Should We Discuss the Potholes on China’s Road to Socialism?

One can admire the Chinese revolution as one of the great setbacks to the imperialist and colonial undertakings of Europe, Japan, and the US. One can hail the extraordinary sacrifices and deep dedication of members of the Chinese Communist Party to both liberate the peoples of China from foreign domination and advance the people toward a better life.  

At the same time, one can recognize the errors, the missteps, and the failed campaigns that unsurprisingly went with establishing and developing the New China.

As with other previous revolutionary projects like the Americas and France -- in their times-- and the Soviet Republic, the European Peoples’ Democracies, Peoples’ Democratic Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam in our time, Peoples’ China’s fate will and must be decided by its own people and their leading forces. And we are obligated to defend their right to make that choice, whether we agree with it or not.

Those of us who are on the outside looking in need to demonstrate humility and reserve in assessing the progress of the Chinese revolution. We should make neither hasty critiques nor unqualified defenses. We should not rush to judgement on a job that is, by all accounts, unfinished. Even as late as February of 1952, Stalin was reminding us that commodity production still existed in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the goal of Communists remained, in Engels’ words from Anti-Duhring as cited by Stalin, “the seizure of the means of production by society” and putting “an end to commodity production, and therewith to the domination of the product over the producer.”

While conceding that the Soviet Union had yet to secure this aim, Stalin was unequivocal about how the Soviet Union and Soviet Communists pursued this goal: 

The specific role of Soviet government was due to two circumstances: first, that what Soviet government had to do was not to replace one form of exploitation by another, as was the case in earlier revolutions, but to abolish exploitation altogether; second, that in view of the absence in the country of any ready-made rudiments of a socialist economy, it had to create new, socialist forms of economy, "starting from scratch," so to speak. Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR [my emphasis]

For Stalin, the socialist project in the USSR was to hinge on eliminating exploitation and developing socialist economic forms.

Undoubtedly, there are many ways to target these objectives. Every country embarking on the revolutionary path faces a different set of circumstances determined by unique historical, geographical, national, and social features. These circumstances foreclose a “one-size-fits-all” program to secure socialism. Yet, ending capitalist exploitation-- the buying and selling of labor power and the private appropriation of surplus value-- and developing new non-capitalist forms of economic life stand as the common goals of the Communists. 

As Marx and Engels attest in Part III of The Communist Manifesto, there are many kinds of “socialisms.” Those “socialisms” compete with the socialism of the Communists, where the “distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.” (The Communist Manifesto [my emphasis])

It is significant that the grand debates raging over whether The People's Republic of China is socialist or capitalist so rarely invoke the “exploitation of the many by the few.” Reaching for relevance, the Western left-- Marxist and non-Marxist-- rarely couch the struggle for socialism in the language of exploitation, despite its centrality in the classics.

Consequently, the debate over China frequently has one side celebrating the impressive alleviation of extreme poverty in China’s recent history, while the other side decries the vast wealth and income inequality produced over the last decades. Both claims are true, seemingly leading to contradictory conclusions. 

A recent Jacobin article takes a different tact, provocatively arguing that “the greatest stretch of growth and poverty alleviation in human history [achieved by China]” was “made possible by the brutal exploitation of millions of workers.” Daniel Cheng’s article is a review of a book by Xiao Hai allegedly recounting his experience working in five different Chinese enterprises. The book's unabashedly anecdotal character-- vividly brutal, yet only one man’s experience-- may carry little weight in the larger picture. 

But even the most fervent friend of “Socialist China” will not deny that millions of rural Chinese migrated to the cities and special economic zones to work under similar harsh, capitalist conditions of exploitation. 

Certainly, the accumulation of the vast sums of capital by an emergent Chinese capitalist class (as well as by welcomed foreign capitalists) contributed greatly to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy. 

Undoubtedly, a “rich” China might better afford to provide a humane economic floor to a more and more stratified Chinese society. And surely, under the leadership of a seasoned Communist Party, the provision of such a guaranteed standard of living would be more likely than under a regime dominated by hidebound monopoly capitalists.

But in today’s China, the exploitation of the many by the few remains-- after nearly fifty years-- a central driving force in the country’s economic advance. Cheng’s article reminds us of that fact.

Into this conversation steps Carlos Martinez, a leading leftist supporter of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” the direction Chinese Communists embraced after 1978. His response to Cheng argues that “[e]xploitation must be contextualized.” Rather than addressing the fact that Chinese socialism encourages the exploitation of workers under capitalist conditions of labor, Martinez suggests that the ends justify the means; suffering capitalist exploitation will result ultimately in gains for the Chinese people. This may seem to some to be an uncomfortable counterpart to the Western capitalist promise that growth will “trickle down” to the least advantaged or that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” After all, life expectancy under capitalism in the UK has more than doubled since 1800 and average male height has increased by four inches. Caloric intake, access to ever-advancing medical care, improved sanitation, public goods, etc. all benefitted the people, while the UK working class continued to be profoundly exploited, generating a greater concentration of capital into the hands of monopoly corporations and the obscenely rich. The capitalist development of productive forces generally enables an increase in the relative costs of successfully reproducing labor power extracted from a restive, organized, and resistant working class.

