern part of the country, or the lithium that Elon Musk’s companies are removing from south America for electric car batteries. These free or cheap raw materials ‘imports’ reduce production costs for American companies and reduce prices, as follows: As Marx has shown,^[8] the price of a manufactured article is broken down into the constant capital (C) and variable capital (V) that went into its production together with surplus value (S) or profit. Constant capital (C) is the cost of replacing raw materials and manufacturing plant and equipment; variable capital (V) is the cost of sustaining and reproducing labor. Look at Marx’s representation of the price of an ell of linen in Figure 4, example I. The price is 2 shillings. With imperialist raw materials imports from the developing sector, the constant capital component of the cost could be reduced from 80 Pounds, for example, to, say, 20 Pounds, and then the price of the ell of linen would be cut in half to 1 shilling. This constantly in-effect mechanism reduces price inflation in imperialist economies. Importing finished goods, e.g., clothing, from cheap labor markets also retards inflation, because then both constant capital and variable capital costs are lower. Americans should not worry about the 8% inflation that they are experiencing. Based on the expansion of the money supply, they should expect approximately 20% inflation per year since the year 2000.^[9]

Another peculiarity in the inflation data is that Germany’s inflation exceeds that of the US: Germany is a highly industrialized country with a strong basic industry producing steel, machine tools, agricultural equipment and automobiles. Why is their publicly announced rate of inflation of 10.9% higher than that of the US? There are two primary reasons. First, Germany does not benefit from imperialist hegemony over the vast regions of the world from which the US extracts value. Second, the US also dominates Germany and forces it to buy its expensive products, e.g., Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).

All this is very troubling, but why, out of the blue, have we got inflation now since Spring 2021? First, the money supply went through the roof in 2020. That’s the last big jump in Figure 3. That’s the effect of the CARES Act. The US had to do it because of the pandemic, right? Wrong. As Marx wrote in his Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, the reasons people give for doing something are ideological and usually not the reasons they actually do them, which are economic.

Marx wrote:

“It is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production…and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.”^[10]

The economic reason for the hyperinflationary CARES Act was the crisis in financial markets from Fall 2019 to March 2020, as shown in Figure 1. What especially aggravated the financial system was the government’s response to the crisis in the Repurchase (Repo) Market in 2019. The Repo Market is where giant financial institutions borrow trillions of dollars from each other and from central banks every day, often just for overnight. The Repo Market was what brought down the economy in 2008. From 2010 to 2019 it was relatively calm: Banks and corporations traded Repos with no seeming problem. Then in Fall 2019 lenders began to distrust the collateral that their Repo borrowers were putting up to secure their loans. They refused to extend credit. The Fed stepped in as in 2008 and bought up the outstanding Repos that lenders refused to buy. Again, the Fed bailed out the investment banks that had gotten themselves into trouble as in 2008. The amount of Repos purchased by the Fed per day grew from zero on September 4, 2019, to 200 Billion in October and exploded to 450 Billion in March 2020. The government then had two responses: First, the lockdowns. Because they shut down the economy, they eliminated pressures on financial markets, and the Repo market began to settle down. Then the CARES Act provided the biggest bailout to NY banks in the history of the country—at first $2 Trillion (including $290 Billion in payments to taxpayers who had to hand it back to the banks again in Covid-19 Lockdown emergency spending). In 2020 and 2021 the money supply increased by $4.8 trillion. Inflation exploded in 2021 and jumped from 1.7% per year in February to 5% in May, and now up to 8%.^[11] So, the cause of the inflation is the government’s attempt to stabilize financial markets. Why did the Repo market get jittery? It all comes down to real value, or rather the absence of it in the US economy. In the last few years, the world economy’s big actors outside the West—the BRICS countries, China, Russia, India, etc.—have been moving away from using the US dollar as their reserve currency, as the currency in which all international trade takes place.[12] The US has bullied the world with the hegemony of the dollar, and the world got tired of it. Now the world is trading in Rubles and other currencies. Instead of the Petrodollar, we have the Petroruble. The dominance of the dollar was the dollar’s only support. With the decline of the Petrodollar comes the decline of the US economy, first signaled by the highest rate of inflation in over 40 years. The US is on the way down.

The Federal Reserve piggy bank has been pumping out money for its friends in investment banking like mad. They all got rich; we got inflation and economic crisis. This is the way it works, according to 18^th century Irish political economist Richard Cantillon: The people who are closest to where the new money enters the economy—investment bankers—can benefit from the new money before prices rise. They buy new homes, land, gold, stocks and other investments. But the people who are farthest away from where the new money enters the economy—that’s wage earners—suffer from the inflation it causes. Cantillon explains:

In general, an increase of hard money in a state will cause a corresponding increase in consumption and this will gradually produce increased prices…Those who will suffer from these higher prices and increased consumption will be…all the workmen or fixed wage earners who support their families on a salary. They all must diminish their expenditures in proportion to the new consumption [by the rich].^[13]

That’s the Cantillon effect. So, Wall Street grabs up all the value in the economy with the new money pumped out by its friends at the Federal Reserve. What’s left for us is the inflation they caused by expanding the money supply without expanding the real economy of manufacturing, construction, transportation and energy production. Look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on inflation and you will see that wage earners suffer the highest rate of inflation in the country, a 9.1% annual rate in July 2020, while the average rate for everybody, bankers and wage workers included, was 8.5%. Under the Cantillon Effect wage earners suffer higher inflation that anyone else. This is one of the processes that drives inequality. The working poor suffer the highest inflation. Figure 5 from a Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows price increases by social group since 2003. The top curve shows the highest inflation rate suffered by the lowest income quartile, the 25% of Americans with the lowest income share in the country. The bottom curve shows the lowest inflation enjoyed by the highest income quartile, the richest 25% of the population.^[14] The average annual rates of inflation by social group are given in Table 2. That brings us back to square 1, the economic injustice we referred to at the top. The growth in speculative investment that has been going on for decades, has driven up US “gross domestic product” (GDP) per capita from $20,000 in 1968 to $46,000 in 2014 in fixed 2005 dollars at a nearly constant rate of $565 per year. That increase does not represent an increase in real goods and services but rather the paper wealth of the Wall Street millionaires averaged over the whole population, for US industrial production has collapsed. This same process has driven down the relative incomes of everyone else since 1968, for as Figure 6 shows, the ratio of the income share of the lower 80% to the income share of the highest quintile has fallen from 135% in 1968 to 95% in 2014. For more than 50 years, finance capital—the Federal Reserve banks, the big commercial banks, the investment banks—have been sucking wealth out of the US population and the world at a fantastic rate. Like Cantillon, many ‘conservatives’ oppose the Fed’s monetary and ‘wealth’ policies. These conservatives represent industrial capital, not finance capital.

[1] https://wolfstreet.com/wealth-effect/

[2] Reported by Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[3] https://wolfstreet.com/2022/09/30/eurozone-inflation-spikes-to-10-in-germany-10-9-without-energy-6-4-from-temporary-inflation-mid-2021-to-runaway-inflation/

[4] https://wolfstreet.com/2022/09/26/my-wealth-disparity-monitor-september-update-qt-rate-hikes-dropping-stocks-bonds-reduce-outrageous-us-wealth-disparity/

[5] Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. 1; Penguin: London, 1976, Chapter on Money, section on “Coin and symbols of value,” p. 225.

[6] Ibid., p. 126.

[7] Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[8] Marx, Op. Cit., p. 962.

[9] If the money supply increases 450% over 22 years (from 4 trillion to 22 trillion), then so do prices, which inflation would average to 20% per year.

[10] K. Marx, “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859; translation from edition of Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977

[11] Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[12] On ruble-rupee trade, cf. https://www.rt.com/business/562727-russia-india-trade-doubles/ and https://www.iasparliament.com/current-affairs/rupee-rouble-trade-arrangement

[13] Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, Paris, 1755, Pt. 2, Ch. 6; translated as An Essay on Economic Theory by C. Saucier, published by Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010.

[14] J. Klick and A. Stockburger, “Experimental CPI for lower and higher income households,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Working Paper 537 March 8, 2021

The post Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire appeared first on The Communist.

While Taiwan and the mainland have been separated for 70 years, efforts to reduce tension and increase communication and cooperation have never ceased. Cross-Strait relations have witnessed one breakthrough after another over the years, from the open letters to Taiwan compatriots to the development of the “One Country, Two Systems” policy and the basic strategy for national reunification; from the 1992 Consensus to the first-ever historic meeting between leaders from the two sides; from total separation to direct two-way links in postal mail, transportation, and trade; and from the early years, when Taiwan was expelled from the UN, to efforts to defeat attempts at Taiwan independence. 

As we now look upon cross-Strait relations from a new starting point, we can see an overwhelming and unstoppable historical trend for national reunification. In his speech at a conference commemorating the publication of the “Letter to Taiwan Compatriots” issued by the Standing Committee of the NPC 40 years ago, General Secretary Xi Jinping elaborated on China’s policies and positions in the new era for peaceful reunification, demonstrating political wisdom and historical responsibility for a solution to the question of Taiwan. Listening to his convincing words, we realize even more that national renewal and reunification represent a historical trend, a cause to fight for, and a goal that we all want to achieve. 

Peaceful reunification depends on national rejuvenation. The fact that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait remain separated is a wound left over from history. It is said that “the Taiwan question was created at a time when China was a weak and chaotic country, but it will end with the rejuvenation of the nation.” As the Chinese nation moves forward with its renewal, we will see a much stronger force for national reunification under more favorable economic, political, and cultural conditions. People in Taiwan will, of course, be a part of this great journey, joining hands with the people on the mainland in the drive to achieve their dream for national renewal. 

Integrated development is a sure path to peaceful reunification. In times of great changes, the mainland and Taiwan must work together through thick and thin as we move forward with a shared future and intertwined interests. To realize national reunification, it is essential for people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to have the same goals, which are in turn enabled by more communication and connectivity. As requested by General Secretary Xi Jinping, connections with Taiwan should be improved to the greatest extent possible. In particular, as soon as possible, we need to ensure water, electricity, and gas supplies to Kinmen and Matsu from the coastal areas of Fujian and build bridges wherever possible so that people in Taiwan may benefit from development in the mainland. We must also make sure that Taiwanese residents and businesses in the mainland enjoy equal treatment and access to equal, inclusive, and convenient public services.

