Is Marxism "Leftist"?

By Kate Woolford

Republished from Challenge Magazine.

A Marxist approach to leftist moralism

Many self-styled communists view Marxism-Leninism more as a set of moral and ethical values than a science firmly grounded in material reality. To them, Marxism is the ultimate embodiment of liberal and ‘progressive’ values, while those with more conservative values are nothing more than ‘chauvinists’ who should be excluded from the cause. 

However, this moral interpretation of Marxism is inconsistent with Marx’s own understanding, which asserts that the driving force behind human society is contradictions between classes, rather than a moral dichotomy of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’. In this respect, Marx did not abstract capitalism outside of its historical context but instead showed that it could be both historically progressive and regressive depending on its stage of development. Within its early stages, the progressive nature of capitalism is tied up with its need to constantly revolutionise the instruments of production, the relations of production, and therefore also the whole relations of society. This, in turn, replaces the scattered, less-effective feudal mode of production with capitalist production and allows production to be carried out at an unprecedented scale. Nevertheless, as capitalism matures, and the proletariat grows into a fully developed class concentrated together in huge numbers, a contradiction arises between the social process of production and the private ownership of production. 

The contradictions inherent within capitalism are demonstrated through recurrent crises, during which huge amounts of goods and machinery are needlessly destroyed and wasted. Capitalism’s incompatibility with the future development of society can only result in a revolution led by the class capable of bringing about a higher mode of production, that is, the modern working class. Therefore, the inevitability of the socialist revolution is not tied up in capitalism’s moral shortcomings, but on the objective laws governing the development of human society. 

In a similar vein, Engels criticised, “every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate, and forever immutable moral law on the pretext that the moral world too has its permanent principles which transcend history and the differences between nations”, and disapproved of a theory of morals “designed to suit all periods, all peoples, and all conditions” arguing that “precisely for that reason it is never and nowhere applicable.” Both Marx and Engels upheld that the communist movement unified workers based on the material conditions of their life; their nation, their workplace, and their commonly experienced exploitation as proletarians, not on the basis of a shared set of moral values.

Therefore, those within the communist movement who uphold their personal morals as eternally and indisputably correct, or, even worse, seek to elevate their personal morals to the position of communist morals in general, clearly do not view morals in a materialist way. Nor do they approach it in an anti-imperialist way, with notions of moral superiority giving way to imperialist interventions on the countries alleged to be morally inferior, often on the basis of their cultural and religious values.

What is Marxism?

Marx understood that changes in society, like changes in the natural world, are far from accidental and follow certain laws. This understanding made it possible to work out a scientific theory of human society; to study why it is the way it is, why it changes, and what changes are to come. The scientific method of Marxism, dialectical materialism, regards the world as both a living organism in a state of constant development and composed of matter existing beyond human perception. 

Like all sciences, Marxism is based on the material world around us. Therefore, it is not a finished theory or a dogma, but must be continuously applied to new conditions, new problems, and new discoveries to draw from them the correct conclusions. The value of Marxism lies in its ability to form conclusions capable of changing the world, just as all scientific discoveries can be used to change the world. 

Defining Left and Right 

While Marxism historically belongs to the definite left tradition, that is, it finds much of its origins in the Jacobin radical left of the French Revolution, today’s leftism is understood more as an indefinite set of moral values than a clearly defined ideology. 

Delineating what values belong to the left and what values belong to the right is a challenging task given that these terms mean different things within different contexts. One study found that conservatism can be associated with a left-wing or right-wing orientation depending on the cultural, political, and economic situation of the society in question. Another study found that, within the former Soviet republics, “traditionalism, rule-following, and needs for security are more strongly associated with the old (left-wing) ways of doing things than with right-wing preferences. It is also possible that openness would be associated with a right-wing political orientation in Eastern Europe, rather than with a left-wing orientation, as in the West.” In other words, in the former Soviet republics, the Soviet Union is often associated with values the West considers to be right-wing. 

In this respect, understandings of left and right are subjective and vary widely depending on time and place. Therefore, it is important to clarify that this article will be considering values associated with modern “leftism” in the West today. The cultural values considered in this article are liberation through love, openness, and equal rights, and the policy matters considered are equality, government intervention, and high taxes. 

Love and inclusivity

Notions of love as an all-liberating force find popularity among leftists, an outlook prevalent among 18th and 19th-century philosophers and revitalised during the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 70s. Engels, however, criticised the “religion of love” and, in the End of Classical German Philosophy, denounced Feuerbach’s idea that mankind could be liberated through love alone instead of the economic transformation of production. To Engels, the idea that love could function as a reconciling force for all differences “regardless of distinctions of sex or estate” had no plausibility. 

Despite what leftists proclaim, the act of loving one another, including beyond traditional boundaries, does not inherently constitute a revolutionary act. Engels reinforced this idea in On the History of Early Christianity, which disapproved of the pacification of Early Christianity and its transformation from a revolutionary, working-class religion of “undiluted revenge” into a petit-bourgeois religion of “love your enemies, bless them that curse you.”

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The same principles Engels applied to the “religion of love” can be applied to the leftist values of openness and inclusivity. The proponents of these ideas suggest that the working class should be accepting and accommodating to the ideas, values, traditions, and mindsets of everyone, including the class exploiting them. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels deemed this position as belonging to the “socialistic bourgeoisie,” and criticised the belief “that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.” Therefore, Marxism has little to do with absolute ‘inclusivity’ and notions of ‘liberation through love’, making it distinct from the leftist counterculture movement borne out of the 1960s and 70s. 

