Amid the recent victories for the anti-imperialist forces, we should let these developments boost our morale, but the last thing we must do is become complacent. We need to redouble our efforts at advancing the workers struggle; to rebuild from the losses the workers movement experienced with the USSR’s fall. I’m mainly speaking to my fellow residents of the core imperialist countries, because that practice of optimistic diligence is already the norm for the mass movements across the Global South. It’s what Burkina Faso’s anti-imperialists are doing when they fly the Russian flag at their rallies; they recognize all of the gains that Russia has made for the global liberation struggle, but they do so while dedicating themselves to that struggle on a mass scale.
We must follow the Global South’s lead
If our own communist and anti-imperialist movements take example from this, then we’ll be able to celebrate multipolarity while making a serious contribution ourselves. In general, we need to learn from what the liberation struggles in the Global South have been doing; when it comes to the issue of multipolarity in particular, though, it’s especially urgent that we adopt the posture of these movements.
It’s these forces that are holding out against imperialism’s assaults, and that are making progress towards the final defeat of the hegemon. They’re the ones which have oriented themselves around the popular masses, and that already know how to uphold the traditions of the 20th century’s liberation struggles; they know this because their members have had to live these struggles. So as our ruling class tries to crush dissent inside the U.S. and its satellite states, our only way forward is to become connected to the class struggle as much as our Global South counterparts are.
Many of those within the U.S. communist movement understand the form of an authentic revolutionary movement. They see that modern China, post-Soviet Russia, and the rising post-American economic order represent the future. And they’ve fused their support for these things into a synthesis with the Marxism-Leninism of Lenin and Stalin. More of those within the broader antiwar movement have come to support the Chinese bloc as well; it only makes sense when China keeps being at the center of what U.S. foreign policy seeks to destroy.
The next step is to grasp not just the form of what our movement stands for, but also the content. To expand our efforts into a real mass mobilization, where we bring the bulk of the people into a project for building socialism.
To understand this other aspect of our mission, we need to get the experience which that knowledge requires. To enter into the political struggle itself, and gain direct familiarity with the masses which we seek to lead. This is entailed within the idea of revolutionary struggle, but a danger we face at this stage is that online politics will keep us demobilized. That many who’ve absorbed knowledge about anti-imperialism and class struggle will remain separate from the fight itself, only acting as observers.
This is not to say online politics are irrelevant; today the masses are online, so the algorithms are something we need to prioritize. For anything we do to have meaningful impact, though, it needs to be done in the service of a larger project for collective organization. And for those of us within the communist element of this organizational effort, it’s essential that we make our desire for workers revolution clear to the people, forsaking any euphemisms which conceal our goals.
“It will be up to us, the Communists, to present to the American people our vision of socialism,” writes Carlos Garrido of the American Communist Party. “This cannot be a vision of something foreign that will be artificially implanted on our unique histories and traditions, but as the logical and practical conclusions of the values of 1776 and the notion – enunciated by Lincoln and accepted as common sense by our people – that government should be of, by, and for the people…Such a reality, thoroughly absent in our current conjuncture, where government is of, by, and for big corporations, big banks, and investment firms, can only become actualized when the working class obtains political power.”
We’ll only be able to carry out such a mission when we’ve closed the gap between our desire for defeating the hegemon, and how connected we are to the actual counter-hegemonic struggle. The shift in the global power balance that we’ve seen during this last generation, where China and its partners have built themselves up exponentially, represents an improvement in the objective conditions for workers revolution. The subjective conditions depend on what those of us within the movement itself do. This economic change in the east’s favor only makes our task easier, it cannot finish the task.
The temptations of fake friends
Our mission, or at least the present phase of our mission, will only be finished when we’ve given the masses the means to overthrow their capitalist dictatorship. And to do this, we’ll need to recognize where our true allies are in this fight; to know which players are only posturing as friends of the anti-imperialist cause. If we get swayed towards supporting any controlled opposition “anti-imperialist” forces, inevitably we’ll end up opposing the real anti-imperialist forces, and every part of our progress will be set back. And trying to get us to do this to ourselves is the major new tactic our enemies have adopted.
At this moment, one of the most insidious types of controlled opposition within our spaces is the pro-BJP psyop. When somebody is looking at things from a perspective that’s specifically “multipolarist,” and doesn’t have the class analysis that’s essential for a full understanding, they’re often inclined to treat India as if it were an anti-imperialist country. To minimize the realities that India is ruled by a genocidal party, and that Washington continues to use Hindu nationalist India as a weapon against China.
This is a problem that comes from many different ideological elements which claim to be socialist, antiwar, or “anti-establishment.” Tulsi Gabbard, and the Trump administration more broadly, are closely aligned with India’s Hindutva fascist movement. The Communist Party of India Marxist has effectively sided with the Hindutva regime by supporting India’s recent military operation against Pakistan. There are also uncritical supporters of Russia’s bourgeois government who believe that Russia is correct for aligning with India, not seeing how this policy exists in spite of Russia’s internal revolutionary forces. Russia’s Ukraine operation is what a revolutionary foreign policy looks like; Russia’s close collaboration with the Hindutva regime comes from the influence of the Russian capitalist class. To treat both policies as revolutionary is dangerous.
It’s these types of positions that gain prominence in an environment like ours, where even though many hopeful developments have come about, the anti-imperialist struggle is trying to recover from catastrophic recent setbacks. Setbacks which can make many people inclined to turn towards false solutions, and tail behind some of the most reactionary political forces, with the hope that these forces will deliver them wins.
That’s what the fall of Syria’s anti-imperialist government, and the ongoing Palestinian genocide that this event has contributed to, could do to our movement: lead people to look for leadership in the wrong places. The pro-BJP phenomenon is just one example of this trend; there are “anti-imperialist” commentators which present the Gulf states as anti-Zionist allies, and there are even elements that are willing to trust Turkey (the main U.S. proxy behind Syria’s regime change).
Another government that we shouldn’t place trust in is Brazil’s, which blocked Venezuela from entering BRICS last year and thereby showed where it truly stands. When Lula recently praised Trump for his “peace” efforts, this was a sign that we shouldn’t put faith in Trump; the nature of the Trump White House’s diplomatic overtures is to try to make Russia, Iran, and other Chinese partners into U.S. client states. That’s the essence of why this last week’s Trump-Putin talk fell apart: Putin wants to keep pleasing Russia’s communist movement, so he isn’t going along with Trump’s attempts to divide Russia from China.
The communist and anti-monopolist forces in the empire’s core will only become tempted by controlled opposition if we fail to stand on our own. If we don’t put in the work to build a mass workers movement, keeping our position weak and thereby making it attractive to sell out. We must not go along with the narratives of Trump and his special envoy Steven Witkoff, who’s peddling the dangerous psyop where a neo-colonial Iran deal gets sold as “peace.” All of the elements which claim anti-imperialists can ally with U.S. puppet regimes are trying to get us to rationalize such a policy, in which new takeovers by U.S. capital are justified in the name of “detente.”
The logical conclusion of this is to embrace reformism, class collaboration, and national chauvinism, like the CPIM has done; when you’ve gotten to a place where you’re supporting your government’s pro-imperialist endeavors, you’ve become detached from everything the class struggle represents.
To embrace a strategy like this is to admit one’s bankruptcy as an anti-establishment actor, and acquiesce to the establishment under the belief that there’s no alternative path. There is an alternative; it’s been shown to us by our fellows in the Global South, and in the anti-Zionist resistance forces. Whether we learn from them is up to us.
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