Enduring exploitation has never been simply a matter of the classic Reagan-era rubric of “are you better off now than you were before?”. The recognition of a new meaning to exploitation-- labor exploitation-- traces its origins to early European industrialization and its adoption of capitalist social relations. Even before Marx and Engels, observers were cognizant of the injustices of capitalist exploitation, of using humans as instruments of capital accumulation, of compensating workers according to their sustainable cost of reproduction, of forcing them into the universe of commodities.

Conditions of labor were brutal and difficult in early Soviet industrialization as well. Life was hard. But the conditions were not exploitative because all of the wealth produced by working people promised a better future for everyone. Some of the accumulated wealth may have been squandered, misdirected, even stolen, but it was not systematically and methodically directed to the few and denied to the many. Sacrifice was voluntary because workers believed that it was destined to help the many. Martinez cynically seems to dismiss this experience as “an imagined socialist utopia.”

One easily forgets some of China’s early successes while following a model more congruent with the experiences in the Soviet Union and the Peoples’ Democracies. For example: 

The success of early land reform meant that at the founding of the PRC in 1949, China could credibly claim that for the first time since the late Qing period that it had succeeded in feeding one fifth of the world's population with only 7% of the world's cultivable land… By 1953, China had rapidly recovered its economy…  Its industrial outputs grew by 31% in 1955 and a further 10% in 1956… The collectivization process began slowly but accelerated in 1955 and 1956. In 1957 about 93.5 percent of all farm households had joined advanced producers' cooperatives. Although the agriculture sector only received 6.2% of the budget during the first five-year plan, agricultural gross outputs increased by 24.7%. The industrial working class grew from 6 million to 10 million.  Industrial work places organized as danwei (work units) provided subsidized housing, permanent jobs, education, and medical care.  In the early 1950s, China established a social security system covering workers at SOEs [state-owned enterprises], collectively owned enterprises, government administrative units (such as Ministries) and operative units (such as public universities and state-owned hospitals) ... Throughout the 1950s, a major challenge for the large-scale economic modernization was the relative lack of managerial talent.  Promotion of ordinary workers to management roles was intended to address this challenge while also serving the larger political goal of placing the proletariat in control. 

Thus, by including some ideas inspired from earlier Communist experiences and with help from the socialist community, People’s China achieved remarkable success in its first decade.

Unfortunately, this path was interrupted by The Great Leap Forward, an excessively idealist departure in the direction of what Martinez might more appropriately view as “an imagined socialist utopia.” Despite the disaster of the GLF (combined with a brutal famine), growth was restored in its wake, only to be disrupted again by the equally chaotic Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and beyond. 

The Communist Party’s ultra-leftist, voluntarist excesses of the time derailed the economic successes fostered by rational, reality-based projects. The notion that a collective will could overcome all material limitations-- a notion alien to Marxism-- led the Party to many policy dead ends, while exhausting the enthusiasm for socialism among many. 

Accompanying these twists and turns was a break with the Soviet Union, a break resulting in closer cooperation with US imperialism, friction and actual aggression against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and a shameful alliance with South African apartheid in the anti-colonial wars against Portugal’s African colonies. 

The Chinese Cold War anti-Soviet posture and the metaphysical romance of creating socialism by sheer collective will appealed to far too many in the New Left and with other anti-Communist “leftists.”

With the death of Mao, the Party leadership made an extremely sharp turn away from ultra-leftist adventurism, embracing the Deng capitalist-friendly reforms in 1978. Pragmatism replaced wild idealism.

When Martinez insists on “contextualizing” exploitation in the People’s Republic, he should be as enthusiastic in contextualizing the turn toward allowing capitalism in through the front door. It has its historical roots in the rejection of the mechanical, shock-troop socialism of the Mao era that delayed a planned, efficient march to a society without exploitation. Despite the chaos of the era, the PRC enjoyed an average growth rate of 6.2% from 1952 until 1978, according to Lin Chun in The Transformation of Chinese Socialism, an accomplishment achieved without relying on capitalist relations of production.

Martinez seizes upon Cheng’s comparison of emergent capitalism in nineteenth-century Manchester and the more recent emergent Chinese capitalism in Shenzhen. Indeed, it is an imperfect comparison in many ways. Cheng would have been better served by comparing the number of billionaires in Shenzhen (132) to the number of billionaires in New York City (146). There were no billionaires in Shenzhen in 1978. Billionaires in both places are the direct or indirect product of capitalist exploitation. From a Marxist perspective, what is the social utility of a billionaire? How does the existence of billionaires advance the cause of socialism in China or anywhere else?

Rather than contextualizing exploitation, Martinez succeeds in relativizing and-- consequently-- rationalizing the exploitation of the many by the few. He urges a comparison between today’s China and low-wage countries in the Global South. Indeed, the same changes in the mobility of capital, lowering of export and transportation costs, and trade liberalization that allowed China to offer up millions of low-wage workers to manufacturing is now shifting manufacturing to even lower-wage countries. Ironically, many Chinese companies are now taking advantage of these lower costs and shifting production to these new “Chinas.” In a race to the bottom, workers will always lose, as they have even outside of the global economy. Few on the left would celebrate the "prosperity" of the US South, when jobs migrated from the unionized North to non-union cheaper labor areas.

