There is a clear contrast between how the communist parties which hold actual power have responded to the recent geopolitical shifts; and how the compromised “communist” parties have done so. Many of the globe’s “communist” formations denounced Russia’s Ukraine operation; yet what all of these formations have in common is that the bourgeoisie don’t truly view them as a threat. They’ve either been parties that hold zero state authority; have functionally taken on the role of social democratic parties, like the “communist” parties of France and Japan; or have engaged in a retreat from Marxism that’s wasted their momentum, like Greece’s KKE. There’s a reason why the ruling Marxist-Leninist parties have either endorsed the operation (like Korea’s WPK has), or pointedly declined to denounce it while materially backing Russia (like China’s CPC has). It’s because victory depends on properly adapting to the reality of the multipolar world, and these parties are aware of this due to the experience which power has given them.
Now that our third world war has expanded, and West Asia is at least as big of a battleground as eastern Europe, the multipolar question is affecting how different communists respond to Zionism’s genocide. The rule is that the same ones who refused to embrace NATO’s Ukraine narratives are the ones who’ve acted principled on Palestine; who’ve fought against the regime change project in Syria, which has let the genocide to expand and accelerate. And essentially everybody who denounced Russia from a “Marxist” angle has promoted the anti-Assad psyops that let Washington destroy secular Syria. This places them on the opposite side of many on the “right,” including the large parts of the MAGA base which haven’t liked the wars against Syria and Russia.
It’s the same phenomenon that’s come about during many other imperialist wars: a certain element of “communists” side with the imperialists, while certain conservatives and patriots speak up against the war effort. It defies what the political divide is supposed to look like, yet it’s kept happening. When Ukraine made it happen again at a crucial juncture, the big lesson I took away was that any real anti-imperialist united front is not based within the left; far too much of the left is imperialism-aligned, while so many outside the left are increasingly hostile towards the war machine. It’s still true that we need such an anti war alliance which transcends the conventional ideological divides. Since October 7, though, history has provided us with a gargantuan amount of new information. Information about what the multipolar era truly means, and who we can expect to align with the revolutionary side in this geopolitical conflict.
With Operation Z, Al Aqsa Flood, and the other recent blows against the hegemon, the anti-imperialist side has gained a series of strategic victories; the problem we’re now facing is that when the enemy has struck back, it’s been able to find too many vulnerable targets. By assassinating ever-more hardline Iranian leaders, Washington and the Zionist entity have given the country’s liberal reformers an opportunity to gain major influence. This has let them obstruct Khamenei’s efforts to fight the enemy, weakening the Axis of Resistance on all fronts. That was the first big structural weak point the hegemon took advantage of. Next it exploited the Syrian government’s lack of willingness to accept help from Iran, as well as the corrupt and disloyal character of many Syrian military officials.
With Iran’s growing internal interference from liberals, Washington saw an opening. It saw that for the first time in the thirteen years of its latest war against Syria, those who stood against it were now experiencing unprecedented issues. The empire knew that if it went on the offensive now, it would have a real chance of overthrowing Assad; which meant that the “Israeli” Nazi state could now agree to a “ceasefire” in Lebanon, while expecting Hezbollah to soon lose an important ally. This is why “Israel” immediately began to violate the so-called ceasefire: it expects that Iran can no longer get a substantial amount of weapons into Lebanon, and must now rely on sea shipments to transport the arms.
This belief is actually mistaken, and our enemies have admitted as such; Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has warned his fellow imperial strategists that “Although the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime is certainly encouraging, this does not mean its former patron Iran will simply give up on using Syria as a corridor for reconstituting Hezbollah next door in Lebanon. Quite the opposite: Iranian arms smuggling has historically thrived in collapsed or weak state environments.” Therefore, the thing that could truly prevent a sufficient response towards the enemy’s aggressions is not a logistical obstacle. The real threat is a lack of adequate proletarian power.
If the interests of Iran’s workers don’t drive what the country does next, then such a weapons smuggling operation won’t take place, because the anti-imperialist faction will be prevented from carrying it out. There is a real risk that the liberal interference will reach this level, because it’s already created comparable catastrophes; it was because of Iran’s reformers, with their false promises of a Lebanon ceasefire, that Nasrallah got assassinated.
The solution is not to turn against the anti-imperialist states; the anti-imperialists within Iran’s government still need our solidarity, and we can’t abandon them any more than we can abandon the Russians who brought about Operation Z. The answer is also not to oppose multipolarity, whatever that means; multipolarity is simply our reality at this moment, and opinions can’t change this. What we must do is adapt our practice to the conflicts which multipolarity entails. The multipolar era is an era of heightened warfare, where both the progressive and reactionary sides intensify their offensive actions; whether the progressive side wins depends on how well we can engage with this reality. And that goes for anti-imperialists in every part of the globe, including my home the United States.
As somebody who lives in the empire’s heart, I’m acutely aware of how the anti-imperialist struggles in places like Iran or Syria are not my primary business. My primary business is the struggle between the ruling class and proletariat in the USA; which is also one of multipolarity’s wars. Our ruling class is waging a counterinsurgency that’s still only in its early stages, and that’s going to accelerate with these latest global escalations. The USA’s war on dissent has come to center around the crackdown on the pro-Palestine movement, and now that Syria’s fall has let the genocide accelerate, the state will react massively to whatever solidarity actions we take next.
The U.S. empire’s acts of terrorism abroad, and attempts to terrorize the people here, are part of the same effort to turn back history; to return capitalism to the stability which it had before multipolarity came about. We within the USA’s anti-imperialist movement will do our part to achieve victory, and ensure that a revolutionary organizational force survives the next attacks. Then we’ll be able to keep making connections with the country’s masses, and strike the enemy from within.
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