Above: a statement where AOC uses pro-worker rhetoric to promote liberal “anti-authoritarian” foreign policy.
Our ruling class understands that the workers movement’s next direction will define whether anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism are able to prevail. So our class enemies have made a plan for how to neutralize the antiwar, pro-solidarity forces within organized labor: rebuild the “labor aristocracy,” the layer within the workers who live comfortably due to being bribed by imperialist super-profits. Whether we can overcome the opportunistic politics that are associated with the labor aristocracy, and take the workers movement in an anti-imperialist direction, is what will determine the U.S. empire’s survival. The imperial system is coming closer to collapse, which is why our rulers know they’ll soon need to fortify the system through domestic social reforms; but their plan will fail, if we combat the anti-solidarity ideas that they seek to propagate among the workers.
These ideas include labor Zionism, which says settler-colonialism is compatible with socialism; the anti-Chinese narratives, including the notion that socialist China is actually an enemy of the working class; pro-NATO ideology, with its belief that Russia is the aggressor in the Ukraine proxy war; and the color revolution ideology, which backs all protests that the imperialist media says we should support. These are the main pro-imperialist trends inside the workers movement right now, and they’re such a threat because they’re ideological positions which consistently align with the left wing of bourgeois politics.
Organized labor, which as a rule is controlled by the Democratic Party, will be more likely to oppose the pro-imperialist positions that most align with the Trump wing. It would be easier for us to get a typical labor formation to endorse a resolution against military action in Iran, for instance; and we certainly should push for labor leaders to go against the Trump wing’s foreign policy. However, we are going to run into a much harder wall when it comes to rallying them against Democrat foreign policy, or against the color revolution operations that both wings within our ruling class advance. Which is where it becomes necessary to bring the workers inside the unions, and the non-union workers, into a truly principled effort at resisting Washington’s offensive.
As we go about this task, we must reject the practice of passively accepting the policies by the liberal labor leadership. This would be the equivalent to the complacent posture that one faction within the socialist movement adopted during Lenin’s time, wherein these socialists chose not to take issue with the pro-war stance of the “social chauvinists” among their ranks. These particular individuals didn’t even need to be social chauvinists themselves in order to help the pro-war actors, as Lenin explained in his report on the 1915 International Conference of Socialist Women in Berne:
Two world-outlooks, two appraisals of the war and the tasks of the International, two tactics of the proletarian parties clashed at the Conference. One view holds that there has been no collapse of the international; no deep and grave obstacles to a return from chauvinism to socialism; no strong “internal enemy” in the shape of opportunism; no direct and obvious betrayal of socialism by opportunism. The conclusion to be drawn might be worded as follows: let us condemn nobody; let us “amnesty” those who have violated the Stuttgart and the Basic resolutions; let us merely advise that the course followed should be more to the left and that the masses be called upon to hold demonstrations.
The other, view is diametrically opposed to the former on each of the points enumerated above. Nothing is more harmful or more disastrous to the proletarian cause than a continuation of inner-Party diplomacy towards the opportunists and social-chauvinists. The majority resolution proved acceptable to the opportunist delegates and to the adherents of the present-day official parties just because it is imbued with the spirit of diplomacy. Such diplomacy is being used to throw dust in the eyes of the working masses, which at present are led by the official social-patriots. An absolutely erroneous and harmful idea is being inculcated upon the working masses, the idea that the present-day SocialDemocratic parties, with their present Executives, are capable of changing their course from an erroneous to a correct one.
The modern U.S. equivalent to this idea is the notion that we can “push the Democrats left,” which comes from an even deeper bankruptcy than the one which drove these past left-wing actors towards appeasing the social-chauvinists. The crisis that we’re facing is more dire than the one Lenin described here, because unlike was the case for pre-revolutionary Europe and Russia, today’s America doesn’t have a real left. And because an organized mass opposition to capital doesn’t exist here, many of the forces that call themselves leftist or “socialist” can get away with supporting the Democratic Party, which is to the right of even those chauvinist social democrats.
The rationale for working inside the Democratic Party which the “Berniecrats” have used is that supposedly, the “democratic socialists” represent an independent force, separate from the “Democratic establishment” and capable of bringing the masses to victory. This illusion of independence falls apart when you look at which interests these “progressive” politicians objectively serve, and the tactics those interests use to fortify their control. Sanders, Zohran, AOC, and “the squad” all take the Zionist position on whether “Israel” should exist. They also reliably promote the narratives behind Washington’s wars. This part of their politics makes all the difference. When one has gained an anti-imperialist consciousness, it becomes apparent why these figures act to strengthen capital, and at this stage aren’t even acting to “move the overton window.”
A lesson from the Palestinian liberation struggle is that for the Zionists and the imperialists, “progressives” are critically useful. The “progressive” wing of Zionism shields the settler-colonial project from scrutiny, while working with the blatant racial supremacists in stealing land and committing mass murder. This is how the capitalist order has functioned ever since the advent of parliamentary bourgeois democracy: the left wing within the system, the social democrats and the “humanitarian” liberals, have been an integral part of advancing the bourgeoise’s schemes. As Stalin concluded, the social democrats are essential to the success of the fascists, because they can fulfill a different strategic need. They can facilitate capital’s counterrevolutionary and imperialist warfare by giving the people social benefits, or the promise of social benefits; which isn’t fundamentally different than what traditional fascism did.
The social democrats may soon actually get an opportunity to implement welfare state expansions, after over a decade of the Bernie Sanders movement being held back. Therefore, our argument against the socdems shouldn’t be that they’re not capable of enacting their promises; it should be that they’re part of the same transnational banking regime which brought our conditions to this point. They’ll continue to ramp up Washington’s wars if they get into power; which according to the social chauvinist argument isn’t a problem, but we will not let this view come to dominate what “socialism” means.
In this next phase, our mission is to reach the parts of the masses who still won’t see their living standards go up in the event of these social-democratic reforms (for example the rural poor, who’ve always been left behind by American capitalism); while not giving up on these Americans who the socdems seek to bring to their position. The effort to rebuild the labor aristocracy is about saving an endangered system; and this system will be destroyed, if we rally the popular masses behind a program that’s truly aligned with the world’s anti-imperialist forces.
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