The imperial sphere’s intelligence network has shown us what its counterinsurgency model looks like: inflame social tensions by mobilizing counter-gangs, then use the destruction to justify suppression of dissent. Depending on how the USA’s next election goes, what soon happens in this country could look quite similar to what’s happened in Britain; if Kamala Harris “wins,” the feds will activate agent provocateurs within the MAGA movement, creating right-wing violence that the state uses to justify a crackdown. That this kind of op has worked so well in the UK shows one of the reasons why our bourgeoisie’s dominant wing prefers Harris: because if Harris wins, the intelligence network will be able to do here what it just did over there. The UK’s crisis has also shown that as these deep state forces expand their controlled destabilization efforts across the west, the element they’re relying on for this is the lumpen.
This is true for the counter-gangs on both the right and the left. The “lumpenproletariat,” the element that’s detached from the productive economy and subsists on peripheral means, has made up most if not all of the participants in the recent UK pogroms. And the same is true for the left-wing mobs that the imperialist color revolution apparatus has mobilized over the last decade or so. It’s the lumpen which lack a material investment in growth, in proletarian revolution, and in the defeat of imperialism, as their livelihood is based on gaining monetary benefits from the social ills that capitalism’s contradictions create. So as Marx and Engels observed, they’re ripe for being weaponized by the bourgeoisie. In this case, the way this element has been used is for terrorizing religious and ethnic minorities, with the violence being instigated by the social media platforms the intelligence centers control.
This reality about the class character of these mobs is extremely important for Marxists to understand, because it refutes the dogmas the imperialism-compatible left promotes about ethnic bigotry and fascism. When liberals discuss racism and fascism, they usually describe its prime source as either the working class, or the smaller bourgeoisie. Amid the rise of Trumpism, liberals and the leftists who tail them have often framed bigotry as simply being a product of white working class ignorance, where the lower income whites have turned towards racism out of fear of losing their privilege. This narrative depends on 1) exaggerating how many white supremacist elements exist within the MAGA base, 2) exaggerating how important working class support actually was to Trump’s victory, 3) portraying the economic discontent of the white workers as proof that they’re inherently in conflict with the nonwhite workers, and 4) obscuring how xenophobic campaigns like this one have centered around not the workers but the lumpen.
Among the leftists who describe themselves as Marxists, another common idea is that this rightward shift is a creation of the petty-bourgeoisie and the other lower-level capitalist elements, which are seen by liberal thinkers as the central drivers of fascism. Umberto Eco, the left anti-communist intellectual, wrote in 1995 that “one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old ‘proletarians’ are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.”
As capitalism was getting towards its next stage of collapse, Eco and the ones who shared his liberal mindset were preemptively framing the present right-wing upsurge as principally coming from the smaller capitalists. Eco even implicitly waved away the idea that the lumpen would be a factor within the next fascist upsurge, acting as if the only social class which could be brought towards fascism was this “frustrated middle class.”
These views of fascism ignore where fascism truly comes from: monopoly finance capital, which during times of capitalist crisis employs fascism to defend the present economic order. Given this reality, fascism’s main source is not within capital’s lower levels, nor within the spontaneous sentiments of the working masses. Its main source is within the liberal wing of our ruling class, which is capital’s dominant element. MAGA emerged not from the finance capitalists, but from the lower-level bourgeoisie, and from certain parts of the workers. What fascist traits exist within MAGA come from the ways MAGA has been co-opted and used by finance capital.
The conservative smaller-scale entrepreneurs (and their equivalents in the UK) see right-populist politics as a way to break the power of monopoly capital, which has been squeezing the non-monopoly businesses. Through ops like the one they just carried out in the UK, the monopolists are working to steer this Bonapartist uprising away from a direction that could truly threaten finance capital, and towards violent lumpen activities which the monopolists can use to justify more repression. Capital’s highest levels seek to fuel the reactionary aspects of MAGA, because this makes it unable to seriously challenge their rule.
There’s a reason why I’m a communist and not a MAGA supporter. The xenophobic aspects of MAGA, and of its British equivalent, have made these political trends ripe for getting diverted in this way. And communists are opposed to these reactionary sentiments, which is why we seek to bring the more backward workers away from these ideas rather than dismiss them like the liberals do. We want to replace the false consciousness of MAGA with a class-conscious movement that combats finance capital, instead of blaming social scapegoats while arguing capitalism is still fundamentally worth saving. Like the imperialism-compatible left, MAGA promotes a false path towards defeating monopoly finance capital, where it’s recognized that the present power structure is bad but misunderstands how to defeat it. Communists are working to combat both dogmatic leftism, and the anti-woke psyop that’s being used to divert conservatives away from gaining class consciousness.
By furthering divisions and prejudices, the monopolists are working to make such re-education harder. They’re mobilizing the lumpen towards medieval pogromism, while acting like these evils are both entirely organic and a product of finance capital’s enemies. In response to the actions of the lumpen fascist terror gangs, the British state is now cracking down on the political activities of the proletariat, and of the small capitalist elements that have potential to join with the proletariat. The new censorship standards, which in the UK translate to not just social media policing but also arrests, are about setting a precedent for criminalizing anti-imperialist and labor organizing. And the narrative about the violence originating from working class ignorance reinforces the notion that white workers can’t unite with nonwhite workers.
Left-wing dogma says that just because the lumpen are dispossessed, they’re natural allies of the workers, and that the lower-level bourgeoisie are necessarily enemies of the workers just because they’re part of the capitalist class. This is inverse to how the 21st century’s class conflict has actually been developing. The lumpen are being weaponized by finance capital against the anti-imperialist, working-class cause, while many within the smaller bourgeoisie are pursuing the same goals which the most conscious workers have: the defeat of finance capital, and the implementation of growth. This fits with the material interests of these different classes. Degrowth is what benefits both the ultra-monopolists, who need to shrink the economy so that capitalism’s crisis of overproduction can be alleviated; and the lumpen, who function within an illicit market that’s going to grow as the economy’s productive parts further shrink. The workers and the smaller entrepreneurs share an interest in the opposite outcome.
If our enemies in this class conflict are forming these inter-class alliances, then we need to do the same with our own potential allies, both class-wise and ideology-wise. This is why I’ve long been advocating for communists to build coalitions with libertarians: both ideologies are in conflict with the monopolists, as both ideologies desire growth. When you look at the economies of today’s Marxist-Leninist countries, it’s clear that the predominant form of communism is not opposed towards entrepreneurship; this new communism is in favor of business, when business takes place within a planned economy. From both a proletarian perspective and an entrepreneurial perspective, finance capital’s degrowth efforts must be ended.
It’s therefore fitting that a notable amount of the opposition towards imperialist wars is coming from industrial capital, the social element which the Libertarian Party best represents. The lower-level capitalists increasingly see finance capital’s geo-strategic goals as not worth pursuing, because the new cold war is hurting the profits of the smaller entrepreneurs.
We will make alliances where we can, like Mao did when he allied with China’s lower level capitalists. And the monopolists will make alliances where they can, recruiting whatever elements of society are willing to fight on their behalf. The two sides will continue to battle, and should we navigate things correctly we’ll win. Our foes have used the UK as a place for testing their next class warfare maneuvers within the United States, and this lumpen mobilization strategy has been proven effective. This does not mean they’ll win the class war, though.
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