Two Marxisms?

Google knows that I have an abiding interest in Marxism. Consequently, I receive frequent links to articles that Google’s algorithms select as popular or influential. Consistently, at the top of the list, are articles by or about the irrepressible Slavoj Žižek. Žižek has mastered the tricks of a public intellectual-- entertaining, pompous, outrageous, calculatedly obscure, and mannered. The disheveled pose and the beard add to a near caricature of the European professor gifting the world with big ideas embedded deeply in layers of obscurantism-- a sure-fire way to appear profound. And a sure-fire way to advance one’s commercial entertainment value.

Close followers of the “master” even post videos of Žižek devouring hot dogs-- one in each hand! He is currently cashing in on a public debate with a right-wing gas-bag counterpart which reportedly brings in obscene prices for tickets. Marxism as entrepreneurship.

Žižek is one of the latest iterations of a long line of largely European academics who build modest public celebrity from an identification with Marxism or the Marxist tradition. From Sartre and existentialism through structuralism, postmodernism, post-essentialism, post-Fordism, and identarian politics, academics have appropriated pieces of the Marxist tradition and claimed to rethink that tradition, while keeping a measured, safe distance from any Marxist movement. They are Marxists when it brings an audience, but seldom answer the call to action.

The curious thing about this intellectual Marxism, this parlor, dilettante Marxism is that it is never all in; it is Marxism with grave reservations. Marxism is fine if it’s the “early” Marx, the “humanist” Marx, the “Hegelian” Marx, the Marx of the Grundrisse, the Marx without Engels, the Marx without the working class, the Marx before Bolshevism, or before Communism. Understandably, if you want to be the next big Marx-whisperer, you must separate yourself from the pack, you must rethink Marxism, rediscover the “real” Marx, locate where Marx got it wrong.

Previous generations of well-meaning, but class-befuddled university students have been seduced by “radical” thinkers who offer a taste of rebellion in a sexy academic package. Student book packs carried unread, but fashionable books by authors like Marcuse, Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Laclau, Mouffe, Foucault, Derrida, Negri, and Hardt-- authors who shared common features of exotic, provocative book titles and impenetrable prose. Books that promised much, but delivered murk.

With a new generation of radically minded youth looking for alternatives to capitalism and curious about socialism, it is inevitable that many are looking toward Marx. And where do they turn?

A Yale professor unabashedly offers a handy primer, featured in the hip Jacobin Magazine, entitled How to be a Marxist. Professor Samuel Moyn is currently the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence. Apparently, Moyn feels no unease with holding a chair endowed by one of the country’s most notorious anti-Communist, anti-Marxist publishers, while offering a guidebook to Marxism.

Moyn’s How to… presumption to guide the unknowing to Marxism is neither justified nor explained. Nonetheless, he feels confident to recommend two recently deceased academics, Moishe Postone and Erik Olin Wright (along with the still living Perry Anderson), as representing the last of “...the generation of great intellectuals whose 1960s experiences led them to adopt a lifework of recovering and reimagining Marxism.”

I confess that his choice of Moishe Postone had me baffled. Should I be embarrassed to say that I had never known Professor Postone’s work or known him to be a Marxist? When I found a YouTube interview with the esteemed Professor Postone, I quickly discovered that he emphatically and without reservation denies being a Marxist. Further, Postone contends that most of what we call Marxism was written by Frederick Engels. Postone concedes that Engels was “really a good guy,” but Engels never properly understood Marx. Postone, on the other hand, does. And his Marx does not “glorify” the industrial working class.

I am, however, familiar with the other alleged exemplar of a “great intellectual” devotion to Marxism, Erik Olin Wright. Wright was a long-standing, prominent member of the so-called “Analytic Marxism” school. Wright, like the other members of this intellectual movement, attempted to place Marxism on a “legitimate” foundation, where legitimacy was earned by subjecting Marxism to the rigors of conventional Anglo-American social science. The conceit that Anglo-American social science is without flaws or that it has nothing to learn from Marx’s method is never questioned with this clique. But to Wright’s credit, he struggled mightily to grasp the concept of social class.

In order “to save the Left from going down various cul-de-sacs again,” Professor Moyn offers the latest book of his “brilliant colleague,” Martin Hägglund. Moyn assures us that “This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom is an excellent place to start for those who want to energize the theory of socialism, or even build their own theory of a Marxist variant of it.”

It takes only a brief moment to see that Martin Hägglund and his admiring colleague are taking us down other cul-de-sacs, ones trod by many earlier generations. Hägglund’s journey would revisit existentialism, Hegel, and Christian traditions in search of the elusive “meaning of life.” Though many of us thought that Marx offered a profoundly informed analysis of social change and social justice, Moyn/Hägglund, following Postone, bring forward “the ultimate questions anyone must ask: what work should I do? How should I spend my finite time?” Accumulating capital contrasts, they submit, with “maximizing... each individual’s free time to spend as she pleases…”

Thus, the struggle for emancipation, in this rethinking of Marxism, is not the emancipation of the working class, but the wresting of freely disposable time from the grip of work. The professors concede that this struggle is far easier for academics than for “the wretched of the earth.”

“And finally,” Moyn concludes, “there is Hägglund’s proposal that Marxists can ditch communism — which in any event Marx described vaguely — in favor of democracy. It is not totally clear what Hägglund means by democracy, something which neither Marx himself nor many Marxists have chosen to pursue theoretically.” So Hägglund distills “Marxism” into a rejection of Communism and an embrace of a vague “democracy.” I would have to agree with Moyn: “Indeed, it is remarkable how little of what most people have thought Marxist theory was about make it into Hägglund’s ...attempt to restart it for our time.” Apparently, the now revealed secret of becoming a Marxist is to discard Marx.

Like many self-proclaimed “Marxists” who came before Postone, Hägglund, and Moyn, their intent seems to be to defang Marxism more than it is promote it.

Dangerous Ideas

The naked truth is that Marxism-- from the time of Marx’s censorship and multiple expulsions from different countries-- is a dangerous idea. Marx’s inability to secure academic appointments and his constant surveillance and harassment by authorities proved to be a harbinger of the fate of nearly all authentic Marxist intellectuals. Capitalism does not endow those who advocate the undoing of capitalism with academic honor or celebrity. And those “Marxists” who do rise to academic acclaim, who get lucrative book deals, who enjoy media exposure, seldom present much of a threat to the system.

