In a 2014 article, Marquette University’s Gerry Canavan observed the relationship between capitalist realism-the view that capitalism is the only viable system-and necrofuturism, the view that humanity is headed for dystopia and apocalypse. “Necrofuturism premediates the unhappy economic and ecological future that will emerge out of current trends,” he wrote, “but not in a register that suggests or nurtures alternatives; rather, necrofuturism resigns us to a coming disaster we can anticipate but not prevent.”
Necrofuturism is a convenient philosophy for the capitalist ruling class, because it abdicates them of moral responsibility for the ecological catastrophes, wars, and explosions of poverty that the system is taking the world towards. The rising sea levels, the droughts, the refugee crises, the conflicts, the economic unravelings-none of these things make it worthwhile to create a better system. Capitalism can be utilized to positively respond to these crises, the system’s defenders figure. Besides, the alternative is communism, which is unquestionably worse than what capitalism has to offer.
This is why anti-communist propaganda is crucial for maintaining this loyalty to capitalism amid all the horrors that capitalism is producing: it provides a rationale for rejecting the solutions that the communists have presented, for claiming that no matter what, the present system is better than what anti-capitalist arguments lead to. As French philosopher Alain Badiou writes in a passage that Canavan‘s paper quotes:
A brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian — where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone — is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in the condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism.
These arguments for capitalism’s continuation are predicated upon a view of the history of communism that capitalist, pro-imperialist institutions have themselves constructed. If the public is led to believe that Stalin deliberately starved Ukraine, even though this is a misleading claim that originated from Nazi propaganda, it’s easy to argue that communism is a force for evil. If the media says that China is interning over a million Muslims, even though this is a similarity misleading claim that comes from U.S.-backed Chinese regime change organizations, it seems reasonable to accuse communists of supporting a genocidal ideology. If Stalin, Mao, Castro, Xi Jinping, the Kims, and the other communist leaders are all consistently characterized as “dictators” by bourgeois academic and media sources, even though all of these leaders have been elected through proletarian democracy, the pro-capitalist arguments gain more perceived credibility.
No matter how divorced from reality these anti-communist arguments are, they serve to keep the legitimacy of “capitalist realism,” and therefore of deterring people from taking serious steps to replace the system. This is because they don’t just stop reactionaries and liberals from embracing a revolutionary mindset; they stop many anti-capitalists from aligning with the Marxist-Leninist movement out of the belief that communism leads to “dictatorships.”
When anti-communist propaganda has become the commonly accepted version of reality throughout capitalist society, one can find self-identified socialists contradicting their own stated goals by arguing against capitalism in one moment, while acting like the anti-communist slanders are true in another moment. Take the example of left-wing commentator Nathan J. Robinson, who’s written:
It’s incredibly easy to be both in favor of socialism and against the crimes committed by 20th century communist regimes. All it takes is a consistent, principled opposition to authoritarianism…When anyone points me to the Soviet Union or Castro’s Cuba and says “Well, there’s your socialism,” my answer isn’t “well, they didn’t try hard enough.” It’s that these regimes bear absolutely no relationship to the principle for which I am fighting. They weren’t egalitarian in any sense; they were dictatorships.
This is the inverse of the “socialism is evil because socialist countries are evil” position: “socialism is good because those evil countries aren’t really socialist.” Since both positions rely on accepting capitalist propaganda, it’s easy to see how the latter can lead to ineffective attempts at resisting capitalism. It makes anti-capitalists try to latch on to various anti-communist brands of leftism, from the anti-Marxistideology of anarchism to the Eurocentric ideology of Trotskyism, all out of fear of being labeled an “authoritarian socialist.”
In addition to being a divisive force within the anti-capitalist movement, this anti-communist impulse leads many leftists to embrace strains that outright seek to perpetuate capitalism. This year Robinson endorsed Bernie Sanders, whose goal is to save capitalism by putting in Scandinavia-style reforms. Sanders’ support for Israeli settler-colonialism and frequent support for imperialist policies also don’t fit with Robinson’s goal of supporting socialism, and they certainly don’t fit with his supposed goal of staunchly opposing authoritarianism. It’s decidedly authoritarian to bomb a country for being socialist (which Sanders has assisted by endorsing the war on Yugoslavia), or to take land from indigenous people.
The hypocrisy of the declarations from anti-communist leftists about not supporting “authoritarianism” becomes further apparent when their position brings them to support the imperialist takeovers of socialist nations. For instance, the Democratic Socialists of America, which Robinson also strongly supports, says on its website that “We applaud the democratic revolutions that have transformed the former Communist bloc.” This isn’t just a statement of disagreement with Leninism, it’s an endorsement of a Washington-led effort to destroy the social safety net and privatize services throughout numerous countries.
The DSA is so invested in opposing communism that it’s eagerly willing to support the vast expansions of neoliberalism throughout the last generation-and it would no doubt take up a similar line if surviving socialist countries like China, the DPRK, and Cuba were to get their own neoliberal “democratic revolutions.”
Indeed, a modern equivalent of the 20th century anti-Soviet left is found in the socialists who now decry China as an “imperialist” country that stands in opposition to socialism. Not only does their view of China contradict Marxism (China doesn’t fit any of the criteria for imperialism that Marxism puts forth), but it keeps them tied to the necrofuturist view that the system can’t be replaced in time to prevent catastrophe. If the Communist Party of China is a moral and political equivalent to the United States, why support Marxism-Leninism? If China, Cuba, the DPRK, and the other socialist countries represent nothing more than “authoritarianism” or “state capitalism,” why take sides in the fight against U.S. imperialism?
This reasoning is what’s led many of these anti-China leftists to support the reactionary U.S.-backed Hong Kong protests, to disseminate U.S. imperialist propaganda about “Chinese concentration camps” and “CPC organ harvesting,” and to otherwise assist neoconservatives in their campaign to carry out a counter-revolution in China. Like supporting the colonization of Palestine, agreeing with Bernie’s endorsements of imperialist bombing campaigns, or cheering on the neoliberal transformation of Russia and Eastern Europe, this course of action very much helps bring the world towards a necrofuturist dystopia. The imperialists and plutocrats are getting exactly what they want, all because of the agreement across the ideological spectrum that anti-communist propaganda is true.
Canavan’s observation about morally relativistic arguments for capitalism comes to mind: “Necrocapitalist practices are thus reinforced on the level of ideology by a wonderful and terrible double-bind of perpetual threat: things must be this necrocapitalist because, if they were not, our society would be even more necropolitical and wretched than it is now. That is: necrocapitalism’s own horrors are perpetually taken as proof of necrocapitalism’s necessity, even its own self-prophlyactic. We ingest the poison to keep ourselves from becoming even sicker.” Doesn’t this perfectly reflect the DSA’s line about how neoliberalism was good for the former socialist countries because their systems were more “authoritarian” than the “democratic” capitalism which came after them?
As the writer Andre Vltchek has assessed, “Anti-communism is a fundamentalist religion, now followed by billions.” The claims that support this religion are believed through a sense of faith, and the religion’s endgame is appropriately an apocalyptic one; we’re meant to accept whatever catastrophic events that capitalism produces, no matter how deadly and destructive, because to choose the side of communism would be to choose “the condition of Evil.”
It’s a fundamentally nihilistic position, one that rationalizes the continued descent into corporate-engineered doomsday as the price we must pay for fighting communism. It can’t be the view that defines this century. We must work to advance the struggle for anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and communist liberation, which involves countering the lies of those who stand against these goals.
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