What History Teaches…

The years of reaction (1907–10). Tsarism was victorious. All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression, demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism; mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle. It is at moments of need that one learns who one’s friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson. V I Lenin, “Left-wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder

What does history tell us about where we are today, well into the first half of the twenty-first century? 

It surely tells us that capitalism remains the greatest obstacle to solving the manifold injustices, irrationalities, and existential threats that face humanity. History also teaches us that the false answers of nationalism, racialism, and social exclusion remain leading obstacles to overcoming capitalism and the class divide at the center of capitalist social relations. Division-- the separation of potential allies in the struggle against capitalism-- remains a deep infection immobilizing those seeking social justice for all, a lesson the advocates of both casually chosen and deeply personal identities seem to have missed. 

We are even further removed from defeating capitalism when we construct unlimited identity barriers to unity, when who we are as an individual comes before who we are as a class. 

History’s lessons are easily lost to hasty generalizations and wishful thinking. The “victory” of the US over the Soviet Union in 1991 was thought to usher in the end of history and, in the mind of celebrated intellectual, Francis Fukuyama, the global ascension of US values and US rule over the global order. Within a decade, this conclusion met determined resistance on many fronts, as the US attempted to enforce its dominance, only to be challenged on all counts by independent rising powers, insurgencies, and defiant forces in Asia, the Middle East, and South America. The two-decade long war in Afghanistan is but one dramatic example of that stubborn resistance to US power.

Unfortunately, popular resistance in the capitalist powers of Europe and North America took a different turn after 1991. A “third way” center left, buoyed by the setback to Communism, abandoned class politics for “a rising tide lifts all boats” economic policy, as well as cultural politics, the chosen field of battle favored by the political right. This “respectable” left-- respectable to power and wealth-- paid an electoral price over the following decades with the erosion of working-class votes. Today, the Euroamerican center left, along with its center-right counterpart, struggle weakly to dominate politics, as they have since World War II.

The multifaceted crises of capitalism-- unemployment, slack economic growth, inflation, recession, political illegitimacy, inequality, eviscerated social services, rotting infrastructure, and environmental degradation-- have all struck at one time or another since capitalism’s “triumph” in 1991. The lowering of mass expectations and the rising of mass deprivation have presented the radical left with the objective opportunity for change only imagined in earlier generations. 

But the radical left was not ready for the challenge, convinced after 1991 that socialism, as we came to know it, was either impossible or too far off in the distant future to be our project. The self-annihilation and mutation of Europe’s two largest Communist Parties only added to the pessimism. It was a time not unlike the years after the failed 1905 Russian revolution, as described by Lenin: 

Tsarism [capitalism] was victorious. All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression, demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism; mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle.

Except the radical left largely drew no useful lessons from the 1991 setback, beyond the abandonment of the socialist project. When jobs migrated in huge numbers to low wage countries, the left blamed “globalization” -- a process commonly and frequently encountered in the capitalist accumulation process. It is far easier, but far less effective to fight a phase --- a phase soon to be transcended by a resurgent economic nationalism-- for society’s ills than to attack its parent: capitalism. It is as though people believed that they could actually turn back the clock to some imagined, more benign era of capitalism.

Others in the diluted socialist movement designated the enemy as another phase of capitalism: “neoliberalism” -- a set of ruling class policies designed to escape the 1970s collapse of the post-war Keynes/demand-side paradigm. 

During that lost decade, Stagflation and aggressive foreign competition brought the class-collaboration model into disrepute, with the monopoly corporations turning viciously on their counterpart, the class-collaborationist labor leadership; decades of capitalist offensive followed, with a rout of working people’s liberal and “progressive” former allies; many past gains were reversed. 

After 1991 and with far too many having abandoned the socialist project, the broad left chose not to attack the cancer of capitalism, instead, choosing to try to dull the painful symptom of neoliberalism. 

The drift to “philosophical idealism” described by Lenin was everywhere in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. Academics diminished Lenin’s theory of imperialism, with wild fantasies of the decline of the nation-state (a fantasy embarrassed by the aggressive global reach of the US empire-- the preeminent, most powerful nation-state of all time). Other thinkers saw transnational capitalist corporations overshadowing and superseding the nation-state, as though the nation-state was not intimately fused with monopoly capital. This drift from Lenin’s historical-materialist analysis reached its ludicrous peak with the infamous tract of Hardt and Negri, Empire, positing that history was now grounded in a mysterious, totalizing force that they called “Empire,” an obscure, ineffable entity rivaling Hegel’s Absolute. 

Some on the international left saw a possible socialist revival in the righteous rejection of US domination by social movements in Latin America, the so-called “pink” revolution. Elections brought to power several promising charismatic leaders who openly and strongly defied the long-imposed dictates of US imperialism. Most notably, Hugo Chavez mocked and scorned US government arrogance, establishing an independent foreign policy and embarking upon a generous and humane welfare state based on Venezuela's then-ample resource revenue. 