What Martinez fails to understand or chooses to ignore is that capitalism has a unique, focused logic that accumulates vast sums of capital into the hands of the few. Marx’s proclamation in Capital that accumulation is “Moses and the Prophets” is made to vividly, emphatically acknowledge that accumulation is a never-ending process. The existence of masses of capital in private hands commands that the owners of capital invest, reinvest, and reinvest again to grow their capital. China’s billionaires cannot escape that logic.

From 1978 on, the imperative of capital accumulation was expressed through investments in manufacturing and the turning of China into an enormous commodity-exporting engine. As capital has accumulated, China has become-- following the logic of capital-- more and more an exporter of capital to capital-poor countries, accumulating assets, financing projects, and expanding demand for its products. 

Whether or not China’s Belt and Road Initiative was intentionally meant for this purpose, it well serves as a vehicle for the exportation of the accumulated capital of China’s billionaires. 

As capitalist apologists have faithfully maintained since the dawn of the era of imperialism, global trade, the “reasonable” export of capital, and “a rules-based international order” are supposedly the road to mutual prosperity. Today, the Chinese government is the leading exponent of this “Moses and the Prophets” doctrine, while the rest of the capitalist world is increasingly engaging in protectionism, tariffs, and sanctions to cling to a tenuous hold on its place in a global economy more and more dominated by China and other Global South success stories.

Is this class struggle in today’s world or something else entirely? Is the clash for market share, stock market success, and capital accumulation a twenty-first-century class battle or a revisit of twentieth-century great-power rivalry for markets and spheres of interest? It is not enough to answer these questions by pointing to the glitzy cities, the incredible fast trains, and stunning technology of China, without discussing the status of the 400,000,000 workers and their relationship to Chinese private capital. 

Keen observers have noted China’s unexpected behavior in recent international conflicts, behavior more in step with a capitalist country, a country putting economic interests ahead of political principle. China has maintained strong economic ties with Israel during the ongoing genocide in Gaza, speaking with a loud oppositional voice at international forums, but actively doing next to nothing to stop Israel or break the blockade of Gaza. Similarly, China’s reaction to an unprovoked attack on Iran-- a BRICS partner-- by the US and Israel is best described as fence-sitting (apart from finding ways to continue economic activity with all parties). For arguably the most powerful potential counterforce to US imperialism to step aside from serious resistance to a rabid US administration is not what many of us would expect from a socialist country. 

With Cuba facing an extortionate, existential crisis imposed by the empowered North American gusanos, China’s response has been less than inspired.

Establishing a useful balance sheet on China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” may prove to be a daunting, even misguided challenge for Western leftists, but blindness to legitimate questions like those raised by Daniel Cheng and others serves neither the cause of the Chinese working class nor exploited workers in other countries.

After nearly fifty years of riding the capitalist tiger, China’s chosen road to socialism remains foggy and fraught with danger. Nonetheless, it is China’s road. 

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

 

The Debate Behind the Debate: Is the Exploitation of the Global South by the Global North the Main Contradiction of our Time?

When it comes to debates among Marxist intellectuals, it is often difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the more arcane disputes have absolutely no bearing on Marxist practice-- the actual class struggle. 

The so-called “Transformation problem” debated among political economists, for example, is not a problem, unless you accept the assumptions that graduate students in economics departments are told must be attended if Marxism is to be taken seriously. Marxism, however, advances a powerful, effective critique of capitalism without accepting those assumptions or deferring to the manufactured problem. Failure to deduct fluctuating prices from exchange values no more derails the Marxist project than failure to deduct actual thought from brain events or neural processes derails the scientific project of neurophysiology.  

But the outcomes of some “theoretical” debates have real practical consequences. Still others are stalking horses for controversies within our political movements.

A recent dust-up between Vivek Chibber and Vijay Prashad is an example of both, along with a heavy dose of pettifoggery.  

Chibber spurred the debate with an interview posted in Jacobin magazine in mid-December. His thesis-- set out explicitly in the interview’s title-- is: “Colonial Plunder Didn’t Create Capitalism.” To the query of whether “colonial plunder was essentially responsible for bringing about capitalism,” Chibber responds with characteristic bluntness: “The idea that capitalism was brought about by plunder can’t even get off the ground.” 

In March, Vijay Prashad responded sharply to Chibber in a long piece in Monthly Review. After chastising Chibber for not being serious: “It would have been better if Chibber wanted to initiate a discussion on the issues of the origin of capitalism and the role of colonialism for this origin to have produced something other than a podcast as an incitement to debate…” He regrets that Chibber’s thoughts were not presented “as a major written text with citations.” 

This would appear to be a specious charge, coming from an intellectual whose stature and broad appeal come largely from podcasts, interviews, and popular writing, and not from his academic work.

Further, Prashad unabashedly concedes in his article that “No serious scholar says that colonialism created capitalism.”

With that concession, the contest would appear to be closed-- there really is no disagreement. Anyone innocent of the often-acrimonious debates on the left would wonder why there was a dispute at all.

