Today’s strategic situation is shifting in favor of the anti-imperialist cause, and this has been the trend since capitalism’s supposedly definitive triumph in 1991. The last generation has seen an unprecedented decline for unipolar hegemony, because whether or not there’s been a USSR, there’s continued to be a need for a new paradigm. The Soviet Union’s fall ultimately represented a backfiring upon the imperial forces. It created a vacuum within the anti-imperialist movement, which was soon filled by a resurgent opposition towards Washington’s rule. This is the historical dynamic that we must consider amid Syria’s fall: when a revolutionary force gets destroyed, the energy behind it will have to go in new directions. This fact represents hope, but we must be active in guiding that energy; we cannot be complacent, and wait for the existing momentum to carry us to victory.
This becomes more apparent every day, as Washington and its Zionist proxy expand their extermination campaign. The hegemon is looking to take millions of lives across West Asia, in addition to the mass deaths it brought about through its “War on Terror” invasions. The goal is to destroy as much of the region’s infrastructure as possible, and to maximally set back Iran’s scientific progress in particular. That’s what the Syria regime change is supposed to enable: a project where the imperial forces launch unprecedented attacks on Iran, with Syria as their new vantage point.
This hasn’t been enough to eliminate the forces that are bringing Zionism towards collapse. Hamas continues to frustrate the Gaza ethnic cleansing effort, while the Houthis keep sabotaging the Zionist entity’s daily security. And because the resistance is to this extent undefeatable, the demise of the settler state is certain; Palestine will get its own state, and this state will outlive what remains of the settler entity. China and Russia will also keep winning against the empire in their own kinds of battles; and as Washington gets drawn into another quagmire inside Syria, it will have to sink its resources into an unwinnable fight, undermining its plans for war in east Asia.
This will accelerate the transition to multipolarity, letting China build up its economy and global development projects even faster. The overall trajectory of history is in the favor of the revolutionaries. Yet if we underestimate the present threats, the empire will be able to do much more damage than otherwise, because it won’t face an opposition that’s prepared.
China cannot bring this fight to completion; neither can Russia, Hamas, the Houthis, or any of the other forces that are presently fighting the hegemon. The fight won’t be done until the imperial state has been overthrown from within, which is a task that’s fundamentally connected to the Palestinian struggle. Right now, the U.S. government is using its war against the pro-Palestine movement to prepare for crushing the workers movement; which makes sense, because these two struggles are inseparably connected. The plans for deporting Palestine protesters, and for illegalizing pro-Palestinian groups, are designed to harm the proletarian struggle by extension. Therefore, any ostensibly pro-labor organizations that abandon Palestine out of hope for escaping repression won’t even be rewarded with relative safety.
Nobody who believes in the rights of the working class will gain anything by giving up solidarity for this genocide’s victims; our rulers will only target organized labor even more ferociously, taking advantage of its leadership’s weaknesses. Such is the nature of opportunism: it can only think to compromise with those in power, even when they don’t intend to reward the ones who help them. Our task is to disempower today’s opportunistic forces within the workers movement, and build an organizational force which can commit to this fight.
The Palestinian struggle has brought up one of the fundamental ideological conflicts within the communist movement: the fight between liquidationist and revolutionary thinking. Liquidationism says that the communist party must be dissolved, and that its members must enter into a united front with one wing of the ruling class. This is the path that today’s opportunists within the left are taking when they de-center Palestine. The organizations that will survive this crackdown, and bring the masses to their side, are the ones that take an anti-opportunist path. That don’t cower from any of the tasks involved in defeating our imperialist dictatorship.
The biggest lesson from this moment is that it’s not enough to rhetorically align oneself with the era’s revolutionary struggles. There also needs to be a commitment to advancing these struggles; a practical application of the cause’s ideas. PSL, DSA, and the other leftist groups that are working to de-center Palestine all say they stand with the Palestinians; they also say that they’re against imperialism, and for socialism. Yet in practice, the thing they’re doing is tailing behind the Democratic Party; they’re making Trump the central focus of their events and their rhetoric (as shown by their roles within the “We Fight Back” January 20 rally), which effectively aligns them with the Democrats. Many communists have recognized the unprincipled nature of both the left-imperialist DSA, and the red liberal PSL; but just because we’ve recognized this, doesn’t mean we aren’t at risk of replicating their errors. At all times, we must make sure that we’re advancing a practice which genuinely advances the struggle.
This genocide has made our tasks much clearer, illuminating which actions are opportunistic and which ones truly threaten our ruling class. Our conditions demand more from us than a principled anti-imperialist stance; form is one thing, and content is another. The contents of our practice need to include serious operational security measures; they need to include robust, proactive efforts at building ties with the unions; they need to include consistent cadre training, of both the theoretical and physical kinds. We have to take the measures that ensure our orgs remain in operation no matter how extreme the state’s attacks become; and these orgs need to stay connected to the masses, rather than retreating away from the people. Forsaking the people is how liquidationists respond to crises; this crisis needs to make us redouble our mass work.
Our class enemies fear both the loss of their empire’s geopolitical dominance, and revolt from the USA’s own people. They’re reacting by waging war against civilization throughout West Asia, while preparing a purge against dissent. U.S. communists and our allies have an unprecedented opportunity for advancing the class struggle, and we have a crucial role to play in the hegemon’s defeat. The question is whether we’ll navigate these circumstances correctly, and treat the imperial state as the dangerous foe that it is. There is no way to negotiate towards peace with this enemy; trying to get “peace” in that way means willful self-destruction, where you let the enemy annihilate you without a fight. That’s the thinking which led to the Soviet Union’s downfall, and communists will either learn from this or lose again.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
