What we need to focus on, more so than ever, is winning over the people towards the class struggle. This last week, we’ve seen some developments that show our ruling class is in a position to wage its counterinsurgency more effectively than previously seemed to be the case. This can’t discourage us, though. Because the most important thing I’ve learned throughout the struggle’s last few years is that the bulk of the USA’s people are absolutely revolution-compatible; that we shouldn’t view them as fundamentally reactionary, because the majority of them have shown a willingness to turn against imperialist projects like the Ukraine proxy war. That’s what should give us hope amid the dark events we’re about to experience, and what should motivate us to keep building on our recent gains.
Amid Biden’s dropping out, and the Democratic Party’s backing Kamala Harris, it’s apparent that our ruling class is now likely to succeed at resetting the discourse to an earlier era; an era where the culture war is able to dominate, at least so long as bourgeois politics remain able to define it. Just two weeks ago, it looked like Trump was sure to win, which would have let Trump fail at draining the swamp and thereby lead to the decline of MAGA. This was something that myself and many other communists saw as an opportunity for revolutionary agitation. But with Biden being replaced by a candidate who’s long been a favorite of Hillary Clinton backers, it’s looking more like finance capital will rig the election for the Democrats. Trump isn’t seen as the favored candidate by all, or even most, elements of finance capital. So the new strategy of our class enemies is to install Harris so that they can both keep the Democratic Party highly tied towards wokeness, as well as keep up the illusion that MAGA is an anti-establishment movement.
This maneuver will let the U.S. empire escalate the new cold war through a more effective facilitator of imperialism, while simultaneously fueling the woke and anti-woke psyops. It will be a redoubling of the culture wars, except within a political environment that’s come to be even more right-wing than it was twenty years ago. As the geo-strategists get Harris to pursue a new big war, likely with China, anti-imperialists are going to need to navigate conditions where our rulers have gained an advantage in pitting the people against each other. The hope of our class enemies is that they can keep the American people from coming together at the moment when the masses most need to be unified; when we’ll most urgently require a popular mobilization against the war machine, degrowth austerity, and state repression.
As big as this threat we face is, my friend within the struggle Jesse Wingert just wrote something that gives me inspiration amid the direness. Referencing the recent development I’ve reported on where Zionist infiltrators couped a communist party, Wingert has observed how obstacles like these can shape us into better fighters. As well as how the potential for the masses to join with us is there, regardless of what the ruling class does:
The people are not stupid, nor easily fooled, and when put out in the open, its obvious to them who is fighting in their own personal interests, and who is fighting for the interests of others. We are approaching a stage in our struggle where we will find it necessary to live under what are effectively wartime conditions, and actually live as Communists rather than Liberals; this is what will bring the Masses to us in a way that guarantees us victory. The Right-Opportunists who have taken over the PCUSA have exposed this mistake within our ranks, and not only given us the opportunity, but made it necessary to correct our mistakes in that regard. We cannot afford to merely talk to the whole Masses, we have to join with them and fight alongside them; all of them. The Bolshevik party was forged and strengthened in its struggles against the Opportunists on both sides prior to the first Revolution, and our Parties and Organizations will only be strengthed by these Imperialist attacks against us just as steel is forged beneath the hammer. Overcoming these challenges will shape us into exactly what is demanded by the Class Struggle, but we have to press ahead and discipline ourselves to act whenever there is opportunity.
Communists must never shrink away from the people. We can’t interpret the setbacks and obstacles we encounter as evidence that the people are our enemies, and that our best path is to retreat into a niche. That’s how we lose. Because the U.S. communists of the mid-20th century experienced a time when the labor aristocracy was strong, and most of the country’s people were hostile towards communist ideas, they reacted by adopting an anti-popular view. This was wrong even at the time, and we see this view continue to dominate American Marxism despite the labor aristocracy’s massive decline since then.
That American communists have kept making this mistake is the reason why we’re in such a weak place, and why we have to rebuild what we once had. Myself and the communists I align with are not going to repeat this error, and react to the coming challenges by scorning the masses. That’s what would really ensure the ruling class wins: if we become demoralized from mass work, from party building, and become consumed by bitterness.
To do this would be to surrender U.S. Marxism towards the ideological forces on the left which have committed themselves to pessimism and anti-popular ideas. To the “antifa” anarchists that are obsessed with attacking communists, and will act as the prime counter-gang proxy forces for liberal fascism. That’s going to be the core of this next stage in the class war: a conflict between the optimistic, mass-centered revolutionaries who love the people, and the forces of nihilistic destruction that hate the people. Our class enemies want us to align with the counter-gangs, and act on our frustrations by embracing adventurist violence or radical intellectual elitism. They want us to be unable to see the revolutionary potential which exists all around us, and only focus on the negative. When developing radicals do this, they take on a reactionary role, allowing our class enemies to fortify their rule.
The op where Zionists took over PCUSA was about demoralizing communists from party-building, and the ops that the ruling class will soon carry out are partly going to have this role too. We’ll overcome these culture war manipulations, and the other parts of the state’s counterinsurgency, if we keep building up the anti-monopoly united front. Should the ruling class install Harris, the reality we’ll need to accept is that for the time being, our previous vision of drawing in disillusioned MAGA voters isn’t as immediately realizable as we thought. We can’t be invested in one particular tactic, though, because that leads to failure and discouragement.
If Trump overcomes the efforts to rig the election, we’ll get that opportunity, and avoid the worst-case scenario that would be a Harris presidency. If Harris gets the presidency, the solution will not be to tail MAGA. We will be on the same side as MAGA, in the sense that we’ll both be in conflict with liberal fascism’s dominant wing, but we’ll have to make clear that we don’t view MAGA as genuinely anti-establishment. We view it as an effort to defy monopoly finance capital that’s driven by genuine proto-revolutionary sentiments, yet is led by a wing of the ruling class that’s obstinately pro-Zionist and willing to advance the new cold war. We offer something fundamentally different from this, something authentically revolutionary. We won’t be able to win over all MAGA supporters with this message, but we never expected total success in this area anyhow.
Our victory depends not on winning everyone within any single demographic, but on winning the bulk of the masses, whose revolution-compatible elements include many different ideological groups. We will make our case to the masses, and as long as we act with humility and self-awareness, we’ll be able to avoid the insularity which has long held back the class struggle. The mass base for proletarian revolution is there, that’s the most important thing to note. And we’ll connect with this base one way or another.
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