It is a telling fact that, though history has produced many “organic” Marxists, Marxists with roots in the working class and in movements challenging capitalism, their contributions seldom populate the bibliographies of university professors, unless to deride. University employment is rarely available to purveyors of dangerous ideas or the advocacy of a version of Marx that calls for revolutionary change.

A Marxist historian like the late Herbert Aptheker, who did more than any other intellectual to challenge the twisted Birth of a Nation/Gone With The Wind depiction of the benign South and its heroic defense of a noble way of life, could not find work in US universities. Indeed, it took a free speech movement to get him to be permitted to speak at all on US campuses. His books have disappeared from circulation and few students of African American history are exposed to his contributions.

No one has created a history of the US labor movement to rival the late Marxist Phillip Foner’s 10-volume History of the Labor Movement in the US. Foner’s 5-volume The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass reestablished Douglass as a preeminent figure in the abolition of slavery in the US. An historically Black university, Lincoln University, courageously hired Foner after years of blacklisting. Sadly, today, his works are largely ignored in fields where he pioneered.

The serious contributions of many other US Marxist intellectuals can be found in back issues of publications like Science and Society, Political Affairs, Masses, Masses and Mainstream, and Freedomways resting on out-of-the-way library shelves gathering dust, diminished by McCarthyism, blacklists, scholarly cowardice, and blatant anti-Communism.

The doors and public discourse of the academy and the mass media have equally been shut to working class Marxists (unless they renounce their views!). Despite his leading of working class movements and his writing prolifically, Marxist William Z. Foster’s works on organizing, labor strategy and tactics, and political economy are largely forgotten, unless they reappear as someone else’s thinking. Other key Marxist figures responsible for and interpreting some of labor’s finest moments such as Len De Caux and Wyndham Mortimer are denied membership in the club.

Similarly, Marxist pioneers in the Black and women’s equality movements like Benjamin Davis, William Patterson, and Claudia Jones are neither hailed as such nor offered as examples of “How to be a Marxist.” 

Marxist political economist Victor Perlo's work in identifying the highest reaches of finance capital and the economics of racism are curiously missing from any relevant academic conversation.

What these Marxists all share is an activist political life in the US Communist Party, a proud badge, but one denigrated by most US intellectuals.

The best writing of the venerable Monthly Review magazine suffers the same marginalization. Its founders were threatening enough to be victimized by the Red scare. And co-founder Paul Sweezy, a serious Marxist political economist, never was enthusiastically welcomed into academic circles.

Today, Michael Parenti is the most dangerous Marxist intellectual in the US. I know this because despite countless books, videos, and speaking engagements, despite an uncompromising commitment to a Marxist interpretation of history and current events, despite a profound, but reasoned hatred of capitalism, and despite an admirably approachable style and manner with big ideas, he is otherwise unemployed by universities and denied access to all but the most left or marginal media.

Another impressive US Marxist scholar, Gerald Horne, though enjoying academic tenure, deserves to be studied by every “leftist” in the US for the integrity, accessibility, and quality of his work.

Authentic Marxism, as opposed to fashionable, trendy, or faddish Marxism, is relentless, aggressive, and inspiring of action. It diligently dissects the inner workings of the capitalist system. It is ruthless and unsparing in its rejection of capitalism. It challenges conventional thinking, making few friends in the capitalist press and rocking the gentility and collegiality of the staid liberalism of the academy. Marxism is not a career move, but a thankless commitment.

Real Marxists are necessarily outliers. Until the conditions for revolutionary changes ripen, they are often subjected to skepticism, disinterest, even derision and hostility. Marxist poseurs are allergic to political organizations, activism, and intellectual risk, while committed Marxists are compelled to seek and join movements for change; they are driven to serve Marx’s oft-quoted, seldom heeded eleventh thesis on Feurbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

We Knew Mueller’s Basket was Empty

The RussiaGate conspiracy theory, which came unwound over a past weekend, underscores the truth that the rot in the US political system includes the security services and the monopoly media, as well as the Democratic and the Republican Parties. Of course that comes as no surprise to the too few of us on the left who loudly cried foul when the anti-Russia hysteria reached painful levels.

Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, two who earned the right to gloat over Mueller’s conclusion of no Russian collusion with Trump, promptly exercised that right. Taibbi recounts many of the more ridiculous claims assembled to form the fictitious mountain of evidence for the Trump/Russia connection. Greenwald has mounted a media blitz (e.g., here and here), rubbing the nose of the establishment media in the RussiaGate excrement.

In response, Joshua Frank, managing editor of CounterPunch, engages in a nitpick with Taibbi and Greenwald and their choice of comparisons and superlatives. Frank crows that the RussiaGate debacle can’t hold a candle to the Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction deception preluding the Iraqi invasion of 2003, as though pointing that out is of itself of any great significance. It must be remembered that CounterPunch went into a public meltdown in 2017-18 when they were allegedly victimized by an internet poseur. The late Alexander Cockburn-- a founder of CounterPunch--  would have simply moved on, but the RussiaGate hysteria drove CounterPunch into a paranoid frenzy over the “Alice Donovan” affair. Consequently, CP tread very carefully around the RussiaGate question.

In an ironic twist, Frank’s snarky response counts as a further example of how damaging the RussiaGate fiasco was to media independence, objectivity, and integrity.

Obviously little was learned from the Judith Miller/WMD episode that brought shame on a lap dog media in the run-up to the Iraqi Invasion of 2003. Today, as then, there is little contrition shown in the backwash of a near-total media debacle. Today’s generation of budding media stars-- elite educated and fast-tracked into media prominence-- seems to have the same deference to the rich and powerful, the same servility to conformity as its forbearers.

So it’s not surprising that many caught on the wrong side of the Mueller report are redesigning the rules of the game, rather than accepting defeat.

One writer for a major RussiaGate-promoting magazine decided that the evidentiary bar was set entirely too high for Mueller to draw proper conclusions from the data collected by his large team of lawyers and FBI agents.

