What does it tell us that the president who was supposed to bring spectacular “peace” deals has fully taken the mask off of U.S. imperialism’s violence? That Iran is under likely unprecedented threat from Washington, less than a year after Trump 2.0 was pretending to be interested in de-escalation? It tells us that the anti-imperialist movement can only succeed when it’s given up all bourgeois illusions about class reconciliation, and come to base itself within the proletarian struggle. As long as our movement entertains these illusions, and acts like the material interests driving imperialist war can be neutralized through negotiations or reforms, the movement will keep failing.
When we within the empire’s heart have given up these dangerously harmful ideas, we’ll be able to take example from the struggles of the Global South, which by their nature are not as susceptible to reformist idealism. Forces like Yemen’s Ansarallah, or Palestine’s resistance, exist in contexts where the people have been forced into desperation; so the tendencies that promise reconciliation with the aggressors can’t even gain a foothold within these forces. The masses by necessity embrace the popular revolutionary struggle, as it’s their only path besides destruction.
With this perspective about what anti-imperialist struggle looks like in its raw, pure form, we see that this struggle cannot be “de-classed,” as the reformists wish could be done. Yemen did not break free from international finance capital, and get a government that represents the people’s revolutionary desires, by working out a deal with the Zionists and the imperialists. It got this far by applying a technologically updated version of Che Guevara’s guerrilla warfare strategy, which let it keep advancing in the struggle even as Washington has inflicted genocidal violence upon the country.
To win against the enemy we’re fighting, we have to adopt the mentality of those movements that are fully committed to their task of resistance, as they don’t even have the option to take a middle route of compromise. Such false paths come from the bourgeois ideologies that ignore how capitalism is inseparable from imperialism. For an example of when such ideologies have sought to mislead the people, including the class-conscious workers, William Z. Foster explained the deceptive tactics of Communist Party leader Earl Browder:
Browder’s line is a rejection of the Leninist theory of imperialism as the final stage of capitalism. Comrade Browder, in his books and speeches, paints a utopian picture of a world capitalist system, not moribund, but vigorous and progressive, especially in its American section—a world capitalist system about to enter into a period of unprecedented expansion. It is a denial of the general crisis of the capitalist system. Browder believes that under the leadership of his “enlightened” American monopolists, the imperialist ruling classes in this and other capitalist countries will peacefully and spontaneously compose their differences with each other, with the U.S.S.R., with the liberated countries of Europe, and with the colonial and semi-colonial countries, without mass struggle. This is the bourgeois liberal notion that the epoch of imperialism is past. It conflicts fundamentally with the Leninist theory of imperialism as the last stage of a decadent capitalist system.
By studying how communists have fought against the forces in their own parties that have tried to sell class reconciliation, we can gain the insights needed to solidify a real anti-imperialist position. Obviously we shouldn’t have to wait until conditions get sufficiently bad before we can struggle against bourgeois reformist ideology, and somebody is capable of discarding this ideology even if they’re bourgeois themselves; unless you’re dealing with a society like Israel’s settlers, your community and its social movements can absolutely be rallied behind the revolutionary cause. This can be done by exposing how the reformists are truly aligned with capital, and work to advance capital’s biggest projects of global violence.
The next reformist scam will be one where faux-socialists like AOC promise that the working class can prevail by electing a “progressive” president. This scam is in a way even more social chauvinist than Trump 2.0, because AOC has been critiquing Trump for not waging imperialist war hard enough; her arguments have been that Trump is enabling “authoritarianism” around the globe, and that Trump should have destroyed Venezuela’s revolutionary government. This is social fascism unmasked, and it’s exceptionally dangerous because it advocates for imperial aggression under a “socialist” brand. We can figure out how to fight against it, though, by looking at the particular way AOC’s politics take class out of the political struggle.
Social democracy is by definition a class collaborationist ideology, based within the petty-bourgeois illusions about how the workers and the capitalists can reach peace. How have this ideology’s propagators tried to uphold these illusions, though, when confronted with the paradigm-shattering horrors of Gaza? The holocaust against the Palestinians proves that U.S. imperialism is limitlessly violent, and not interested in compromise; so to maintain their pro-capitalist position while posturing as pro-Palestine, the social fascists have portrayed their imperialist welfare state model as being compatible with a free Palestine. Which depends on the notion that Zionism's “progressive” wing, represented by pro-socdem PACs like J Street, genuinely desires equality.
When these faux Palestine allies employ this deceptive tactic, they utilize the parts of the Palestinian diaspora which share such a “soft” Zionist mindset. The J Street wing of Zionism is aligned with the Palestinian Authority, the Zionist puppet regime that denounces Hamas for not taking the “peaceful” path. The PA, with its bourgeois version of Palestinian politics, is what provides legitimacy to the social fascists who oppose the resistance from a “pro-Palestine” angle. And the resistance has had to reckon with this class contradiction inside Palestinian society; concluded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at its 1969 Congress:
It is the workers and peasants who today fill the miserable camps in which most Palestinians live. When we refer to the camps, we in reality refer to a class situation representing the workers, peasants and the destitute sections of the petit bourgeoisie of the Palestinian people. Here lie the forces of revolution... the forces of change. Here we find real preparation for long years of fighting. Here are the particular daily living conditions which drive people on to fight and die because the difference between death and life under such conditions is not much. It is by starting from this objectivity that we are able to define the distinguishing mark between our people’s unsuccessful struggle during the past fifty years and this new stage of our struggle, to draw a line of demarcation between clarity and vagueness, and to determine the great difference between a revolutionary march ending in victory and a hesitant, unsteady march ending in failure. When we have addressed ourselves to the workers and peasants – the inhabitants of camps, villages and poor urban districts-and armed them with political awareness, organisation and fighting means, we shall have created the firm material foundation for a historical liberation revolution. It is the rise of such a solid revolutionary backbone that will enable us to conclude class alliances to benefit the revolution without exposing it to vacillation, deviation or defeat.
It is such vagueness, vagueness about the question of class, that’s holding back so many fronts in the global anti-imperialist struggle. You cannot prevent or defend against the wars of capital while ignoring the class forces at the heart of every aspect in this conflict. The Palestinian liberation movement needed to reckon with class in order to build a fighting force which knows where its class allies are; this is one of the critical lessons we must take from the Global South’s struggles. It’s how we can defeat the bourgeois reformists within the antiwar movement and the socialist movement, reorienting our practice to where it can effectively fight global finance capital. Then we will be able to act in tandem with the forces that are most successfully resisting Washington’s murder campaign.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment