What happens when a circle of people who desire social change have conditioned themselves to view the people as fundamentally reactionary? When they act like the potential for change to happen is far less substantial than it actually is, because they in effect act like anyone who deviates from the orthodoxy of their exclusive club is incompatible with revolutionary politics? If they don’t become apolitical, and convinced that the destructive process of capitalism is impossible to stop, then they invest themselves in “solutions” which go against what can actually provide hope for workers victory.
This is why among many of my fellow pro-China American communists, there’s an attitude that hope exclusively exists within either one of the major “left” orgs, or a practice of fetishizing armed struggle. These types of communists are aware that great working examples of socialism exist today, so they’re not able to be brought towards the false solution of anarchism or the nihilistic attitude of total hopelessness about any revolutionary prospects. Yet because they’re still invested in the notion that left-liberals are the only ones we should ever be working with; and that therefore the majority of Americans aren’t worth trying to reach until after socialists have won state power; they expect our task to be vastly harder than it has to be.
They grasp the reality that socialist projects continue to exist, and this gives them more optimism than most other western leftists have, but they haven’t recognized the other big truth which Marxists in the core must recognize: that the people have much more revolutionary potential than someone with the pessimistic mindset would assume. Their view of our society makes them only willing to trust the others within their own subculture, which isn’t a healthy way to think for a socialist—nor for anyone else.
By rejecting the strategy of building a true coalition against monopoly and U.S. hegemony; by forsaking most of the allies they have the potential to gain within the struggle against imperialism; they’ve willfully handicapped their ability to be effective agents within the struggle. Which has naturally led to them embracing an ideology which is akin to the one of a counter-gang; that being a controlled opposition group which the capitalist ruling class cultivates in order to manage popular discontent, diverting the people towards reactionary endeavors.
The thinking of a counter-gang is oriented not around what’s best for the class struggle, but around what advances the group’s momentary interests and conflicts. And when a developing radical who’s being guided by such a non-strategic, insular mentality becomes aware of the physical requirements within our revolutionary task; when they find out how great the violent powers of the state and its gangs are; they can be led towards injecting an adventurist component into their ultra-left practice. This is the error I was engaging in during my first years as a Marxist; not because I was advocating for people to pursue any militant activities which aren’t strategically necessary, but because I was advocating for turning cadres into armies while not understanding the steps which will be necessary for bringing the struggle towards its most militant stage.
I was being mentored by Democratic Party tailists who think that PSL and its left opportunist practice represent the solution. As a consequence, whenever I promoted militancy training, I was seeking to prepare us for an eventual stage within the struggle which would never come as long as people followed the model of my former mentors. As long as we isolate ourselves from the people; and try to build influence within a niche subculture, rather than seriously reaching into a broader demographic; we’re not going to get to the point where we can defeat the state.
That the liberal tailists are invested in the insular activism model makes them feel like the needless hardships this model creates are inevitable; they’ve resigned themselves to a scenario where they’re trapped within a perilously tumultuous near-future America, without the allies and popular momentum they would need in order to gain an advantage. The problem they have is self-fulfilling, with their pessimistic attitude being guaranteed to put them in a bad situation that will then seem to vindicate their bleak expectations.
The radicals who stay within this state of perpetually preparing for the most intense moments of the struggle; while working to hold the struggle back from ever progressing towards those moments; inevitably take on the same role which members of a counter-gang have. They find themselves aggressively pursuing dire struggle, while operating within an environment that keeps failing to become favorable towards their goals.
Many of them respond to this by retreating into Menshevist thinking, and prioritizing electoralism above all else in the hope that this will one day make their insular model effective. But if they go in an even more foolish direction, they start turning their militant mentality towards attacking their ideological rivals within organizing spaces. If these attacks don’t consist of vandalism or assault, they consist of denunciations, based within “criticisms” that lack principles or rigorous factual investigations behind them. The tragedy of such sectarian conflict scenarios is that the targets of the ultra-lefts could offer these adventurists the strategic solutions required for them to actually become effective historical agents, if they would only listen.
Adventurism is what a radical often resorts to when they discard the wisdom from Mao that “As for people who are politically backward, Communists should not slight or despise them, but should befriend them, unite with them, convince them and encourage them to go forward.” As well as this wisdom from Lenin, which follows that same reasoning regarding the need to not discard the forces we depend on: “a certain ‘reactionism’ in the trade unions is inevitable under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not to understand this means a complete failure to understand the fundamental conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism. It would be egregious folly to fear this ‘reactionism’ or to try to evade or leap over it, for it would mean fearing that function of the proletarian vanguard which consists in training, educating, enlightening and drawing into the new life the most backward strata and masses of the working class and the peasantry. On the other hand, it would be a still graver error to postpone the achievement of the dictatorship of the proletariat until a time when there will not be a single worker with a narrow-minded craft outlook, or with craft and craft-union prejudices.”
Because the anti-imperialist movement in today’s USA is as important for the class struggle as the trade unions were in Lenin’s Russia, within our context we can substitute “the antiwar orgs” for “the trade unions.” It’s only when we’ve understood this reality about how important the anti-imperialist struggle is; and how this importance it holds creates a mandate for us to leave our activism “comfort zones”; that we can do any kind of revolutionary preparation in a serious way. Because unless you’re using the present moment to build towards workers victory; rather than staying invested in an activism model which keeps the class struggle stagnant; whatever physical training you do can at best protect you from the reactionary backlash. You’re not going to be given the opportunity to use this training in a proactive way, as opposed to the reactive way where you’re simply defending yourself.
If American Marxists remain isolated from all the other counter-hegemonic forces; and thereby isolated from the majority of the people; then our movement is going to remain too weak to have hope for challenging state power, and reactiveness is going to be the only thing we’ll ever engage in. Should we stay willfully impotent, the reactionaries are going to be able to keep us purely on the defensive, and without hope for victory. We must choose to do what’s necessary for winning.
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