Why does Chibber feel it necessary to deny that colonial plunder created capitalism? Is “colonialism-created-capitalism” a straw man? If Prashad is right and no serious scholar believes it, who is Chibber’s argument directed towards? Why is Prashad so agitated by Chibber’s intervention?

Is this another instance of seminar-room Marxism? Of résumé padding? Of dispute-for-dispute’s-sake?

In fact, there is a seething backstory to both positions--- a long, contentious ideological battle that erupts frequently on the academic stage.

Chibber takes issue with a left trend prevalent among many Marxists to locate the nexus of exploitation in national inequalities, specifically between the most advanced capitalist countries and the less developed countries. He says:

In the 1960s and ’70s, it had come back in the form of what’s called “Third Worldism,” which was this idea that the Global North collectively exploits the Global South. And you can see how that’s an extension of the view that capitalism in the West came out of the plunder of the Global South. You can just extend it to say that the Global North continues to stay rich because of the plunder of the South…

It’s transforming a class argument into a racial and national argument. And in today’s left, nationalism and racialism are the dominant ideologies. It’s quite striking to me how this trope, this “global white supremacy” has become so current on the Left. And it’s utterly nonsensical. It has literally no connection to reality.

But it’s become fashionable on the Left because it allows you to align radicalism with the current wave of racial identity politics. And the core of this is whatever divisions there might be within the races, pale — no pun intended — in relation to the divisions between the races.

In essence, Chibber believes that he is defending class analysis against a left that has abandoned class, a left viewing global oppression only through the lens of nationalism and racialism. 

Writers like Prashad frame the principal contradiction in today’s world as between the “Global North” and the “Global South,” abstractions constructed from a rough division of the world between the former colonizing states and the post-colonial states.

The appeal of the Global North versus Global South analysis should be readily apparent. Since well before the birth of capitalism, powerful empires have subjected, exploited, oppressed, and enslaved peoples to the benefit of the empires. In the pre-industrial mercantile era, principalities, city-states, kingdoms, and other centers of power continued to extract wealth from those unable to resist. And soon after the maturation of capitalism and the full development of the modern nation-state, the monopoly capitalist corporations of the great powers continued the subjugation, pillage, plunder, and rape of weaker peoples through the colonial system.

There is nothing new or original, however, in affirming that powerful nations, organizations, institutions, groups, individuals, etc. periodically or even systemically exploit their weaker counterparts. There is nothing new or especially insightful about recognizing asymmetries of power in global relations. Certainly, there is nothing specifically Marxist about such a claim.

But Prashad wants to go further. He wants to specifically link nation-states to capitalist exploitation. Where the Marxism of Marx and Engels fundamentally located exploitation in the relationship between those who own the means of production and workers-- two distinct classes-- Prashad sees exploitation as a relationship between nation-states: the original colonizing states and the colonial subjects. And today, he and others argue that exploitation remains fundamentally grounded in the relations of nation-states: the privileged former colonizers and the former colonies. Granting that inequalities are certainly, at least in part, the legacy of colonialism, the fact that national inequalities exist today further demonstrates that this exploitative relationship exists, according to Prashad and others of like mind.

Prashad cites counterfactual studies-- identifying where wealth might have gone if events had taken a different course-- as further showing that exploitive relations account for the continuing inequalities between South and North, without mentioning the relations of production-- capitalism-- that actually enable these inequalities. Class relations-- relations privileging exploitative advantages of the foreign and domestic bourgeoisies-- go unmentioned. Do we conclude, by comparison, that the US North exploits the US South based on the existence of persisting inequalities? Or do we say that-- due to uneven, disparate development-- corporate capitalism exploits them both, but differently? I think we agree it’s the latter.

Paradoxically, Prashad says:

This ceaseless drain provides a continuous stream of plunder into the Western-controlled financial systems whose power remains intact despite the great changes taking place with the center of gravity of the world economy shifting to Asia.

This curious statement suggests that the global North is systematically plundering the global South, while the weight of the global economy-- its future and fortunes-- lie in Asia, the economic powerhouse of the Global South. How can he have it both ways? How can Prashad and others celebrate the fact that the core of the South-- the BRICS+ countries-- have together surpassed the economic product of the G7 and also maintain that the North continues to systematically plunder its wealth?

The fact is that capitalist social relations-- struggle between classes over the fruits of labor-- have entirely penetrated both the Global North and Global South. It is monopoly corporations-- social entities that respect no state boundaries-- that “plunder” anywhere and everywhere.

 Rather than uncritically submitting its fate to the direction of international capitalist institutions, their loans, or foreign investment, rather than seek some compensatory justice to the crimes of colonialism, the post-colonial states should consider the insights argued by Paul Baran in his opus at the height of the colonial independence movement:

The principal insights, which must not be obscured by matters of secondary or tertiary importance, are two. The first is that, if what is sought is rapid economic development, comprehensive economic planning is indispensable… The second insight of crucial importance is that no planning worth the name is possible in a society in which the means of production remain under the control of private interests which administer them with a view to their owners’ maximum profits (or security or other private advantage) ... (xxviii-xxix, Foreword to 1962 printing) The Political Economy of Growth, Paul A. Baran [emphasis added]

Baran is unabashedly advocating for a socialist escape from the legacy of colonialism and the fate of neocolonialism-- a position that has fallen out of fashion, but remains the only authentically Marxist answer for workers in the so-called global South. As an ideological godfather of many who stress the North/South exploitation divide, it is odd that this conclusion is rarely cited by those who owe their lineage to Baran.