Countercurrents against peaceful reunification must be curbed. General Secretary Xi Jinping stated categorically that nothing can change the fact that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese with the same national identity, and nothing can stop the trend toward reunification of the Chinese nation. Taiwan independence goes against this unstoppable trend and will eventually be crushed by the wheels of history. Chinese must not fight against Chinese, and for this purpose we have made the greatest efforts for peaceful reunification with the utmost sincerity. However, we do not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures to prepare for possible interference by external forces and separatist activities by a handful of “Taiwan independence” separatists. Such measures would certainly not be targeted at the people of Taiwan.

The residence permit for Taiwan residents is a permit available to Taiwan residents who come to work, study, live, and travel in the mainland, with protection provided for the legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan residents on the mainland. On August 6, 2018, the General Office of the State Council published the procedures for the application and issuance of residence permits for Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Residents, and the permit system took effect on September 1, 2018.

The Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) is a public organization established in Beijing on December 16, 1991, for the purpose of promoting peaceful reunification. Entrusted by the mainland authorities, it handles communications with its counterpart in Taiwan on issues regarding cross-Strait exchanges and is authorized to conclude relevant agreements. The Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) was established in Taiwan on November 21, 1990. It is a non-governmental organization authorized by the Taiwanese authorities to handle cross-Strait affairs. Since the beginning of the 1990s, ARATS and SEF, under authorization from the authorities on both sides, have been holding talks and dialogues for the purpose of promoting economic, trade, scientific, technological, and cultural exchanges between the two sides. Pictured here are ARATS and SEF representatives signing official documents.  We may not be able to decide on what has happened in the past, but we can certainly seize the moment and choose our future. Seventy years have passed, and that is long enough to let bygones be bygones and leave bitterness, hate, and separation behind us. Looking to the future, we have every reason to believe that we can build the mutual trust that allays misgivings, that we can increase communication and clear up misunderstanding, and that we can let peace prevail over conflict. People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, working together, will usher in a bright future for the country as we realize the reunification of the Chinese nation and achieve the goal of national rejuvenation.

The post National Reunification Across The Taiwan Strait — An Inevitable Trend appeared first on The Communist.

In carrying on a struggle against the Trotskyite agents, our Party comrades did not notice, they overlooked the fact, that present day Trotskyism is no longer what it was, let us say, seven or eight years ago; that Trotskyism and the Trotskyites have passed through a serious evolution in this period which has utterly changed the face of Trotskyism; that in view of this the struggle against Trotskyism and the method of struggle against it must also be utterly changed. Our Party comrades did not notice that Trotskyism has ceased to be a political trend in the working class, that it has changed from the political trend in the working class which it was seven or eight years ago, into a frantic and unprincipled gang of wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers acting on the instructions of the intelligence services of foreign states.

What is a political trend in the working class? A political trend in the working class is a group or a party which has its own definite political face, platform and program, which does not and cannot hide its views from the working class but, on the contrary, openly and honestly carries on propaganda for its views in full view of the working class, does not fear to show its political face to the working class, does not fear to demonstrate its real aims and tasks to the working class but, on the contrary, goes to the working class with open visor to convince it of the correctness of its views. In the past, seven or eight years ago, Trotskyism was one of such political trends in the working class, an anti-Leninist trend, it is true, and therefore profoundly mistaken, but nevertheless a political trend.

Can it be said that present-day Trotskyism, the 1936 Trotskyism, let us say, is a political trend in the working class? No, this cannot be said. Why? Because the present-day Trotskyites are afraid to show their real face to the working class, are afraid to disclose their real aims and tasks to it, and carefully hide their political face from the working class, fearing that if the working class should learn of their real intentions it will curse them as an alien people and drive them from it. This in reality explains how it is that the chief method of Trotskyite work is now not open and honest propaganda of its views among the working class, but the masking of its views, servile and fawning praise for the views of its opponents, a false and pharisaical trampling of its own views in the dirt.

If you remember, Kamenev and Zinoviev at the trial in 1936 strenuously denied that they had any political platform. It was fully possible for them to develop their political platform at the trial. But they did not do so, declaring that they had no political platform. There can be no doubt that both of them were lying when they denied that they had a platform. Even the blind can now see that they had their political platform. But why did they deny the existence of any political platform?

Because they were afraid to disclose their real political face, they were afraid to demonstrate their real platform for the restoration of capitalism in the U.S.S.R., fearing that such a platform would arouse revulsion in the working class.

At the trial in 1937, Piatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov took a different line. They did not deny that the Trotskyites and Zinovievites had a political platform. They admitted that they had a definite political platform, recognized and unfolded it in their testimony. But they unfolded it not to call on the working class, not to call on the people to support the Trotskyite platform, but in order to curse it and brand it as an anti-people’s and anti-proletarian platform.

The restoration of capitalism, the liquidation of the collective farms and state farms, the restoration of the system of exploitation, an alliance with the fascist forces of Germany and Japan to bring war against the Soviet Union nearer, a struggle for war and against the policy of peace, the territorial dismemberment of the Soviet Union, giving the Ukraine to the Germans and the maritime provinces to the Japanese, the preparation of the military defeat of the Soviet Union if enemy slates should attack it, and, as a means of achieving these tasks, wrecking, diversion, individual terrorism against the leaders of the Soviet government, espionage for the benefit of the Japanese and German fascist forces — such was the political platform of present day Trotskyism which was set forth by Piatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov.

Naturally the Trotskyites could not but hide such a platform from the people, from the working class. And they hid it not only from the working class but also from the Trotskyite rank and file, and not only front the Trotskyite rank and file but even from the leading group of the Trotskyites, consisting of a small handful of 30 or 40 people. When Radek and Piatakov asked Trotsky’s permission to call a small conference, 30 or 40 people, to inform them of the character of this platform, Trotsky forbade them, saying it was inexpedient to talk of the real nature of the platform even to a small group of Trotskyites as such an “operation” might cause a split.

“Political figures” hiding their views and their platform not only from the working class but also from the Trotskyite rank and file, and not only from the Trotskyite rank and file, but from the leading group or Trotskyites — such is the face of present-day Trotskyism.

But it follows from this that present-day Trotskyism can no longer be called a political trend in the working class. Present-day Trotskyism is not a political trend in the working class but a gang without principle, without ideas, of wreckers, diversionists, intelligence service agents, spies, murderers, a gang of sworn enemies of the working class, working in the pay of the intelligence services or foreign states.

Such is the indisputable result of the evolution of Trotskyism in the past seven or eight years.

Such is the difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism at the present time.

The mistake of our Party comrades is that they did not notice this profound difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism at the present time. They did not notice that the Trotskyites have long since ceased to be people devoted to an idea, that the Trotskyites have long since turned into highway robbers, capable of any foulness, capable of all that is disgusting, to the point of espionage and the outright betrayal of their country, if only they can harm the Soviet government and Soviet power. They did not notice this and were therefore unable to reconstruct themselves in time to wage battle against the Trotskyites in a new and more regular manner. This is why the abominable work of the Trotskyites of late years was a complete surprise for some of our Party comrades.

To proceed. Finally, our Party comrades did not notice that there is an important difference between the present-day wreckers and diversionists, on the one hand, among whom the Trotskyite agents of fascism play “an active part”, and the wreckers and diversionists of the time of the Shakhty trial, on the other hand.

In the first place, the Shakhty and Industrial Party wreckers were people openly alien to us. They were in greater part former owners of factories, former managers for the old employers, former shareholders of old joint-stock companies, or simple bourgeois specialists who were openly hostile to us politically. None of our people had any doubt about the authenticity of the political face of these gentlemen. And the Shakhty wreckers themselves did not conceal their distaste for the Soviet system.

The same cannot be said of the present-day wreckers and diversionists, the Trotskyites. The present-day wreckers and diversionists, the Trotskyites, are mostly Party people with a Party card in their pocket, and consequently people who formally are not alien to us.

Whereas the old wreckers went against our people, the new wreckers on the contrary cringe to our people, laud them, lick their boots, in order to worm their way into their confidence. As you see, the difference is essential.

In the second place, the strength of the Shakhty and Industrial Party wreckers was that to a greater or lesser degree they possessed the necessary technical knowledge, while our people, not possessing such knowledge, were forced to learn from them. This circumstance gave a great advantage to the wreckers of the Shakhty period, made it possible for them to do their wrecking work free and unhindered, made it possible for them to deceive our people technically.

This is not so with the present-day wreckers, with the Trotskyites. The present-day wreckers have no technical superiority over our people. On the contrary, our people are better trained technically than the present-day wreckers, than the Trotskyites. During the time from the Shakhty period to our own days, tens of thousands of genuine, technically strong Bolshevik cadres have grown up among us. One could mention thousands and tens of thousands of Bolshevik leading figures technically developed in comparison with whom all such people as Piatakov and Livshitz, Shestov and Boguslavsky, Muralov and Drobnis are empty windbags and mere tyros from the point of view of technical training. In this case, what does the strength of the present-day wreckers, the Trotskyites, consist of? Their strength lies in the Party card, in the possession of a Party card. This strength lies in the fact that the Party card gives them political trust and opens the doors of all our institutions and organizations to them.

Their advantage lies in the fact that holding a Party card and pretending to be friends of the Soviet power they tricked our people politically, misused their confidence, did their wrecking work furtively, and disclosed our secrets of state to the enemies of the Soviet Union. This “advantage” is a doubtful one in its political and moral values, but still, it is an “advantage”. This “advantage”, in reality, explains the fact that the Trotskyite [ultraleft – ed.] wreckers, as people with a Party card having access to all places in our institutions and organizations, were a real windfall for the intelligence services of foreign states. The mistake of some of our Party comrades is that they did not notice, did not understand all this difference between the old and the new wreckers between the Shakhty wreckers and the Trotskyites, and not noticing this, they were unable to reconstruct themselves in time so as to wage battle against the new wreckers in a new way.

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Social and political movements in a sense develop in similar ways. When the social molecules become agitated it results in mass upheavals, the waves of radicalization. Class contradictions and relations sharpen up. This propels the revolutionary process. It results in new levels of mass class and socialists consciousness. There is a speedy growth of movements and organizations. They also become tempered and purified in the struggle. Such is the path of revolutionary development.