But that is absurd. The Justice Department charge to the Special Council (Order 3915-2017) was shockingly broad: “...to conduct an investigation...including:  

(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and (ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and (iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).

Rather than too high, the evidentiary bar was virtually non-existent. Mueller could report whatever he wanted on whatever he wanted.

Apparently lacking any sense of whimsy, a Bloomberg writer begged social media not to punish the RussiaGate conspirators by banning them for their transgressions. He noted a Republican commentator calling for the ban and pleaded mercy for his irresponsible colleagues.

Another reporter stung by the RussiaGate outcome argued that the sainted Robert Mueller was too good, too principled, too objective to operate in this corrupted world. The former FBI director was a man of nuance and fair play, and his report’s conclusions should not overshadow the “knowable facts” embedded in his report.

Of course this is nonsense: a bizarre brew of metaphysical “facts” revealed mysteriously to the author and a cloyingly fawning portrait of a player previously compromised by the weapons-of-mass-destruction lie.

Sainthood ill-fits Robert Mueller. He knew last summer that he had no evidence for collusion, but strung the investigation on to benefit the Democrats in the interim elections. As I noted last June:

That certainly captures the allure of the Mueller investigation to the big corporate media-- it is the gift that keeps on giving, until it doesn’t. And it seems, more and more, that it has stopped giving. That would likely be the meaning of Senator Mark Warner’s comments last week at a retreat with important fellow Democrats: “If you get me one more glass of wine, I’ll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know,” Warner reportedly told the 100 or so guests, according to the Boston Globe (6-25-18). “If you think you’ve seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It’s going to be a wild couple of months.”

Warner knows better than most that Mueller and Russiagate are the only meatless bones that the Democrats have tossed to the ravenous corporate media. Also, he knows that the Democrats need the issue to stay alive for the next “couple of months” to help the Democrats in the interim elections.

But most significantly, he knew when he spoke that confidence in the Mueller investigation had waned and was in need of some juice. As The Hill reported on June 13: Mueller’s public image sinks to all-time low in new poll. “The Politico–Morning Consult poll found that 40 percent of voters believe that Mueller's probe has been handled unfairly — a 6-point increase from February…”, and a greater number than those who thought the investigation to be fair...

...And in an opinion piece in The Hill, former National Security Prosecutor, Joseph Moreno, hopes to let the faithful down gently with Prepare to be disappointed with Russia investigation conclusion (6-26-18).

Clearly, this mini-series is losing the public, a development that backs the Democratic Party into an awkward corner. The Democrats needed wildly sensational stories to court the sensationalist monopoly media and to cover the embarrassing loss to a vulgar entertainer who makes Ronald Reagan look like a seasoned, measured diplomat.

The final act in the Mueller play was to place the private parts of three despicable Trump associates-- Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone-- in the judicial vise. As a modern-day torture, nothing secures cooperation more effectively than tightening the vise with the threat of more and more legal indictments, regardless of their merit. Yet despite the Inquisition-like pressures, the Mueller team was unable to generate Russian collusion.

Mueller closed the shop. Like former FBI head, James Comey, Mueller doesn’t like his reputation to be sullied. Therefore, $20-40 million later, no evidence of Trump/Russia collusion, no conclusion on obstruction, and case closed.

The “journalists” who have been hustling the RussiaGate conspiracy have taken a big hit in popularity. Ratings for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow-- the Queen of RussiaGate-- are down over 20% in the wake of the Mueller Report. Her network and CNN are being appropriately punished for their role in fueling a wildly unhinged smear of Russia and Putin.

The beneficiary of the collapse of RussiaGate, of course, is Donald Trump. While the media and the Democrats spun their fairy tales, Trump pressed on with his sordid agenda. Instead of battling military spending, wars, bitter sanctions, tax increases, destruction of social programs, immigration, etc., the Democrats offered two years of fear-driven distraction. Instead of constructing a program around Medicare-for-all, taxing the rich, relief of the cost of education, minimum-wage reform, etc., the Democrats and the sensation-hungry media indulged in two years of gossip, innuendo, and lies.

Trump couldn’t dream of a greater gift.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

When Internationalism Mattered

Early March marked the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Third International, the Communist International or Comintern. For the most part, the anniversary went unnoticed.

An exception was an article in Jacobin by Loren Balhorn entitled The World Revolution That Wasn’t. Balhorn is a youthful contributing editor of Jacobin.

Not so long ago, the legacy of the Comintern still prevailed -- Communist Parties in virtually every country constituted, dominated, or greatly influenced their country’s left. Perhaps those of us who lived through or well remember that time should be grateful for its commemoration by Balhorn. But because Balhorn does not fully grasp the significance of the Communist International, he delivers a small favor, a very small favor indeed.

For Balhorn, the Comintern was a failure. Its history was quite simple:

The International’s first four years of existence witnessed multiple uprisings and revolutions, socialist and other radical organizations exploded in size, and it appeared that the world could really be on the cusp of socialist transformation.
Yet the Communists failed to realize this transformation. The Soviet Union remained isolated and grew increasingly authoritarian and stagnant. When it met its end in 1991, its failure triggered neoliberal capitalism’s truly total globalization and the collapse of the international left as a powerful force able to oppose it.

To illustrate the lost opportunity of the Comintern, Balhorn cites the planned German rising of October, 1923, an event that he derisively calls the “German Floptober.” Like so many liberal and social democratic accounts of the Weimar period, Balhorn buys into the myths of Communist incompetence, betrayal, and, contradictorily, both timidity and ultra-leftism. The reality was somewhat different, though, when viewed against the backdrop of social democratic perfidy. Like the liberals of today, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was willing to work with the devil to achieve or protect political goals and to avoid, at all costs, a socialist revolution.

In the case of the SPD, Communist calculations were necessarily shaped by the collaboration of the SPD with-- indeed, the eager recruitment of -- the German extreme right, the proto-fascist Freikorps, and the German army in the slaughter and defeat of Communist risings in 1918 (Spartacist), 1919 (Bavarian Soviet Republic), and 1920 (in the wake of the Kapp putsch).

The Kapp putsch is particularly instructive. When a counter-revolutionary plot of some Freikorps and army elements marched against the social democratic-dominated Weimar government, President Ebert and most of his SPD government fled Berlin, cautiously calling for a general strike against the coup. The workers responded and, within days, brought the rightists to their knees with the greatest, most paralyzing strike in German history.

Buoyed by their overwhelming demonstration of working class power, workers kept to the offensive, rising throughout Germany in a revolutionary wave. In Germany’s industrial heartland, workers formed a Red Ruhr Army of 50,000-80,000 armed workers supported by 300,000 miners. The Communist and left socialist workers defeated Freikorps and regular army units, eventually taking the entire Ruhr area.

Treacherously, the SPD government unleashed the forces sympathetic to the coup-- the Freikorps and the Reichswehr-- on the insurgents, resulting in the slaughter of hundreds if not thousands of Communist and Socialist workers. Most of the extreme right coup participants were amnestied, many later joining the ranks of the Nazis, while many strikers were punished.

Is it any surprise that Communists many times referred, in ensuing years, to social democrats as “social fascists”? In the case of Germany, the treachery of suppressing the left and collaborating with the extreme right emboldened and cleared the way for fascism. And certainly, the all-too-frequent collaboration of social democracy with reaction to forestall revolutionary change earned the enmity of revolutionaries.

Without the historical context of social democratic betrayal, liberal historians and the anti-Communist left have constructed the widely-held myth of Communist intransigent, ultra-left sectarianism in the working class movement.

Balhorn enthusiastically subscribes to that canard:

The failed German Revolution would have disastrous long-term effects, entrenching a divide between Communists and Social Democrats that greatly weakened the resistance to Hitler’s rise and culminated in the destruction of the German workers’ movement — one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century.

Given the resolve of the era’s social democrats and liberals to defend capitalism against revolutionary change at all costs, Communists had no choice but to go it alone.

Moreover, the coddling of the Freikorps, the Reichswehr, and putsch-happy Nazis by the SPD and its Weimar allies made a tactical anti-fascist alliance nearly impossible in Germany. Nonetheless, the Communists sought working class unity in many instances, contrary to the liberal mythology that blames the rise of Nazism on Communist sectarianism.

In some places, like Saxony, SPD workers rebelled against the leadership’s anti-Communism and forced a united front government with the Communists (1923), defying the national SPD. Consequently, SPD leader and Reich President Ebert permitted the army to depose the government and suppress the Communist Party.

After the victory of the Nazis in the spring 1932 Landtag election in Prussia, it was the Communists who called for unity of action between SPD and KPD workers, as noted by the German Nobel Peace prize-winning journalist martyred by the Nazis, Carl von Ossietzky, a call that went unheeded.

It was, of course, the German Communists who issued the appeal for a general strike after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, an appeal rebuffed by the Social Democrats.

The realities of German Weimar history leading up to Hitler’s consolidation of power clash sharply with the mythologies promoted by liberal and social democratic historians. The facts point to a collapse of social democracy in the face of economic crisis and political reaction rather than a failure of Communism or the Comintern, as Balhorn would lead us to believe.

To leap from the failure of European revolutions in the early 1920s to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and to pronounce the Communist International therefore a failure and irrelevant is surely an ill-informed judgement. There is no way to explain the twentieth-century fight against (and defeat of) fascism without acknowledging the central role of Communism and the Comintern. The foundations for that fight were laid in the Comintern-organized internationalist defense of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, a heroic effort that even served as the centerpiece of an iconic Hollywood movie, Casablanca, and numerous other celebrated cultural artifacts of the time. The Comintern-organized international response to fascism’s assault on Spain remains, to this day, the most inspiring example of selfless solidarity with the cause of social justice.

Though the Comintern ceased in 1943, its legacy of Communist unity continued well after the war, through successful revolutions in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere and through the liberation of nearly all of the colonies. While the unity of the Communist movement was broken by the Chinese Communist Party and its allies, at one point, two-fifths or more of the world’s population was ruled by political organizations claiming adherence to Marxism-Leninism. At the same time, significant Communist organizations existed throughout the capitalist states.

To be clear, the Soviet Union fell because it lost the Cold War. Why it lost the Cold War is important, though a different conversation. But it is an improper conclusion to judge a state to be unworthy, flawed, or failed simply because it lost at war. Many just causes, many movements for emancipation have tasted defeat and, unfortunately, will again. And surely the sanctions wars conducted by today’s imperial bullies demonstrate that war is not only armies meeting on the battlefield. But the success or failure of the Soviet Union and the Communist movement must be judged by a careful and thorough look at the balance sheet, given the alignment of forces, the level of material development, the plans met, the benefits achieved, and the social progress won. Some thirty years after European socialism’s demise, opinion polls still show widespread nostalgia for the system in the former socialist states.

To say, as Balhorn does, that the Soviet “...failure triggered neoliberal capitalism’s truly total globalization and the collapse of the international left as a powerful force able to oppose it...” is regrettable. The logic of capitalism-- faced with the ineffectiveness of the Keynesian model-- triggered the return to market fundamentalism-- so-called “neoliberal capitalism;” the relegation of millions of well educated workers from the former socialist countries to the capitalist labor market did indeed dramatically lower the cost of labor globally, fueling the growth of profits and global trade expansion.

But once again, it was social democracy, including its liberal and Labour embodiment, that yielded to triumphant capital’s assault upon public institutions, welfare, regulation, living standards, wages, and social protection, an assault that pundits have dubbed “neoliberalism.” With the failure to manage the system through Keynesian prescriptions, social democracy quickly surrendered to the forces of brutal, unfettered, unreconstructed capitalism.

Just as timid “socialists” preferred to placate the right in the 1920s rather than join with the forces of revolutionary change, the social democrats of today make common ground with the corporate globalists and the market fetishists, thus, paving the way for the growth of right-wing populism.

Balhorn concludes:

The political landscape today is nothing like 1919... We are still at the beginning of a potential mass socialist movement — a priceless opportunity we cannot afford to waste… Today the distinction between revolution and reform appears less immediately relevant. With overall levels of class struggle and organization still at historic lows, and insurgent politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jeremy Corbyn popularizing socialism in a way not seen in decades, it seems obvious where the action is… The problem is that no revolutionary left of any significance exists. To abstain from the breathtaking developments in electoral politics will ensure only that nobody notices that socialists are trying to pull them to the left at all.

Yes, the ‘problem’ is that the revolutionary left is very weak-- still reeling from the loss of the Soviet Union and the social democratization of many Communist Parties in the post-war and Perestroika era. But the labor movement is very weak as well. The peace movement has fallen upon hard times. In fact, nearly all social justice movements have declined in recent years. That is only more reason to redouble our efforts to build them.

Yes, the ‘political landscape’ is not 1919; it is more like 1914! With the rivalries between imperialists heating up nearly every day, there is an urgent, dire need for action, action against war, action that has not been forthcoming from existing political forces. War danger on the India-Pakistan border, drone attacks in Somalia and Afghanistan, threats of invasion in Venezuela, plots of “regime change,” fighting in Syria and Yemen, the abrogation of treaties, aggressive war games, death-dealing sanctions, and nuclear saber-rattling are just a few of the daily threats to peace that could explode at any moment, just as they disrupted the appearance of peace at the turn of the last century.

Balhorn’s contrast between ‘reform and revolution’ is not useful. There are no revolutionary agents that have not won the confidence of the masses through fighting for immediate reforms challenging capital and ameliorating the suffering of working people. Conversely, reformism has never won enduring concessions from capital unless insurgents or revolutionaries were breathing down the necks of the capitalists-- that’s the dialectics of political struggle.

We should be mindful of the fact that the success of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Corbyn, and others is as much or more a matter of mass dissatisfaction searching for an expression (as it is to some extent with Trump) than it is any commitment to a particular ideology. The Democratic Party (and to a lesser extent, the Labour Party) has never been a friendly home for socialism. Since the time of Woodrow Wilson, the notion that the Democratic party can be enlisted to tame corporate capitalism has been dashed by its corporately-controlled leaders. To think that a new generation of young, dynamic, and capable progressives can transform the Democratic Party is either wishful or muddled thinking. For the moment, the Democratic Party and a burst of social democracy may be ‘where the action is,’ but history suggests that it will not be there for long. It must be compromised or grow independent and more militant.

As in 1919, the task of revitalizing the revolutionary left is urgent. Decades of social democratic degeneration into a cheerleader for “a rising tide lifts all boats,” a sponsor of market solutions, and an apologist for obscene inequality, underscores the need for an authentic anti-capitalist movement.

At the same time, the emergence of left trends in the US and the UK signals a popular thirst for a new politics and legitimizes a conversation about socialism. That conversation should not, must not be constrained by electoral fetishism or shepherded into old, compromised institutions. How this trend evolves will, of course, help shape the left of the future. We must help to shape it.

But the revitalization of an independent left, a Marxist-Leninist left will be the necessary step toward a genuine anti-capitalist and revolutionary left and our greatest contribution.

That is the real lesson of the Communist International.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

A Forgotten Anniversary

In contrast to four years ago, the anniversary of the electoral victory of the Greek political party, SYRIZA, passed almost unnoticed by the US and international left. Thanks to a posting by Nikos Mottas, we are reminded of that once celebrated event.

Apparently, it is easy to forget the euphoria of the great majority of the reformist and anti-capitalist international left accompanying SYRIZA’s success in the Greek elections, promising to overturn the regimen of austerity that brought Greece to its knees. It must be easy to forget the ascent of the youthful, charismatic, and photogenic SYRIZA leader, Alexis Tsipras, who charmed everyone from The New York Times liberal Paul Krugman to even some in the Communist movement.

I remember well the disdain cast on those who defended the decision by the Greek Communists (KKE) to refuse partnership in the SYRIZA government. Left pundits pointed to KKE rejection of collaboration as another example of Communist “sectarianism.” The KKE was vilified for refusing to legitimize a social democratic electoral victory that would both fail to rescue Greek workers and betray the cause of socialism.

In the words of Motta in his In Defense of Communism article:

From the very beginning of SYRIZA's electoral rise, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was the only political power which, actually and honestly, exposed the real nature of Alexis Tsipras' party. Back in 2012, various leftist and reformist forces in Greece, including SYRIZA, exercised immense pressure to the KKE, in an effort to extort its collaboration with a future “left government.” Both bourgeois and opportunist media attacked the KKE for its refusal to join a “left” political alliance under SYRIZA.

Looking back, the four years of SYRIZA were a disaster for the Greek people. As the Mottas quote below reminds us, SYRIZA and its right-wing populist allies brought:

• Full implementation of all the anti-people, anti-worker measures of the previous austerity memorandums (2010-2014) signed by the governments of PASOK [social democrats] and ND [conservatives], which include immense cuts in salaries and destruction of labour rights.

• Unprecedented tax enforcement against the working class and popular strata, including increase in VAT [value-added tax] and dozens of increases in “special” taxes. At the same time, numerous tax evasion laws in favor of the big capital remained intact.

• Cuts in pensions and retirement age limits, decrease of lump-sum allowances, while through the so-called “Katrougalos law” a whole category of insurance contributions was imposed.

• The tax enforcement on one hand and the continuous reductions in pensions and social benefits on the other, led to monstrous primary surpluses. These surpluses in state budget have been a result of extreme austerity imposed on the working people. From the budget's 55 billion euros, only 800 million euros are being used by the government as part of a supposed “social policy.”

• Implementation of every project that benefits the big capital, from the destructive gold mining in Chalkidiki and the conversion of Attica into a field of profit-making large businesses (casinos, Elliniko redevelopment, etc) to the privatization of the country's airports, major ports (e.g. Piraeus, Thessaloniki), of the Public Power Corporation (DEI), etc.

In addition, the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition collaborated closely with US-NATO imperialist ventures, including in Syria. Instead of offering an escape from the austere, repressive, capital-friendly policies of PASOK and New Democracy, SYRIZA-ANEL entrenched, even expanded those policies. In short, SYRIZA betrayed the Greek people who supported politicians proving to be sell-outs rather than liberators. For those in the international center-left and left who invested heavily in what they believed to be a rebirth of progressive militancy, SYRIZA proved to be an embarrassment.