Neither Prashad nor Chibber acknowledge this solution. Prashad, citing Samir Amin, mischaracterizes contemporary imperialism:

In the Marxist tradition, there are a variety of interpretations of the idea of originary accumulation, but what the facts show—and has been established in, for example, the oeuvre of Samir Amin, among others—is that imperialism is not an outgrowth of capitalism, but is foundational to capitalism itself. [emphasis added]

Today’s imperialism is driven by protecting and expanding spheres of influence, energy and rare metal acquisition, market access and expansion, and dominating labor markets. Behind the endless Great Power conflicts, civil wars, and regime changes is inescapably capitalist competition. 

Capitalism is foundational to imperialism itself. And if we lose sight of that fact-- the class perspective-- we will lose sight of who are the perpetrators and who are the victims.

But class alone does not explain exploitation and imperialism, as one might think from reading Chibber. Nationalism and racialism have always been capable tools in misguiding, thwarting, or taming class struggle. Capitalism’s long life and resilience owes much to the insidious, but masterful manipulation of race and nationhood by the capitalist class to deflect attention from the war between the class exploiters and the exploited. Deafness and insensitivity to race and national identity only exacerbates and multiplies the harsh lash of class exploitation.

Debate is most useful when it shines a light on the way forward.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

The Decline of Trumpism and the Crisis of Capitalism

The chaotic Trump reign over US politics is showing critical signs of weakening on many fronts: Trumponomics is failing: Trumpian immigration policy has stirred a powerful backlash; Teflon Trump has been tarnished by his clumsy, slippery handling of the Epstein scandal; his foreign-policy contradictions and outrages have confused both international friends and foes alike; and his violation of his “end to endless wars” campaign has caused a break with some of his most ardent supporters.

It is easy to forget that this Trump regime has been in power for only a little more than a year, while enjoying a majority in both the House and the Senate, as well as a favorable majority in the Supreme Court. In such a short time, he and his cohorts have managed to do extraordinary damage.

Unlike in his first term, where Trump included some of the Republican Party old guard, the new administration was outfitted with hard-core MAGA-- a cabal that proved to be craven sycophants, unhinged racists and nationalists, and intellectual reactionaries.

Whatever traction Trump may have gotten with those angry with two-party betrayal, his already shattered promises are reflected in his falling poll numbers. With the mid-term elections coming, significant numbers within his coalition are questioning his policies or distancing themselves from his positions despite his brazen threats to destroy them politically for their heresy.

It would be more than misleading to credit the decline of Trumpism to the resistance, the Democrats, or the broad left. For sure, there have been remarkable centers of mass struggle against Trump’s policies, most notably, the impressive Minneapolis resistance to ICE that successfully organized tens of thousands into a powerful force driving the Trump forces into an embarrassing retreat. Those hoping to reverse the Trump onslaught would do well to study the Minnesota phenomenon rather than deferring to Democratic Party leadership.

The labor unions-- potentially a formidable adversary to Trumpism-- are paralyzed by a leadership afraid to defy their members who might support Trump. They are willing to close their eyes to MAGA’s clearly anti-union program in order to maintain the internal tranquility of business unionism. As support for Trumpism declines with working people, careerist union leaders remain on the sidelines. When union organizers and leaders have stood up in the past, they have made the difference between surrendering to reaction or defending the interests of working people. The left-led CIO unions of the thirties were the bulwarks of the resistance to the far-right “answers” to the Great Depression.

Similarly, the Democratic Party has demonstrated both its inability and unwillingness to defeat the Trump steamroller. Trump’s reelection itself proves that the Democratic Party has failed to create a program that will deliver voters from the fears and anxieties that animate Trump support. Tolerating-- if not welcoming-- the admission of billionaires, war mongers, spies, hucksters, and careerists into their inner circle, Democratic Party leaders are counting on Republican failure and Epstein-sleaze to propel them back to power, instead of developing a popular agenda. 

Recent local and by-elections have shown a hunger among Democratic Party voters for progressive, populist candidates of the Sanders/Mamdani ilk, but party functionaries have sought to cultivate ex-military, CIA, FBI hawks with corporate-friendly agendas to fill their electoral slates. The Democratic Party has evolved into a massive fund-raising machine more than willing to wait its turn in the two-party back-and-forth. Candidates of substance have no place in the strategic vision of their bankrupt leaders.

The Democratic Party response to the ongoing war against Iran (and the recent invasion of Venezuela) evidences its cynical, corrupted posture. Sensing a vulnerability with Trump’s naked aggression, they attack the Republicans-- not on moral or humanitarian grounds-- but on procedure! The slaughter of the innocent victims of Israeli and US bombs is passed on uncritically, but the failure to consult Congress counts as a grievous sin!