Equal rights

One of the most misunderstood aspects of Marxism is its stance on the concept of equal rights. Despite the prevalent use of ‘equal rights’ as a leftist buzzword, Marx’s work, the End of Classical German Philosophy, outlines that, within bourgeois society, equal rights are, in fact, formally recognised. However, social satisfaction does not depend upon equal rights but material rights – and “capitalist production takes care to ensure that the great majority of those with equal rights shall get only what is essential for bare existence.” In this respect, if the interests of classes in conflict are irreconcilable, the material rights of one class impede on the material rights of another. Therefore, better conditions are not brought about through platitudes of equal rights, but through material rights and the abolition of classes. In Anti-Dühring, Engels traced the origins of the demand for “equal rights” to the bourgeoisie’s struggle against feudalism. During this period, the bourgeoisie called for the abolition of “class privileges” and the proletariat demanded the abolition of classes themselves. 

Furthermore, while leftists uphold equal rights on the basis that all people, by virtue of being human, should be treated the same, Marxism recognises that, within class society, individuals do not relate to each other solely as humans but also as members of a class. In this respect, during the epoch of capitalism, the bourgeoisie uses the state apparatus to suppress the working class. Likewise, during the epoch of socialism, the new state apparatus is used by the working class to suppress the bourgeoisie. 

Moreover, socialism and communism does not seek to enforce complete equality in the everyday life of members of society regardless of how driven and hardworking one might be compared to another. As per Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.” Thus, Communism allows for individuals to enrich themselves over others, so long as this enrichment does not come at anyone else’s expense. Therefore, it is a widespread misconception that hard works reaps no reward under socialism and communism – in fact, hard work can only truly be rewarded under socialism and communism.

The state and taxes

Another policy often associated with leftists is ‘big government’, that is, that the government should play a more active role within society. However, as Marx and Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto, as the proletariat raises itself to the position of ruling class, it sweeps away the conditions of class antagonisms and classes generally, abolishing its own supremacy as a class. At this stage, the state, which functions as an organ of class domination, becomes obsolete as classes do not exist. Consequently, communism does not necessarily involve government intervention into the personal lives of members of society. While the early stage of socialism requires a strong state to centralise production and defend the gains of the revolution, as socialism develops, the state is increasingly stripped back.

In practice, efforts to shift power away from the state into the hands of the people is reflected within Mao Zedong’s little red book, which was published and distributed with the aim of strengthening the peoples understand of Marxism, thus empowering them as the real movement in charge of building a communist society – bottom up, not top down.  

Leftists also often advocate for high taxation as the grand solution to all domestic problem without realising, however, that the scale and direction of taxation is determined first and foremost by the class characteristic of the state. 

Under capitalism, the state serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, and is parasitic in that it sustains a superfluous class of individuals who do not produce material value for society such as the bourgeois police; the military; the whole judicial apparatus; members of parliament, who get paid disproportionately high salaries; etc. Additionally, the state revenue necessary for war and overseas military bases is generated through taxing the working class, while monopolies pile up war profits. Only a fraction of revenue is allocated to production, and to things like the maintenance of roads, railways, buildings, hospitals, schools, etc. 

On the other hand, under socialism, the state serves the interests of the working class and functions mainly to administer economic life. The socialist state is concerned with the production and distribution of goods, the advancement of the wellbeing of working people, and the maintenance of a limited military apparatus to protect the gains of the revolution. 

In the Civil War in France, Marx described the Paris Commune as having made the “catchword of bourgeois revolutions – cheap government – a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and state functionalism.” The ‘cheap government’ of socialism is financed partly through state owned industry and trade, money which would overwise be retained as private profit under capitalism, and partly through taxation. However, as the state becomes stripped back to the minimum of its functions, taxation is still considerably low as there is no superfluous, parasitic class living off the state as there is under capitalism. 

Furthermore, in the Critique of the Gotha programme, Marx stated that “taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of nothing else.” Therefore, as socialist society progresses towards communism and the state, along with its government machinery, gradually withers away, high taxes cease to have an economic basis. For example, no great war machinery is necessary under communism as the international community has a shared future with common interests. In this respect, while a heavy income tax serves as a progressive demand within capitalist society, socialism and communism eventually leads to a society free from the burden of high taxes on working people. 

As the writings of Marx and Engels do not align with, or go beyond, many leftist cultural and economic values, the idea that Marxism is a leftist ideology in the popular understanding of the term should, at the very least, be questioned. Marxism should instead be upheld by communists as a scientific method of analysis existing outside of the political spectrum.

Kate Woolford is the editor of Challenge.

Muslim and Arab-American Voters Show Black People How to Exercise Political Power

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

Black voters feel trapped in the duopoly but other groups are giving a master class in political courage. The Abandon Biden campaign shows the way.

Face the Nation Host Margaret Brennan: Thasin, you did change your mind on the president. Why?
Thasin: I was a champion for Joe Biden until October 7. I feel he disowned us, disenfranchised us, with his stance on Gaza.
Brennan: What do you mean by that?
Thasin: He’s not listening to us. We’re asking for a cease fire at this time. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Too many lives have been lost at this time. I was never a single issue voter and in fact I used to argue with people not to be single issue voters but for me this is a deal breaker. Way too many lives have been lost. 
Brennan: When you say “us” you’re Muslim, is that what you mean? You think the Muslim community here feels as you do?
Thasin: Yes. I think the vast majority of Muslims, Arab-Americans, progressives, I identify myself as a progressive, and many people I talk to in my circles are not going to be voting for Joe Biden.

- Michigan Voter Focus Group on CBS news program, Face the Nation

Historically, Black people in this country have allowed themselves to feel trapped by the racialized political duopoly. A feature of U.S. politics is to allow only two parties to play a decisive role in elections and for one of them to be designated as the white people’s party and the other as the Black party. 

Beginning after the civil war and until the 1960s, the democrats were the party of the segregated south, and thus the party for white people generally. Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, became the de facto preference for Black people despite their willingness to shove Black interests under the bus when they felt the need to placate white voters. 

In 1872 Frederick Douglass spoke at the National Convention of the Colored People and famously spoke these words. “For colored men the Republican party is the deck, all outside is the sea.” Douglass and other Black people counseled continued support for the republicans, even when they made deals to withdraw federal troops from the south, or refused to codify the Civil Rights Act of 1875 into law after the Supreme Court declared it to be unconstitutional. 