Other leaders in Central and South America were inspired to join this anti-US imperialist, social democratic front, with the goal of Bolivarian independence from neo-colonialism (a sovereignty project) their most common feature. Because of “socialist” rhetoric, many on the left elevated these multi-class, reformist movements to the status of “twenty-first-century socialism”. In fairness, some leaders truly aspired and envisioned socialism, though they lacked a program, a revolutionary party, and the necessary understanding. 

Twenty-first-century socialism, without an existential confrontation with capitalism, has proven to be an elusive goal, especially with a US-supported domestic bourgeoisie still holding vast economic power. The social democratic dream of taming, while partnering with capitalism has nowhere sustained the support of the working classes. With a hostile behemoth on its doorstep, it is not succeeding in Latin America, either.

The latest notion distracting the left from socialism is the doctrine that global multipolarity --removing the unipolar US from the pinnacle of the imperialist heap-- will somehow produce a more just world and even move us closer to socialism. While capitalists in many countries would welcome leveling the economic playing field and freeing markets for others to exploit, a multipolar world offers no obvious benefit to working people. Without question, the iron grip that US capitalists have had on international economic institutions and the promiscuous use of US sanctions and tariffs has incensed US rivals and weakened US hegemony. But their success in blunting US power holds little consequence for exploited workers in Asia, Central and South America or Africa, who continue to be exploited. 

Like the period after the 1905 Russian revolution described by Lenin, the period after the exit of the Soviet Union has been difficult for the international left. After dalliances with bizarre, “novel,” and foolish answers to what many perceive as the failure of socialism, the left has offered a beleaguered working class few victories. In the last thirty-three years, theorists have contrived new enemies: neoliberal capitalism, disaster capitalism, racial capitalism, crony capitalism, hyper-capitalism, coronavirus capitalism, unipolar capitalism and a host of other hyphenated capitalisms. What all of these theories share is a fatal hesitation to call out the capitalist system itself. They all share a faith in a reformed, managed capitalism that --shorn of its deviations-- will somehow serve all classes. 

After thirty-three years, this experiment in rescuing capitalism from itself should be discarded. It is time for the left to draw “a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle,” in Lenin’s words. If defeating capitalism is our goal, it requires tried and tested forms of political organization: a revolutionary political organization. It requires a bold, independent party embodying both democracy and centrism-- a Leninist party-- with a clear program based on enlisting working people to the greatest project of the twenty-first century: winning and constructing socialism. That is what history teaches.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Venezuela: Where Next?

We must speak the truth: therein lies our strength, and the masses, the people, the multitude will decide in actual practice, after the struggle, whether we have strength. VI Lenin, 1905

Hugo Chavez will live on as one of the most outstanding foes of US imperialism in our time. His defiance of successive US governments was truly remarkable. Situated in the US backyard, Venezuela-- under Chavez’s leadership-- brought joy and admiration to millions throughout the world and inspired others in Central and South America to mount their own response to US domination. Faced with foreign intervention, coup attempts, and a vicious domestic opposition, Chavismo will be honored for rebelling against US arrogance and aggression long after his death.

However, Chavismo was not socialism, nor did it construct a path to socialism. Chavez brought a Christian love and respect to the poor and disadvantaged and offered a dash of utopian “socialism” gleaned from Western leftist “advisors.” The movement was multiclass, with the working class playing no special role. The transformation of the state into a peoples’ democracy was never projected. In short, a radical transformation was not and is not secured against the maneuvers of the domestic bourgeoisie and foreign intervention.

Consequently, Venezuela’s path is very susceptible to detours, reversals, and backsliding, especially in the face of potent domestic reaction and foreign intervention. History has shown that mobilization and empowering of the working class is the most important barrier that a government can erect against the machinations of hostile class forces. The ready cooperation of the parties of the most militant workers-- the Communists-- is essential to this effort.

Yet, the Maduro government not only rejected the collaboration of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), but effectively banned the PCV and obstructed its electoral participation. This unprincipled attack on the PCV is well documented; no one among the international solidarity community has disputed its veracity. 

Yet those who know of the complicity of the Venezuelan Supreme Court in enforcing the ban choose to ignore the Court’s failure. They choose to look away from the denial of any hint of due process or transparency in the Court’s slavish toadying to the Maduro government. 

It speaks poorly of a left that indignantly rallies against comparable politically tainted decisions of the highest courts in their own lands.

The recent Venezuelan election is the object of intense contention. Ultimately, the Venezuelan people will resolve the question of its legitimacy, as they, and they alone, must do. 

Does it help Venezuelans find the truth for some to pretend that the most recent electoral process measured up to the past practices applauded by a number of recognized international observers? One prominent left commentator appealed to the Venezuelan Constitution to sheepishly note that the Constitution did not mandate that the electoral council respect those past practices-- hardly, a ringing defense of the results that he, and many others, stoutly maintain.

Of course, it is scandalous that the Maduro government marked “Paid” on the election results through the same compromised Supreme Court that attempted to arbitrarily shape the outcome beforehand by denying ballot status to some parties, including to the Communist Party.

To be sure, the Venezuelan people will overcome this blemish on the legacy of Hugo Chavez and return to a political process that will welcome the most ardent champions of working people, the Communists.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

 

Searching for JD Vance

What explains the meteoric rise of a little-known principal at an investment firm to one of the youngest, least politically experienced Vice-Presidential candidates in US history? How did Senator J. D. Vance rise from relative obscurity in 2016 to become the current running mate to Donald Trump?

Simple: groveling service to the ruling class.

In 2016, Vance published a book describing his youthful hardships growing up in the Midwest, the Rust Belt, or Appalachia, depending on what you choose to call the vast lands impoverished by corporate deindustrialization in the late twentieth century. The social, political, and economic disruptions that ensued affected millions of industrial workers and their families. 

Throughout the Midwest, plant closings left-- in their wake—low-paying jobs, poverty, crime, drug and alcohol addiction, broken homes, unhealthy lifestyles, and a host of other tragedies associated with economic dislocations. 

Vance was one of the few who escaped this fate, joining the Marine Corps after high school and using the tuition benefits from military service to attend and graduate from Ohio State University, and pursue a law degree from Yale. Soon, he felt the need to tell the public of “the anger and frustration of the white working class” and satisfy his hunger to “have someone tell their story.” 

But the story was not one that we might expect or hope for. Vance did not offer sympathy to the victims of corporate policy and political neglect; Vance did not call for help to those left unemployed, desperate, or without options; Vance did not plead their case to those dismissive of their despair.

Instead, he offered his own Horatio Alger, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps “success” story, urging the losers to take responsibility for their own choices. “Those of us who weren’t given every advantage can make better choices, and those choices do have the power to affect our lives…” 

The long-standing myths of self-help and individual initiative so beloved by those born on third base find confirmation with Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy. Consequently, the book became a darling of the corporate media across the political spectrum-- from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal. I wrote in 2016:

Nothing reveals the distance of the upper classes from the realities of working-class life like the current media fascination with the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Writing as one of their own, J.D. Vance… relates his unhappy working-class childhood to book-club liberals and country-club conservatives.

In 2016, it was remarkable that Vance’s account appealed to the elites-- the upper economic strata-- whether they otherwise counted as liberal or conservative. Of course, the book allowed a peek into the world of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables,” satisfying the voyeuristic urges of the elite. But more importantly, Vance’s advance from an abused “hillbilly” youth to the higher rungs of finance capital bolstered the ethos that anyone and everyone can make it in the land of opportunity. 

It was a message that both Democratic and Republican leaders and pundits like to hear. The New York Times lauded the book as a key to understanding Trump’s presidential victory, and he was “the voice of the Rust Belt” to The Washington Post. As I wrote in 2020:

Vance’s book came out at a convenient time-- 2016-- when East and West Coast elites sought explanations for Donald Trump’s success in the Midwest. The corporate Democrats had long taken these Midwesterners for granted, Obama calling them gun-toting religious zealots and Hillary Clinton famously describing them as “deplorables.” It was left to a “survivor” -- JD Vance-- to expose the pathologies and missteps of these flawed creatures. Vance had-- himself-- found the grit to escape the working-class ghetto of Middletown, Ohio and parlay an elite law-school degree into the riches of high finance.

While Vance earned a place on the talk-show circuit and a calling as a cable TV expert, it wasn’t until 2020 that his national political career got a boost. Director Ron Howard-- a master of feel-good movies-- brought Hillbilly Elegy to the silver screen and to NETFLIX. Reaching a much broader audience with his success-in-the-face-of-adversity tale, Vance was ready to pick a party and run for office. He chose the Republican Party, influenced primarily by wealthy donors, but through no great ideological commitment. Indeed, during the years of Trump’s political prominence, Vance frequently expressed scathing public criticisms of Trump and Trumpism, only to join his ticket in 2024.

For a dedicated servant of wealth and power, consistency is no obstacle. Vance can pose as the spokesperson for neglected white workers at one moment, while carrying water for ruthless capitalist billionaires like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen at another. He can be the darling of patronizing liberals when called on, while serving Donald Trump’s political machine when invited. 

In that regard, he has a Democratic counterpart in Senator John Fetterman, who-- like Vance-- opportunistically pushed himself onto the national political stage. 

But unlike Vance, whose roots drew a broader, sympathetic audience, and whose background earned a measure of street credibility, Fetterman came from privilege. Consequently, he had a more difficult journey to establish himself as a savior of the forgotten or discarded. He chose to adopt a small, neglected, predominantly Black, Rust Belt community on the outskirts of Pittsburgh as a personal experiment in elite colonization. 

Fetterman convinced a critical mass of liberals that this scion of Republican parents was a legitimate answer to the souls lost to deindustrialization. 

Taken in by his reverent deference to liberal social conventions, his “cool” trademarks of cargo shorts, hoodies, and tattoos, and his marijuana radicalism, he was quickly elevated to the status of a progressive icon, a fearless defender of the little people. 

All this was sheer nonsense to those of us living in his backyard, watching his careful cultivation of his political opportunities. Today, after a swift rise to the US Senate, Fetterman eagerly renounces his “progressivism,” embraces Israeli genocide, and constructs a safe, centrist image.

The ruling class needs the Vances and Fettermans to benignly explain the anger and despair of those bulldozed by deindustrialization. They serve as a buffer between wealth and power, and the unruly masses.

They represent the new phony populist faces of both parties, offering bogus gestures of sympathy and loud, but meager support for  destitute workers– Black and white.

More than fifty years ago, the ruling class sought similar interpreters and explainers of justifiable Black rage. Patronizing white intellectuals sprang up with comforting analyses and for-hire solutions (think Robin DiAngelo, more recently, in the Black Lives Matter moment), and many ambitious African Americans eagerly brought their political aspirations forward to dilute the rage and redirect the energy into the two-party charade. Then, as now, serving the ruling class pays off handsomely.

Vance, like Fetterman, exemplifies the current breed of bourgeois politicians of both parties, totally devoid of principles and unabashedly pledged to the service of the ruling class.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Multipolarity and BRICS Once More

The debates over “multipolarity” and the significance of an allegedly multipolar BRICS grouping continue. In an opinion piece in People’s Voice (Multipolarity, BRICS+ and the struggle for peace, cooperation, and socialism today, June 16-30, 2024) writer Garrett Halas mounts an earnest defense of multipolarity and the BRICS+ “as a positive step towards socialism.” 

Halas joins many others in envisioning all twenty-first-century resistance to US imperialism and the imperialism of its (largely ex-Cold War) partners as the same as resistance to imperialism in general. They divide the world into the US and its friends and those who, to some extent or another, oppose the US. Sometimes they characterize this as a conflict between the global North and the global South. Sometimes they refer to the imperialist antagonists collectively as “the West.”

From the perspective of the multipolarity proponents, if the countries resisting the US should neutralize US domination and that of its allies, then the world will become peaceful and harmonious. In their view, it is not capitalism that obstructs enduring peace, but US imperial aspirations alone. Accordingly, in the idealized future, multiple friendly, cooperative states (poles) will engage in peaceful, equitable economic transactions that all agree will be mutually advantageous-- what Chinese leaders call “win-win.” If this isn’t achieved immediately, it will soon follow. Is not socialism down the road?

The reality is that as important as resisting US domination and aggression surely is, its decline or defeat will not put an end to imperialism, as long as monopoly capitalism continues to exist. 

In the history of modern-era imperialism, the decline of every dominating great capitalist power has spawned the rise of another. As one power recedes, others step up and contest for global dominance-- that is the fundamental logic of imperialism. And, all too often, war ensues.

• CLASS: Glaringly absent from the theory of multipolarity is the concept of class. Advocates of a multipolar world fail to explain how class relations-- specifically the interests of the working class-- are advanced with the existence of multiple capitalist poles. Halas tells us that the “BRICS+ is a coalition with a concrete class character rooted in the global South” but he doesn’t tell us what that “concrete class character” is. This is a critical question and a significant problem, given that Halas concedes that “most BRICS+ nations are capitalist”! Of the original BRICS members, capitalism is unquestionably the dominant economic system in Russia, India, South Africa, and Brazil. Of the candidate members scheduled for entry in 2024-- Argentina (likely a withdrawal), Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates-- all are capitalist. The idea that working class interests will be served, and socialism advanced by this group seems far-fetched.

• CLASS CONFLICT: Class struggle-- the motor of the struggle for workers’ advances, workers’ power, and socialism-- has been stifled by the governments of nearly all the BRICS and BRICS+ countries. In Iran, for example, Communism is illegal and Communists have been executed in large numbers. Communism is likewise illegal in Saudi Arabia. Modi has conducted class war against India’s farmers. South Africa’s working class has seen unemployment and poverty rise under the disappointing government. Egyptian workers labor under a brutal military government. How does their entry into BRICS promise socialism?

