At this moment, one of our most important tasks as Marxist-Leninists is to continue building the coalition against U.S. hegemony which has emerged since February 2022’s Ukraine escalation. The rise of this new united front against monopoly capital has made it possible for the USA’s communist movement to regain the strength it had during the early to mid 20th century, when its basis was in the broad masses rather than in a niche of left activism. There are players within our organizing and discourse spheres who have an interest in keeping “Marxism” limited to that space, though. And their central argument against the project to expand Marxism into more diverse ideological elements is that supposedly, these elements are inherently less important than the left-liberal ones.
To understand why we should reject this argument, we simply have to look at which material interests today’s main parts of the libertarian-leaning element are invested in. Whereas twenty years ago, this camp was in great part aligned with the neoconservatives, after only a generation it’s undergone a remarkable shift in its thinking and priorities.
The ongoing economic collapse that began in 2008 has compelled tens of millions of people, including ones who would have been pro-establishment conservatives a couple decades ago, to look for the systemic factors behind their worsening conditions. The peddlers of reactionary politics have continued to try to get people to blame society’s decline on individuals, but this has been only partly effective, forcing them to somewhat change their rhetorical tactics. A massive amount of conservative-adjacent Americans have come to at least start identifying the most visible monopoly capitalist institutions as their enemies. The World Economic Forum, big pharma, the intelligence/media actors behind the Ukraine proxy war; these great sources of evil haven’t been able to escape unprecedented public scrutiny.
It’s because of this upsurge in proto-revolutionary sentiments among the libertarian types, contrasted with the stagnation of the “left” as a historical force, that one of my friends within the communist movement has concluded the former element is the more important one. This organizer—who’s a member of the ideologically diverse group California United Front, and has insight into libertarians due to being raised by them—has summarized to me the recent trends which have given him such optimism in the libertarian element.
According to my friend: “Over the past decade, multiple political, cultural, and economic events have greatly shifted the American political psyche. These events such as, but not limited to, the election of Donald Trump, the Covid-19 Pandemic, and the Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine conflicts have led me to the conclusion that those embracing libertarian elements are more valuable to success in the class struggle compared to ‘leftists’ and their organizations such as CPUSA, PSL, DSA, and Code Pink. While I do not consider any American Libertarian party worth supporting, there is a noticeable rise in anti-imperialist type ideology rising within average Americans who identify as Libertarian.”
When I asked him to provide this perspective, I was looking for a deeper analysis of the USA’s political orientation than I’m capable of providing given my own experiences. My upbringing was leftist, not libertarian. So I had to go through a different kind of journey in order to also reject the “left” as the thing we should prioritize. The first people I encountered who called themselves “libertarians” were a family who’d become fans of Stefan Molyneux, which placed them in a white supremacy-aligned camp that’s rejected by great amounts of the libertarian community. Because I came to navigate the antiwar movement, I ultimately learned that “race realists” like Molyneux have largely lost the narrative war within the ideological circles which they seek to influence. A vast amount of non-leftists have decided not to embrace ideas like “scientific” racism, but rather to become increasingly focused on advancing the antiwar cause.
As my friend observes, this puts these libertarians in a progressive role, especially compared to the “leftists” who’ve joined in on the campaign against Russia:
As Marxist-Leninists, we are aware that the main contradiction acting as a barrier to working class liberation is American Imperialism abroad. This is the main characteristic of what I see as the biggest reason they are currently more revolutionary than any leftist organization. The Russia/Ukraine conflict has shown the true colors of leftists who are left in name only, as they openly supported Ukraine despite overwhelming evidence of United States collaboration and funding of Nazi groups, two of the main things they claim to oppose. Anti-war elements are now being shown more among right-wing groups in the name of non-interventionism, as the condition of American infrastructure and other cultural shifts have created a new playing field where going to war is not being supported any longer. Compare this to the days immediately following 9/11, where it was these same people calling for the destruction of the Middle East in the name of protecting our freedom. While the reasons MLs and Libertarians support Russia against NATO are the same or not is irrelevant at this point, what is important is that this is a rare opportunity for Marxists and Libertarians to work together against American Imperialism, and this should not be wasted.
Because the ruling class narrative managers haven’t been able to prevent this antiwar shift among many conservative-leaning Americans, they’re now trying to turn this antiwar sentiment in a self-defeating direction. They’re using “dissident” right-wing figures, like Elon Musk, Javier Milei, and the more Molyneux-esque Bronze Age Pervert, to convince libertarians that hating China is in their interests. They want to negate the effects of the pro-Russian conservative trend by portraying China as a threat to Russia, putting forth a narrative about the PRC being an imperialist power. This is what the elites hope to achieve with the “anti-woke” psyop, which they’ve been making more prominent since Palestine became the main foreign policy discourse topic.
