What happens when Marxists act like their cause depends on the support of obstinately liberal actors who lack material connection to the proletariat? Of the social elements that represent academia, petty-bourgeois liberalism, and the parts of the lumpenproletariat which aren’t interested in embracing a proletarian lifestyle? Marxists end up making themselves into agents of the Democratic Party, gatekeeping the class struggle in favor of actors who aren’t truly invested in advancing the anti-imperialist cause.
These actors are the USA’s equivalents of the cosmopolitan forces that the Soviet Union felt the need to launch a campaign against in defense of the socialist system. And because our class conflict is escalating, making the state need a paramilitary fighting force against revolutionaries, they’re increasingly taking on an ultraviolent nature. What we call “Antifa” in today’s USA is a project to draw alienated young people into efforts at menacing those within the anti-imperialist movement, efforts which are justified by calling the targets “fascists.”
The ideological basis for this smear narrative comes from the same manipulative tactics that imperialism has been using against revolutionary projects for decades, if not centuries. Like is the case for the imperialist NGOs and political plants abroad, these cosmopolitans represent an ideology of detachment from the interests of the workers, devaluing the idea of commitment to one’s community and people. They believe that their own “progressive” values—which are covers for the imperialist ideology that they truly uphold—must be imposed onto all other peoples, without any attempt to empathize or to learn from those who are different.
As the Soviet writer Yu Pavlov explained in Cosmopolitanism– Ideological Weapon of American Reaction:
In the varied arsenal of tactics, used by imperialist reaction, a very promiment position is occupied by the propaganda of bourgeois cosmopolitanism. Under the flag of cosmopolitanism American imperialism is making every effort to establish its rule over the world. What is cosmopolitanism? The word ‘cosmopolitan’, translated from the Greek, means ‘citizen of the world’. Cosmopolitanism is the propaganda of so-called ‘world citizenship’, a denial of attachment to any nation whatsoever, the abolition of the national traditions and the culture of peoples, behind the screen of the creation of ‘world’, ‘universal’ culture. Cosmopolitanism is a denial of peculiarities formed in the course of history in the development of peoples, a denial of national interests, of national independence, and of the state sovereignty of peoples. From its rise to the present day, cosmopolitanism was and is an ideological instrument in the hands of the exploiting classes for the justification and concealment of their aggressive policy.
Cosmopolitanism reached the peak of its development under capitalism, acting as an ideological screen concealing the bourgeois policy of seizing foreign territories, new colonies, and markets. Cosmopolitanism is the obverse side of bourgeois nationalism….It is well known that in conducting its aggressive chauvinist policy, the imperialist bourgeoisie, according to the particular circumstances, appears either openly as nationalist or under the cover of cosmopolitan ideas. For the bourgeoisie of the present day, cosmopolitanism is a screen hiding the drive to imperialist seizure and robbery, to the enslavement of other nations, the suppression of revolutionary movements, the unleashing of a new world war, and the establishment of world rule by one or other of the imperialist countries. World rule is the substance of imperialist politics, the continuation of which is imperialist war. The imperialists are not concerned with the patriotism of the masses of the people, or with the general national interests of the people. They recognize only the interests of their own purse.
In today’s USA, cosmopolitanism is being used to try to separate the communist movement from all social forces which exist outside the Democratic Party’s core base, the petty-bourgeois activist circles, and the radical liberal lumpen elements. The Democratic Party’s agents want to isolate the labor movement from the majority of the elements in our society which have revolutionary potential, and divert the remaining revolution-compatible elements towards left opportunist projects that are hostile towards the wider masses.
The way they’re doing this is by exploiting the divide between urban and rural which the USA’s two-party system has exacerbated. They want Marxists to surrender the rural areas to right-wing anti-communist politics, and believe that the bulk of the masses within these areas are fundamentally reactionary. The narrative they’ve constructed is that only the urban parts of the masses—along with the minority of the rural masses who live in proximity to academia—are capable of contributing to the class struggle. They want us to view the churches, the libertarian-leaning Americans, and the military or ex-military types as enemies, especially if they exist apart from the metropolitan and academic centers which the liberal social base is centered around.
This is the role of radical liberals: to split in half the country’s population so that the “left” side views the “right” side with blanket hostility, and a successful proletarian movement is therefore made impossible. Though by an accurate estimate of how many of the people radical liberalism is hostile towards, really it’s opposed to the great majority of the people, not just half.
Radical liberalism only welcomes the people who are willing to embrace the academic theories which the insular “left” spaces view as untouchable, thereby alienating these spaces from most of the population. Most of the people aren’t willing to embrace Gerald Horne’s ahistorical argument about how the American revolution was a “counter-revolution,” and how the British crown should therefore have been able to continue ruling this land. Yet upholding Horne is seen as a requirement for being part of these cosmopolitan circles which call themselves “Marxist.”
What kind of communist movement acts like the vast majority of the people are fascists because they’re not willing to embrace cosmopolitanism? A “communist” movement that’s never going to win power, because it’s preemptively rejected the same masses which it depends on winning over in order to do so.
The only way that the groups which advance this elitist version of “communism” can remain in operation, and not have all their members abandon them out of hopelessness, is by investing themselves not in the people but in building connections to the liberal establishment. By doing this, they can appear strong, because the liberal establishment is always glad to provide money and connections to controlled opposition groups. Truly they’re nothing more than appendages of our ruling institutions, tasked with diverting revolutionary energy towards insular, liberalism-compatible projects.
The only way to escape the cycle of self-defeat which the workers movement has been trapped in for decades is by aligning ourselves with the ones which are actually our allies: the majority of the people, who share a material interest in defeating the liberal order. Most of the masses are increasingly alienated from liberalism, because liberalism is increasingly crushing them. It’s degrowing the economy, shrinking the workforce while diverting what little wealth the system generates towards an ever-growing military budget. It’s working to censor, and ultimately criminalize, speech that challenges the narratives of the liberal establishment. The goal of the liberal elites is to complete the country’s deindustrialization so that only monopoly finance capital is left, with even the lower-level capitalists getting pushed out of the economy and the political sphere.
Because of how dystopian and destructive this class warfare plan by the monopolists is, communists have potential to gain allies among many more parts of society than the cosmopolitans want them to believe. The cosmopolitans want communists to have a mentality of dependence on them, and think that keeping the favor of a small minority of radlibs is essential for the success of Marxism. The truth is the opposite. In order to appeal to these actors, we’ll need to adopt a stance that’s fundamentally hostile towards the majority of the people. Gaining the people’s support requires breaking from the cosmopolitans, and embracing the people as our allies.
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