Lessons Learned?

For Mottos, the lesson of SYRIZA is transparent:

The four years of SYRIZA governance has destroyed any illusions. The perception that a bourgeois government can exercise a pro-people, pro-workers policy within the limits of the capitalist system has been totally bankrupted. A major lesson that comes out of the SYRIZA experience is that the rotten exploitative system cannot be managed or reformed in favor of the workers' interests.

And yet much of the left-- both the “respectable” and the radical left-- continues to cling to the hope that a reformist political formation can steer the capitalist ship in a more humane, more just direction. Many still believe that the institutions so thoroughly and solidly constructed by capital to promote its interests can be used to serve working people.

Certainly some worthy, but contingent concessions have been won against capital in moments of severe stress on the system-- wars, economic crisis, mass upheaval-- but they were made only to shield the capitalist system from even more drastic outcomes: revolution or breakdown. It is precisely in those moments that the Leninist left sees the opportunity to advance beyond capitalist reforms and overthrow capitalism.

And that underscores the difference between Communists and revolutionary socialists and their social democratic rivals: Communists never surrender their maximum program of overturning capitalism while consistently supporting any and all reforms that challenge capital’s authority or erode its economic dominance. The most radical Social Democrats, on the other hand, see reforms and the fight for reforms as intrinsic, incremental steps on the road to socialism. Consequently, they are prepared to compromise with, to accommodate capital in order to secure even minimal steps toward reforms-- collecting the crumbs does not make a cake!

For example, despite popular disgust with the profit-anchored US healthcare system, Democratic leaders, time after time, dilute healthcare legislation to appease capital and avoid political struggle. It is painful to watch them retreat before the battle is joined. They refuse to fight for what is necessary, instead settling for what they believe is possible.

In countries like the UK or the US, where social democracy is experiencing a rebirth in parties that have for decades mutated into capitalist instruments, into corporate clients, Communists can be the most principled fighters against the predictable ruling class assault mounted against these leftward trends. At the same time, they cannot get caught in the trap of legitimizing social democratic ideology, of endorsing the social democratic ‘road’ to socialism.

The rise of so-called ‘Democratic Socialism’ in the US-- personified by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-- signals the profound political crisis of the US two-party system. And the success of Trump was as much a failure of the corporate-dominated, market fundamentalist Democratic Party to address that crisis.

But the renegade social democratic trend emerging in the Democratic Party is likely more a face lift than a new soul. There is little reason to believe that the Democratic Party leadership will allow real change beyond rousing its liberal-minded base. Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest are charged with and determined to arrest or compromise that trend as illustrated by their dismissal of the “Green New Deal.”

Nonetheless, the popular rise of soft-left alternatives marks a welcome trend, possibly foretelling opportunity for even more leftward options. Ocasio-Cortez frequently punctures the smug facade of the corporate-dominated political establishment; Ilhan Omar has challenged the unrestrained political bullying of AIPAC; and Tulsi Gabbard has boldly critiqued the imperial foreign policy consensus. But all three have been hammered swiftly by the media and their party’s mainstream. What conclusion can be drawn about the prospects for reforming the Democratic Party? For pursuing these goals within the Democratic Party?

The history of the post-World War II era demonstrates the bankruptcy of the social democracy that Motta references. Social democracy has taken the working class no closer to socialism. The reforms won have as quickly been eroded. Since 1980, North Atlantic social democracy has shamefully devolved into conservative-lite, embracing an emaciated state, the rule of the market, a minimal safety net, and ruthless competition. In Europe, social democracy has collapsed-- rejected by the people or betrayed by its leadership-- with the last ruling Party (Spain’s socialists) hanging onto power by a slender thread.

As Motto does, we should draw lessons from this collapse and not pray for the social democratic resurrection as do influential thinkers like Thomas Piketty, Yanis Varoufakis, and their ilk.

With the collapse of social democracy and the ugly rise of bogus populist nationalism, the only credible road of promise for the working class is revolutionary socialism.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

An Interview with Al Marder, President, US Peace Council

GREG: Al, you’ve lived through, participated in some of the most significant events of the last century. You’ve never wavered in your commitment to peace, social justice, and socialism despite many setbacks and disappointments. Others have dropped away, grown cynical, or given up. How do you account for your dogged commitment to these principles?

AL: Thank you so very much for providing me with an opportunity to reflect upon my activities for peace and socialism. As a boy of 14, I observed the steady stream pouring out of the New Haven Railroads yards of men looking for work, coming into my parents’ small store asking for something to eat. I also observed in the neighborhood the poverty and the run-down conditions of mostly immigrants and a few black families. In downtown New Haven, I observed women picketing the Woolworth store that was selling silk stockings protesting the invasion of Manchuria by the Japanese. And then I saw the picket line for the vigils protesting the Spanish Civil War, wearing leather jackets and berets in honor of the Spanish Loyalists. I became deeply aware of the Fascist takeover in Germany, Italy. At the same time, there were fascist broadcasts by Father Coughlin from Detroit spewing anti-Semitism.

It was at this time that I transferred to the James Hillhouse High School. In my class, I discovered some of my classmates shared my concerns. I learned that several of these classmates were the children of Communists.

In our discussions I began to understand the class nature of these events that had disturbed me so. And also, for the first time, I learned of the concept of a society without profit, without discrimination, with equality and justice for all. A democratic society for the people, a socialist society. I was enthralled. This concept was a direct contradiction to what I had observed. My imagination soared. I began seeking out all the literature devoted to the struggles of people. To think that all the people, wherever they were, were struggling for the same goals that I now envisaged was mind-boggling.

With my classmates, with my new-found comrades and friends we decided to organize a Peace Council in the high school to conduct meetings explaining the issues to our classmates. This for me, was the beginning of tying my dreams of a new society with the daily struggles.

I learned of the emergence of a society of workers and peasants in Russia dedicated to building a society of the future, a socialist society. I read of the overthrow of the Czar and the nobility that had imprisoned an entire people. I read of the intervention of the imperialist world to try to prevent the emergence of a society without exploitation and capitalism. I read of a society that declared its goal was to liberate the minds of hate and discrimination. I understood from the very beginning how difficult this task was, to build a society, in the midst of a world controlled by the imperialist capitalist world. The struggles of workers and peasants coincided with my dreams, a society devoted to equality and opportunity for everyone to fulfill their potential. I marveled at learning of how this new society, the Soviet Union, was providing written language to peoples for the first time. I was also taken by the explosion of culture, music and literature emerging from this new experiment in history.