Democrats were the party of the confederacy and thus could not be countenanced under any circumstance, even republican betrayals.

This dynamic played out for the next 100 years when the two teams made a switch which lasts until today. The last time a majority of white people supported a democrat in a presidential election was 1964. Ever since that time they have given a majority of their votes to republicans and Black people have done likewise with the democrats. 

Unfortunately the role that Black political action played in forcing democrat Lyndon Johnson to advocate for and sign the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act of 1964 into law have been forgotten. Black people won legislative victory through their own efforts in creating a mass movement and a political crisis that brought about change. This era has been fetishized, without any understanding of its real importance and meaning. The truth has been turned on its head, and we are taught that Black people owe loyalty to democrats, when that party should reward loyalty with policies that Black people want to see enacted.

But every group in the country has not been cowed. Voters who identify as Muslims or who have Middle Eastern ancestry have put Joe Biden on notice that his aiding and abetting of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza will cost him politically. Michigan has the largest Arab-American community of any state and plays a pivotal role in presidential elections. Democrats take great care to mobilize voters in this key “swing” state. Hillary Clinton’s failure to do so in 2016 resulted in Donald Trump’s victory there by a small margin of 13,000 votes and he prevailed in the Electoral College when Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were also neglected by the democrats and flipped to the republican column. 

Joe Biden won in Michigan in 2020 by a 154,000 vote margin in a state where 200,000 registered voters identify as Muslim and 300,000 claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa. Michigan is not the only state Biden won by a small margin thanks to Arab and Muslim voters. In Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, and Wisconsin he also owed his victory in part to members of this community.

A group of Muslim leaders in swing states are rightly using their electoral power with the #AbandonBiden campaign. They are not so frightened of a Trump presidency that they have allowed themselves to vote for the man who through his proxy Israel has killed some 24,000 people in Gaza and despite phony claims of “working behind the scenes” shows no inclination to change policy and save lives.

It is true that these communities do not share Black people’s history of enslavement and Jim Crow segregation. As such they have a greater willingness to show independence but there are lessons here for Black people in how to exercise their power.

Joe Biden and every democrat elected in the last 60 years owes his presidency to Black voters. The same is true of politicians in city halls, state legislatures, and in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Black people have political muscle but through a combination of misleadership chicanery and ignorance of the right lessons of history, act as supplicants instead of as political players.  

Arab-Americans have not forgotten Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, when citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen were barred from entering the country. Yet they do not act fearfully despite the fact that Trump is again a candidate for the office he once held and pledges to bring back the ban and even to deport people who protest U.S. policy towards Palestine.

Fortunately the #AbandonBiden campaign has shown no signs of letting up because its leadership knows how to get results and because they refuse to disrespect themselves and their people by rewarding a genocidaire with another term in the white house. How much could Black people achieve with similar determination?

In 2024 and beyond, the words “but Trump” should lose their power. How much has Biden done for Black people in the last three years? The covid era programs of small stimulus payments and the Child Tax Credit are over. Millions of people eligible for Medicaid and SNAP food benefits have been kicked off the rolls in many states with no intervention from the federal government. The pardon for federal marijuana convictions freed no one from jail. Police continue their killing spree with more than 1,300 victims in 2023. Mass incarceration continues as 1 million Black people are locked up, more than anywhere else in the world with the help of the most draconian sentences in the world. Of course Senator Joe Biden bragged about his role in the Clinton era Crime Bill which put so many Black people behind bars. There was good reason not to vote for him in 2020.

As it seems Black people have forgotten how to demonstrate political power, perhaps lessons from other groups are a means of regaining what has been lost. Black people can abandon Biden too, along with all of the democrats who owe their elected office to a group of people they routinely ignore or use for “dog whistle” politics appealing to white voters. 

Donald Trump is not the biggest enemy, he is just the loudest and the least refined. Abandoning Biden and his minions can be a reality which may produce some worthy result. Feeling trapped by the duopoly has been and continues to be a losing proposition.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter , Bluesky , and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com

Study, Fast, Train, Fight: The Roots of Black August

By Joe Tache

Republished from Liberation School.

In August 1619, enslaved Africans touched foot in the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States. The centuries since witnessed the development of a racial system more violent, extractive, and deeply entrenched than any other in human history. Yet where there is oppression, there is resistance. Since 1619, Black radicals and revolutionaries have taken bold collective action in pursuit of their freedom, threatening the fragile foundations of exploitation upon which the United States is built. These heroic struggles have won tremendous victories, but they have also produced martyrs—heroes who have been imprisoned and killed because of their efforts to transform society.

“Black August” is honored every year to commemorate the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement, to call for the release of political prisoners in the United States, to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons, and to emphasize the continued importance of the Black Liberation struggle. Observers of Black August commit to higher levels of discipline throughout the month. This can include fasting from food and drink, frequent physical exercise and political study, and engagement in political struggle. In short, the principles of Black August are: “study, fast, train, fight.”

George Jackson and the origins of Black August

George Jackson was a Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party while he was incarcerated in San Quentin Prison in California. Jackson was an influential revolutionary and his assassination at the hands of a San Quentin prison guard was one of the primary catalysts for the inception of Black August.

A 19-year-old convicted of armed robbery, in 1961 George Jackson was sentenced to a prison term of “1-to-life,” meaning prison administrators had complete and arbitrary control over the length of his sentence. He never lived outside of a prison again, spending the next 11 years locked up (seven and a half years of those in solitary confinement). In those 11 years—despite living in an environment of extreme racism, repression, and state control—George Jackson’s political fire was ignited, and he became an inspiration to the other revolutionaries of his generation.

Jackson was first exposed to radical politics by fellow inmate W.L. Nolen. With Nolen’s guidance, Jackson studied the works of many revolutionaries, including Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Frantz Fanon. Nolen, Jackson, and other  prisoners dedicated themselves to raising political consciousness among the prisoners and to organizing their peers in the California prison system. They led study sessions on radical philosophy and convened groups like the Third World Coalition and started the San Quentin Prison chapter of the Black Panther Party. Jackson even published two widely read books while incarcerated: Soledad Brother and Blood in My Eye.