• GLOBAL NORTH/GLOBAL SOUTH: Halas and the “multipolaristas” would have it that the “contradiction” informing multipolarity is the clash between the “global north” and the “global south” or, paradoxically, the “West” and the rest of the world. Apart from the fact that the geographical division captures little—other than the imagination of social-media leftists-- it gives the impression that Australia and New Zealand have something in common with impoverished Burundi. Or that Serbia and Germany are Western partners in exploiting small African countries. There is, of course, a division between wealthy countries and poor countries, between exploiters and exploited. Historically, the sharpest fault lines have been defined by colonialism and its successor, neo-colonialism. But the imperialist cards are shuffled from time to time due to resource inequities, uneven development, or other gained advantages. For example, the Arabian Peninsula was once a dominated colony of the Ottoman empire. That empire’s dissolution and subsequent developments led to an emergent Saudi Arabia infused with resource wealth and high up on the imperialist hierarchy. Today, India has three of the top 20 corporations in Asia by market value, larger than all Japanese corporations except for Toyota. India’s Tata Group has a market capitalization of over $380 billion, with its tentacles spread to 100 countries. The June 28 UK Morning Star editorial informs us: “Tata Steel’s threat to shut the blast furnaces at Port Talbot three months earlier if Unite goes ahead with strike action is blackmail. The India-based multinational does not believe steelworkers should have a say in the plant’s future… It’s outrageous that the future of British steelmaking should be at the whim of a billionaire on a different continent.”

• DECOUPLING: Halas suggests that BRICS+ offers an opportunity for countries to break out of the capitalist international financial structures imposed after World War II and the dominance of the dollar in global transactions. Such an option may exist in the future, but clearly it is intended as an option and not a substitute for existing structures and exchange instruments. As recently as late June of this year, PRC Premier Li Qiang said that “We should broadly open our minds, work closely together, abandon camp formations, (and) oppose decoupling…” [my emphasis] It is clear that the picture of global country-to-country relations-- as envisioned by Peoples’ China’s second most prominent leader, Li, at the “Summer” Davos-- offers no challenge to existing financial arrangements or to the dominance of the dollar. The antagonistic conflict between the old order and the new multipolar order is more a fantasy in the minds of some on the left than a real policy goal of the leading country in BRICS.

• ANTI-IMPERIALISM: Halas would like us to believe that twentieth-century anti-imperialism is multipolarity embodied in BRICS. He cites the UN votes on Palestinian status and oppression (predictably vetoed by the US) as an example of “global south” anti-imperialism. While symbolic and not without significance, it is hardly the principled anti-imperialist action we came to know in earlier times. It is worth reminding that Saudi Arabia was on the verge of abandoning Palestine for better relations with Israel before October 7. Egypt has long sold out the cause of Palestine, as has much of the Arab world. According to Al Jazeera, India is currently selling military supplies to Israel. Virtue-signaling at UN forums is not a substitute for concrete, material solidarity.

• CHINA: This is not the place for debating whether the Peoples’ Republic of China is a socialist country, a favorite parlor game of the Euro-US left. However, it is worth stating that-- as the only self-acclaimed socialist country currently in BRICS-- the PRC does not claim to be advocating, encouraging, or materially aiding the struggle for socialism outside of China. Unlike the former Soviet Union, the PRC does not prioritize or privilege investment or material support for countries embarking on the socialist path. The word “socialism” is largely absent from its foreign policy statements. While the Chinese leadership defends its outlook as “socialism with Chinese characters,” it does not demonstrably support “socialism with anybody else’s national characters.” Yet, some on the left see multipolarity and a largely capitalist BRICS as a road to socialism for the rest of us?

• WE HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE: In the 1960s, it was common for the left in Europe and the US to lose hope in the revolutionary potential of the working classes. Where working-class movements in Europe aligned with Communist Parties, they fully committed to a gradualist, parliamentary road to socialism. An anti-Communist New Left proposed a different vehicle of revolutionary change: The Third World. In the common parlance of the time, the Third World was the newly emergent, former colonies that were neither in the US camp nor the Soviet camp. Per this view, revolutionary change (and ultimately) socialism would grow from the independent road chosen by the leaders of these emergent nations. But instead, they were overwhelmed by the neo-colonialism of the great capitalist powers and absorbed by the global capitalist market, with few exceptions.

• AND EVEN EARLIER: Karl Kautsky, the major theoretician of the Socialist International, anticipated multipolarity in 1914, introducing a concept that he called “ultra-imperialism.” Kautsky believed that great power imperialism and war had no future. The imperialist system would, of necessity, stabilize and, due to declining capital exports, “Imperialism is thus digging its own grave… [T]he policy of imperialism therefore cannot be continued much longer.” For Kautsky, a stage of “concentration” of capitalist states, comparable to cartelization of corporations, will lead to inter-imperialist harmony. Lenin rejected this theory out of hand. For a discussion, go here.

Imperialism is not a stable system. Capitalist participants are always seeking a competitive advantage against their rivals. Sometimes they find it useful or necessary to form (often temporary) coalitions or alliances with others in order to protect or advance their interests. One such alliance was forged by the US after the Second World War in opposition to the socialist bloc and the national liberation movements. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US sought to keep existing coalitions intact by selecting or devising new enemies-- the war on drugs, the war against terrorism, and wars of humanitarian intervention. Beneath these political ties existed a US established and dominated global economic structure privileging the US, but deemed necessary to protect the capitalist system.