This is a party that long left its New Deal image in the rear-view mirror.

But because of the deeply entrenched two-party system, expressions of popular struggle, of resistance, of progressive change too often feel it necessary to tether to a corrupted Democratic Party.

Especially after the shock and awe of massive deindustrialization and a devastating economic crisis, many mistakenly envisioned Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party as a possible break from the indifference of the elites leading both parties. Trump presented himself as such, trading on desperate hope and the desire for change, just as his Democratic Party predecessor stirred a wave of optimism based on vague promises. With economic inequality-- the benchmark for all kinds of inequality-- relentlessly advancing, Trump’s empty promise of restoring manufacturing jobs nonetheless resonated with the disenchanted.

He promoted the idea that a heavy dose of sanctions, tariffs, and other forms of arm-twisting would secure for the citizens a bounty of wealth that had been cheated from them, stolen from them, or given away by the treacherous Democrats. This let’s-make-a-deal economic policy was the basis for the delusion that billions of lost wealth would be recovered for the public good. 

Couple these fantasies with a regressive tax policy to appease the hard-headed corporate bosses, and you have the essence of Trump’s economic plan.

Meanwhile, the serious problems of stagnation and inflation carried over from the Biden administration remain unattended.

Like the Democrats, Trump had no immigration policy that balanced guaranteeing labor-market stability with humanitarian concerns. Instead, he chose to not only expel all undocumented immigrants, but to also whip up hysterical waves of xenophobia, much of it rabidly racist. Unleashing a Gestapo-like ICE on communities and cities played poorly in even the corporate media, costing him dearly in support.

The Epstein scandal-- unlike other exposures of ruling-class libertinism and debauchery-- will not go away because both the Democrats and Republicans will not let it go away. Both parties are thoroughly devoted to throwing slime on their opponents, since both parties own prominent friends of Epstein. However, the Epstein affair has done serious and costly damage to Trump because he already exhibits extraordinary vulgarity, he has clumsily mishandled suspicions of his involvement, and his attorney general has botched the investigation. 

Despite running on a nationalist platform disclaiming foreign entanglements, Trump has been baited by the neo-conservative, Marco Rubio wing of MAGA to embrace regime change. After the Venezuela invasion, the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro Moros and Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, and the government’s subsequent capitulation, Trump grew “dizzy” with his perceived success. The Wall Street Journal has dubbed his novel regime-change strategy as “decapitate and delegate.” Now Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has wooed Trump into applying the strategy to Iran, launching a joint war that threatens to escalate into a regional war with profound implications for the global economy.

Trumpism’s decline comes at a time of the deepening crisis of capitalism. Since the devastating economic crash of 2007-2009, the world economy has failed to recover fully from financial stress, stagnation, and inflation. 

Under the management of political and central bank leaders, rapidly rising inequality, deteriorating standards of living, social stress, and widely expressed dissatisfaction afflict all the advanced capitalist countries. The most dramatic mass expression of this rising discontent is the growing rejection of centrist political parties—parties that have shared rule in most countries for many generations of voters. Trumpism and other, European and Asian, right-wing populist parties and movements reflect this bitter discontent with conventional governance.

Some of the so-called lower-middle or higher-middle-income capitalist or capitalist-accommodating countries have high growth rates that-- in spite of great inequality-- have generated growing middle strata and relative political stability. Insofar as they enjoy high growth from the migration of capital and industrial production to their economies, they also sustain high rates of labor exploitation along with modestly rising living standards. Their ruling classes have traded extreme labor exploitation for a competitive advantage against the advanced capitalist countries. 

Of course, the poorest countries remain tragically stunted from the legacy of European colonialism, denied any but the grimmest future in the capitalist economy.  

Competition between the advanced capitalist countries, rivalry with the emerging economies, and the desperate conflict between the have-nots for a place in the imperialist system constitute a global tinder box. 

Headlines understandably report US-Israeli aggression in the Middle East (now engaging nearly all of the countries in the region) or US brazen meddling in the Americas. 

Less acknowledged are the wars, conflicts, and civil wars stoked and conducted in nearly every region: Russia-Ukraine, Pakistan-Afghanistan, China-India, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Rwanda-DRCongo, Sudan, Thailand-Cambodia, Sahel, Myanmar, China-Taiwan, China-Japan, China-Philippines, Haiti, Colombia, are part of a list that grows almost weekly. Millions of lives have been affected by, even sacrificed to national ambitions to acquire markets, to attain resources, or to secure advantage over others directly or indirectly.

While the US remains the biggest capitalist bully in the imperialist system, it is simplistic and misleading to assume that its action is the only global expression of capital’s ruination upon the world’s people. Nor should it be forgotten that capital oppresses and immiserates the people of the US as well. It is an entire system in dysfunction.

As more and more people recognize that the current system and its managers are failing us, they will necessarily look for a more radical alternative. It should be apparent that recycling the same leaders, the same ideas, the same parties will simply not do. 

Yet there are those who insist that bringing down Trump or his global counterparts is enough. They see Trumpism and right-wing populism as a plague that visits the world periodically and must be collectively turned back to restore some kind of normalcy. They conjure an idyllic past that Trump and his ilk disturbed. This is the fantasy of privileged elites who have not felt the sting of inequality, insecurity, and misery persistently and increasingly inflicted by capital on many millions and for many generations.

