The proletarian struggle in the United States is facing the same obstacle that the Bolsheviks did: the capitalist ruling class has been able to turn the established workers organizing outlets into tools for blocking genuine progress. And like was also true back then, the ultra-lefts are trying to turn the workers movement away from the strategy which could let the revolutionary forces win. That strategy was for revolutionaries to work within the reactionary trade unions, which is of course still the right thing for communists to do when it comes to the unions themselves. In the modern USA, though, the way that we need to apply this lesson has many more facets.
For us, putting into practice Lenin’s advice of working among the reactionary elements entails more than agitating among the workers within bourgeois labor structures. It also means entering into coalitions with the parts of the anti-imperialist movement that aren’t communist or leftist. The alternative is to pursue the futile path of trying to build a sufficient anti-imperialist force that’s isolated from all or most of the ones which already exist. Lenin decried the early 20th century equivalent of this practice when he described “the pompous, very learned, and frightfully revolutionary disquisitions of the German Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary trade unions, that it is permissible to turn down such work, that it is necessary to withdraw from the trade unions and create a brand-new and immaculate ‘Workers’ Union’ invented by very pleasant (and, probably, for the most part very youthful) Communists, etc., etc.”
This applies so directly to the anti-imperialist movement in the modern United States because we’re living in the center of imperialism, the strongest link in the chain of international monopoly capital. The question of imperialism was obviously quite relevant to the conditions of the Bolsheviks; here, though, the ruling class depends even more on keeping the established workers organizations compromised by pro-imperialist ideology. When we end the monopoly that the liberal Atlanticists, the Zionists, and the Sinophobes hold over labor organizing, the class struggle will be advanced to its next stage, putting us in place to overthrow the capitalist state.
More of the workers within the unions are coming to essentially understand this, even if they haven’t yet come to Marxism-Leninism. This is apparent from the conflict that’s emerged between the union members who seek to end Zionism’s genocide against Palestine, and the labor bureaucracy that’s determined to keep appeasing the Democratic Party. As was articulated in a statement last month from members of United Auto Workers Labor for Palestine:
As rank-and-file members of the UAW, we refuse to shore up the political power of officials who do not show accountability to their bases, let alone adhere to social justice imperatives to end war and genocide…UAW Labor for Palestine’s support for the “Uncommitted” [Israel] strategy comes on the heels of what many felt was the UAW leadership’s premature and unprincipled endorsement of Biden’s reelection campaign in late January, given his role in arming and bankrolling Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. Leadership’s decision was made in secret without any input from union members. Having become the largest U.S. union to call for a cease-fire just the month before, many rank-and-file members felt confused and betrayed by leadership’s announcement to support Biden at the annual UAW political conference, sparking a wave of internal dissent. Joining unionists from the National Education Association (NEA) and Communications Workers of America (CWA), UAW Labor for Palestine has called on its union leadership to rescind the nomination of Biden on the grounds that it violates solidarity with Palestinian workers.
The work needed for building a sufficiently large popular workers force is going to be massive, and I can’t speak on every decision you’ll need to make during your cadre-building efforts. Instead, I’ll summarize the most important lessons that our conditions have given us on what the path towards that success is going to entail. The opportunists within the union leadership and the main “left” organizing groups may be dominant for the time being, but the statement above proves that there’s a growing will among union workers to free the class struggle from their grip. And if we navigate our situation correctly, we’ll make the anti-opportunist elements prevail.
The first major thing for developing radicals to learn is that we can’t let the Democrats pressure us into voting blue, and thereby reinforcing the liberal imperialism’s monopoly over social movements. This has been a relatively easy thing for aspiring revolutionaries to learn, and that’s evident from how the CPUSA’s Vote Blue leadership isn’t seen as worth listening to by most U.S. communists. A great deal of these communists have gravitated to orgs besides CPUSA in part because of how easy the leadership’s liberal appeasement is to recognize. And many of the CPUSA’s own members are dissatisfied with the higher-ups for this same reason. Struggling against the most obvious liberal narratives isn’t enough, though. We don’t just need to combat the idea that one must vote blue to be a “good” Marxist; we also need to combat the idea that one must solely prioritize appealing to liberals and the “left.”
