I identify Islamic Marxism as the answer to DSA’s reformism, not because all Marxists are Muslim but because Islam has proven to be today’s main resister of empire. Since the end of the USSR, the Axis of Resistance has taken on the primary role in fighting off Washington; and it’s for this reason that any successful working-class movement will have to take Islam into account.
The Democratic Party has recognized this, and has responded by putting forth a series of “progressive” Muslim candidates. Given how much the reformists have lately been trying to get ahead of communists, it’s quite likely that this tactic was directly informed by opposition research into the revolutionary movement. And this diversion is working, but only insofar as the “democratic socialists” are able to hold their coalition together. New splits are coming to the socdem camp, and the authentic revolutionary tendencies will take over amid the failures of DSA’s politics.
Right now, these tendencies are coalescing, finding an unprecedented unity between the Islamic camp and the Marxist camp. They’re discovering that they are in fact the same tendency. When the chairman of my party recently clarified that Islam is Marxism, he was able to draw from sufficient historical evidence for this; evidence that the disillusioned individuals within DSA’s camp will increasingly absorb as they seek out alternatives. When you look at how Shia Islam came from a push to consistently resist injustice, and how this movement’s philosophy of direct confrontation repudiates the European theories of mediation, it becomes clear that this Islamic tendency has no contradiction with “Marxism” proper. The only contradiction is with the dogmatic and chauvinistic western “Marxism” that fetishizes secularism. And it’s necessary for us to advance this tendency because it provides the perfect answer to the contradictions inside DSA.
The posture the “democratic socialist” leaders have taken is one of anti-woke virtue signaling. This is how I would describe AOC’s statement that the original version of wokeness was “crazy”: an attempt to show that these “progressives” share the logic of the Zionist right, and of its Democrat allies. When these socdems disavow wokeness, they’re implicitly talking about the principled anti-imperialist positions of Hasan Piker, who’s increasingly been getting shunned by the same liberals he’s helped. There is a growing desire among the masses for principled anti-Zionist politics, yet these “socialists” have pivoted towards crushing these politics as soon as they could make use of Hasan. What Marxists have to offer Hasan’s audience is a version of “woke” that’s actually authentic, as it comes from a consistent anti-imperialist position.
This position of ours has come from a testing of practice, as Mao said is essential towards forming any theory with real-world applicability:
Many theories of natural science are held to be true not only because they were so considered when natural scientists originated them, but because they have been verified in subsequent scientific practice. Similarly, Marxism-Leninism is held to be true not only because it was so considered when it was scientifically formulated by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin but because it has been verified in the subsequent practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle. Dialectical materialism is universally true because it is impossible for anyone to escape from its domain in his practice. The history of human knowledge tells us that the truth of many theories is incomplete and that this incompleteness is remedied through the test of practice. Many theories are erroneous and it is through the test of practice that their errors are corrected. That is why practice is the criterion of truth and why "the standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge". Stalin has well said, "Theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory."
Right now, the generation which became radicalized towards supporting Palestine’s resistance is in the process of testing DSA’s mode of practice. If DSA’s politics fail to keep up their momentum—which they absolutely will, as all bourgeois idealist trends have a half life—their base will be left without any institutional avenue. For the DSA leftists who genuinely seek a way to defeat Zionism, the only path forward will be outside the system, as this strata won’t even be able to retreat into the academic and nonprofit sphere. Academia and NGOs are being progressively dismantled, taking away the old career opportunities that were promised to woke Gen Z. The question will then become what form of renegade politics is correct.
We cannot let the alienated DSA leftists be captured by the ultra-left adventurists, who reject mass organizing in favor of a fetishized ultraviolence. This destructive mode of politics is something we should treat as an enemy, like Lenin did; it does not mean, though, that the alternative we put forth should be some kind of “moderation” in the vein of DSA’s present direction. We need to do the exact opposite, creating a complete counter to the genocidal position that DSA acquiesces towards. This looks a lot like the pro-resistance politics of the generation that’s been radicalized by Gaza, except we can provide a framework for translating this defiant spirit into America’s own class war.
Among those who’ve been roped into the woke activism sphere, we see the desire for such an effective model of revolutionary organizing. The form of the politics they’ve embraced tells them to carry out revolution, or at least pushes them in the direction of wanting it. But inevitably their leaders let them down, and the theory they’ve read is left without an outlet for being applied. Such was the experience of the PSL members who left their org this year in response to the leadership’s suppressing union organizing and mass work.
As time goes on, more movement participants are becoming disillusioned with petty-bourgeois radicalism, and many of them have already come to our position of rejecting bourgeois identity politics. We will bring more of them into our ranks, not by centering our outreach around radlibs but by doing what radical liberalism cannot. The form and the impulse of this radlib politics is about breaking from the imperial hegemony, which you can only do by following the same path as the Islamic resistance. Most of the post-Covid generation already grasp that the anti-Zionist resistance is in the right; all that’s left is for them to discover just how fundamentally Islam connects with their own class war, and bring Islam’s revolutionary spirit to America.
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