In this next phase, the biggest problem for the antiwar movement will be the “progressive” Democrats who act as false allies to our cause. The “democratic socialists" will do damage in the same way that Trump 2.0 has done damage: by giving false hope to people with anti-imperialist consciousness, lulling them into complacency while the empire ramps up its wars. Our rulers know to switch up their primary means of propaganda every couple of years; by regularly changing which wing of bourgeois politics gets to have the main cultural platform, they can manage the population in routine cycles.
This has always been the nature of bourgeois “democracy,” and it’s what makes this model so effective at maintaining stability for capitalist rule. What happens, though, when both wings keep starting more and more unpopular wars? When Washington has to keep ramping up its aggressions in order to contain China, and extend U.S. hegemony?
After World War I, the bourgeoisie could afford to put their wars on pause, and thereby placate the population fairly effectively. Throughout this time, both the U.S. and European ruling classes adopted the “pacifist” posture, as they had realized that the system was in danger of collapse and there had to be a momentary compromise. This compromise was part of what allowed the capitalists to then bring about more extreme warfare than ever, and crush the working class by putting communists into the first Nazi extermination camps. This was how Wall Street and London prevented revolution in Germany—which they’d feared would be the next country where the workers prevailed—and created a war machine which could launch genocidal war against the USSR.
As finance capital uses the Zionist Nazi state for a similar purpose, the tasks of the working-class movement are in many ways parallel to what was required from us during Hitler’s war. Yet this new confrontation is unprecedented in nature, because now the imperialist and fascist forces are unified in their efforts at extermination. The Nazi Germany of today is fighting for the United States and its imperial partners, meaning the only recourse of the working class is to unite with the forces fighting against this Hitlerite bloc; to support the Axis of Resistance, and all of the countries that are fighting for their survival amid Washington’s offensive.
This is where the “progressive” imperialist wing seeks to cause division among the globe’s different working-class forces, and undermine solidarity while feigning support for the victims. The “progressives” claim to be pro-Palestine and antiwar, yet they’re hostile towards every country or resistance organization that’s fighting on the side of the Palestinian masses. A leader cannot be “pro-Palestine,” or against the war on Iran, while they’re assisting in the proxy war on Russia; Russia is actively aiding the Iranians, which by extension makes Russia an ally to Iran’s anti-Zionist Axis of Resistance. A leader also can’t be pro-Palestine when they condemn Hamas, which is the leading force in pushing back the occupier.
The only way that the socdems can make these positions seem compatible with socialism is by taking the class struggle out of the picture, and leading the workers towards an ideology of collaboration with capital. This was the strategy that Lenin identified among the “socialists” who got behind the first world war:
Opportunism and social-chauvinism have the same ideological-political content: collaboration of classes instead of class struggle, renunciation of revolutionary methods of struggle, helping one's "own" government in its embarrassed situation instead of taking advantage of these embarrassments for revolution. If we take all the European countries as a whole, if we pay attention not to individuals (even the most authoritative), we will find that it is the opportunist trend that has become the chief bulwark of social-chauvinism, whereas from the camp of the revolutionaries, more or less consistent protests against it are heard nearly everywhere. And if we take, for example, the grouping of trends at the Stuttgart International Socialist Congress in 1907, we will find that international Marxism was opposed to imperialism, while international opportunism was in favour of it already at that time.
In the past epoch, before the war, although opportunism was often regarded as a "deviationist," "extremist" part of the Social-Democratic Party, it was nevertheless regarded as a legitimate part. The war has shown that this cannot be so in future. Opportunism has "matured," is now playing to the full its role as emissary of the bourgeois in the working-class movement. Unity with the opportunists has become sheer hypocrisy, an example of which we see in the German Social-Democratic Party. On all important occasions (for example, the voting on August 4), the opportunists come forward with an ultimatum, which they carry out with the aid of their numerous connections with the bourgeoisie, of their majority on the executives of the trade unions, etc. Unity with the opportunists actually means today, subordinating the working class to "its" national bourgeoisie, alliance with it for the purpose of oppressing other nations and of fighting for great-power privileges, it means splitting the revolutionary proletariat in all countries.
This was how the mask came off of these “socialists” who believed in class collaboration: when the “scramble for Africa” had reached its conclusion, and the colonial powers entered into war with each other for the imperial holdings, those who sought to work with the bourgeoisie got behind this war. These opportunists had by definition always supported imperialism; the difference was that they could no longer keep this aspect of their politics in the background, because imperialism’s violence had spilled over into Europe itself. With the USA’s entry into the war, America’s socialist movement was forced to confront imperialism in this way as well; and though the social-chauvinists in the Second International offered them a rationale for supporting the war, many chose to bear the wrath of their government by speaking out against it. Most notably Eugene Debs, who was made a political prisoner for making a speech against Wilson’s interventions.
This is the path that we need to choose as today’s “socialist” or “progressive” opportunists seek to get the workers behind Washington’s next global assaults. And they absolutely will do this to an increasing degree; the only reason why they’re posturing as antiwar now is because Democrats don’t necessarily view Iran as the top priority. They want Washington to primarily focus on the war against Russia, and this will turn into them more openly promoting proxy war over Taiwan as time goes on.
Like during the first world war, the imperial order is undergoing a process of crisis and scrambling, forcing everyone to take sides on the question of imperialist war. The difference is that today, technology has progressed in ways which make a world war protracted, and only able to be resolved through a greater upheaval to the social system. Because of nuclear weapons, Washington cannot enter into direct conflict with its biggest challengers. There’s also the fact that the USA, and much of the rest of the world, have de-industrialized; which extends how long these conflicts are going to last. The hope of the “progressive” Atlanticists and opportunistic “socialists” is that because of how lengthy and complex the third world war will be, they can keep enough of a distance from the implications of supporting this war.
We must expose the true nature of their positions, which means forcing foreign policy into the center of the discourse whenever the opportunists act to divert from it. Part of this is agitating against the wars themselves; the other part is organizing the masses towards advancement of the workers struggle, which will force the ruling class to divert their resources towards fighting the USA’s own people. The more our enemies have to scramble, the more relevant and tangible the revolutionary task will become for the masses, and the more apparent it will be that class collaboration isn’t an option. We have to make these wars backfire by upsetting the system’s processes of social control, and turning Washington’s offensive into something that breaks this internal order.
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