A Product Of Frustration

But such moments also give birth to momentary political “bubbles.” As in steel, many of them also come and go. Some are serious movements that reflect momentary issues. They disappear when the issues are resolved. But others turn into petty-bourgeois radical expressions — petty-bourgeois reflections of the issues and the problems of the moment.

Such movements are especially a phenomenon in periods when great numbers–new waves–of people move into action. Like all sectors, the petty-bourgeois strata tend to reflect their class position when they react to the issues of the class struggle. They develop moments of great militancy. At such moments they are a source of inspiration and militancy to other sectors, including the working class. But they tend to go for short-term tactics. When this does not result in victories, for some the militancy, the enthusiasm, turns into petty-bourgeois radicalism. It is necessary to make a sharp distinction between the healthy militancy and determination expressed by non-working class sectors and the concepts of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Petty-bourgeois radicalism is a by-product of a sense of frustration.

When concepts based on unreality are bounced back by reality it results in frustration.

A secondary cause for the frustration is the occurrence of opportunist, passive tendencies and problems in the ranks of other sectors, including the working class.

The concepts, the ideas, motivating petty-bourgeois radicalism are not necessarily wrong in the abstract. Those who follow wrong concepts, in most cases, are dedicated and sincere individuals. The concepts are wrong when they do not reflect the specific reality of the moment. Therefore, the more determined such individuals are, the more damaging they can be. Good intentions and even good ideas are not enough. One of the key ingredients in a revolutionary struggle is people in mass. People do not respond to commands or to exhortations. They do not respond to ideas–even good ideas–if they do not see their self-interests involved in these ideas.

The inner laws of capitalism, the laws of exploitation, the inherent drive for profit, the contradiction between the social nature of production and the private appropriation of its products are all factors that force the victims in mass more and more to see their self-interests related to the more basic and revolutionary ideas. Policies and tactics, to be successful, must be related to this objective process. A revolutionary force must take full advantage of each new situation presented by this process. Only then can it become a revolutionary force propelling events. Tactics must be synchronized to each stage of this development.

The very essence of capitalism is class exploitation. It is exploitation of people, again in mass. The essence of any struggle is the class struggle. The central moving force is the exploited class–the working class.

Concepts of struggle not based on the above reality will sooner or later come into conflict with it. The advocates of petty-bourgeois radicalism try to bypass this reality. They believe they can avoid the necessary and unavoidable consistent and sustained work, the work of organizing, educating, mobilizing and leading people in mass, of leading people on the level of their understanding, of their own self-interest, and in this sense reflecting the objective processes leading to a revolutionary struggle against capitalism. For this they seek to substitute radical rhetoric with general slogans, or advanced actions that have no relationship to struggles to which the masses do respond. Thus, when the concepts based on unreality meet the reality of class struggle they bounce back. If such tactics are further pursued they become an obstacle to struggle. They become a destructive and divisive force. Organized groups which pursue such policies not only tend to move away from the working class, but they reject mass concepts of struggle altogether.

The relationships between the objective processes and the tactics of struggle are not simple. It is an intricate process. The lines are not clean-cut and even that which is negative, in the long run, can have momentary positive influences. It is not always easy to draw the line between passivity that is motivated by opportunistic considerations and a judgment that is based on a correct, necessary tactical consideration. And it is not easy always to see the line between a militancy that is necessary to propel the struggle to new heights, or a necessary advanced position or action by a more limited force, and ill-advised actions that alienate and separate the advanced force form its mass base.

Petty-bourgeois radicalism as a concept is now in a serious crisis. Masses have moved to new levels of political consciousness and to higher forms of struggle [sic]. Generally, petty-bourgeois radical concepts go into a crisis when working-class concepts of struggle are on the ascendancy.

An Old Problem

Petty-bourgeois radicalism is not a new phenomenon. It has emerged as a problem throughout the history of the world revolutionary movement. Petty-bourgeois radicalism has had a historic run in the recent period. The wave has touched most of the non-socialist world.

A special brand of petty-bourgeois radicalism made deep inroads and influenced the policies of the leading cadre of the Communist Party of China. Throughout its history the Maoist influence has been a petty-bourgeois radical influence. In its basic essence the Cultural Revolution was propelled by a mass petty-bourgeois radical sweep. This is a special brand of petty-bourgeois radicalism because it takes place in a country that is building socialism. It is a special brand because the leading core of the leadership used it as an instrument in the struggle to stay in power. It is a special brand because in China it was woven into a pattern with bourgeois nationalism. Mao’s policies have always been and are today based on mobilizing the non-working class sections. It was the destruction of the organizations and politics based on the working class that were the main objectives of the Cultural Revolution.

The Debray theories of revolution were an extension of these petty-bourgeois radical concepts. All variations of petty-bourgeois radicalism come into conflict with the class approach to struggle. They reject the class struggle as the vehicle for social progress. They reflect the individualism, the lack of class identification of petty-bourgeois elements generally. They reject policies and tactics that are based on mobilizing the working class–the one class history has designated as a basic contingent in the struggle for social progress. In fact, petty-bourgeois radicalism rejects the role of the one revolutionary class in society.

Thus, the very premise of petty-bourgeois radicalism is that it is impossible to win the working class in the struggle against capitalism. From this it follows that mass concepts of struggle are not possible, necessary, or realistic. This leads to actions based on small elite groups—or to individual action. Because this concept is not concerned with winning over masses, it promotes and condones actions that alienate masses. There is an inner logic to this path. Specific actions are taken because there is a lack of confidence in mass–in class–actions. These ill-considered actions result in widening the gap between the petty-bourgeois radical movements and the masses. This widening gap then becomes “proof” that you cannot win masses and therefore the line of conduct of these movements is justified. Each step leads to a further isolation. This is the inner logic of petty-bourgeois radicalism.

This has been the path of world Trotskyism, the classical movement of petty-bourgeois radicalism. It had its genesis with Trotsky’s rejection of the working class as a basic revolutionary force. He also substituted radical-sounding rhetoric for the class struggle. Trotskyism has remained a worldwide petty-bourgeois radical current. It remains a negative, a divisive, and a disruptive current. Because of its basically incorrect position it is not surprising that in the very center of its work has been the attack, the slander, against a country where the working class is in power–the Soviet Union.

When the working class either takes other paths of struggle or when it does not move because of the influences of opportunism, petty-bourgeois radicalism becomes a more serious problem. This also has its inner logic which results in such radicalism becoming an obstacle to mobilizing and moving the working class.

Crisis And Decline

As in the US, the world wave of petty-bourgeois radicalism is now also in a crisis and in the declining phase of the present cycle. It is a world crisis of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Its policies have come up against the realities of the class struggle. Masses have gained new experiences in the fires of the class struggle. They are now rejecting petty-bourgeois concepts as divisive and impractical.

The problems in the struggle against these concepts arise because they seem radical and revolutionary. For many who are influenced by such ideas honestly believe they are the most revolutionary. But when such policies fail–when they do not result in revolutionary victories, those who honestly believe in them face a dilemma. They can go one of three ways. Some give up the struggle. They use many excuses, but in essence they accept the status quo. They move into positions of opportunism. Others, in frustration, move into isolation by accepting the path of anarchism. This path destroys cadre as a meaningful revolutionary force. But most, however, draw the correct conclusions. They move into struggles and movements based on mass concepts. They draw the necessary conclusions that one’s revolutionariness can be measured only in the framework of moving masses into struggle.

It is impossible to struggle against the incorrect concepts of petty-bourgeois radicalism without a consistent and sharp struggle against the forever present influences of Right opportunism. The pressures towards Right opportunism are the most consistent in any capitalist country. They remain the chief danger to the revolutionary movement in the broad mass organizations of the people and the working class. It is impossible to conduct a successful fight against petty-bourgeois radicalism unless there is a consistent, successful fight against the influences of Right opportunism.

Like all political currents, petty-bourgeois radicalism finds expression in the form of specific groups. But like all political currents, it also has influences in most people’s and working-class organizations.

In this past period in the United States, we have witnessed the appearances of numerous petty-bourgeois radical sects. They are all now, to one degree or another, feeling the effects of the crisis of petty-bourgeois radicalism. These groups include the carious varieties of Trotskyism. They include the groups that emerged as a result of the continuous splits of the original forces in the Students for a Democratic Society. They include those that emerged because of the disintegration and the splitting of the Progressive Labor group.

In rejecting petty-bourgeois radicalism we do not need to reject or ignore the positive contributions many of these groups have made. We need not condemn individuals when we reject the concepts of petty-bourgeois radicalism.

Even in their best moments they view their work with the working class as that of missionaries. They all tend to be anti-Communist and even more specifically, anti-Soviet. On these basic class matters they join hands with the Right opportunists. This factor exposes the more basic opportunistic side of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Everyone knows it is easier to be a radical and even a “revolutionary” as long as you are anti-Communist. The enemy is never too disturbed by the most radical speeches of anyone who remains ideologically tied to capitalism by means of anti-Communism. In this sense petty-bourgeois radicalism does a very special favor to capitalism because it covers its anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism with “Left” radical phrases.

For a number of years Mao Tse-Tung gave the world’s petty-bourgeois radical groups a lift. These groups turned to Mao because his thought is the most rounded form of petty-bourgeois radicalism. That it also has its anti-working class and rabidly anti-Soviet features, of course, is no surprise.

But the most important factor of petty-bourgeois radicalism today, including its Maoist features, is that it is in crisis and in the declining phase of its cycle the world over as well as in the United States. The easy catch-all slogans have turned into empty rhetoric. Much of the motion has turned into “bubbles” that are now disappearing.

When the hothouse schemes of instant revolution meet reality they burst like balloons. When this happens petty-bourgeois radicalism blames its failures on the working class. In their frustration many of these sects turn to anarchism, which is only another form of petty-bourgeois radicalism. This is, in fact, one of the features of the present crisis of petty-bourgeois radicalism.