To escape the trap of nostalgia for a decadent past and to avoid the return of right-wing snake charmers, socialism must be pressed on the people’s agenda. Socialism must not be pushed down the road as an ideal, as a far-off destination. The fact that polls show a popular acceptance of socialism, even a preference-- especially with the young-- for socialism, should demand its serious advocacy. 

The future can be brighter.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Two-Party Duplicity

And yet there never was a more widespread feeling in England than now, that the old parties are doomed, that the old shibboleths have become meaningless, that the old watchwords are exploded, that the old panaceas will not act any longer… But in England, where the industrial and agricultural working-class forms the immense majority of the people, democracy means the dominion of the working-class, neither more nor less… Yet the English working-class allows the landlord, capitalist, and retail trading classes, with their tail of lawyers, newspaper writers, etc., to take care of its interests. No wonder reforms in the interest of the workman come so slowly and in such miserable dribbles. The workpeople of England have but to will, and they are the masters to carry every reform, social and political, which their situation requires. Then why not make that effort? Frederich Engels, A Working-Men’s Party, July 23, 1881

In the middle of July, the House of Representatives considered amendment 114 to H.R. 580 that would reduce US military aid to Israel by $500 million, the amount designated for Israeli missile defense. Sponsored by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the amendment offered a rare opportunity for our national leaders to show a modest objection to Israel’s genocidal foreign policy or, as in the case of Greene, to voice opposition to an unnecessary subsidy from a debt-ridden country to a country with universal healthcare and subsidized education-- the lack of which account for two of the biggest factors in personal debt in the US. 

Though only a gesture, a yes-vote on the amendment would have brought great attention to the ongoing brutal genocide in Gaza, to the nuclear-weapon-backed bully daily slaughtering starving Gazans as though it were a sport. It would have slowed the flow of US dollars supporting Israeli violence.

A yes-vote would have shown some actual principle behind the hollow slogan of “Make America Great Again” espoused by so many who neither really care about the US people nor have any idea where its greatness would lie. 

But the amendment received only six votes, and few “news” purveyors even bothered to report it. 

Some will heap praise on the four Democrats and two Republicans, citing their courage and independence.

But that profoundly misunderstands the moment.

It is wrong to offer accolades to those who are simply doing what they should do. The fact that there are so few supporting the amendment is less an expression of the moral worth of the six than a measure of the depravity of the many. We expect our representatives to do that which is morally correct. Gratitude is reserved for those who exceed their duty, not those who simply do what any decent person should do. 

Voting no-- as did 422 House members-- is a despicable, scurrilous act. Voting to give the Israeli government even a dollar for its death-dealing enterprise deserves our utter scorn. 

It is important to fully grasp what it means for nearly the entire legislative body of a country to back the genocide of another people, a people virtually defenseless for over eighteen months.

It would be easy, but cynical to see the House vote as reflecting their constituents or their apathy. A recent Gallup poll shows that only 32 percent of US respondents approve of Israel’s actions in Gaza, a substantial decrease since the beginning of Israel’s systematic killing of Gazan civilians. Therefore, the House vote is far from a reflection of the sentiments of all US citizens. 

Instead, it is a result of the corruption of US politics, specifically the two-party system. AIPAC-- the leading lobbying group for Israel’s interests in the US-- distributed $29,078,901 to 335 House members last year, according to Open Secrets. Other Israeli interest-groups contributed to House members, as did US apocalyptic fundamentalists that identify with Israel’s supposed Biblical role. 

Of course, it is not only the issue of Palestine’s right to exist that is shaped by the wholesale purchase of the two-party system. Publicly-run national healthcare, free of insurance companies-- overwhelmingly popular with the people-- never gets a serious legislative debate because of the influence of the profit-sodden insurance industry and Big Pharma. And the unpopular wars and massive defense spending keep coming, thanks to the effective, generous lobbying of the military-industrial behemoth.

My Italian-born grandmother often repeated a saying meant to explain crass opportunism and shamelessness: “Sei come Bertoldo, che mostra il culo per un soldo” (Bertoldo, shows his ass for a penny). Over fifty years of following the Democratic Party has taught me the real meaning of the insult.

Besides our morally corrupt representatives, the US mainstream media has historically thrown its support behind Israeli policies, almost without exception. Only alternative media and a profound distrust of the capitalist “news” outlets nourish opposition to official support for genocide.

What is truly remarkable, given the long standing “bipartisan” toadying to Israel and the high and growing costs of dissent in the US, is the noble actions by students and activists in the US who risk careers, arrests, and even deportation to show that everyone is not bought and sold in political life. 

The old Nixonian notion of a silent majority in the US has been turned on its head. Today, it is not an alleged conservative trend that exists beneath the political life shaped by elites, but a latent pacifism, egalitarianism, and class partisanship smoldering beneath the surface of ruling-class politics (a part of which has defected to right populism out of impatience and frustration). 

That sentiment is ill-represented by the broken, bankrupt two-party system. 

