Whatever increases in American ruling class unity that have come from the shared desire of our elites to defeat the Palestinian resistance, this unity is only going to last as long as these elites can still sell the illusion that “Israel” has a chance of having its strategy succeed. As soon as the empire’s proxy war on Gaza reaches the stage of failure that its proxy war on Russia has, the Democratic Party is going to experience a crisis; Israel is becoming overwhelmed even faster than the Ukrainian fascist regime was, so this coming great loss for colonialism is in all likelihood going to happen by the end of Biden’s present term. This humiliation for the Democrats is going to create an opening for the Bonapartists in the Republican Party to gain power; which the highest levels of capital will react to by speeding up their national security state purge of the country’s illiberal elements.
The urgency of our situation has greatly increased during this last month, which means we need to work harder at unifying the illiberal elements—or at least the ones which are compatible with each other—in a united front against an encroaching liberal fascism.
The Democratic Party’s wing of the ruling class—that being the one backed by finance capital—is absolutely capable of holding on to its dominance over our most powerful institutions amid the destabilizing events of this next year. Finance capital doesn’t simply mean the big banks, it means the industrial monopolies that have fused with the power of finance; and because this biggest type of capital has come to primarily use the Democratic Party as its political tool throughout the new cold war, it’s going to make sure that the anti-Russian foreign policy model of the Democrats continues—regardless of which party wins in 2024.
The neoconservatives who are tied to finance capital were able to do this when Trump got elected, and there was a moment of uncertainty about whether the White House would maintain an aggressive posture towards Russia; the neocons simply needed to concoct the “Russiagate” hoax, which they propagated via their heavy connections within big tech, the intelligence agencies, and the majority of the legacy media. This hoax pressured Trump into continuing and expanding on Obama’s cold war policies, and whatever new iteration of Russiagate that the intelligence centers advance next year is going to fulfill the same purpose should Trump win a second term.
That doesn’t mean the Bonapartists aren’t going to throw the liberal order wildly out of balance; if not by taking over our most powerful institutions then, then by instigating the inter-elite conflicts that create the conditions for workers victory. The latter outcome is only possible, of course, if communists and our anti-imperialist allies do the work required for getting sufficient momentum behind our cause; which is going to require us to reject the narrative that finance capital will be putting forth during the coming months. This being the narrative that those who are more to the “left” are obligated to mellow our efforts at struggling against the liberal bourgeois politicians, or else we’ll simply be helping the right.
These appeals by the Democrats for us to join them in a supposed united front against fascism aren’t going to convince every socialist org to endorse Biden; most of them aren’t as shameless as CPUSA or RevCom, and no Marxist who has credibility is able to be won over towards such a blatant kind of liberal tailism. So the type of liberal compromise within our circles which we need to struggle against the most is the one where self-described socialists don’t necessarily vote for Biden, but still adopt the Democratic Party’s one-sided way of portraying our situation.
This kind of liberal tailism is more threatening than the “vote blue no matter who” kind, because its rhetoric can corrupt the Marxists who actually have potential for becoming members of a vanguard. Recognizing that voting blue is incompatible with revolutionary politics makes somebody especially advanced in their class consciousness; so to divert people who’ve gained this knowledge towards reformist tendencies is to damage the struggle in a highly insidious way.
The Democrats seek to manipulate these socialists who’ve rejected the two-party system by convincing them that if we want to stop fascism, we’ll need to decrease how much negative attention we give to the Democrat side. That’s how the liberals hope to make the present condemnations of Biden from pro-Palestine activists end, or at least become mild enough for Zionism to regain dominance over the discourse. They don’t need to get the left to entirely stop talking about Biden’s genocidal policies in order to succeed at this narrative management attempt; they only need leftists to tailor their rhetoric to exclusively appeal to left-liberals, rather than to the broader masses of people.
The liberals need socialists to embrace the way of operating that Caleb Maupin has described as being normal among the modern followers of Sam Marcy, one of the 20th century socialist leaders who sought to make Marxism an exclusively “left-wing” phenomenon:
Rather than winning the working class away from Trumpian demagogy in a time when they are more critical of the status quo than ever before, the Marcyites have instead opted to join “the movement” fomented by the imperialists in the hope of saving their system…Trump is not Hitler. The USA is not Weimar Germany. Furthermore, the crowds of middle-class CNN college liberals being mobilized to defend the wildly unpopular Biden administration do not represent the proletariat. The BreadTube/Young Turks/DSA cult that mesmerizes its recruits with infantalizing corporate-style “Wokeshops” rooted in scientology practices, while calling for concentration camps for the unvaccinated and equating “Tankies” with Nazi holocaust deniers, is not where serious revolutionaries should be attempting to recruit. While conservatives and right-wing dissidents often appear open to conversation despite their backward views, the vile, hateful entity called “the movement” looks a lot more like fascism to those who understand what the term actually means.
This ideology doesn’t require its adherents to vote Democrat, it only requires them to view those within the Democratic Party’s base as the most important element to appeal to. Should the liberals convince more of the left-leaning types of Marxists that they must unite with liberals against the threat of fascism, then the struggle will be further impeded by left opportunism, and the state will be able to pursue its next wars and austerity policies without sufficient resistance. Even though the Democratic Party’s aggressive embrace of genocidal anti-Muslim, anti-Arab warfare has made “wokeness” into being no longer sustainable as the primary means for ruling class narrative control, the elites can still use woke arguments to bring many developing radicals towards Marcyism’s liberal tailist stance.
What the Democratic Party aims to do is put forth a Bush-style “you’re either with us or with evil” ideology of inter-civilizational warfare against Islam; while still appealing to the Obama-style social justice sentiments so that they can maintain control over the communist movement. Which are sentiments that themselves come from a “with us or with evil” reasoning, except when it comes to domestic politics rather than to foreign policy.
The central argument they’ll use for why we should embrace Trump derangement syndrome, and replicate the rhetoric and aesthetics of the “ResistanceTM,” is that the Republicans supposedly are the sole ones who represent fascism; and that the Democrats, however much the left hates them, supposedly represent the side of anti-fascism. The reason why Maupin said that such a notion is based in a misunderstanding of fascism’s nature is that “fascism” isn’t synonymous with backward ideas; fascism, as Dimitrov clarified, is the power of finance capital.
This means that in an era where finance capital has made the “progressive” party into its main tool, while the more regressive party has become on the side of relatively small capital, it’s the liberals who represent the biggest kind of fascist threat. They’re the ones who now for the most part act to advance the interests of the highest levels of capital, which is increasingly in conflict with the lower levels of capital that Trumpism seeks to aid. That’s why the liberal side is pushing for degrowth, while the Trumpians seek to bring back industry via trade protectionism: one side can afford to degrow the economy, while the other side would suffer if degrowth were to become complete. We’ve seen this conflict during the pandemic, in how monopolistic forces like big tech have uncritically supported the lockdowns while the lower levels of capital have nurtured the backlash to the lockdowns.
This distinction between the two main wings of the elites doesn’t mean Marxists should side with small capital over big capital; it also doesn’t mean we should side with big capital, which is what the liberal tailists are leading their followers towards doing. The correct way to respond to our situation is by bringing in everyone who’s growing disillusioned with the liberal order, and who’s willing to advance the interests of the struggle in a principled fashion. At the present stage, that includes everyone who’s made fighting U.S. hegemony into their central priority; as the class struggle in the imperial center can’t succeed until we’ve sufficiently combated imperialism.
Recent events have revealed that many of those on the right who’ve opposed aid to Ukraine are not within that principled category, as they’re now supporting aid to Israel. Though there are also plenty of non-leftists, mainly within the libertarian activism circles, who are acting principled when it comes to Palestine; and that disproves the argument of the Marcyists that only left-liberals have potential to fulfill a progressive role. Plus, there are a growing amount of Americans across the political spectrum who could join the revolutionary cause in response to our government’s crimes; many traditionally Democratic voters, particularly in the Muslim community, are turning against Biden due to his support for the Gaza genocide. And should we pursue a practice of educating the broad masses about Zionism’s evils, rather than preaching to a left-wing niche, we’ll be able to help turn more Americans against Biden’s war on the Arab and Persian worlds.
The joint war against Palestine and Iran that our government aims to create the conditions for is going to go along with an acceleration of degrowth austerity in the core; as the empire is on the defensive after losing Eurasia, and can only maintain capitalism by further contracting the economy. And when this war effort inevitably fails, Mexico will likely be the next country the USA targets, bringing the devastating consequences of capitalist exploitation and war closer than ever to the lives of Americans. Many things are changing, and many of the Americans who’ve for so long been divided by partisan polarization could soon find themselves coming together so they can advance their common interest in the imperial state’s defeat.
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