The battle that we’ve been seeing take place within the socialist movement for the last few years, where one camp has sided with Russia’s operation while the other has opposed it, is truly a battle between hope and despair. Between the way of thinking within the left which is willing to surrender towards capital’s collapse into barbarism, and the authentically communist way of thinking which instills one with a will to fight against that destruction.
This contrast has been illustrated quite well by the debate over how to view Russia’s Ukraine action. Here we have a development that’s destroyed the military of Kiev’s genocidal regime, strengthened China’s Belt and Road Initiative, accelerated the decline of the dollar, and overall rendered U.S. imperialism strategically weaker. Yet the predominant socialist formations in the imperialist countries have interpreted it as a bad thing. The issue with the pessimistic left goes deeper than such foreign policy issues, though. It also pertains to how these imperialism-compatible socialists view the people in their own society, which is with hostility. They look at the real or perceived contradictions within the people, and conclude that the bulk of them lack revolutionary potential. Or at least that only the left-liberal elements are worth reaching, which is functionally the same idea.
If the class struggle is guided by that idea, the only possible outcome is barbarism. Without a working class movement that’s effective, monopoly finance capital will triumph. Then it will fulfill its plans for water wars, militarized efforts at strengthening the existing power structures, cruel “degrowth” austerity precipitated by the next economic meltdown, and the other parts of the elite’s planned late-capitalist dystopia.
Such a desire to confine oneself to a political fandom—and thereby to let the ruling class carry forth its anti-human agenda—comes out of an ideological leadership that’s not focused on winning the class struggle. Its priority is to maintain a monopoly over the movement itself. As Joti Brar has said, opportunism is the reason why these ideas exist:
They use these terms which are Leninist, which are Marxist terms which have an emotional impact on socialists, right? And they use them to describe their actions. They talk about Russia as an aggressive imperialist power. So that immediately has an emotional impact on people who identify as socialists, right? “Oh gosh, I can’t be on the side of aggressive imperialists,” and then they say what they want to do, bless them, is to decolonize Russia … Don’t you understand? So the imperialists are very good at taking our terminology and using it against us. But of course, this only works if you’re a self identifying, emotional communist, and not an actual student of socialism. Because if you study Marxism, this won’t fool you … the root cause is opportunism…It’s a pro imperialist ideology, essentially, that the organizations, many of them, are led and funded by the state. They’re not going to be pulled into anything useful, but many of their people are sincere people, who are just misinformed and miseducated by this machinery. So is there hope for catching some of these people, changing their minds, pulling them back? Of course; if there wasn’t, if you can’t change people’s minds, you can’t make a revolution.
The class struggle’s success isn’t totally dependent on whether we can change the minds of those particular people, because they represent a tiny minority. Rescuing them from the imperialism-compatible way of thinking only provides the struggle with some extra strength, on top of the strength it draws from its main, true source: the broader masses. As in the great majority of the people who haven’t passed through the compatible left’s recruiting process, which draws heavily from the young middle-class and academic radicals who tend to be drawn the most towards ultra-leftism.
The members of this intelligentsia who’ve embraced pro-imperialist dogma may in large part have sincere intentions, but their materially comfortable conditions predispose them towards such ideas. As Caleb Maupin has observed about this layer of radicals: “Among the political left, the primary and constant current is an extremely alienated minority from within the privileged sectors of society…No matter how strong or weak the leftist current is in society at large, a certain sector of the privileged classes exists as a kind of ‘radical intelligentsia.’” The problem with this social element as it exists in the modern imperialist countries is that due to the destruction of the old left—which empowered the revolutionary element that’s based within the working class—that alienated minority among the privileged now exists in isolation. It’s today the only part of the socialist movement, so the socialist movement has been cut off from the broader masses for decades.
When we succeed at rebuilding those means for the workers to define the class struggle, far from every member of this petty-bourgeois radical element is going to be willing to renounce their alignment with opportunism. We’ve see this in how many of them have reacted with indignance and anger towards what efforts we’ve so far made at breaking opportunism’s hold. Peter Coffin has particularly noticed such obstinacy from the leaders of the PSL, and from the organizers who uncritically promote the ideas of these leaders: “Though they profess anti-imperialism, they declined to participate in a wide coalition against US intervention called ‘Rage Against the War Machine,’ not because it included libertarians (though I’m sure they didn’t like that), but because it included Jackson Hinkle (whom I am no fan of, but this is a ridiculous reason not to participate in an anti-war coalition).” This instance of unseriousness among some of the main representatives of modern “leftism” is an indicator of how they’ll respond to every future opportunity for bringing the struggle to the masses.
Because these political actors have already shown which role they want to have in the class war, that being an impediment towards working class victory, we can’t act like everything hinges on whether the misguided intelligentsia members undergo a transformation. Our central task is instead to bring in the vastly larger popular elements. The ones which presently lack connection to the political sphere, but would join this sphere if presented with an avenue for defeating monopoly capital. Maupin’s conclusion is that communists have to be trying to reach people who otherwise would never get involved in politics; who aren’t on the same life path that so easily leads the intelligentsia’s members into our spaces.
Only then, when we’ve sufficiently brought the masses into the cause, will we be able to start drawing in the intellectual minority with maximum ease. And this is important because though many or even most of those left intellectuals aren’t going to break away from pro-imperialist opportunism, a revolution needs at least some intellectuals on its side in order to win.
This was shown by the Bolsheviks, who united enough of the radical intellectuals with the workers that the two were able to utilize both of their respective strengths for the same purpose. “The October Revolution of 1917 was successful because it merged the two trends,” writes Maupin. “In a time of crisis, the revolutionary intelligentsia who longed to smash the old order, were able to mobilize the workers and peasants who were suffering and desperately wanted ‘Peace, Land and Bread.’ The effective convergence of these two currents created a new political and economic system.” This part of history shows it is possible to bring members of the intelligentsia to the people’s side, at least in large enough part that the people can triumph.
The key to doing so is the same as the key to the rest of the class struggle: prioritize winning the broad masses, as opposed to a niche. Staying in that niche naturally instills somebody with pessimism, because this is a space that’s filled with political impotence. For at least two generations now, the class struggle in the United States has been held back by actors who aren’t interested in winning, and who convince their followers that stagnancy is the inevitable nature of socialist politics. Get out of this space, and it becomes possible to take on an optimistic outlook. To imagine a future where the people have won, and are building socialism in partnership with the globe’s other civilizations.
This is what I mean by optimistic socialism: a philosophical alternative to pessimistic leftism, with its determination to imagine a bleak future. Whereas pessimistic leftism accepts the logic of the ruling class when it comes to the people’s supposedly reactionary nature, and the supposedly negative role of Washington’s geopolitical challengers, the Marxists with an accurate idea of these issues are able to take an optimistic view.
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