Petty-bourgeois radicalism as a concept rejects the basic class nature of society and the class struggle as a pivotal element in the fight for progress. It rejects the role of mass movements because it does not see its basic ingredient–the working class. A class approach to struggle is of necessity a mass approach. The petty-bourgeois radical rhetoric is a sanctuary for those who have given up the possibilities of leading masses, and in the first place the working-class masses, in struggle. It is a way of keeping a radical image when in fact one has retreated and given up the struggle.

The Story of SDS

The SDS had its birth in the ideological chambers of the Socialist Party. Its present crisis can be clearly traced to the petty-bourgeois radical views that it inherited from the parent body. This is not to negate in any way or detract from the positive contributions of the tens of thousands of young people who have come into the struggle and into the Communist Party through the activities of the SDS. This organization went through many stages of development. It moved from its open anti-working class position to accepting the role of the workers. But even then it saw that role only in relation to the SDS being the “missionary” enlightening the people called “workers”. The SDS never did understand the role of masses as the key factor in struggle.

Because they did not understand the class struggle they tended to reject all concepts of unity, including a unified front of the forces opposing capitalism. This comes from the very nature of petty-bourgeois existence. These sectors do not see themselves as being exploited or oppressed as a class. They do not react to oppression as a class. Unity, a unified front are class-mass concepts. The SDS, even in its best days, rejected these concepts and tended to organize their own actions, asking others to “join them” or “support them.” When they could not have their way they very often boycotted many important mass actions against the U.S. aggression in Vietnam.

Under pressure they constantly slipped into anti-Communist positions. Petty-bourgeois radicalism by its very nature–its class essence being, as it is, that of a group between two basic classes–cannot for long sustain a united organization. Its concept of “participatory democracy” was, in a way, a recognition of this fact. As the working-class upsurge has developed and the class concepts of the struggle have moved into the forefront, petty-bourgeois radicalism has also been evident in the policies of accepting racism. This has been justified by statements like, “We will fight for black-white unity when we have socialism.” For white Americans not to fight racism at all times is racism.

Most who took part in the SDS and the actions that it organized have drawn the correct conclusions. These forces have tended to reject the petty-bourgeois radical concepts. But some, as we know, have moved into channels of anarchism and individual actions. When one is convinced that mass struggles will not achieve results, anarchistic actions seem a realistic way out. Fictitious “communiqués from the underground” threatening violence are infantile. Acts of individual terror at a moment when mass actions and movements are possible and necessary, are actions in the service of reaction. They are damaging to the revolutionary movement. These “communiqués from the underground” and other threats of violence become the most convenient cover for acts of violence by police provocateurs, by enemy agents. Police agents blow up buildings–but the blame is placed on the “Left radical movement.” The fictitious “communiqués from the underground” threatening violence become the canopies under which the enemy conspires to create new Reichstag fire situations.

Another of the petty-bourgeois radical groups now in crisis is the group called Progressive Labor. It got a start as a splinter from the New York City Communist Party. When the Supreme Court upheld the McCarran Act and said the Communist Party was ordered to register its members, finances and officers, a small group in the Party panicked. The Party overwhelmingly decided to stand up and fight. This splinter group was a part of those who fought for a policy of liquidating the Communist Party. They called for its dissolution.

When the Party rejected this they set up their own little group. But right from the beginning it was stamped with their opportunism. Their liquidationist, opportunistic tendency continued in their own organization. They tried to hide and bypass the anti-Communist barrage from the enemy behind a name that said nothing about socialism or communism. Opportunism has been their hallmark. Now life has caught up with their brand of petty-bourgeois radicalism. It has remained a sect becoming ever more isolated–and now the sect has split asunder.

The basically opportunistic approach of Progressive Labor led it along the path of rabid anti-Sovietism. This is opportunism because it is a concession to the central ideological pillar of U.S. imperialism. This same opportunism has led Progressive Labor to compromise with the same struggle against racism under radical phrases and even in the name of the working class. It has followed a policy of accommodation and conciliation with racism. Because of its racist and white chauvinist practices the Black and Puerto Rican members have either been expelled or left the group.

The various Trotskyite sects continue as of old. They continue their splitting tactics in our mass movements, as is clearly shown in their latest efforts to set up a peace movement under their control. Momentarily some of these groups have made some gains. They are carefully covering up their real Trotskyite policies. But the Trotskyite sects are also in a crisis. They are also isolated. Their splitting tactics in all movements flow from their basic petty-bourgeois radical essence. Working-class consciousness leads to concepts of class unity. It leads to rejecting tactics that lead to disunity. Petty-bourgeois radicalism does not see the concept of class or mass struggles. From this it follows that it does not see the need for class unity. It reflects the individualism of its class nature. Petty-bourgeois radicalism is a political trend. It is this political trend that is in a crisis. Militant currents, radical trends, and the revolutionary process–these are not in a crisis. They are features of the mass upheavals. Marxism-Leninism is not in a crisis. It is the growing, the most consistent revolutionary current. It is not in a crisis because it reflects and is changing reality. It is the revolutionary current.

The post Crisis Of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism appeared first on The Communist.

Therefore, such inner-Party struggle is absolutely necessary and cannot be avoided. Any idea of trying to avoid inner-Party struggle, or of refraining from criticizing others’ mistakes so that they will not criticize one’s own errors, is totally wrong.

Inner-Party struggles consist principally of ideological struggles. Their content is made up of the divergencies and antagonisms arising in matters of ideology and principle. The divergencies and antagonisms among our comrades on matters of ideology and principle can develop into political splits within the Party, and, under certain circumstances, even to inevitable organizational splits; but, in character and content, such divergencies and antagonisms are basically ideological struggles.

Consequently, any inner-Party struggle not involving divergencies in matters of ideology and principle and any conflict among Party members not based on divergencies in matters of principle is a type of unprincipled struggle, a struggle without content. This kind of struggle without principle or content is utterly unnecessary within the Party. It is detrimental and not beneficial to the Party. Every Party member should strictly avoid such struggles.

Inner-Party struggle is absolutely indispensable to protecting the purity and independence of the Party, to guaranteeing that the Party’s activities constantly proceed along lines which represent the highest interests of the proletariat, and to preserving the Party’s basic proletarian character. With this object in view, inner-Party struggles must be conducted from two sides, or on two fronts. This is because the enemy’s ideology influences the Party from two directions, attacking the Party from both the Right and the “Left.” This is expressed in the Party by Right or “Left” opportunism.

Therefore, our inner-Party struggle must be directed simultaneously against both Right opportunism and “Left” opportunism, against these two aspects so that our Party can preserve its definite proletarian character. If we fail to do this, if we merely carryon a one-sided struggle, or if we slacken our vigilance and our struggle against either side, then the enemy not only can but assuredly will attack our Party from that very side which we have neglected. In that case, it will be impossible to preserve the Party’s purity and independence or to consolidate the Party. It is, therefore, in the course of ceaseless inner-Party struggle on two fronts that our Party consolidates and develops itself.

Comrade Stalin said: “The question here is that contradictions can be overcome only by means of struggle for this or that principle, for defining the goal of this or that struggle, for choosing this or that method of struggle that may lead to the goal. We can and we must come to agreement with those within the Party who differ with us on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical character. But if these questions involve differences over principle, then no agreement, no ‘middle’ line can save the cause. There is and there can be no ‘middle’ line on questions of principle. The work of the Party must be based either on these or those principles. The ‘middle’ line on questions of principle is a ‘line’ that muddles one’s head, a ‘line’ that covers up differences, a ‘line’ of ideological degeneration of the Party, a ‘line’ of ideological death of the Party. It is not our policy to pursue such a ‘middle’ line. It is the policy of a party that is declining and degenerating from day to day. Such a policy cannot but transform the party into an empty bureaucratic organ, standing isolated from the working people and becoming a puppet unable to do anything. Such a road cannot be our road.”

He added: “Our Party has been strengthened on the basis of overcoming the contradictions within the Party.” This explains the essential nature of inner-Party struggle.

[…] The special conditions and circumstances prevailing at the time when our Chinese Party was founded gave rise to two kinds of influences. One was favorable, enabling us from the very start to build a Communist Party of the Leninist type. Subjectively, we strictly adhered to the principles laid down by Lenin. From the very outset, our Party has carried out strict self-criticism and inner-Party struggle. This accounted for the rapid progress of our Party and served as a motive force to spur our Party forward.

But the other influence frequently led our comrades to another extreme, to another kind of mistake—the mistake of carrying inner-Party struggles too far, of struggling too intensely without any restraints whatsoever. This resulted in another deviation, a “Left” deviation.

Many comrades had a mechanical and erroneous understanding of Lenin’s principles and turned them into absolute dogmas. They believed that the Party’s highly centralized organization negates inner-Party democracy, that the need for inner-Party struggle negates peace within the Party; that the political leadership of the Party—the highest form of class organization of the proletariat—in other mass organizations of the proletariat negates the independence of trade unions and other organizations of the workers and toiling masses; and that unified, iron discipline means the obliteration of the individual personality, initiative and creativeness of Party members.

Many comrades memorized the principles of Lenin as if they were dead things. While they considered inner-Party struggle to be necessary and regarded liberalism and conciliationism as useless, still they applied these principles mechanically and dogmatically. They thought that inner-Party struggles should and must be uncompromisingly carried on regardless of the time, circumstances and issues involved, and that the more bitterly such struggles were conducted, the better. These comrades thought that the more vehement and sharp the form of inner-party struggle and criticism, the better. They felt that the sharper the controversies between Party comrades, the better. If this was not the case, then they thought that errors of liberalism and conciliationism were being committed.

In order to prove that they themselves were free from liberal or conciliatory tendencies, that they were “100 percent Bolsheviks,” they carried on unprincipled struggles within the Par0ty, irrespective of the actual conditions of time and place. Thus, these people became “rowdies” without any standpoint in inner-Party struggles, “struggle specialists” with no regard for principle, or “brawl experts” given to fighting. They conducted struggle for the sake of struggle. This is disgraceful within the ranks of the proletariat. And of course, it does not prove that they were “100 percent Bolsheviks.” On the contrary, it only serves to prove that they had insulted Bolshevism and utilized the name and appearance of Bolsheviks to practice opportunism inside the Party.

Many comrades did not understand that our inner-Party struggle is a struggle over principle, a struggle for this or that principle, for defining the goal of this or that struggle, for choosing this or that method of struggle that may lead to the goal.

These comrades did not understand that on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical character we can and must come to agreement with those within the Party who differ with us. They did not know or understand that on issues involving principle, on questions of defining the goal of our struggles and of choosing the methods of struggle needed to reach such goal they should wage an uncompromising struggle against those in the Party who hold divergent opinions; but on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical character, they should come to agreement with those within the Party who hold divergent opinions instead of carrying on an irreconcilable struggle against them, so long as such questions do not involve any difference over principle.

This is precisely the traditional style of work in the Party of Lenin and Stalin, which, however, many of our comrades have not yet acquired. They conducted uncompromising struggles over issues on which they should have come to agreement. As a result, there was not a single issue they would not fight over, there was never a time when they would not fight and there was not a single person against whom they would not fight. They struggled against all who differed with them, enforcing absolute conformity. They made no concessions on anything and would not compromise under any circumstances. They regarded anything contrary as antagonistic and believed that opposition is everything. This constituted their absolutism. These comrades do not preserve or achieve unity within the Party by overcoming differences over principle and ideology within the Party and by correcting certain incorrect tendencies and phenomena. On the contrary, they attempt to preserve or achieve unity within the Party by simple organizational means or by high-handed measures, by a policy of attack, by a system of punishment in dealing with Party members. As a result, they bring about various erroneous and excessive inner-Party struggles. Therefore, instead of carefully and considerately persuading comrades on the basis of principle and ideology, they suppress and bully comrades by resorting to simple organizational means, hostile methods, and even administrative measures. They draw at random organizational conclusions about comrades and mete out organizational measures to discipline comrades. Moreover, they ruthlessly discipline comrades inside the Party from the bourgeois viewpoint of equality before the law—that is, they mete out the heaviest discipline as provided in the Party Constitution without taking into consideration what kind of Party members the offenders are and whether or not the offenders have admitted or corrected their mistakes. In this way the system of disciplinary measures inside the Party is introduced. They often employ the means of conducting struggles in order to start and push forward work. They purposely look for “targets of struggle” (comrades inside the Party) and conduct the struggle against them as representatives of opportunism.  They  sacrifice  and attack this one comrade or these few comrades, “killing the rooster to frighten the dog” as the Chinese saying goes, in order to make other Party cadres work hard and fulfill the task. They deliberately collect information about the shortcomings and mistakes of the target of struggle and jot down mechanically and piecemeal his not too appropriate words and deeds. Then they view in isolation such shortcomings and mistakes and his not too appropriate words and deeds and regard all these as representing the whole make-up of the comrade. They magnify the individual shortcomings and mistakes of this comrade and develop these into a system of opportunism, create an extremely unfavorable impression about this comrade among comrades in the Party and incite their hatred for opportunism in struggling against this comrade. Then, “everybody can inflict blows on a dead tiger.” The psychology of revenge on the part of some persons begins to gain ground and they expose all the shortcomings and mistakes of this comrade and arbitrarily raise these shortcomings and mistakes to the level of principle. They even fabricate some story and on the basis of subjective suspicion and completely groundless rumors, accuse the comrade of various crimes. They will not stop until they drive him into mental confusion. With this done, they are still reluctant to allow the comrade who has been attacked to make any defense. If he makes any defense they would accuse him of deliberately defending his mistakes or of admitting mistakes with reservations. Then they would deal him further blows. They do not allow the comrade being attacked to reserve his opinions on condition of submission to the Party organization and do not allow him to appeal to the superiors but insist upon his admitting his mistakes on the spot. In case the comrade being attacked has admitted all his mistakes, then they do not bother whether the problem pertaining to principle or ideology has been solved or not. So, it occurred inside the Party that in the course of the struggle certain comrades admitted more mistakes than they had committed. In order to avoid attacks, they thought that they had better accept all the accusations. Although they admitted all the mistakes, as a matter of fact they still did not know what it was all about. This proves that such methods of struggle cannot cultivate the firmness of a communist in sticking to the truth.

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The situation preceding the general crisis of world capitalism before World War II called for this basically correct policy as well as that of thoroughly fighting against forces on the left that ultimately serve to weaken and break the workers resistance against capitalist aggression. With the practical effect being the victory of fascism if the workers are beaten. These forces are what we call social-fascists.

However, once the victory of fascism was achieved in Germany, Italy, and Japan, the conditions ostensibly called for a more advanced policy. The presence of fascism had a deleterious effect on the entire world and threatened to pull the whole of humanity down with it. No longer could the struggle against social-fascists be carried on in the same way.

The international situation called for the policy of a People’s Front. This differs from the United Front as its basis of unity extends beyond the working class and seeks to unite an entire people, the progressive elements which for one reason or another stand against fascism and against the capitalists offloading the crisis onto the workers.

As well, the stronghold of world socialism, the USSR, was under threat of invasion by the German fascist forces. The defense of the international position of communism required a tacit alliance on the lines of anti-fascism between the socialist camp and the capitalist camp which had not fallen into fascism. Dimitrov, secretary of the Comintern, explains the reasoning for this at the 7th congress of the Comintern in 1938:

“We Communists employ methods of struggle which differ from those of the other parties; but, while using our own methods in combating fascism, we Communists will also support the methods of struggle used by other parties however inadequate they  may seem, if these methods are really directed against fascism.

“We are ready to do all this because, in countries of bourgeois democracy, we want to block the way of reaction and the offensive of capital and fascism, prevent the abolition of bourgeois-democratic liberties, forestall fascism’s terrorist vengeance upon the proletariat and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intellectuals, and save the young generation from physical and spiritual degeneracy.

“We are ready to do all this because in the fascist countries we want to prepare and hasten the overthrow of fascist dictatorship.

“We are ready to do all this because we want to save the world from fascist barbarity and the horrors of imperialist war.

“Ours is a Congress of struggle for the maintenance of peace, against the threat of imperialist war”

”

The struggle of the French people, led by the Communist Party of France on the lines of a People’s Front against the rising tide of fascism before WWII proved effective at preventing the rise of fascism in France before Hitler invaded. The resolve of the French people to resist fascism was a boon to the world anti-fascist movement. Even though with the defeat of France during WWII, their people carried on the anti-fascist fight which was best represented by the heroic resolve of the French Partisans. 

The Communist Party USA, seeked the same success as the tendrils of fascism crept over our own country in the wake of the Great Depression. The threat of fascism in the US was real and presented a revolutionary situation as Stalin outlined at the ECCI in 1929. Twice US finance capital seeked to overthrow the bourgeois-republic, first with the American Liberty League, and a few years later with the American First Committee. 

As Dimitrov and Stalin outlined at the 7th congress, the fascists rummage through history and uphold or revise it in order to validate and achieve support for their anti-democratic and anti-people aims. CPUSA general secretary Browder took on the task of combating this by trying to show the progressive side of American history which the capitalists all too often obscure and suppress. 

Simultaneously, the cooperation between the Soviet Union and the USA in anti-fascist efforts produced great expectations about the possibility of a lasting alliance. In fact, the feeling was so pronounced that many in the party leadership came to see the US bourgeoisie as basically progressive, beyond the context of the Anti-Fascist People’s Front. 

During the war, the party even went as far as to restrict its agitation among the workers in order to further alliances with center-left forces. This meant ceasing criticism against social democrats and the like, as well as ending political education among the workers to further relations with bourgeois organizations or even calling attention to the anti-worker policies of the big capitalists.

In order to achieve the unity required for the People’s Front, the concept of National Unity was needed. This concept was essentially an all-class alliance against fascism. As Browder explained in Victory – and After, it had the goal of “uniting the entire nation, including the biggest capitalists, for a complete and all-out drive for victory.” 

The defeat of fascism, as argued by Dimitrov and Stalin, necessitated the party to uphold the progressive elements of our national history, to open the scope of our agitation to appeal to all elements of society and lead the American people against fascism. This meant that the party would appeal to cultivated bourgeois sentiments among the people in regards to the “Founding Fathers” and the first American Revolution. This was showcased by “Jeffersonian Democracy” being enshrined in the CPUSA constitution and argued to be the American path towards communism. 

By 1940 however, the CPUSA had left the Comintern in order to further its National Unity policy.[1] This is due to the capitalist Allies accusing the comintern of fomenting the “Bolshevization” of the US and others. For the Party’s policy to succeed, it required it to make every effort to prove its commitment to the American people and their national interests. It was feared that not having left the Comintern would have hurt the campaign of National Unity. In fact, Browder later argued in 1944 after the Teheran conference that it was essential for the Communist Party to not “push” the progressive elements of US capital towards reaction.

Because of the policy of National Unity and bringing into the fold both the workers and big capitalists against fascism, it was said to have required on the part of the big capitalists a progressive interest to do so. Browder suggested in his 1944 work Teheran – Our Path in War and Peace that this National Unity was possible owing in part to the immaturity of US capitalism and the classes therein not fully understanding their own class interests or positions.[2] His ultimate point being that US capitalism constituted a peculiarity of world capitalism, ie., not bound to the same laws of capitalist political-economy which was true of all other capitalist countries.

This progressive interest was in the petty-bourgeois concern for “free-enterprise.” On this line of appealing to US capital’s concern for “free-enterprise,” rested the Anti-Fascist People’s Front, ie, the alliance of the CPUSA and the US bourgeoisie to redivide the world market. And this “peculiarity” of the immaturity of US capitalism was said to have stemmed from the same conditions of the US that gave rise to “Jeffersonian Democracy.” This referred to a particular period of the US that saw Jefferson elected on a popular campaign against large landowners and bankers who retarded the development of industry. 

Jefferson’s campaign consisted of both working class elements and that of the industrial bourgeoisie that was prevented from developing under the conditions of the monopoly-landowners, otherwise known as the planter class, or land speculators. This unity of the American workers and elements of the bourgeoisie in opposition against certain monopoly forms (particularly land and slave owners) formed the basis of the “peculiarity” of US capitalism which set it apart from world capitalism. The American values which comprise this unity such as rights of free speech, assembly, worship, trial by jury, expansion of the franchise, and the like all aided Jefferson’s ability to garner the support of the budding bourgeoisie. 