This politico-economic framework served capitalism well, until the great economic crash of 2007-2009 and the ensuing cracks and fractures in the framework. The turmoil unleashed by the crisis dampened the pace of growth in international trade and accelerated the competition for markets. Further challenging the US-centered framework was the ability of People’s China to navigate the crisis rather painlessly. Where the US ruling class formerly saw the PRC as an opportunity, it began to see China as a rival in the imperialist system. 

The post-Soviet global market-- cemented by the so-called “globalization” process-- began to unravel in the wake of twentieth-century economic instability, especially the 2007-2009 crash. Rather than defend existing free-trade dogma, capitalist countries were drawn to protectionism and economic nationalism. Beginning in the Trump Administration and accelerating during the Biden Administration, the US waged a tariff-and-sanctions war against economic competitors. US dominance of international financial institutions and the nearly universal dependence upon the US dollar gave US leaders even more weapons in this competition. 

The US “pivot” to China in its defense posture and its growing hostility to Russia were reflections of its losing ground to the PRC’s growing economic might and Russia’s dominance of Eurasian energy markets. 

Understandably, in this new era of economic nationalism, Russia, China, the leading power on the subcontinent, India, Africa’s top economic power, South Africa, and the largest economy in Latin America, Brazil, would look to counter aggressive US and EU competition. The era of mutual cooperation was ending, and the era of intense rivalry and national self-interest was emerging. It was in this environment that BRICS was born. 

It was a capitalist response to a capitalist problem, not a path to socialism.

The main task for Communists and progressives is not to take sides, but to fight to ensure that these fractures and frictions do not explode into war.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Lessons of the European Elections

The recent European Parliament elections shocked the mainstream European parties and their international friends and allies.

The 720-member European legislature has largely been the handmaiden for the technocrats in Brussels, who craft the economic and social direction of the European Union. Since its inception, the EU has presented a stable, reliable face of capitalist rule organized around market fundamentalism, minimizing market intervention, and slowing, even reversing, the growth of the public sector. The broad right-center and left-center-- traditional pro-business, liberal, and social democratic parties-- have united in ensuring that agenda. 

With the demoralization or decline of the anti-capitalist left, there has been little resistance mounted to the forward march of the EU program.

Into the breach left by a marginal or now timid anti-capitalist left, stepped a new wave of right-wing populists preparing to exploit the growing mass dissatisfaction with twenty-first-century capitalism and its political custodians. The economic setbacks, stagnant or declining standards of living, inadequate social and employment security, inequality, social strife, and displacement incurred by European workers cried out for political expression. Right opportunists gladly answered these calls with hollow nationalism, ill-aimed blaming and shaming, and cultural anti-elitism. 

Throughout Europe, new and refashioned parties like Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, Hungary’s Fidesz Party, Italy’s Lega and Brothers for Italy, Netherland’s Party for Freedom, Spain’s Vox, and many others, vie to fill the radical oppositional space evacuated or neglected by the anti-capitalist left.

Where the European Communist Parties could always count on a far more robust protest vote beyond their core membership, the protest vote now goes to the populist right by default.

To stem the right-populist tide, various strategists devised new alliances, power-sharing agreements, even technocratic governments. New “left” populist parties-- Syriza, PODEMOS, France Insoumise -- sprung up to draw support from the same mass anger and frustration exploited by the populist right. 

But none of these supposed answers to right-wing populism have succeeded in containing or reversing its advance. The mid-June European parliamentary elections have, in many ways, marked a new high water for right-populism. In both France and Germany-- the two anchors for the Eurozone project-- the right has made spectacular gains. 

Most dramatically, the French National Rally (RN)-- the historic party of the Le Pen family-- won more than double the vote (31+%) of Macron’s ruling party. In an act of frustration and, perhaps, desperation, Macron called for early national elections at the end of June. He, no doubt, expects to cry for a “united front” against the threat of right-wing governance, as he has successfully done in the past. He assumes that his party and RN will win in the first round and the left will have no choice but to support him in the second-round run-off. 

Meanwhile, Macron’s approval rate in France has reached an all-time low of 5.5%. And he has begun his campaign by attacking both the left and right (“the fever of extremes”) -- hardly a formula for drawing the left in a presumed second round of voting. 

But the soft leftist parties-- France Insoumise, the Communist Party, the Socialist, and the Greens-- have cobbled together their own shaky “united front” to make an impact in the first round. The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois “solidarity” only goes so far.

In Germany, the hard right, semi-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the second largest party behind the Christian Democrats, garnering more votes than any of the individual parties in the governing coalition. The war-crazed Green Party took an especially hard hit in this election, losing nine seats.