The program advanced by the PSL, the biggest alternative Marxist org to CPUSA, is effectively one of copying the Democratic Party’s rhetoric and aesthetics in a pseudo-radical way. PSL’s members are consistently instructed by the leadership to signal that they don’t want any MAGA voters in their spaces. Which alienates not just the conservatives who have proto anti-imperialist consciousness, but also the unaffiliated Americans who don’t want part in such polarizing ideological games. Because of this commitment to staying confined to the “left” activist niche, PSL hasn’t even truly grown all that much since the start of the recent pro-Palestine upsurge. And its leadership is fine with this, as PSL’s true purpose is not to build a vanguard but to monopolize and manage the protest cage.
Because of this limitation on the PSL’s capacity to grow, and its leadership’s hostility towards all real internal debate, PSL isn’t where the biggest pool of potential recruits to a mass workers force exists. (Though there are plenty of people who’ve only joined the PSL because it’s the most available organizing option to them, and who may decide to defect from it at some point.) The biggest elements of anti-imperialist left-wingers who meet the criteria for potential allies of a mass workers force—those being lack of investment in a personality cult, and disillusionment with the left opportunist leadership—instead exist within the unions and the DSA. The “left” isn’t the biggest overall element where revolutionary potential exists, with the conservative and unaffiliated elements including a much larger combined pool of revolution-compatible individuals. But there is a substantial amount of developing left-wing radicals who could become part of the effort to bring in those bigger elements.
The reason why I equate DSA members with disillusioned UAW members—even though the DSA as an org represents the anti-Marxist politics of Sanders and AOC—is because great amounts of people in the DSA’s lower ranks have been growing disillusioned in an equivalent way to how the UAW workers have. The difference is that whereas the UAW’s pro-Palestine members have been turning against their organizational leaders, the principled pro-Palestine people in DSA have additionally come into conflict with their org’s ideological leaders. As in the members of their org which exercise power not through their organizational status, but through their platforms and their positions in government. Which are especially important things in a political organization, compared to a union.
The DSA is having an internal crisis over Israel, with one Zionist Democrat politician having lamented last year how much support for Palestine exists among the org’s ranks: “The core membership of the DSA has not shown any sympathy at all for innocent victims of Hamas’ barbaric terrorism, where the adults in the room have realized that that’s not a viable path forward for any political party in the United States.” The Zionists may wish that the DSA membership could be won over by these hypocritical appeals towards pseudo-morality, but that’s simply not possible when the state these liberals support is committing crimes against humanity. And AOC, the DSA member with by far the most fame and status, has been joining in on these condemnations of the membership’s desire for serious Palestine solidarity.
AOC and the DSA’s other elected officials have engaged in performative outrage against pro-Palestine demonstrations that haven’t condemned Hamas, solidifying these officials as antagonists towards Palestine supporters both within and outside the DSA. And these are only the most publicly visible ways the DSA’s most influential members have been harming the pro-Palestine cause which their core base cares about so much. The DSA’s official leadership has been endorsing Zionists, voting down actual anti-Zionist resolutions, and even working to intimidate anti-Zionists.
The effect is that many pro-Palestine activists have split from the org, as exemplified by this statement last fall from the Palestine Working Solidarity Group: “At convention, DSA National voted against upholding anti-Zionism … It should come as no shock due to the repeated attacks our group faced within DSA that we do not believe it is a safe space for our members to organize due to repeated targeting, doxxing, leadership bans, and even the attempted expulsion of one of our founding members.” Given these attacks on the anti-colonial cause from the org’s elites, it’s probable that DSA has a large number of members who aren’t happy with their leadership, like is the case within PSL and CPUSA.
Should Marxists put in the work, we’ll bring about the best possible outcome from this situation: a scenario where these pro-Palestine union workers and DSA members unite with the orgs that exist fully outside the Democratic Party’s influence. Some of these individuals could be brought in by PSL, but a lot of them may then end up leaving it, like has happened many times over the years with people who were PSL members at one point. We have an opportunity to give the developing radicals who’ve been betrayed by their leaders a route towards advancing the working-class, anti-imperialist cause. That being to unify with the pro-Russian, mass-oriented groups which have formed an organizing coalition in response to the Ukraine proxy war. With their help, we’ll better be able to bring the broader masses into our efforts, which would break the monopoly of the opportunists.
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