As early as 1938, this perspective on Jefferson and US capitalism became the party line: “A full and complete application of Jefferson’s principles, the consistent application of democratic ideas to the conditions of today, will lead naturally and inevitably to the full program of the Communist Party, to the socialist reorganization of the United States, to the common ownership and operation of our economy for the benefit of all.” Though, four years prior in 1934 the slogan of “Communism Is Twentieth Century Americanism” had already been popularized by the party leadership. And here the concept of “Americanism” refers to the democratic ideals of Jeffersonian democracy, a wholly bourgeois concept. 

With this foundation of a progressive essence to US capitalism, the context of the unity between the capitalist and socialist camps against fascism took on a different perspective than initially thought of as that of a tacit strategic alliance. Not only the possibility[3] for a progressive interest among the capitalists became considered by party leadership, but its actuality.[4] And if the US represents a progressive form of capitalism capable of peacefully, inevitably, leading to communism, then it should be the work of communists to aid the development of US capitalism.[5]

This campaign of unity with the national interests of the US bourgeoisie in its progressive drive against fascism, required, too, that in the spirit of proving communist commitment to the US that the party withdraw from the Comintern in 1940. This is because the capitalist “allies” wasted no effort in accusing all the communist parties and the Comintern itself of acting in a concerted effort to “Bolshevize” them. It is a long standing accusation of the party as receiving orders from Moscow. Stalin explained the dissolution to Reuters shortly after its finalization in 1943:

“The dissolution of the Communist International is proper because:
(a)   It exposes the lie of the Hitlerites to the effect that “Moscow” allegedly intends to intervene in the life of other nations and to “Bolshevize” them. From now on an end is put to this lie.

(b)   It exposes the calumny of the adversaries of Communism within the Labour movement to the effect that Communist Parties in various countries are allegedly acting not in the interests of their people but on orders from outside. From now on an end is also put to this calumny.

(c)   It facilitates the work of patriots of all countries for uniting the progressive forces of their respective countries, regardless of party or religious faith, into a single camp of national liberation—for unfolding the struggle against fascism.

(d)   It facilitates the work of patriots of all countries for uniting all freedom-loving peoples into a single international camp for the fight against the menace of world domination by Hitlerism, thus clearing the way for the future organization of a companionship of nations based upon their equality.”

Furthermore, the conditions of World War II for the Soviet Union meant intense battles mainly being fought on the eastern front. The allies refused to attack from the west until after the comintern was dissolved. 

In the international context of the alliance between the capitalist and socialist camps, this international camp against fascism, led many to believe a new world was on the horizon. The prospect of both camps working together for the benefit of all was a seemingly tangible possibility. Many assurances from both sides were made on the post-war order of the world. 

In fact, peaceful coexistence was not a new idea. Lenin also considered it not only possible, but a necessity for building socialism while encircled by capitalism. This is because a global revolution at the same time was not possible. So naturally, socialism would crop up in one country or another while existing side by side with capitalist states. Peace as a matter of foreign policy is then not negotiable, it’s a requirement of survival for the proletarian state until socialism has sufficiently encircled capitalism. [6] 

Yet, in the conditions of the Anti-Fascist People’s Front, the threat of fascist terror proved to be a far more pressing concern, and rendered the antagonism between the two systems secondary while fascism existed. In 1947, Stalin explained that “[t]he difference between them [capitalism and socialism] is not important so far as co-operation is concerned. The systems in Germany and the United States are the same but war broke out between them. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. systems are different but we didn’t wage war against each other and the U.S.S.R. does not propose to. If during the war they could co-operate, why can’t they today in peace, given the wish to co-operate?“[7]

Peaceful coexistence as a practical possibility was thus built upon the concessions of the international communist movement to unite both camps against fascism. And owing to the progressive aspirations of the people from both camps toward a post-war world, no sacrifice was too sacred to further the Anti-Fascist People’s Front, up to and including the dissolution of the Communist International. Thus, the international communist line was set on the facilitation of national interests to build “national unity”, rather than an international centre for proletarian revolution. 

However the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) thoroughly repudiates the long believed purpose of the dissolution of the comintern. The characterization of the war by the comintern to be initially that of an imperialist war to redivide the world market was abruptly changed to being anti-fascist once Germany invaded the USSR. The KKE argues that the real character of the war as being an imperialist war was inescapable and unavoidably part and parcel of the underlying conditions of the war but underestimated in the line of the Anti-Fascist People’s Front. The KKE explains in its report on the Comintern by the Section of the International Relations of the Central Committee of the KKE:

This position underestimated the fact that the character of the war is determined by which class wages the war and for what purpose, whether it is originally and at that particular moment on the defense or on the attack. The struggle against fascism and the liberation from foreign occupation, for democratic rights and freedoms, was detached from the struggle against capital.

The contradictions in the CI’s (Communist International) line on the character of World War II were also influenced by the aspirations of the USSR’s foreign policy and by its attempt to defend itself from an imperialist war. However, in any case, the needs of the foreign policy of one socialist state cannot supplant the necessity of a revolutionary strategy for every capitalist country. The ultimate security of a socialist state is determined by the worldwide victory of socialism or its prevalence in a powerful group of countries and hence, the struggle for revolution in each country.

Further, the change in policy of the communist parties to this new reality meant doing away with previous methods of work as was done before the rise of fascism. To prevent a collapse of the international camp, and its tenuous alliance, the role of the communist party was redirected away from an exposure of the oppressive policies of the bourgeoisie. The party saw such agitation as a threat which could culminate in driving progressive capital towards reaction. [8]

Through this context of national unity, progressive capitalism, and peaceful coexistence, the dissolution of the Communist Party USA took place and its re-formation into the Communist Political Association (C.P.A.) in 1944. This was an organization not for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie, but for “Marxist edification” of the American people who by means of the existing bourgeois political structure of the country would realize socialism peacefully in alliance with progressive monopoly capital. The party of a new type, Leninism itself, finally being rejected.

It is quite easy and convenient to attribute all of the incorrect policies of the party during the war period to Browder. He was of course the general secretary of the party in the period. The theoretical leader of the party. However, this would fall into the easiest traps of analyzing this period. The Popular Front, National Unity, Progressive Capital, and Peaceful Coexistence were not solely Browder’s ideas. These all came from the international movement and its leaders. As well, almost every communist party in the advanced capitalist countries fell into similar mistakes.

Ultimately, we cannot ignore the reason why the Communist International was dissolved to further the national unity campaigns of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries in order to gather bourgeois support against the Axis. Neither can we ignore the extent to which peaceful coexistence was believed to be not only possible, but probable in a post-war world. That hostile attitudes and imperialist interests would dissipate in the absence of the unifying threat of fascism was not seriously considered.

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.

By virtue of our analysis coming some 80 years after the policies of the Popular Front, some truths are self-evident. Such being that many parties in the absence of the Communist International fell into social-democracy, the capitalist camp vehemently attacked and subverted the People’s Democracies of Europe, and finally, had a hand in the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The long desired peaceful coexistence, its technical possibility, and historical necessity only resulting in the loss of the international position of the communist movement. 

Perhaps the alliance between the capitalist and socialist camps was only possible through the shared interest in destroying the rise of fascism, and ultimately in furthering imperialist interests. Stalin further qualified such an alliance as being possible only if the underpinning impetus to its continuation in the context of shared interests overcoming the fundamental contradiction between states remained intact.[9] Alliances between capitalists states are predicated on the build-up of forces for the re-division of markets, this is indisputable, alliances between imperialist bourgeois-democracies and socialism are, as evidenced by the practical result of the second world war, predicated on the existence of a threat to both bourgeois-democracies and socialism. 

The “desire,” so to speak, which conditions the unity between the two camps against fascism stems from the very nature of fascism. Without this threat, the domination of imperialism becomes the overriding interest of the capitalist camp if it is not all along. 

The economic logic of imperialism necessitates war, it requires the penetration of new markets. Peace between the socialist and capitalist camps can then only ever be tenuous at best. The capitalists will never stop looking for weak points in the proletarian state to subjugate it to the interests of capital. The only way to maintain peace between the camps then is through trials of strength, otherwise the capitalists will attack with force and destroy the socialist state.[10] Lenin was very clear that peaceful coexistence was limited and conditional:

“the very thought of peacefully subordinating the capitalists to the will of the majority of the exploited, of the peaceful, reformist transition to Socialism is not only extreme philistine stupidity, but also downright deception of the workers, the embellishment of capitalist wage slavery, concealment of the truth.”[11]

In fact, the entire purpose of the Communist International was to serve as an organizing body of the world proletariat to combat the encirclement of the young Soviet Republic, the stronghold of socialism.

In the final analysis, the Axis was defeated, but at a severe cost to the international communist movement which still struggles against fascist reaction today. The factors which contributed to the degradation of the western communist parties are situated in a deeper analysis of the conditions of capitalism retarding the ideological development of the workers and subsequently the communist parties therein. 

Reflecting on the collapse of the Second International in 1972, Gus Hall remarked, 

“The unity between parties was first diluted to a formal unity. But very quickly even the formal ties became obstacles to carrying out opportunist policies. World and class ties between parties became an embarrassment. Each party stated its internationalism would be expressed through effective work, each within each of the national entities.

The leaders of these socialist parties very quickly made “new” discoveries. They decided Marx was wrong. There were no laws of capitalist development that applied universally. There were no worldwide concepts of the class struggle. In each country they discovered “fundamental” national peculiarities that overshadowed international similarities. The working-class interests were watered down to where they did not appear in contradiction with the interests of the ruling class.

The class struggle became purely a “people’s struggle.” Class concepts became national concepts. No party openly condemned internationalism, they just put it on the shelf for “the duration.”

Many of the parties became large mass parties. This was good. But what was not good, was that they became broad popular parties by going along with popular concepts of nationalism and classlessness. They became mass parties by giving up their advanced working-class positions. Their growth was fed by opportunism”

A very apropos analysis of the Second International that has an all-too coincidental similarity to the objective consequences of the 7th Congress of the Comintern line. Opportunism is at the heart of its self-dissolution. 

    *    *    * 

Some Implications and Consequences

If the Popular Front line of the 7th Congress of the Comintern is examined to its end in 1943 it is unquestionable that its primary thesis forms the foundation for several party leaders later on. Let us outline this connection.