Neither major US political party captures this undercurrent. But this fault is especially true of the Democratic Party that traditionally claimed to be a home for more progressive policy. A mid-July poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal shows how distant the Democratic Party is from the people. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party-- the highest number since the poll was initiated in 1990.

Where the Republican Party broke into negative net favorability in 2005, the Democrats sank into negative territory in 2016 and today stand 20 points below the Republicans, who, nonetheless, also remain out of favor. 

The WSJ article captures well both the decline of the two-party system and the collapse of the Democratic Party in the face of Trumpism:

On the whole, voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs and foreign policy. And yet in each case, the new Journal poll found, voters nonetheless say they trust Republicans rather than Democrats to handle those same issues in Congress. 

In some cases, the disparities are striking. Disapproval of Trump’s handling of inflation outweighs approval by 11 points, and yet the GOP is trusted more than Democrats to handle inflation by 10 points. By 17 points, voters disapprove rather than approve of Trump’s handling of tariffs, and yet Republicans are trusted more than Democrats on the issue by 7 points.

By any rational standard, one would have to conclude that voters are dissatisfied with both parties, but view the current Democratic Party as beyond hope. They may disapprove of Trump, but find nothing suggesting an alternative with the Democrats.

The WSJ article quotes Democratic Party pollster, John Anzalone: “The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party… Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they’re for and what their economic message is, they’re going to have problems.”

The hope that they will reconnect flies in the face of years, even decades of tailing the Republican Party, locating their platform slightly left of the Republicans, a place that Party leaders felt confident would hold labor, African-Americans, women, and other groups in the Party’s clutches. 

Meanwhile, the Democrats were vigorously pursuing the suburbanites and bedroom communities with lifestyle politics. Democrats gave the people answers to micro-aggressions when they were desperately looking for help with economic macro-aggressions.

Many loyal Democrats and earnest liberals are pressing the Party’s watchdogs to read the polls and repent, citing recent studies that show that working-class voters are hungering for an active social justice agenda. The Democratic Party left represented by DSA and Jacobin hope to rescue the Democratic Party from its leaders by underscoring the recent Mamdani primary victory as well as polling that shows that working people want what Mamdani offers and much more-- better pay, better benefits, cheaper prices, affordable housing, health care, etc.

But experience teaches that the Clintons, Obamas, Pelosis, Schumers, Jeffries, and Bookers are determined to steer the Democratic Party ship on the course dictated by its billionaire donors. They are perfectly happy allowing Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to paint the ship with left-wing slogans, provided that they don’t threaten to abandon the ship.

However, there is good news and cause for hope.

A mid-May poll conducted by the ultraright Cato Institute and YouGov found that-- with 18 to 29-year-olds-- socialism is quite popular and-- to their shock-- Communism has substantial support as well. Despite years of indoctrination, the Cato fellows were hysterical to discover that 62 percent of these youngsters had a favorable view of socialism and even 34 percent had a favorable view of Communism. After all the years, the money, and the effort in painting Marx, Engels, and especially Lenin as agents of Satan, the kids still don’t get it! One can only hope that more of their elders will show the same independence and escape the clutches of the capitalist propaganda mill.

But there is more good news, coming from the UK! 

In a bold move, Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana have announced the founding of a new party to the left of the Labour Party. The Labour Party-- since its brief flirtation with left social democracy after World War II-- has been drifting, even rushing, rightward. In many ways, like the Democrats, it has postured as the home of liberal and reformist ideas. And like the Democrats, it will not depart from business friendliness, minimal social advance, and an imperialist foreign policy today. Any deviance from conformity has been met with strict discipline and ostracization.

Former popular leaders of Labour-- counterparts to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez in the US Democratic Party-- have signaled that they have had enough by announcing the creation of a new, left party on Thursday, July 24. In first-weekend polling, Corbyn and Sultana’s no-name party drew 15% of the respondents, roughly the same share as the in-power Labour Party polls.

On the following Monday, Morning Star commented enthusiastically: 

Four hundred thousand and counting. Sign-ups to be part of founding the new party initiated by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana already surpass the membership of any existing political party in Britain.

While the appetite for a left alternative to Labour has long been clear, even supporters of the project cannot have expected a response on this scale…

[The] …rejection of the post-Thatcher political settlement is in reality a rejection of the consequences of the right’s policies — privatisation, deregulation and deindustrialisation — since these have been pursued by both governing parties since the 1980s…

[T]his is a very encouraging beginning. The march of authoritarianism and racism across this country, the disgusting consensus behind complicity in Israeli genocide and the attempt to keep public ownership and wealth redistribution off the table can all be challenged by the emergence of a left movement on this scale. No socialist can close their eyes to that.

Of course, we have to temper our optimism by acknowledging the tremendous challenges ahead. We saw how the auspicious start of the German alternative left party organized by Sahra Wagenknecht in 2024 faltered after remarkable early success. Nonetheless, the new German party, while failing to maintain its momentum, succeeded in shifting politics leftward and restoring confidence in a class-based agenda.

In the Corbyn/Sultana party, many see even greater opportunity to escape the stale politics of social austerity and military aggression. The initiative has already rocked the UK political system.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com