While AfD has done less than RN to attempt to clean its ownership of fascistic detritus, it nonetheless draws a great deal of support from working-class protest voters. Germany’s ARD polling found that “a full 44% voted for the AfD out of disappointment at other parties.”

And that is how much of the electoral support for the populist right should be understood. The traditional right has long drawn its support from the bourgeoisie, small businesses, the professional strata: those protecting their status in a capitalist society. The populist right, taking that approach a step further-- through nostalgia, misplaced blame, false anti-elitism, and the bogus promise of life-altering change-- appeals to the masses: those alienated from a capitalist society. Unless one wants to cynically dismiss the people for their bad choices or pompously scold them for their bad judgment, you must conclude that the existing left parties have failed the masses, lost their credibility, and surrendered leadership on the popular issues, allowing right-populism to fill the breach. 

Can one imagine Le Pen or even Macron winning the votes of France’s workers from the post-war Communist Party of Thorez, Duclos, and Rochet, the party esteemed for its role against fascism, and the party promising socialism? 

Can one imagine Berlusconi, Lega, the Five Star Movement, Brothers of Italy drawing the Italian working class away from the Communist Party of Togliatti, the party that led the anti-fascist struggle, the party that offered Italian workers a dignified struggle against capital?

Can one imagine the AfD flourishing in the GDR, that part of Germany that today supplies the greatest number of votes to the AfD?

They do so today because the French Communist Party has abandoned its historic role as the champion of the working class and neither listens to workers nor puts their interests at the top of its agenda.

The Italian party dissolved itself thirty-five years ago and paved the way for decades of political farce and faux populism in Italian politics.

And the capitalist pillage of the former socialist German Democratic Republic planted the seeds of despair that grew into the AfD.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The untold story of the European parliamentary election reveals a world of possibility.

Purposely overlooked by the media were the impressive left gains in Greece and Germany. In both cases, working-class partisanship, principled socialism, and militant anti-imperialism and the promise of peace attracted voters. Where the weak-tea, decaffeinated left campaigned on fear of the right and defense of the European Union’s foreign policy, the Greek Communist Party and a new, radical German party surprised observers with significant gains.

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) nearly doubled its percentage of the vote over the previous European parliamentary election held in 2019. The results substantially exceeded last year’s parliamentary percentages as well. Its strength was shown especially in Attika and urban and working-class areas. These gains were made because of the principled stance of KKE and in spite of swimming against the EU tide of capitalism and war shared by all the other parties. KKE shows that defeating right-wing populism is possible by giving real, bold, and radical answers to the despair of working people.

In Germany, the left wing of the Die Linke Party-- the working class-oriented, anti-imperialist wing-- finally broke away and established a new party openly opposed to the European Union agenda, its institutionalized capitalism, and its war policies. Led by the independent-minded Sara Wagenknecht, the new party was quickly organized five months ago, yet drew 6.2% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections. The persistently compromising, centrist-orienting Die Linke was trounced, reduced to 2.7% of the vote. ARD polls show that the new party drew 400,000 votes from Die Linke, 500,000 votes from the Social Democrats, and 140,000 votes from the AfD. In some parts of Eastern Germany, the new party-- yet to create a sustainable name-- drew as much as 15% of the vote.

Perhaps better than any result, the new party delivered a shocking blow to the idea that one must stop the populist right by rallying to the center in defense of a moribund capitalism. As Lenin reminds us: “Two questions now take precedence over all other political questions—the question of bread and the question of peace.” Wagenknecht’s new party gave the questions precedence, attacking Germany’s economic malaise and inflation, as well as the deadly war in Ukraine. We should follow the development of the new party closely.

By attending to working-class interests, The Austrian Communist Party and the Workers’ Party of Belgium also made gains against the right-populist wave.

It should be clear that the hollow tactic of opposing right-populism by circling the wagons around mainstream centrist parties is proving to be bankrupt. The notion that voters can be shepherded away from populist poseurs with a “united front against the bad guys” approach has failed to win people from a desperate need for bread and peace.

These examples show a principled, proven approach to the problem of the populist-right, an approach that neither resorts to a retreat to the center or a bogus, unsustainable, ineffective “united front.” The thirst for change is there.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

What is Independent Political Action?

I recently found an unpublished essay written in 1979 by a comrade from Western Pennsylvania who argued passionately for the urgent necessity of independent political action. In The Time is Now: A Position Paper on Independent Political Action, Bob Bonner challenged the left to begin the process of building independent political organizations and to convince the people to support them.

Bob is not a starry-eyed academic or a know-it-all armchair socialist, but a keen observer of local politics, its limitations, and its possibilities. 

He was then a worker, a founding leader of the Clairton Coalition, a leader in a local independent political party that scored some notable electoral victories, and a founder of the Pittsburgh Coalition for Independent Politics. He grew up in Clairton, PA breathing the foul air of the country’s largest cokeworks, a virtual company town that knew every corporate injustice that one found in the industrial heartland. It has become fashionable to refer to people like Bob as community organizers; I prefer to see him simply as a peoples’ leader.