This was also the period when the newly formed industrial unions were trying to organize the shops in Connecticut. It wasn’t long that I met the union organizers who needed help distributing flyers to the various factories in the greater New Haven area. I volunteered. Since my father owned a car, I managed to find a way that we could “borrow” the car and distribute the flyers before the family awoke. The realization that the struggle for a new society entailed the struggle for improvement of the daily lives of the workers cemented my understanding and commitment to the working class.

I learned that there was a long history of the struggle of peoples for a better life. There was a great deal of literature explaining this struggle as a science of society. I became an avid reader of this material despite the fact that at that stage much of it was difficult to absorb. I must confess that it was only in later years that the lessons of what I had read became clear to me, the more and more I became involved in the struggle.

The horrors of fascism were the background of everything we did or discussed. How to mobilize the American people against fascism became the dominant responsibility. It was clear to us that we had to unite all the democratic forces, center and left. The concept of “united front” became the overarching guide. I became deeply involved in organizing the New Haven Conference of Youth and the Connecticut Conference of Youth as part of the mobilizing of the young people against fascism. This effort deepened my understanding.

The effort to organize the electrical and brass industries of Connecticut was successful. When the organizers became aware that the companies had set up sports and activities to cement the loyalties of the young workers, they approached me and asked if I would help organize a sports and youth organization for the CIO. I enthusiastically agreed and became president of the CIO Sports and Youth Association and proceeded to organize athletic events, dances, and other activities that would enhance the participation and the loyalty of young workers to the union. The outbreak of WWII made it impossible to continue. However, this experience brought me closer to the lives of young workers, their hopes and their expectations. I was one with them.

These experiences have never left me. I understood from my experiences that the move from avaricious capitalism to socialism was a very difficult road but one I was determined to travel. I realized there was no blueprint for this struggle. It entailed educating workers that the only answer to exploitation and impoverishment was to change the system. While we fought for an increase of 5 cents an hour, this was not the ultimate answer.

Today, millions throughout the world are struggling for food and shelter. Millions are leaving their homes in search of work. The only answer of capitalism is war and domination. This, while at a different level and historical stage, is what I had witnessed as a boy of 14.

GREG: The World Peace Council emerged in 1949-1950. What is its mission? What have been its major initiatives and accomplishments?

AL: The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US had a profound effect on the immediate post-World War II. Any thoughts that were nurtured of post-World War II cooperation in the struggle against fascism that brought together the Socialist Soviet Union with the capitalist world were shattered. That collaboration during World War II itself was characterized by the constant thread of the capitalist maneuvering to weaken the Soviet Union in that common struggle. The postponement of the Second Front was a deliberate strategy to bleed the Soviet Union. This strategy contributed to the unbelievable toll of 28 million Soviet citizens.

There was the hope that the establishment of the United Nations would provide a venue with a new socialist world that could meet as equals with the capitalist world in post-World War II. However, it did not take long for that hope to unravel. The US emerged from World War II as the sole capitalist Superpower, with no international capitalist competition and facing an enlarged Socialist block in Eastern Europe and large Communist parties in Europe.

It became evident that the post-World War II period would soon become a battleground between the people’s movement and US Imperialism. French anti-Fascist intellectuals with support from the anti-Fascist and Left movements organized a movement for peace calling the first meeting for Paris. However, the French government refused permission and it was moved to Warsaw, and the World Peace Council came into being. It began the task of organizing peace councils throughout the world. It extended support to the burgeoning anti-Colonial movements in Africa and the national movements in China and Asia.

Recognizing that the major threat to world peace was the emergence of nuclear weapons, the World Peace Council initiated the Stockholm Peace Pledge, a petition that was circulated globally for the abolition of nuclear weapons. It mobilized international support for the Cuban Revolution and full support for the anti-Apartheid struggle in Africa. Throughout its existence, it has provided leadership and recognition of the dangers that US Imperialism presents to world peace. It is a beacon for peoples everywhere who are struggling for national liberation and sovereignty.

With the virulent McCarthyite anti-Communism of the post-World War II period coinciding with the organizing of the World Peace Council, relations for the US peace movement were very difficult. It was almost impossible to get travel permission from the State Department for outspoken peace leaders of the Left. A delegate to the initial World Peace Council Conference from the US was Reverend Willard Uphaus, president of Religion and Labor, from New Haven. He addressed the meeting in Warsaw, urging the peaceful competition between systems. Upon his return, the trade union movement, already subverted to virulent anti-Communism, the national trade union leadership withdrew support from the organization. Forced to find employment Willard Uphaus became the Executive Director of a Peace Camp in New Hampshire. There the state of New Hampshire insisted that he reveal all the names of people who attended his Peace Camp. Willard refused and served a prison sentence.

The US Peace Council maintained its membership in the World Peace Council despite all the difficulties. It finally assumed a leadership role in preparation for the World Congress held in Copenhagen in 1986 for the International Year of Peace. It has remained a Vice President and member of the Secretariat.

GREG: Many believed that with the end of the Cold War global peace was within reach, yet today the US is involved in seven wars, maintains hundreds of military bases, and strong-arms countries with sanctions. The US military budget is bloated and growing even faster than the military requests, nuclear weapons are being modernized, new weapons systems are being developed, the INF treaty is threatened, and the US and NATO surround Russia and PR China with offensive weapons. How do we best understand these developments? Are we headed for another world war?

AL: The New York Times recently in a lead editorial asserted that the US was involved in 14 secret wars. We are aware of the seven but obviously New York Times is privy to other developments.

These are indeed volatile times. The capture of the US government by the billionaires, assisted by the belligerent positions and support of the Democratic Party, has created the preconditions for a potential catastrophe. The US economy is a war economy with 61% in the national treasure devoted to the military budget. The dominance of the military in the government becomes more apparent every day, with ex-military officials in policy-making positions. The arms industry is flourishing, depositing huge profits. Arms have become the major export item, along with capital. In order to keep this profit stream going imperialist policies must follow.