As stated previously, it was fully argued under the 7th congress line that the previous periods of the Comintern were a mistake and were ultra-leftist. The development and popularity of fascism had come out of the “failure” of the communist movement to have adequately embedded itself in the large petty-bourgeois, and nationalist populations. The new line was to correct this mistake by shifting the movement away from “left-sectarian” methods. 

In effect, a move away from combating the bourgeoisie ideologically to form the popular front through concessions to it was the systematic dismantlement of proletarian internationalism. “Peaceful Coexistence” as a matter of foreign policy thereafter for the communist movement became perverted to mean outright submission to the capitalists who were now “progressive.”

The “broad masses” as defined in the line of 7th Congress of the Comintern were not compelled out of necessity to unite with the communists here as much as was the case in war torn Europe. While all western communist parties eventually devolved into social democracy over several decades, the US party did so not two years after the 7th Congress. No one can deny the fascist threat which loomed and looms in the US, yet the US party was destroyed easily by opportunism. 

Again, we cannot stress enough that Browder is merely applying the line of 7th Congress of the Comintern to its logical end. All understandings of Browderism while correct superficially are hollow when examined at a deeper level. Browder was many things, but in the final analysis their failure is primarily to be found in their uncritical approach to the line of 7th Congress of the Comintern. We must also mention that while Foster was correct in recognizing the folly of what came under Browder’s leadership, they failed to see its real connection to the 7th Congress of the Comintern.

Even after the disastrous effects under Browder, Foster and the CP leadership failed to see what truly upended the communist movement. As a further consequence, the CPUSA never abandoned the rightist line of the 7th Congress of the Comintern and to this day puts forward the path to socialism as through a “peaceful revolution” literally at the ballot box. The “Communist Party” of the US is purposefully ignoring the class character of bourgeois democracy. This is why with the deaths of Foster and later Gus Hall, the last vestiges of militancy in the CP died as well. Rank opportunism having claimed victory in the CPUSA.

The distortions of Marxism-Leninism by the 7th Congress of the Comintern must be studied and fought against to rebuild and bring about Socialism-Communism. 

Timothy Dirte is the Educational Secretary of the Party of Communists USA and Editor-in-Chief of “The Communist”.

[1] In fact, Browder says as much in the early 1943 issue of The Communist when the Comintern was dissolved.

[2] First of all, it would be well to clear up a certain paradox which gives rise to many confusions. The paradox can be stated in this form: that American capitalism is the most advanced in the world, but not the most mature. It is the most advanced, in that it is the strongest, it has brought the technique of production to its highest known point, and it has carried over and preserved the least proportion of pre-capitalist social, political, and economic forms. It is not the most mature, in the sense that it does not exhibit the full evolution of its inherent tendencies of development, it retains some of the characteristics of a young capitalism, and lags in self-understanding and self-consciousness. (E. Browder, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, 1944)

[3] Regulation and limitation of monopoly capital, in a society in which it plays a dominant role, are not simple and easy matters. If big capital unites its forces against the rest of society, and fights for unrestricted domination, then it is extremely doubtful whether it can be regulated successfully, short of a major political and social struggle, and a crisis resulting in a socialistic system replacing the present one.

   If, however, in the ranks of big capital there is a sufficient number of men of vision and understanding who recognize the suicidal results to their own system that inevitably flow from a failure strictly to subordinate its operations to a broadly conceived and definitely planned program of national and international expansion of well-being for all – then such men, integrated in or working with the democratic-progressive camp of the people, can become the decisive leaders of big capital in a maximum of self-limitation to meet a minimum of governmentally-imposed regulation that will effectively curb the anti-social and anti-national tendencies of big capital, sufficient for it to participate in the national unity in support of the program of Teheran. (Ibid)

[4] There is a growing volume of evidence that there are such men of vision and understanding in the ranks of big capital. Their number will grow, and their initiative and leadership will become stronger, to the degree that it is made evident that there exists a practical platform upon which they can unite, and are uniting, with the broad democratic-progressive camp inclusive of the organized labor movement, which promotes the general interest of the whole nation. (Ibid)

[5] Therefore, the policy for Marxists and all adherents of socialism in the United States is to face with all its consequences the perspective of a capitalist United States in the period of postwar reconstruction of the world, to evaluate all plans on that basis, and to collaborate actively with the most democratic and progressive majority in the country in a national unity sufficiently broad and effective to realize the policies of Teheran. (Ibid)

[6] [..]the lesson all workers and peasants must master is that we must be on our guard and remember that we are surrounded by men, classes and governments openly expressing their extreme hatred for us. We must remember that we are always at a hair’s breadth from all kinds of invasions. (“On the Domestic and Foreign Policies of the Republic, Report Delivered at the Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets”, Collected Works, fourth Russian ed., Moscow, Vol. 33, p. 122.)

[7] J. V. Stalin Coexistence, American-Soviet Cooperation, Atomic Energy, Europe, 1947.

[8] We must all learn to welcome their appearance and prove in practical life that such cooperative effort in the spirit of national unity is both possible and profitable. Nothing can be more fatal for the perspective of Teheran, so far as the United States is concerned, than an attitude of uniform and undifferentiated hostility to the ranks of big capital from the side of the labor and liberal sectors of our democracy. That only drives the intelligent capitalists back into the arms of their most reactionary fellows and unites the most powerful group in American society solidly against all progress.

   There can be no effective national unity in America to secure and unfold the program of Teheran that does not include big capitalists able to fight for and win at least a certain minimum of participation on the part of their whole group. (E. Browder, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, 1944)

[9] Of course, if there is no desire to co-operate, even with the same economic system they may fall out as was the case with Germany. – J. V. Stalin Coexistence, American-Soviet Cooperation, Atomic Energy, Europe

[10] That is the way it always is  —  when the enemy is beaten, he begins talking peace. We have told these gentlemen, the imperialists of Europe, time and again that we agree to make peace, but they continued to dream of enslaving Russia. Now they have realized that their dreams are not fated to come true. (“Speech Delivered at the First All-Russian Conference on Party Work in the Countryside”. Alliance of the Working Class and the Peasantry, FLPH, Moscow 1959, p. 326.)

[11] V.I. Lenin, Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920

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The eyes of the whole world are focused on the United States, despite the discreet commitment of certain Italian media which, for evidently political reasons, succeed in the arduous task of giving considerably greater importance to the protests in Hong Kong. The virality of the video showing the death of 46-year-old African American George Floyd and the indignation that ensued sparked a spontaneous mass movement that spread from Minneapolis to the whole country in a few days.

This is a just, legitimate protest. And not only that: what days ago could be defined as a protest movement, today takes on the characteristics of a real revolt of the urban proletariat, right in the metropolitan center of imperialism. Just look at what is happening. Protests in more than 40 cities where a curfew was imposed with the intervention of the National Guard; more than 10,000 people arrested, dozens of injured by the police who make extensive use of tear gas and rubber bullets. The repressive response of the state has raised the bar of confrontation day by day. Donald Trump has openly addressed the governors of the various states, accusing them of being too weak and asking for more arrests and to intervene to “restore order”, an invitation that seems to have already been taken up by far-right groups and supporters of white supremacists. of the President. A few days ago, taking refuge in the security bunker while the White House was surrounded by demonstrators, Trump announced the banning of the “Antifa” network and declared that the protests are led by terrorist organizations. In part it is an electoral campaign, in part it is unmistakable signs of the high level of the conflict in which the country finds itself today.

Police abuse of African Americans in the United States and racial discrimination[1] , which has never really disappeared from American society, have always been known. But it would be highly reductive to think of the protests of recent days as a simply anti-racist movement . From the riots of the last few days, a political rejection of the American model, of the injustice of that model of society has emerged . The target of the protests does not appear to be just the Trump government, but the entire scaffolding that large sections of US society perceive as grossly unfair. And in fact, in all the cities, demonstrators are seen waving US flags upside down.

The African American question in the USA, which today also extends to Hispanics, has always been intertwined with the class character of American society. Police abuses of African Americans are the icing on a deeply unfair system. To cite some data, African Americans are 13% of the US population, but they own 1.5% of the wealth. A white household earns on average ten times more than a black household, and inequality rose sharply during the crisis 10 years ago (before the crisis the proportion was one to seven). The health emergency from Covid-19 has hit African Americans in considerably greater proportions, in a country without a true public health service, which does not consider health a right, making it accessible only to those who can afford it. All the statistics have highlighted a trend: the sick and especially the dead from Covid are African Americans. According to data from the Washington Post and the New York Times, in counties with a majority of African Americans there are three times the number of infections and six times the deaths. In New York, the main outbreaks of the epidemic are in the working-class neighborhoods: Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. The data of the individual states make the situation even clearer: In Michigan, African Americans are 14% of the population, but they represent 40% of deaths from Covid. In Louisiana, 70% of Covid deaths are African American, but blacks are only 32% of the population. This happens because the black communities, being the poorest, they have less access to treatment as they cannot afford to pay for them and therefore have more frequent previous pathologies, which increase mortality. Many work underpaid and exploited precisely in those essential sectors that are not affected by lockdown measures and are therefore more exposed to infections. All this happens to increase the dose in a context, that of the health emergency, in which thousands of people are deprived of their income, lose their jobs, have no access to medical assistance.

The killing of George Floyd acted as a detonator for the exasperation of the popular classes to turn into revolt. A class revolt, because those who live in African-American neighborhoods are proletarians, and it is the proletarians who are affected by racial discrimination. It is against this exasperation that the police, the National Guard are mobilized today in the US and the opportunity to use even the army to suppress protests is discussed. It is a response that is far from atypical for the United States: a country that has 6% of the world population, and which at the same time boasts 25% of the world’s prison population.