There are many parallels today with the world that Bonner wrote about in 1979. Jimmy Carter had run and won in 1976 on the most progressive party program that the Democrats had offered since the New Deal; but by 1978, he had jettisoned the program and turned to policies that presaged the policies of the soon-to-be-president, FBI snitch and B-actor, Ronald Reagan. By the midterm elections of 1978, Carter had reneged on virtually every progressive campaign promise and was saddled with brutal inflation.

Bonner wrote at the time: “America’s two-party system has reached an all-time low in the eyes of the voters… rendering the concepts of majority parties and representative government meaningless and, to some, a laughing stock… 62.1% of American voters, or 90 million people, stayed home last election day, an increase of another one and a half percent from 1974… Millions more can’t be motivated enough to even register [to vote].”

Citing a New York Times-CBS poll, Bonner notes that “fully half of those who participated in the two-party charade felt that the outcome would have no appreciable effect on their lives.”

Bonner goes on to show that despite dire media assessments of a rightward trend, where progressives or independents offered voters a real choice, they were met with enthusiasm, often victory. 

The then-left-oriented Congressional Black Caucus picked up three new members in the interim election, and arch-reactionary Frank Rizzo was denied a third term in Philadelphia. “The massive monopoly effort in Missouri to pass an anti-union ‘right to work (for less)’ law through a referendum failed, and in some states liberal to progressive tax initiatives won,” Bonner reminds. Communist Party candidates, running as Communists, received vote totals unprecedented since the 1940s. There was a sense that inroads were possible for independent politics.

With regard to the then-emerging danger of the so-called “new right” of Reagan and his ilk, Bonner had this to say: “The high visibility of the ‘new’ right is made possible by the huge gap that exists between the direction of the two main parties and the urgent pressing needs of the people as a whole. The ruling class has recognized this gap and has smartly and opportunistically shoved reactionary one-issue groups into this vacuum in order to confuse and misdirect the voting public.”

Ironically, today’s corporate Democrats have followed this Republican strategy by placing single issues front and center at the expense of a popular program meant to resonate with all working people.

Bonner believes that “[t]he electorate is searching for meaningful alternatives. That is why they vote for ‘mavericks’; that is why Black people voted for Republicans in the last election…”

Forty-five years later, this obvious point is missed by the elite pundits who denounce working-class “deplorables” turning to unlikely “mavericks” like Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. They are surprised and alarmed that polls show many Black and Latino/Latina voters-- ignored by Democratic Party leaders-- leaning toward Trump’s false promises of change.

Today, one-issue groups abound, with foundations doling out financial support, designer NGOs staffing causes, academics offering studies, and consultants mapping strategies. Talk of “intersections” are just that, with more and more divisions denying any basis for common cause, as our common plight grows more desperate.

And when the two parties’ thinkers offer even a hint of prospective benefits in exchange for their votes, it is not a vision, but a reminiscence. The Republicans promise a return to the land of milk and honey before “freedom”-restricting laws on civil rights, the environment, workplace safety, and unions. 

The Democrats, on the other hand, offer an idyllic time before the Reagan revolution-- the so-called Neoliberal era ushered in with the 1980 election-- conveniently forgetting the long, painful, previous decade of stagflation. In essence, we are given two different versions of “Make America Great Again.” Neither promise works for the twenty-first century.

Sounding eerily prescient, Bonner cites the opposition to the unbearable weight of the military budget and the threat of war, actions against the energy monopolies, a militant women’s movement for women’s rights, the fight against police brutality, the miners’ strike, and the struggle for the Dellums National Health Service Act as a basis for bringing together a united, independent movement escaping the political inertia of 1979. “There is absolutely no reason and no excuse for not pulling several of these forces together and entering the political arena…,” Bonner asserts.

Forty-five years later, we have yet to create this needed movement, and the battles of 1979 are yet to be won.

We must recognize that a mere declaration of independence is not enough, as our own US Revolution shows. Achieving independence is an arduous process. In our time, it is a battle against the dependency that comes from taking the money offered from corporations, foundations, non-profits, NGOs, and governments, and from uncritically accepting the influence of think tanks, universities, academic “authorities,” and consultants. 

Most importantly, political independence only begins with a concerted effort to fight capture by the two parties. Far too many left initiatives have been absorbed and suffocated by the Democratic Party. In its essence, independence is always independence from some external force that doesn’t share our values and goals.

We must also judge independence by acts and not rhetoric or posture. The fallacy of celebrity, the fetishism of personality, is a sure barrier to independence. Instead, the steps away from wealth and power should be our measuring stick of independent political action. Where independence exists, we must nurture it; where it doesn’t, we should sow it.

In the forthcoming election, how will we express our political independence?

Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com