Essential for the success of this psyop is to convince libertarian-leaning individuals that China, as well as Iran and the anti-Zionist forces it backs, are engaged in a conspiracy with the USA’s liberal technocratic institutions. This lie has worked to an extent, but it has less potential to convince certain libertarian elements than others. It’s a narrative that’s rooted in synthetic, State Department-aligned politics, most compatible with astroturfed online “anti-woke” propaganda campaigns. These politics are detached from the more organic, grounded type of politics that my friend describes as driving the people who were part of his upbringing:
My experiences with people of Libertarian thought has been exclusively with my
family. Both my mother and father’s sides of the family have forgone college in favor of trades and the freedom of owning your own business. ‘Being your own boss’ is a fundamental thought among these groups and influences their political ideology more than they may even understand. This state of mind relates to their mindset regarding local and national politics, circumventing local permits to build was common, as they felt the restrictions of Sacramento do not apply to their condition, in rural areas hours away from the state capital. And are they wrong? This scenario reminds me of the Communist Party of China in a way, localized political strategies curated to the specific conditions of a certain community or village. Only the community and people within truly know what the problems of their area are, and they should be the ones in control of how to fix them, this is an innate mindset within the Libertarian.
It’s that last part of my friend’s statements which provided a concise explanation of why the libertarian element holds such value for the class struggle. This social force’s driving mentality is based in a desire for meeting the practical needs of one’s own community. Which has the potential to bring this social force in a more revolutionary direction than is possible for many of the “left” forces that the established socialist orgs prioritize appealing to. Look at the class character of the types of libertarians my friend talks about, vs the class character of many of the types who become anarchists or ultra-lefts. The former have an immediate, tangible incentive to improve the conditions of their communities. The latter lack such an incentive, because they represent the petty-bourgeois radical strain which tends to become invested in tearing society down.
This has been a contradiction within the class struggle for centuries: one element (by far the majority element) has entered into radical politics with a central desire to rectify the people’s practical needs, because they themselves are the people. Another element, though, has strayed from the true purpose of class struggle, and has embraced adventurist tactics that place themselves ahead of the people.
Keep this in mind while we see these types of leftists blanketly categorize the elements outside their circles as enemies. These actors view the level of knowledge they’ve gained as justification for not wanting to learn from the people, for assuming that there’s nothing more they need to know. What lessons could they get from the ones who are less advanced than them? They already know so much more! When one is operating with this kind of hubris, even if they indeed are well-learned, many of the things they’ve learned end up being wrong.
It’s not a good thing to be thoroughly versed in the dogma that portrays the people as fundamentally reactionary. The normalization of this elitist thinking within the “left” has only kept our predominant activist circles cut off from the developments that have been occurring among the masses over the last generation. Developments which, as my friend concludes, have disproved the notion that most Americans can’t be brought to anti-imperialism: “In regards to the anti-war elements among Libertarians, this is something I witnessed first hand and was shocked to see. As stated before, the post 9/11 frenzy of Islamophobia plagued those on the right and leftwing to blatant warmongering and ignoring civilian massacres. The election of Donald Trump and his stance of being antiwar, and being maybe the first president to be critical of funding NATO with unlimited funding. The creation of an entirely new conservative group we know as MAGA has given new breath to anti-imperialist rhetoric, even if it is not in the style we usually know it. While MLs oppose funding Israel and Ukraine for certain geopolitical reasons, the MAGA/Libertarian crowd simply asks, ‘Why should I care?’ and ‘Why are my tax dollars funding war?’”
We can disregard these realities, and keep the communist movement in the U.S. inert, or we can adapt our practice according to the character which this country’s class struggle has shown itself to have. Throughout the decline of U.S. capitalism and global hegemony, the New African and Native revolutionary movements have come to have numerous new allies and potential allies, found within many of the same demographics that used to have a wholly reactionary role. The development of the USA’s class war has revealed that the liberals, not the conservatives or libertarians, are to have the biggest reactionary role during our class struggle’s most intense phases. The left deviation within Marxism that’s emerged since the beginning of the New Left doesn’t want to accept this reality. The Marxist-Leninists who are committed to a scientific analysis, though, have been increasingly embracing it.
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