If somebody is serious about advancing the class struggle at this moment in American history, they frame issues and orient their practice around two goals: fighting U.S. hegemony, and taking away the Democratic Party’s dominance over our organizing and discourse spaces. The latter goal is dependent on the former, and the same is true the other way around. We can’t take away the DNC’s ability to hold back the class struggle until we’ve sufficiently worked to combat imperialism’s narratives. Narratives which protect Democrat infiltrators within radical spaces by making it look acceptable for them to promote pro-imperialist ideas, while masquerading as revolutionaries. Therefore, we can’t adequately combat these ideas without exposing the hypocrisies of the “socialist” individuals and organizations which normalize them within our spaces.
The notion that we need to accomodate or appease these “Marxists” who denounce acts of defiance against U.S. hegemony by Washington’s rivals, promote State Department atrocity narratives, and attack entire sections of the anti-NATO movement for being too impure is a primary obstacle to fighting the empire’s psyops. Because as long as socialists are framing the class struggle in terms that make it seem like the left opportunists have some special kind of value, and like we must be careful not to alienate them, our pro-imperialist cultural hegemony will remain intact. At least to the extent that socialists haven’t genuinely joined in the effort to end this cultural hegemony, and the American global economic/military hegemony which it perpetuates.
If socialists don’t break from the imperialism-compatible left, the right will continue to be the primary force that opposes the war against Russia. And aside from the kinds of libertarians who’ve come to also oppose the war against China, these conservatives aren’t consistent in their anti-imperialism. They’re also of course not interested in rectifying our domestic systemic injustices. Socialists need to take responsibility, and become explicit and vocal about backing the maneuvers by Russia and China to weaken U.S. hegemony. Which means giving up the Democratic Party-created, radical liberal framing of our liberation struggles, in which every decision socialists make has to be based on asking: “is this the correct thing to think or do from a ‘leftist’ perspective?” The right question is instead: “is this correct from a counter-hegemonic perspective?”
If somebody’s practice is centered around what you’re told a “leftist” should do, they’ll consistently find themselves opposing the actions necessary for defeating U.S. hegemony, and thereby the state. This is because according to the orthodoxy that’s been established by the New Left (the element the three-letter agencies created to replace the genuine labor movement), if you’re principled about opposing imperialism then you’ve joined with the reactionaries.
The upholders of this orthodoxy say it’s not a “leftist” position to support Russia’s war against Ukrainian fascism and American dominance. If so, then I’m proud not to be a “leftist.” What we call the left in today’s America is simply a social club used to exclude any actors who are serious about building a movement outside the control of the Democratic Party. Orient your practice around trying to keep favor within this club, and you’ll never come to be an active agent within history. You’ll remain tethered to a group that doesn’t care about advancing the class struggle, but about maintaining status within the clique.
This clique keeps developing radicals discouraged from leaving it by maintaining the illusion that there’s no alternative to it, that if you’ve left it then you’re eternally irrelevant. The opposite is true. There is an alternative to what left spaces have to offer. It can be found by looking for which political and ideological forces in our discourse are being consistently attacked by the upholders of imperialism’s cultural hegemony.
The white supremacists and transphobic culture warriors, in their stupidity, think that they represent this dissident force simply because the left doesn’t like them. If this were true, the USA wouldn’t be built off of white supremacy, our systems of state violence wouldn’t be designed to harm trans folks, and the government wouldn’t be backing Nazis in Ukraine. Dissident politics don’t look like Stefan Molyneux or the Proud Boys, they look like the united front that’s emerged against NATO. The ultra-lefts and the reactionaries are two parts of the same body, both there to reinforce the system. What genuinely threatens the existing social order is the type of politics that’s focused on affecting the most important issues in the class conflict. Which at this stage are the domination of reformism and opportunism within radical spaces; and the U.S. government’s ability to fortify its internal control by exacting violence upon the majority of the globe.
These are the central priorities of the members of the anti-NATO united front, by which I mean the Rage Against the War Machine coalition and the groups or individuals that support this coalition. There’s an effort among the feds, the Democratic Party’s narrative managers in the media, and their ultra-left allies to discredit this front. Don’t listen to what these bad actors say. The interests of the class struggle are not what motivates them, maintaining their personal status is. If the people who at present don’t support the RAWM coalition were to talk with its ideological leaders in person, many of them would come to understand just how much sense their ideas make. This project is about building an antiwar movement that’s independent from the Democratic Party, and is therefore authentic in being antiwar. It doesn’t undermine its own cause by denouncing Russia to appeal to liberals, or by investing itself in the critical theories put forth by the New Left’s pseudo-Marxist academics.
Due to this coalition’s counter-hegemonic character, the communist organizations and individuals that have joined it are naturally all the types of Marxists who back Russia’s actions. The anti-Russian Marxists could join it if they wanted to, it tolerates a great range of differing views as long as everyone is willing to foster an environment of unity. Yet the socialists of this type have all shunned it, because their politics simply aren’t compatible with a serious effort to challenge our ruling institutions. They can only either be individualists who aren’t connected to any significant organizational force, or lackeys for one of the opportunist orgs.
Because the imperialism-compatible leftists are unwilling to join with any force in the class struggle that’s effective, the threat they pose is limited. As soon as enough Marxists stop taking their advice and join with the anti-NATO front, they’ll essentially cease being relevant. Because then Marxists will be able to confront the state from a place of greater advantage than we used to have.
The Democratic Party’s narrative agents represent the first layer in the state’s counterinsurgency. When we’ve overcome this layer by uniting behind the anti-NATO front, the state will try to stop us with more aggressive means, exemplified by the Uhuru indictments and the RESTRICT act. Should we do our jobs well enough, and maintain the communist movement amid intensified repression, we’ll be prepared to guide the country’s regular mass uprisings in a coherent, revolutionary direction. Then the state will confront us with domestic military interventions, which it’s preparing for with police militarization and Cop City. As we fight the Democrat lackeys today, we must equip ourselves with the tools to defeat the anti-revolutionary forces we’ll meet when we defeat our present enemies.
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