Amid the escalations in our class conflict the Ukraine war has brought, the question that the communist movement has increasingly come to be battling over is: can we advance all the parts of our cause, while working with ideological elements that don’t share each of these ideas? Can we remain principled on social justice, workers rights, and all other aspects of our agenda at the same time that we collaborate with these elements on issues like anti-imperialism? The answer can be found within Lenin’s Should revolutionaries work in reactionary trade unions:
Millions of workers in Great Britain, France and Germany are for the first time passing from a complete lack of organisation to the elementary, lowest, simplest, and (to those still thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices) most easily comprehensible form of organisation, namely, the trade unions; yet the revolutionary but imprudent Left Communists stand by, crying out “the masses”, “the masses!” but refusing to work within the trade unions, on the pretext that they are “reactionary”, and invent a brand-new, immaculate little “Workers’ Union”, which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices and innocent of craft or narrow-minded craft-union sins, a union which, they claim, will be (!) a broad organisation. “Recognition of the Soviet system and the dictatorship” will be the only (!) condition of membership…
It would be hard to imagine any greater ineptitude or greater harm to the revolution than that caused by the “Left” revolutionaries! Why, if we in Russia today, after two and a half years of unprecedented victories over the bourgeoisie of Russia and the Entente, were to make “recognition of the dictatorship” a condition of trade union membership, we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly “Left” slogans.
Today’s versions of these kinds of purity-fetishizing “left” revolutionaries are people like Andrew Saturn, the Socialist Party of America activist who’s lately been putting much of his efforts into attacking Cornel West’s campaign. Saturn is part of a strain that fits Lenin’s description of the “left” revolutionaries so well because even though they consistently reject the organizing solutions we need at crucial moments, they’re still “revolutionaries” insofar as they study Marxism. The problem is that when the time comes to practice Marxism, they interpret Marxism’s theories to mean that we shouldn’t take advantage of any serious opportunities for making the workers movement’s victory possible.
Saturn and the other actors who represent this ideological element have been attacking West’s campaign for the same reason that they’ve rejected Rage Against the War Machine. It’s because their practice is not informed by the reality Lenin pointed out about how even when a person or organization is guilty of things like “bourgeois-democratic” (as in reformist) prejudices, to shun them would be self-defeating. That applies to the argument over whether West is worth voting for. Because when confronted with how voting West will hurt the Democratic Party in a way which helps not reactionary politics but rather the anti-NATO movement, these actors have asserted that West will endorse Biden. They predicate this in how West endorsed him the last time, which sounds like a compelling argument for why communists shouldn’t invest themselves in his campaign. That is, if one has forgotten about Lenin’s reminder that even those guilty of reformism can be strategically useful to the class struggle.
Moreover, West’s case is different from that of a reformist like Sanders, who was running as a Democrat and consequently signed a non-aggression pact with the Clinton campaign. West is running as a People’s Party candidate. Which means it wouldn’t make sense for him to endorse Biden, and these actors who promise he’ll inevitably do so are making a bigger predictive gamble than they’d like to think. If West is willing to disrupt the Biden campaign in 2024, that indicates he’s at least given up some of his reformism over the last several years. And if somebody’s argument is that what he did back then means we shouldn’t vote for him, then they’re simply operating under the liberal attitude that people can’t be given any credit for improving, as they’ve already sinned.
Yet I’m still arguing on the terms of the purity fetishists, because these arguments over the project’s purity are aside from the point. Communists need to recognize that the point isn’t whether a project passes a purity test, it’s whether it advances the revolution’s interests. I could also counter their points about how the People’s Party is supposedly too impure to ever be voted for, but then they would simply throw out more points to try to discredit this project, not all of them even fully based in fact. When somebody’s goal is to discredit something, they’ll never run out of reasons to do so, we see this in how the anarchists try to discredit existing socialism.
The reason why Saturn and the others in his camp have opposed RAWM and the West campaign is not because they have contradictions, but because these things represent the larger side that they’ve decided to stand against. You can find contradictions in anything and anyone, what decides which thing somebody will choose to see contradictions within is whether they’ve invested in opposing that thing. And when they do, they naturally come to exaggerate the extent of those issues, as this suits their purposes. The anarchists are willing to believe all the atrocity propaganda the State Department puts out about China, yet aren’t concerned about how Rojava has actually committed war crimes and ethnic cleansing. The equivalent is true for these “left” revolutionaries, who unlike the anarchists say they support China yet don’t support the types of revolutionary practice that made socialist China possible.
The Socialist Party of America, and the other individuals and groups on its side in this ideological conflict, are eager to point out any real or perceived contradictions within RAWM. All while not struggling against the incorrect ideas put forth by the orgs they themselves are adjacent to. Namely the PSL, which has followed up its liberal tailist stance of critical support for Sanders by taking the social pacifist position on the Ukraine conflict. SPA in particular won’t ever combat this “neither NATO nor Russia” idea, because it promotes the idea as well. As much as SPA points out how the Ukrainian side is the side of the Nazis, it won’t be principled on anti-fascism by recognizing how Russia is in the right for working to crush Nazism. As a consequence of this liberal tailism—because these orgs are disavowing Operation Z at least in part to appeal to liberals—the org has been able to rationalize attacking RAWM and West while staying silent on the PSL’s problems. When PSL’s ANSWER organizers have tried to isolate and censure RAWM, these actors haven’t decried this sectarian action either, because they share that stance as well.
A boundary of demarcation is developing, where the orgs and individuals that are more principled on anti-imperialism have gravitated to RAWM while the ones that are less principled have attacked RAWM. This attitude of hostility has extended into how the latter camp has reacted to West’s campaign.
The pattern will continue. The next time a major opportunity to advance the anti-imperialist struggle comes, the element that’s embraced purity fetishism will try to discredit the project which comes from this opportunity. This won’t be because of the project’s contradictions, but because it represents a certain camp within our divide. The camp whose priority is not to cultivate a presence in the insular “left” spaces, but to build an authentic anti-imperialist movement that operates outside the Democratic Party’s control. This is what we need to do in order to make communism viable, thereby it’s the path we’ve chosen. Lenin’s lessons support our reasoning. As Stalin said about that same ideological battle which Lenin was fighting against the purity fetishists:
It should not be forgotten that Rights and “ultra-Lefts” are actually twins, that consequently both take an opportunist stand, the difference between them being that whereas the Rights do not always conceal their opportunism, the Lefts invariably camouflage their opportunism with “revolutionary” phrases. We cannot allow our policy to be determined by what scandal mongers and philistines may say about us. We must go our way firmly and confidently, paying no heed to the tales idle minds may invent about us. The Russians have an apt saying: “the dogs bark, the caravan passes.” We should bear this saying in mind; it may stand us in good stead on more than one occasion.
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