Unfortunately, if predictably, these radical organizers soon found themselves in the cross-hairs of the California prison establishment. In 1970, W.L. Nolen—who had been transferred to Soledad prison and planned to file a lawsuit against its superintendent—was assassinated by a prison guard. Days later, George Jackson (also now in Soledad Prison) and fellow radical prisoners Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette were accused of killing a different prison guard in retaliation for Nolen’s death. The three were put on trial and became known as the Soledad Brothers.

That year, when it was clear that George Jackson would likely never be released from prison, his 17-year-old brother Jonathan Jackson staged an armed attack on the Marin County Courthouse to demand the Soledad Brothers’ immediate release. Jonathan Jackson enlisted the help of three additional prisoners—James McClain, William Christmas, and Ruchell Magee—during the offensive. Jonathan Jackson, McClain, and Christmas were all killed, while Magee was shot and re-arrested. Ruchell Magee, now 80 years old, is currently one of the longest held political prisoners in the world.

On August 21, 1971, just over a year after the courthouse incident, a prison guard assassinated George Jackson. The facts regarding his death are disputed. Prison authorities alleged that Jackson smuggled a gun into the prison and was killed while attempting to escape. On the other hand, literary giant James Baldwin wrote, “no Black person will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did.”

While the particular circumstances of Jackson’s death will likely forever remain contested, two facts are clear: his death was ultimately a political assassination, and his revolutionary imprint can’t be extinguished. Through the efforts and sacrifice of George and Jonathan Jackson, Nolen, McClain, Christmas, Magee and countless other revolutionaries, the 1970s became a decade of widespread organizing and political struggle within prisons. Prisoners demanded an end to racist and violent treatment at the hands of prison guards, better living conditions, and increased access to education and adequate medical care. Tactics in these campaigns included lawsuits, strikes, and mass rebellions. The most notable example may be the Attica Prison rebellion, which occurred in New York State just weeks after George Jackson was murdered. In protest of the dehumanizing conditions they were subjected to, about 1,500 Attica Prison inmates released a manifesto with their demands and seized control of the prison for four days, beginning on September 9, 1971. Under orders from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, law enforcement authorities stormed Attica on September 12 and killed at least 29 incarcerated individuals. None of the prisoners had guns.

This is the context out of which Black August was born in 1979. It was first celebrated in California’s San Quentin prison, where George Jackson, W.L. Nolen, James McClain, Willam Christmas and Ruchell Magee were all once held. The first Black August commemorated the previous decade of courageous prison struggle, as well as the centuries of Black resistance that preceded and accompanied it.

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Political prisoners and the prison struggle

Observers of Black August call for the immediate release of all political prisoners in the United States. That the US government even holds political prisoners is a fact they attempt to obscure and deny. In reality, dozens of radicals from organizations such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, the American Indian Movement, and MOVE have been imprisoned for decades as a result of their political activity. As Angela Davis, who was at one time the most high profile political prisoner in the US, explains:

“There is a distinct and qualitative difference between one breaking a law for one’s own individual self-interest and violating it in the interests of a class of people whose oppression is expressed either directly or indirectly through that particular law. The former might be called criminal (though in many instances he is a victim), but the latter, as a reformist or revolutionary, is interested in universal social change. Captured, he or she is a political prisoner… In this country, however, where the special category of political prisoners is not officially acknowledged, the political prisoner inevitably stands trial for a specific criminal offense, not for a political act… In all instances, however, the political prisoner has violated the unwritten law which prohibits disturbances and upheavals in the status quo of exploitation and racism.”

Prisons in the United States are a form of social control which serve to maintain the status quo of oppression. Over the last few decades, prisons have become an increasingly important tool for the US ruling class. Prisons not only quarantine revolutionaries, but also those segments of the population who have become increasingly expendable to the capitalist system as globalized production, deindustrialization, and technological automation decrease the overall need for labor-power. These shifts, which began in earnest in the 1970s, have hit Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities the hardest, as exemplified by the sky high unemployment and incarceration rates those communities face. These groups are also historically the most prone to rebellion. Angela Davis noted in 1971 that as a result of these trends, “prisoners—especially Blacks, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans—are increasingly advancing the proposition that they are political prisoners. They contend that they are political prisoners in the sense that they are largely the victims of an oppressive politico-economic order.”

Though that definition of political prisoner is unorthodox, it illustrates the political and economic nature of criminalization. This is why observers of Black August connect the fight to free “revolutionary” political prisoners to the broader struggle against US prisons. Mass incarceration is a symptom of the same system that political prisoners have dedicated their lives towards fighting.

As increasing numbers of the US working class are “lumpenized,” or pushed out of the formal economy and stable employment, the potential significance of political struggle among the unemployed and incarcerated increases. George Jackson wrote in Blood in My Eye that “prisoners must be reached and made to understand that they are victims of social injustice. This is my task working from within. The sheer numbers of the prisoner class and the terms of their existence make them a mighty reservoir of revolutionary potential.”

George Jackson’s own journey is a perfect example of that revolutionary potential. Jackson didn’t arrive in prison a ready-made revolutionary. He had a history of petty crime and was apolitical during his first years in prison. He would have been dismissed by many people in our society as a “thug.” But comrades who knew that he held the potential inherent in every human being found him and took him in. They helped him understand his personal experiences within the context of capitalism and white supremacy. In turn, George Jackson dedicated his life to doing the same for others incarcerated individuals.

Black August today

August, more than any other month, has historically carried the weight of the Black Liberation struggle. Of course, enslaved Africans were first brought to British North America in August 1619. Just over 200 years later, in August 1831, Nat Turner led the most well-known rebellion of enslaved people in US history. This historical significance carried into the 20th century, when both the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the Watts Rebellion—an explosive uprising against racist policing in Los Angeles—occurred in August during the 1960s.

Even today, the month remains significant in the struggle. John Crawford, Michael Brown, and Korryn Gaines were three Black Americans who were murdered in high-profile cases of police brutality; Crawford and Brown in August 2014, and Gaines in August 2016. Their deaths have been part of the impetus for a revived national movement against racist police brutality. Finally, on August 21, 2018, the 47 year anniversary of George Jackson’s death, thousands of U.S. prisoners launched a national prison strike. They engaged in work stoppages, hunger strikes, and other forms of protests. The strike lasted until September 9, 47 years after the Attica Prison Uprising began. Like the Attica prisoners, the 2018 prison strike organizers put forth a comprehensive list of demands that exposed the oppression inherent to the U.S. prison system, and laid out a framework to improve their conditions.

Each of these historical and contemporary events reveal a truth that the Black radical tradition has always recognized: there can be no freedom for the masses of Black people within the white supremacist capitalist system. The fight for liberation is just that: a fight. Since its inception in San Quentin, Black August has been an indispensable part of that fight.

In the current political moment, when some misleaders would have us bury the radical nature of Black resistance and instead prop up reformist politics that glorify celebrity, wealth, and assimilation into the capitalist system, Black August is as important as ever. It connects Black people to our history and serves as a reminder that our liberation doesn’t lie in the hands of Black billionaires, Black police officers, or Black Democratic Party officials. Those “Black faces in high places” simply place a friendly face on the system that oppresses the masses of Black people in the United States and around the world, often distorting symbols of Black resistance along the way. Black liberation lies, as it always has, in the hands of the conscious and organized masses. Study, train, fight, and in the words of George Jackson, “discover your humanity and your love of revolution.”

The Political Tragedy of Capitalist Rule

By Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy

Republished from Monthly Review.

Toward the end of his life, Engels wrote: “It is a peculiarity of the bourgeoisie, distinguishing it from all other ruling classes, that there is a turning point in its development after which every increase in its means of power, that is in the first place every increase in its capital, only tends to make it more and more incapable of ruling politically.” Whatever may have been the validity of this statement a hundred years ago (Engels died in 1895), there can be no doubt that it applies with uncanny accuracy to the world of the late twentieth century.

Society is made up of parts that work together, sometimes more and sometimes less successfully, to produce its livelihood and reproduce itself. The master insight of Marxism is that during that period of human history that has been recorded (some four millennia) the decisive parts have been classes, one dominant and exploitative, the other dominated and productive. For most of this period both parts have been necessary: the brains above, the brawn below. They have also been in continuous conflict over the division of their joint product. The vision of Marxism has been that with increases in human knowledge and growth in the productivity of human labor, the necessity for this split tends to disappear. Brains and brawn tend to come together in the far more numerous productive class. From being a struggle over the division of a joint product, the conflict between the classes becomes increasingly concerned about what will be produced and for what ends. Making these decisions is surely what Engels had in mind when he spoke of “ruling politically.”

Successful political rule in a class society is far from being guaranteed. It involves on the part of the ruling class not only effective protection for its own power but also an understanding of the design of the system as a whole and action to see that the essential parts are maintained in working order and able to perform their respective functions. If a ruling class acquires a monopoly of power and used it exclusively for its own advantage, the result will be certain disaster. The historical record is replete with such tragedies. What is required for successful political rule, therefore, is either wisdom and self-restraint or counter-pressure from a non-ruling but powerful class or alliance of classes. Whatever may have been true of earlier times, it is pretty clear that no modern capitalist ruling class has ever been blessed with wisdom or self-restraint, from which it follows that such successes as may have been achieved in the way of political rule are the result of effective counter-pressure from other classes.

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Many examples, we believe, could be cited in support of this conclusion. One of the best and probably the most famous is the story as told by Marx in Volume 1 of Capital of how bourgeois governments in England, protesting and screaming all the way, finally came during a centuries-long struggle to accept the necessity of a comprehensive regime of labor legislation (prohibition of child labor, conditions of work, length of the working day, etc.). Similar stories could be, indeed have been, told about most of the other developed capitalist countries, including the United States. As for the underdeveloped capitalist countries of the world, most of them, sadly, have little or nothing in the way of successful political rule to boast of.

What has all of this, you may ask, to do with our opening quotation from Engels? His contention, you will recall, was that there is a point in the development of capitalist power after which its capacity for political rule declines. Our contention is that history has proved him absolutely right.

The last two decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the amount and power of capital on a global scale. Common sense tells us that capital has never been in a better position to rule politically, i.e., to do the things that need to be done for society to function reasonably effectively and with a minimum of destructive conflict and disturbance. In reality, of course, nothing of this kind has happened. Instead, capital has used its power exclusively in its own interest, and in doing so has set the world on the road to the disaster history should have taught us to expect.

What should we learn from this experience? First and foremost, that as the second millennium and the twentieth century draw to a close, capital has totally lost its capacity for political rule. Now more than ever what is needed is organized, militant struggle to check and reverse capital’s onslaught on the earning power and living standards of the world’s working and oppressed classes and on the natural environment that is the indispensable foundation for civilized life on an already endangered planet. And the final lesson surely is that success in this struggle must eventually lead to the definitive overthrow of the rule of capital.

Cornel West, the Pitfalls of Bourgeois Politics, and Forging a New Future Among the Rubble

By Colin Jenkins

On Monday, June 5th, Dr. Cornel West announced his bid to run for the presidency of the United States in 2024. Coming on the heels of two such runs by Bernie Sanders, as well as current runs by Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy, Jr. West is seeking to fill what many view as a “progressive” void on the grandest electoral stage. However, in contrast to the other three, West, a longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), will shun the Democratic Party and run on a third-party ticket under the People’s Party.

West’s announcement came via his Twitter account, where he has one million followers, and has amassed over 18 million views, 47k likes, and 18k shares in a few days. The announcement coincided with an interview on Russell Brand’s Rumble livestream, Stay Free, and sparked a flurry of mainstream news reports over the last few days.

As the buzz continues to gain momentum, we should ask ourselves a few questions. What does this candidacy mean for working-class politics? Considering the recent betrayals by Bernie Sanders, can we expect anything different from West? Can any significant change come from participating in bourgeois elections? And, finally, should working-class people invest our time, energy, and resources to support West?

What does this mean for working-class politics?

While West’s candidacy could properly be described as the most potentially-overt, working-class (aka anti-capitalist, left-wing) endeavor we have seen on this stage since perhaps the 1960s, it remains to be seen how far he is willing to go. Outside of the Green Party, which has made strides to fill this void in recent years by including explicitly anti-capitalist wording in its national platform and running candidates such as Ajamu Baraka, there is no actual, organized, mainstream left in the United States. Socialist parties that are grounded in working-class emancipation exist, but they are typically small, fragmented, at constant war with one another, and subjected to mainstream censorship. The Green Party itself falls into the same traps, is scattered and unorganized due to a lack of resources, and has been chronically hamstrung by the capitalist duopoly’s (Democrats and Republicans) increasingly difficult standards for getting on ballots.

A major problem for authentic working-class politics in the US is the widespread misconception that Democrats and liberals are, in fact, “left wing.” This is an ahistorical belief that is ignorant to the formation, and subsequent historical developments, of political ideology. It is also an issue that has been historically unique to the US, as an international powerhouse birthed from the fascistic wombs of Native Genocide and chattel slavery and maintained by fascist tendencies embedded within the utter dominance of capital (the wealthy minority) over labor (the working majority). It goes without saying that the US government, in serving global capital, has thrived on exploiting not only much of the world, especially the Global South, vis-à-vis colonialism and imperialism, but also much of its own population, especially working-class peoples from historically-marginalized demographics (black, brown, women, migrants).

Thus, the country’s proclaimed “democracy,” or “republic,” has never actually been democratic in any genuine manner because self-determination and self-governance do not, and cannot, exist under capitalist modes of production. A “common good” can also not exist, which means that a so-called “social contract” cannot exist. These are realities that were firmly understood by the founders of the country, all of whom were privileged men of wealth hell-bent on breaking free from the confines of a monarchy while simultaneously arranging their own elaborate system of class dominance for centuries to come. The masses have been led to believe that the two capitalist/imperialist political parties which run the US exist in vastly different ideological wings, and that we have civic empowerment through the act of voting. However, this could not be further from the truth. And a West candidacy has the potential to destroy this illusion simply by showing the people what a genuine working-class (aka left-wing) candidate looks like – something most have never seen.

However, before we decide on where to stand with West’s campaign, there are many questions that need to be pondered. Because West’s track record is a mixed bag. There are aspects of his politics that are promising, just as there are aspects that are problematic. In light of the last few elections, we can’t help but ask ourselves if he will choose the same path as Bernie Sanders by building potentially radical momentum among the masses, only to pull the plug and herd us back to the Democrats? Or will he understand the importance of truly breaking from not only the capitalist duopoly, but also the dominant bourgeois (capitalist) institutions, narratives, and psychological tactics that have us all trapped in a tightly-manicured ideological space, inundated with delusions, paranoia, and hysteria pushed by capitalist media? Will he use this campaign in an ironically-masterful manner to steer us away from the electoral arena? And, if so, can he leave us with at least a foundation of formidable working-class organizations that are prepared for both the fascist wave and the demise of both capitalism and the United States as we know it?

the bernie lesson, the good and the bad of west, and will we ultimately be sold out again?

So, will West and his campaign ultimately herd us back to the Democratic Party? Anyone who has been involved in working-class politics – most notably, the Bernie Sanders campaigns – would likely ponder this question with fear, and understandably so. Sanders has been the closest thing we have had as a representative of the working class on a national stage in decades. Sanders’ first run in 2016 was especially electric in this regard, as he railed against capitalist greed, did not shy away from the “socialist” label, and generally maintained a solid campaign in support of the working-class masses, at least by US political standards. In terms of tangible results, Sanders spearheaded a formidable organizational following and gave millions of young adults the courage to call themselves “socialists,” even if perhaps many still did not know what this meant.

However, as beneficial as Sanders was to many, some noticed warning signs early. In a 2015-piece at Black Agenda Report, as the Sanders phenomenon began to gain steam, the late Bruce Dixon published a scathing critique, and what would come to be a prophetic warning, about Sanders serving as a “sheepdog” for the Democratic Party and its anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton. Unfazed by the momentum, Dixon brilliantly noted,

“Spoiler alert: we have seen the Bernie Sanders show before, and we know exactly how it ends. Bernie has zero likelihood of winning the Democratic nomination for president over Hillary Clinton. Bernie will lose, Hillary will win. When Bernie folds his tent in the summer of 2016, the money, the hopes and prayers, the year of activist zeal that folks put behind Bernie Sanders' either vanishes into thin air, or directly benefits the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

Dixon’s article was labeled as unnecessarily cynical by many at the time. However, to those who had followed electoral politics from a working-class perspective for some time, it was an accurate reflection of a decades-old tactic used by Democrats:

“1984 and 88 the sheepdog candidate was Jesse Jackson. In 92 it was California governor Jerry Brown. In 2000 and 2004 the designated sheepdog was Al Sharpton, and in 2008 it was Dennis Kucinich. This year it's Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. The function of the sheepdog candidate is to give left activists and voters a reason, however illusory, to believe there's a place of influence for them inside the Democratic party, if and only if the eventual Democratic nominee can win in November.”

In the end, Dixon’s warnings and predictions came to fruition. Sanders did, in fact, throw in the towel, publicly lauded Clinton, and asked his army of loyal followers to support her in the general election against Trump.

A much greater degree of skepticism followed Sanders’ second run in 2020. In a 2019 piece for Left Voice, Doug Greene exposed Sanders as a consistent supporter of US imperialism, opening with the following breakdown:

“On February 19, 2019, Vermont Senator and “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders announced his plans to run for the Democratic Party nomination for President. The announcement was met with cheers from large swaths of the American left who identify with his support for expanded labor rights, Medicare for All, free college, and a litany of other progressive issues. Those appear to be very compelling reasons to back the Sanders’ campaign. However, when it comes to American imperialism and war, Sanders may offer slightly different rhetoric than other Democratic candidates or Donald Trump, but his record proves him to be no alternative at all.”

Greene went on to provide detailed examples of Sanders’ support of the US war machine as a battering ram for global capital, which included backing the arms industry during the Reagan years, supporting sanctions and bombings during the Clinton years, supporting Bush’s initial response to the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center, providing lukewarm responses to Israel’s brutalization of Palestinians while refusing to support the BDS movement, and finally “by voting in favor of the military budget in 2009, 2010, and 2013, and supporting Obama’s military actions against Libya, sanctions against Russia, providing a billion dollars in aid to the far right Ukrainian government in 2014, and supported arming the Saudi Arabian monarchy to fight ISIS.”

Ultimately, despite being slighted by the Democrats, which pulled every backdoor maneuver possible to push their corporate candidate, Joe Biden, to the forefront, Sanders once again willingly stepped back, publicly proclaimed Biden to be worthy of the office, and asked everyone to support Biden. While Sanders had already lost a significant amount of support after his first betrayal, this second act of treachery seemed to be the final nail in his coffin, and legacy. Now, in retrospect, it is difficult for many of even his loyalist followers to see Sanders as anything other than what Bruce Dixon labeled him – a sheepdog who stole the immense time, energy, and resources that he received from millions and handed it over to the capitalist/imperialist Democratic Party, with no strings attached.

Which now brings us to Cornel West, who happened to be a vocal supporter of Sanders. To be fair, Marianne Williamson or Robert Kennedy, Jr. fit the profile of “sheepdog candidate” much more so than West does. West offers us much greater potential in terms of constructing an authentic, working-class campaign. But, still, we must ask ourselves, is he any different than Sanders?

In many ways, he is. First and foremost, West is not a career Senator of the US imperialist state and a direct surrogate of the Democratic Party. While West supported Sanders during the runups to both presidential elections, he ultimately had the integrity to “disobey” him by endorsing Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, in the 2016 general election. And while West, like many others, threw all of his weight behind the political ascendency of Barack Obama in 2008, he showed bravery and consistency by reconsidering this support shortly after Obama took office, publicly criticizing the country’s first black president for his Wall Street appointments, rampant drone strikes, record deportations, and unwillingness to take action for the struggling working-class masses, including the millions of black USAmericans who experienced no tangible benefits from the administration. In doing so, West faced a harsh backlash from much of the black community, who were understandably high on the symbolic victory and immense significance of seeing a black man in the oval office. Many viewed West’s criticisms of Obama as “petty jealousy,” despite the fact that they were perfectly consistent with West’s track record and represented a level of intellectual honesty that is rare in these times.

West has also remained steadfast in his support of the Palestinian people against the apartheid regime in Israel, something that typically amounts to political suicide in the United States (see the recent example of Robert Kennedy, Jr. quickly changing his tune on this very matter when pressured). And perhaps the most important difference is West’s willingness to shun the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate under the People’s Party. There has been much to say about why West chose this relatively-unknown party over the seemingly obvious choice of the Green Party, and that may be worthy of investigation, but the importance of this decision is more so in the blatant rejection of the Democrats, who have maintained a decades-long stranglehold on progressives, much of the working class, a large majority of the black community, and even some socialists, despite ongoing militarism, pro-corporate policies, and covert racism.

West has openly pushed for internationalism and has provided a more nuanced opinion on the situation between Russia and Ukraine, ultimately placing much of the blame on the United States and NATO, while calling for the disbandment of NATO. It is difficult to imagine someone like Bernie Sanders, who is a career Senator of the very state responsible for much of the strife in that region, thinking such things, much less saying them out loud. In fact, Sanders notably hopped on the “Russiagate” train following the 2016 election and has toed the Democratic party line since then.

However, in many ways, West is not different. In 2020, West joined other public intellectuals in supporting Biden as the “anti-fascist choice” in the general election against Trump, essentially going against his consistent opposition of both capitalist parties under the impression that Trump represented the greater threat. West described the battle between the two parties as “catastrophe (Trump and Republicans)” versus “disaster (Biden and Democrats)” and, while noting that Biden was not his first choice, ultimately proclaimed that “catastrophes are worse than disasters” in his official endorsement of Biden:

“There is a difference in neofascist catastrophe and neoliberal disaster,” he said. “Catastrophes are worse than disasters. Disasters have less scope and range regarding certain kinds of issues. I never want to downplay the least vulnerable in our society — our gay brothers, lesbian sisters, trans, Black poor, brown poor, Indigenous poor. They are more viciously attacked by the neofascists than the neoliberals. But the neoliberals capitulate to the attack. I would never say they’re identical, but I would say poor and working people are still getting crushed over and over again.”

On a Facebook post made on September 4, 2020, West shared a video link of his speech along with the explanation that, “An anti-fascist vote for Biden is in no way an affirmation of Neoliberal politics. In this sense, I agree with my brothers and sisters like Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Paul Street, and Bob Avakian.” Fifteen months earlier, however, in a Fox News appearance on The Ingraham Angle, West correctly referred to Biden as a “dye-in-the-wool, backward-looking neoliberal with little vision and even less courage” who “represents a past that hurt black people.”