Any reflection on the violence, on the police stations set on fire, on the destroyed shop windows or on the episodes of looting, must take steps starting from this context, because they are typical phenomena of a context of revolt like the one in progress, they have to do with the effective mass participation in the protests that have been going on for more than a week now. This net of reports of infiltration by police and provocateurs by the protesters themselves. The talk of beautiful souls about violence that calls more violence, about “there is a way and way to manifest”, really leave the time they find when faced with a real mass movement that points the finger at the power of the ruling classes. It is a context that physiologically presupposes, by its very definition, the presence of violence, which comes primarily from the state. Those who hasten to “condemn” the violence of the demonstrators, real or alleged, only show that they prefer the daily violence of the bosses. Those who even from the “left” distance themselves from looting do not realize that there is no popular uprising in history without such episodes, in which exasperation for their living conditions finds an outlet in the act of appropriating goods and merchandise which normally could not be afforded for economic reasons. It is a phenomenon explained by the context. Rather, we should ask ourselves what are the reasons why the anger of the popular classes in the US does not find a more advanced outlet than this. What for the right-thinking and for the theorists of order and discipline would be enough to condemn that movement?

What Are The Prospects?

The United States is a country in which the insufficiency of the forces of the labor and communist movement has emerged for some time and much more than in other countries. The historical CPUSA, who started with a troubled history, suffers the profound limits due to an opportunist political leadership that has led him for years to support the Democratic Party of the USA, also and above all electorally. The Communists in the USA operate in a context of weakness and fragmentation, in the absence of a party that can express today a real political and fighting alternative. The US trade union system imposes an entirely company-based structure in the total absence of collective agreements and therefore an enormous fragmentation of workers’ organizations. An overall picture that shares many aspects with other Anglo-Saxon countries;

The movement these days is paying the price for these shortcomings, for which the young people who animate it are not to blame. It is a great protest movement, a revolt that certainly sees black and non-black men and women as protagonists, workers and precarious workers, and students but that does not see the support of a large, organized workers movement that is capable of giving the protests an outlet for struggle for a more advanced policy. This movement does not exist in the USA, just as there is no communist party rooted and present throughout the national territory, despite some interesting and important experiences, but still in an embryonic phase. These days it is a movement animated by proletarians, by waged, precarious, unemployed workers, who however are not organized as such, and one would wonder if they are aware of it.

The United States is no stranger to the explosion of this kind of movement. Indeed, it can be said that in the last 10 years there has been more mass movement in the US than in Italy. But they take place in a context in which the forces capable of directing anger and rebellion in the direction of the revolutionary struggle , of the struggle against the imperialist system of which the US has been the main global player for years, are lacking .

It is not a question, mind you, of discrediting a movement for these shortcomings. Those who think that the role of the Communists is to pontificate at the window by excommunicating any mass movement that is not born on its own initiative, without asking the question of what kind of intervention should be put on the real level, have understood very little of Marxism. However, it is a question of remembering the lesson of the many movements seen in recent decades. We think of Occupy (born in the USA), the Indignados and so on, which were also movements with more “political” connotations when compared with this which really expresses the characteristics of a people’s revolt. The irrational and romantic fascination for protest movements should rather be contrasted with a mature reflection on how the communists should act.

In Italy the movements have shown one thing: without a communist party and an organized workers’ movement, but even if the communists do not prove themselves politically up to it, a spontaneous protest movement can run out, or slowly ebb, without there having been no advancement for the class forces. In the years of the G8 in Genoa, the two communist parties present in Italy at the time, Rifondazione and the Pdci, were respectively engaged in theorising the movement of movements (a sort of Bertinottian version of the multitudes of Toni Negri, which in fact dragged that party to the tail and not at the head of those movements) and to study the best alliance for each region to obtain councilors and elect councilors. That movement, which posed important fundamental questions in the opposition to the G8 and saw the participation of large proletarian and trade union sectors, found itself lacking a vanguard leadership and a real perspective. A merciless picture if observed today in retrospect, which reminds us that that is not enough in itself there are communist parties, but it is also necessary that the right objectives be set.

A separate discussion applies to the individual days of protest that resulted in pitched clashes with the police, which is linked to the reflections on the violence. On the specific theme of street clashes, some clarifications are important and it may be useful to recall the recent experiences of our country to clarify some aspects. A day that the not so young will remember is that of December 14, 2010. A large mass movement, participated in spite of the fact that it mostly saw students at the center (unlike the movement against the G8 in Genoa which saw a wider mass participation), culminated in that day that saw the explosion of the clash in the street after the Berlusconi government did not fall in the Chamber by three votes from the center-left. The last blow of the tail of that movement was, in hindsight, on October 15, 2011, where the contradictions of an ever less spontaneous street conflict were already emerging and more and more practiced on the precise choice of individual organized groups. But it is perhaps the march of 1 May 2015 in Milan that made a reflection on how the mere simulation of a conflict that does not correspond to the reality of the class struggle (which certainly cannot be reduced to the aesthetics of a clash with the police) really necessary. ) risks even being counterproductive and lending its side to reaction and repression. Here, when it comes to violence and clashes that take place during a protest, this should be the main discriminator for communists. But it is perhaps the march of 1 May 2015 in Milan that made a reflection on how the mere simulation of a conflict that does not correspond to the reality of the class struggle (which certainly cannot be reduced to the aesthetics of a clash with the police) really necessary. ) risks even being counterproductive and lending its side to reaction and repression.  The condemnation of spontaneous episodes of violence typical of a mass movement does not belong to the communists, much less the condemnation of violence in general in the name of that “pacifism” which would like the unilateral disarmament of the oppressed. On the other hand, it is entirely legitimate and right to criticize the political tactics of certain minority groups which envisage the simulation of that violence even when the real mass movement does not exist or does not express advanced positions, for the reasons mentioned above. In the case of the current uprising in the United States, however, it seems that we are more in the first case than in the second.

The attempt to “absorb” the protest and the tasks of the Communists

When a movement is born and develops outside the organized workers’ movement, but above all when there is no political vanguard of the class capable of taking over it, it is physiologically that this movement expresses backward conceptions and that above all the conditions are met for which it can be absorbed by bourgeois political forces.

Recent news is the announcement of the participation in the funeral of George Floyd of Joe Biden, candidate of the Democrats in the US presidential elections highlighted an election campaign logic that seeks to transform the anger that is setting the United States to fire and sword into political consensus, without any form of real political discontinuity. Suffice it to say that the Democratic candidate, even in a similar situation, did not go much further than affirming the need to teach the police to “shoot in the legs instead of the heart”. And beyond Biden, all the political, media, cultural, and even economic apparatuses are already working to “normalize” the protest. Big companies are scrambling to take part for the demonstrators, for many big monopolies #BlackLivesMatter has already become a marketing campaign, much like what happens annually in the month of Pride (which “normalization” has already seen. for quite a while), in which even large companies are tinged with the rainbow.

For some time now the hands of those “left” sectors of the Democratic Party of the USA have been reaching out to the Black Lives Matter movement, from Bernie Sanders to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which more than representing a real alternative of struggle capable of undermining the American bipartisan system, are successfully carrying out the function of reabsorbing even the most radical elements of protest emerging from American society into the confines of that system. A function similar to that performed throughout Europe by the parties of the European Left with respect to movements against austerity. Experiences of government or support for bourgeois governments of the European Left in countries such as Greece, Spain, Portugal have fully demonstrated the historical function of those forces that are now fully integrated into the bourgeois political system (Syriza, Podemos, Bloco de Esquerda…), for the sake of those in Italy who still think they are taking that road out of time. The “left” of the US Democratic Party does not express anything qualitatively different from these experiences, and manages to be more backward even on the political level.

The Communists of the USA operate in a difficult context, but also in a historical moment in which – it is now well known – among the young American generations an idea of ​​rehabilitation of “socialism” (certainly conceived in a confused way) is gaining ground. It took place from the time of the protests against the war in Vietnam. This sentiment, certainly confused and contradictory, but which remains indicative, is now being intercepted by the left of the Democrats, which re-proposes the project of a “traditional” social democracy as opposed to the substantially liberal nature of that party.

Of course, the bipartisanism of that system, with the primaries of the two parties now welded as institutional processes in all respects (and not just party-based), has considerable weight. Asking whether the two-party system in Anglo-Saxon countries is the product of the marginalization of the communists in the political scenario or whether it is quite the opposite is a bit like the story of the chicken and the egg. If one thing is certain, it is that that mechanism can only be undermined by the material strength of the workers and organized proletarians; that building this force is all the more necessary in a country like the USA where the electoral system deprives the Communists of even the same parliamentarian illusion and the possibility of building the party as a political / electoral consensus party disconnected from the working class.

It would be a great mistake, however, to cultivate the illusion that those forms of spontaneity can in themselves lead to a real change in the system, and that in this they can replace the organization. History shows that when there is no political reference, even the largest mass movements can ebb and give way to the return of ordinary oppression, or even to responses of a reactionary nature. The images of the White House surrounded by demonstrators are an important signal, but we cannot delude ourselves that the White House “conquers itself”, without an organized force of the oppressed classes capable of leading the assault as it did with the Winter Palace.

The task of the Communists would be first of all not to arrive unprepared. Recent events, not only in the US but also in France, constantly remind us that the possibility of the explosion of movements of struggle and protest also exists outside the forecasts of the organized class forces. When this happens, you risk missing the train of history. The biggest mistake, in a situation of this kind that we know well in Italy, would be to stay at the window launching anathemas, blaming the masses for being backward, blaming the movement for its own limits deriving above all from the unpreparedness of those who should put themselves to the guide of the masses. Conduct such as this has the sole result of facilitating the absorption of a movement of this type by the bourgeois political apparatus,

The experience of the workers’ movement teaches us that the Communists can and must move like fish in water. That even small organized groups, such as the most consequent Communists in the USA who are fighting for the reconstruction of a revolutionary party, can act in the context of a mass movement, gaining positions and prestige, albeit in initially limited sectors; they can place the need for organization on the more advanced and conscious sectors of that movement, absorb the more combative part that has no intention of remaining to witness the reflux of a struggle movement that it has helped to animate. Our whole history is full of episodes that remind us of a lesson: there are no conditions that, however unfavorable they may be, justify the abandonment of the struggle.

To the anger, to the will for change of millions of proletarians in the USA who today point the finger at injustice, we must offer a force capable of truly conquering a different society. This force is the Communist Party. The struggle to organize and strengthen this party, in the US as in all countries, remains the greatest hope of change for a generation that does not want to bow its head in the face of the new capital crisis.

Paolo Spena is a leader in the Italian communist movement.

[1] Let us use the term “race” in its social and non-biological meaning, which has always belonged to the Afro-American movements.

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