Above: Palestinians in Hebron
What anti-imperialists in America need to learn from the events of the last couple years; wherein anti-colonial forces from Burkina Faso to the DPRK to Palestine have sided with Russia against the hegemon; is not just that we should also support all countries which resist imperialism. It’s also that we should unite with all the anti-liberal elements within our own society which are compatible with us, forming a united front against the liberal order that we make as big as possible. Within the American left’s spaces of dogmatic opportunism, there are Marxists who reject both of these lessons; as well as ones who recognize the need for supporting all anti-imperialist forces globally, yet still reject the idea of an illiberal coalition.
We can’t convince every one of these leftists, but another important lesson in effective revolutionary practice is that we don’t need to; the class struggle isn’t dependent on the “left” spaces, and there are tens of millions of Americans outside these spaces who have potential to be brought into our resistance effort.
The idea we need to communicate to these masses of disillusioned workers (so they don’t get deceived by the arguments of the insular left orgs) is that when you look at our situation strategically; when you search for which elements of our society share an interest in defeating the imperial state; you find that revolution isn’t going to come from the “left.” Leftists who decide to defy the dogmas of their social circles can be part of it, but the force that overcomes our ruling institutions is going to have to come from a broader range of places than one ideological element.
To win, this force is going to need to draw power from many of the same people who the Democrats and their lackeys say we should blankedly reject. Not everyone from the MAGA and libertarian crowds are people we can expect to get on our side, as there are elements among them that are obstinately Zionist or obsessively anti-communist. The types we should be looking for, regardless of how they label themselves, are the ones who show themselves to be willing to centrally prioritize what’s most strategically important for advancing the class struggle; which at the present stage is the fight against U.S. hegemony.
If we recognize that what someone calls themselves is secondary to whether they seek to rectify the world’s primary contradiction, that being the domination by a genocidal imperialist parasite state, then we’ll empower ourselves to gain a much greater strategic advantage. And the fight against U.S. hegemony isn’t the sole thing we can unite with these kinds of non-left elements on; they also support the fight to abolish the three-letter agencies, the fight against big tech, the fight to end the war on whistleblowers, and the fight against big pharma. That reactionary demagogues seek to exploit these issues doesn’t negate the potential for the Americans who’ve gained the beginnings of revolutionary consciousness; who’ve already learned enough to reject the key narratives of the liberal order; to contribute to the struggle.
This is why the communists who’ve decided to expand their outreach beyond the left now find themselves on the side of those who are helping Uhuru’s efforts to resist state persecution, rather than those who are harming these efforts out of opportunism. The Marxists who’ve embraced an alternative to the insular activist model have come to a place where they can see actual progress.
The parallel to this that we can find within the anti-imperialist struggles of the peripheries is the phenomenon where resistors of colonialism across the globe; who naturally include many communists and social progressives; have sided with Russia even though the country’s present government is neither communist nor socially progressive. These anti-imperialists have backed Russia for the same reasons Karl Marx sided with Lincoln and the Union in its conflict with the Confederacy; these reasons being not only that the victory of the Union would obviously bring a better outcome, but also that the political element Lincoln represented was one which had revolutionary potential. And this potential needed to be nurtured by socialists, so that more people could be brought towards aiding in the class struggle.
That Lincoln’s supporters were primarily white settlers didn’t make them unable to partner with the emancipated Black southerners in bringing about one of the biggest advancements for racial equality in the country’s history. There was a distinction between them and the whites on the reactionary side, who vilified northern white Republicans as “carpetbaggers” that supposedly were only helping Black southerners out of opportunism. What modern ultra-lefts do when they dismiss the reality of Marx’ pro-Lincoln sentiments is in effect conflate the whites who were on the right side of history; with the whites who formed the Ku Klux Klan and worked to undo the progress made by the interracial alliance.
The socialists supporting Lincoln at the time weren’t uncritically endorsing everything about him; they were finding the revolutionary elements of his policies, and also of the social base that backed those policies. The equivalent is the case when we see anti-colonial demonstrators displaying pictures of Putin, or flying the Russian flag. Not only are Putin’s policies having an overall positive effect on the global anti-imperialist movement; but more importantly, his supporters represent a massive part of the worldwide social base behind the resistance against the hegemon. That’s why it’s not even accurate to consider Operation Z “Putin’s war;” he’s only the one who happened to be in charge when the majority of the Russian people mandated that action be taken against U.S.-backed Ukrainian fascism. He’s merely a symbol of something that’s almost infinitely bigger than him, something that’s accelerating the transition away from U.S. hegemony.
There are illiberal elements that communists shouldn’t ever be willing to unify with, such as actual racial supremacist fascists. If we act like every illiberal element that’s to our right may as well be Nazism, though, we ironically undermine our ability to defeat the Nazis (which these days predominantly exist as pro-Ukrainian liberal tools anyhow). It’s our job to identify the progressive ideas within the illiberal elements which aren’t “leftist”; to build a movement which brings in those among these elements who are willing to take these ideas to their logical conclusions. Many of the libertarians and conservatives who’ve opposed aid to Ukraine can come to the conclusion that to be consistent with this anti-imperialist stance they’ve taken, they’re going to need to also oppose aid to Israel, as well as reject the right-wing fixation on fighting communism.
That there are self-described libertarians and conservatives in antiwar activist spaces who’ve come to these conclusions shows the power of the anti-imperialist cause to unify illiberal minds. And like is the case for the leftists who aren’t going to give up their investment in dogmatic opportunism, we don’t need to convince the kinds of conservatives who will never stop prioritizing the culture war over anti-imperialism. We only need to find unity with the people who have the integrity to commit to the struggle against the hegemon; which is the struggle that’s going to need to succeed if we want victory against all the domestic evils that these Americans seek to defeat. When we defeat the hegemon, it won’t be the end of all debates and contradictions, including within the American movement that helped end U.S. hegemony; that doesn’t mean this movement isn’t worth aiding. If we win this fight, the possibility will appear for us to win all the other fights within the class struggle.
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