Until we’ve normalized a type of antiwar movement-building that includes every element of Americans who support the cause, the movement is going to remain unable to have an effect on the conflicts our government is involved in. The idea of fighting the war machine is going to keep being nothing more than a way for members of an exclusive clique to project an activist aesthetic. That’s what our ruling elites want our popular movements to be; and ever since any authentic labor movement in America got crushed, the dominant sources of organizing leadership have operated according to this self-constrained model.
They destroy their own hope for winning enough of the people to win the antiwar struggle, because they mix antiwar organizing and rhetoric with appeals towards the left wing of the culture war; they want the antiwar movement to be owned by the left, which by definition is a goal that handicaps the movement’a numbers. A growing number of Americans are becoming disillusioned with the war machine, Ukraine showed this; yet the prevailing mentality within modern activism is that this piece of progress is meaningless, because the Americans who’ve been making this consciousness shift aren’t left-liberals. We have an opportunity to expand the amount of Americans who back the anti-Zionist cause, and the ones who are supposed to be leading this project are only interested in preaching to one element of the people.
It’s because of this deficiency in how modern activism works that throughout the last decade or so, the only parts of the U.S. antiwar movement that have had any impact on global events are the ones which have involved fighting the information war. WikiLeaks, RT, and domestic anti-imperialist outlets like MintPress are what have alarmed the new cold warriors; not ANSWER, which as our class conflict escalates is increasingly taking on the role of an attacker against orgs that deviate from its tired old strategy. When WikiLeaks revealed the OPCW conspiracy to hide evidence which contradicted the State Department on Syria, then this report got amplified by the counter-hegemonic news sources, the imperialist media was prompted to react; to try to put forth a counter-narrative, to intensify the censorship against dissenting voices, and to continue with the slow execution of Julian Assange. The most established leftist orgs haven’t gotten the equivalent kind of pushback, unlike the smaller orgs that are dedicated to bringing anti-imperialism to the people.
Their leaders haven’t been caricatured in the media over their antiwar statements, like CPI’s Caleb Maupin has; their members haven’t been raided and indicted, like three members of the Uhuru org have. In modern America, the most visible political forces that sell themselves as antiwar leaders are not genuine threats to our ruling institutions. And this is intentional on their part, because they come not from the revolutionary tendency of Bolshevism, but from the reformist tendency of Menshevism.
Lenin assessed the task of the Bolsheviks when it came to combating reformism, which are the same as the tasks of revolutionary actors today:
The intensification of the struggle of reformism against revolutionary Social-Democracy within the working-class movement is an absolutely inevitable result of the changes in the entire economic and political situation throughout the civilised world. The growth of the working-class movement necessarily attracts to its ranks a certain number of petty-bourgeois elements, people who are under the spell of bourgeois ideology, who find it difficult to rid themselves of that ideology and continually lapse back into it. We can not conceive of the social revolution being accomplished by the proletariat without this struggle, without clear demarcation on questions of principle between the socialist Mountain and the socialist Gironde[2] prior to this revolution, and without a complete break between the opportunist, petty-bourgeois elements and the proletarian, revolutionary elements of the new historic force during this revolution.
When we break from the actors who are trying to carry on the legacy of the original reformists, we become able to put an end to the crimes of the imperial hegemon; and to do so even faster than it takes for us to win state power. It’s essential that we recognize this as possible, because the elements that hold back the struggle don’t want us to believe we can truly impede the operations of the U.S. empire until after we’ve already defeated the state. This is apparent from how ANSWER’s Brian Becker has directly said he and the org’s other leaders don’t expect to end the wars.
A 2007 New York Times report on the org’s activities provided this insight into the thinking within this political tendency, which contrasts with the thinking of many who get funneled into doing work for Becker’s project:
Judging by the speeches and placards, the marchers on Saturday set their sights on sweeping goals, including not only ending the war but also impeaching President Bush and ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many carried Answer Coalition signs bearing the image of the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. Brian Becker, the national coordinator of the Answer Coalition and a member of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, said the group held out little hope of influencing either the president or Congress. “It is about radicalizing people,” Mr. Becker said in an interview. “You hook into a movement that exists — in this case the antiwar movement — and channel people who care about that movement and bring them into political life, the life of political activism.”
It’s this thinking on the part of the leaders who dominate the movement at present which keeps the struggle from advancing beyond that basic model of activism; from developing into a force that’s truly capable of changing history. The consequence of embracing movementism; where your priority is to build organizing influence for its own sake rather than to win the class war; is cultivating a circle that excludes the most conscious parts of the people, while favoring the most opportunistic parts of the people. Most of the Americans who share antiwar sentiments are considered enemies by today’s established leftist groups; this is because to the activists who’ve embraced the petty-bourgeois radical mindset, anyone who doesn’t fit an arbitrary criteria for respectability isn’t seen as deserving to take part in the struggle.
It’s not only the antiwar libertarians and conservatives who are blankedly excluded from these spaces; CPI, and increasingly Uhuru, are considered untouchable within these circles as well. By extension, anyone who associates with these groups comes to be seen as an enemy too.
It’s a cynical power game that’s not related to what’s best for the cause. And the more we build up the institutions that aren’t invested in this game, the more we’ll see progress happen. The struggle’s gatekeepers want us to fear the idea of becoming that successful at weakening the imperial state, because they fear it; an organization that too directly challenges the power structure is going to become a prime target for the state, and somebody who’s invested in endlessly keeping up movementist rituals doesn’t see that as a worthwhile sacrifice. For the elements of our movement that are serious about winning, any sacrifice that’s indispensable for reaching that goal is worthwhile; which is why these elements are not able to be influenced by any gatekeeping efforts. Those who’ve committed to the cause are staying committed, regardless of what our enemies do.
The more the mass-oriented orgs succeed at building relationships with the people, the more our enemies are going to intensify their attacks, and the more we’ll be tested. The next stage in the escalation will likely be when they start applying the same kinds of indictments they’ve applied towards Uhuru to many other groups; after then, it could be extrajudicial executions of targeted individuals, like in the drone wars. We’re going to have to be ready to keep our operations going throughout all of these developments, and to take advantage of the next openings the struggle creates for shifting the power balance.
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