US imperialists are fully aware that they are no longer able to dominate the global agenda. In order to turn that trend around, they have unleashed a global offensive creating the crisis, potential of war.

While the major capitalist world is part of the aggressive NATO Alliance, there are serious disagreements and competition. The role of Russia and China in opposing US aggression plays a very significant role in the opposition. In addition, the global peoples’ movements are an integral part of the movement against imperialist aggression and cannot be ignored.

When we talk about another world war, the frightening aspect is the presence of nuclear weapons. The trillion-dollar Obama budget for modernizing nuclear weapons and the threat and withdrawal of the INF Treaty by Trump threatens any semblance of arms control and escalates the tensions. The global peace movement must accelerate its opposition to nuclear weapons and energize the recent drive for a United Nations Ban on Nuclear Weapons. This cannot be separated from the campaign for peace.

While we recognize all the factors that can explode into a world war, we cannot, we must not allow this to produce a sense of inevitability. Just as we are witnessing an upsurge by the US peace movement against the US plotted coup in Venezuela, so must we intensify our efforts to mobilize the powerful grassroots movement for peace that has characterized peoples’ struggles for peace in the past. The basic ingredient must be unity of all peace forces.

GREG: You are the president of the US Peace Council, the US chapter of the WPC. In July of 2016, the USPC organized a first-of-its-kind fact-finding delegation to Syria. This was a bold move in the face of almost total official and media support for the anti-government forces and their international sponsors. The report-back broke the consensus and spurred rethinking among many on the left who gave tacit or even active support to the enemies of the Syrian people. Why was the broader peace movement largely absent on the issue of Syrian self-determination? What lessons should we draw from this initiative?

AL: In the broader peace movement there were serious divisions, not only Syria but on Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and North Korea. In every instance, sections of the peace movement bought into the CIA/ State Department ploy of demonizing the leadership of these countries, thus justifying the intervention of US imperialism. They forgot that each intervention of the past was justified by this rationale. It inhibited a discussion that US imperialism was violating the sovereignty of Syria and the right of peoples to determine their own destiny. This led to almost complete silence on the part of the broader peace movement.

The US Peace Council decided that it would organize a delegation that would build on global solidarity and hopefully open the avenues of discussion in the US peace movement. We realized there would be criticisms. At the same time, we knew that a report-back from this delegation would provide the opportunity to engage the peace movement in a discussion. It did. Members of the delegation were invited to address a number of local peace groups. While we cannot say we won over everybody, nevertheless, the delegation opened the door to deepen the conversation on Syria and emphasized the obligation to oppose US imperialism’s drive to extend its domination in the Middle East.

This action proves the need for dramatic expression.

GREG: The US and World Peace Councils were major organizers of the recent Dublin conference against US/NATO bases. Tell us about the event and its resolutions. I understand that one important result is the planning of a national demonstration in Washington on March 30. Would you tell us about this action as well?

AL: The leadership of the US Peace Council recognized that the broader peace movement in the US was comparatively silent in the face of aggressive foreign policies initiated by the new Trump administration and endorsed by the Democratic Party. We also recognized the divisions within the peace movement. We felt it was our historic responsibility to bring the peace movement together in the face of this juggernaut for global domination. To overcome the differences, we proposed a Unity Statement that would recognize that the main dangers to world peace were the policies of US/NATO.

We also recognized that an issue that would unite all the peace movements was foreign bases, the widespread distribution of US military forces in 186 nations, the symbol of US imperialist domination. We proposed a national conference in Baltimore, Maryland in January 2018 to form a US Coalition Against Foreign US/NATO Bases. The Conference was very successful, very well attended and united. Out of the Conference came the Resolution to organize a global conference to set up a global coalition. It also resolved to organize some April spring actions for peace in New York. Efforts ensued to bring together a global coalition in November. With the co-sponsorship of the Ireland Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA), a conference was organized in Dublin, Ireland that brought together over 400 delegates from global peace organizations. This successful conference called for the creation of a global coalition and actions.

NATO declared that it was going to commemorate its 70th anniversary in Washington, DC on April 4, 2019. This announcement desecrates the observance of the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. It also was the date of the previous year when Dr. King made his famous speech at Riverside Church in New York condemning the Vietnam War and decrying the militarism of US policies.

While there will be several activities that week, the Coalition is organizing a Demonstration and March on Saturday, March 30 in Washington, DC. It is imperative that the peace and justice community organize a large expression. It will provide an opportunity to demonstrate the opposition to the drive to war. Carrying banners and posters expressing the demands for peace and justice, the marchers will be making a major contribution to mobilizing the American people for peace.

The WPC will organize a conference on NATO on Sunday, March 31, 2019, continuing its practice of mobilizing in opposition to NATO.

GREG: What role do you see for the USPC in 2019? What is its unique role in the peace movement?

AL: The USPC has maintained its unwavering position of anti-imperialism since its founding. Its unity with the struggles of working people everywhere is integral to its work. Its history of solidarity with peoples and movements throughout the world struggling for liberation and sovereignty permeates its relations with the global people’s movement.

We consider it a profound historical responsibility to help unite the various peace and justice movements in our country. This is an imperative if we are to halt the drive to war.

We invite all those who wish to contribute to this noble struggle to join the USPC, to form Chapters wherever they are. Together we can make a meaningful contribution to unity.

GREG: Thank you for the interview, Al. You are a wonderful example for the thousands of youth who are stirring and looking for political direction. Any closing thoughts and further information about how to participate in USPC activities?

AL: My closing thoughts for young people is if you want a full, rewarding and meaningful life, I heartily recommend joining with us. Knowing that you are devoted to creating a more just, equal and peaceful world is of great satisfaction. It brings you together with others who share your vision. It also extends your hand to peoples throughout the world who are involved in the same struggle. The USPC is a member of the World Peace Council (WPC) bringing us together with peace organizations throughout the globe.

I urge you to come aboard and share your ideas and dreams.

Contact information: https://uspeacecouncil.org




US Peace Council

PO Box 3105

New Haven, CT 06515




Phone: 203-387-0370