West’s attempts to be a unifying force throughout his role as a public intellectual has led him to appear on platforms that many view as problematic, especially in a time when overt fascism is converging around various forms of bigotry, including Fox News, Joe Rogan’s podcast, Real Time with Bill Maher, and the former founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes’s, show, to name a few. There are also questions regarding the new People’s Party itself, which has faced criticisms about its ineffective organizing and willingness to include right-wing populists in a big-tent effort to focus on common struggles. This approach has led to some internal strife, rooted mainly in race dynamics, where some black members have felt understandably uneasy about the inclusion of working-class whites who exhibit racist and xenophobic undertones. It is unclear how substantial this problem is within the party but, at a time when identity politics has largely overshadowed and obstructed working-class unity, it is safe to assume it is potentially significant. Nevertheless, West has obviously embraced the party, being a founding member himself, enough to run as its presidential candidate.

West has openly supported the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) movement, which may not seem problematic on the surface, as the call for reparations for black descendants of US slavery is a righteous and worthy cause. But, in doing so, West has ignored a perceived betrayal of Pan-African principles by the organization, which excludes most of the African diaspora throughout the world to embrace a peculiarly pro-US orientation. In a nuanced critique of the organization, Broderick Dunlap tells us,

“There is no question that Black folks in the United States are entitled to reparations for slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and centuries of racist violence. There is also no question that the United States has caused insurmountable harm to Africans outside of the US. To deny that is to deny history and reality. Understanding that the demand for reparations is an attempt to hold America accountable for harm done to Black folks, excluding Black folks from the conversation contradicts what ADOS claims to be trying to achieve. Besides the impracticality of trying to distinguish between people who are deemed ADOS and other diasporic Africans and biracial Black folks, Africans are socialized and racialized the same as Black folks born in the US. This contradiction is the primary reason it would serve ADOS leaders to adopt Black internationalist principles, so they can build a movement ‘informed by and engaged with real-world struggles.’”

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of West’s politics, though, has been his willingness to express anti-communist talking points. This willingness stems from the red-scare era of US history, when anyone and everyone who merely “sympathized” with socialism and communism were ostracized, exiled, imprisoned, and even murdered by the US government. And while such fears have certainly dissipated since the end of the Cold War and disbandment of the USSR, public intellectuals with large platforms and tenures at major universities are seemingly still held to this standard, with Noam Chomsky being the most notable of this bunch.

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West’s longtime association with Michael Harrington’s DSA also represents an in-between, anti-communist position between capitalism and socialism that is often indistinguishable from mid-20th century US liberals. From this standpoint, folks like West and Sanders can safely deliver vague socialist talking points while serving as social democrats, but are ultimately limited by their peculiar faith in US democracy and reformism, which becomes even more problematic by their anti-communism.

West’s constant yearning for unity among the people, while certainly commendable and needed, can and has led to extending an open hand to elements of the working class who are likely irredeemable, if not simply dangerous, due to their fierce bigotry, intense xenophobia, and blatant misogyny. And his unwillingness to commit to forceful politics over vague intellectualism has led him to make problematic assessments, one of which included a tweet from 2011, in which he oddly proclaimed Ronald Reagan as “a freedom fighter in terms of supporting our Jewish bros & sis in the Soviet Union & opposing vicious forms of communism.”

Granted, this tweet was made as part of a series of tweets that addressed Barack Obama’s public adoration of Reagan – ironically stating “this glorification of Ronald Reagan is really a sad commentary on our lack of historical consciousness” and concluding that Obama was “chasing the cheap fantasy of bipartisanship.” But, nonetheless, it provides a good example on how the weight of anti-communism, which seems to be holding West hostage, can be a potentially blinding force during a time when it, as a direct product of Nazism and fascism, needs to be snuffed out once and for all. In the end, such a blind spot is not only a massive liability, but also seemingly suggests the potential to drift back into the hands of the Democratic Party.

Can any significant change come from participating in bourgeois elections?

Oddly enough, if any significant change comes from this campaign, it will exist outside the realm of electoral politics. We would be foolish to believe that A) West can win, and B) even if he did win, he would have the power to single-handedly enact policies that would benefit the working-class masses. While this may sound defeatist, it is not. Because the reality is the US government and its entire political system are not only completely controlled by the will of capital, but were deliberately set up by the founders for this very reason: “to protect the opulent minority from the toiling majority,” to paraphrase James Madison.

Does this mean the working class has never won meaningful concessions from the government, via electoral politics? Of course not. Bourgeois democracy, despite its deliberate orientation as a force of capital, has represented a battleground between the class interests of the capitalist minority and the working-class majority in the past. In fact, during times of capitalist crises, the system has responded in ways that have resulted in very real concessions for the working class. In the US, the most notable period that included such concessions came during the 1930s, when “New Deal” policies were implemented in response to the Great Depression. Throughout the 20th century, Keynesianism represented the primary macroeconomic policy direction deployed by the government in its management of capital, using high tax rates on corporations and the wealthy to fund governmental programs designed to both supplement capitalist growth and soften the systemic parasitism of that growth. And, in the 1960s, coming on the heels of radical uprisings throughout the country — most notably, the antiwar and Civil Rights movements — “Great Society” policies were created to provide more assistance and opportunities to working people.

It should be noted, though, that the underlying reasons for many of these concessions were tactical, as they have been made to prevent a radical or revolutionary break from the dominant capitalist/imperialist system. In other words, they were just as much forms of appeasement issued by the capitalist class, for the sake of their own survival, as they were hard-fought gains won by the working class, for our betterment. Many gains were the direct result of organized labor struggles, but were also made possible by the US military’s brutalization and looting campaigns of the Global South via colonialism and imperialism. They were also products of the US’s advantageous post-world-war-two positioning, the Marshall Plan, and the fact that US infrastructure was virtually untouched by the ravages of the war. And much of these gains excluded black and brown members of the US working class, as well as women, all of whom continued to be relegated to hyper-exploited positions within the working class, often confined to internal colonies and subjected to compounded social and material forms of oppression. These inconsistencies, as well as the inability of these reforms to affect the modes of production, left such legislation vulnerable to both circumvention and rollbacks.

It is important to include context behind these concessions because we must understand, first and foremost, that all of capitalist society rests upon a fundamental class struggle between those who own and control the means of production (capitalists) and those of us whose only chance for survival is to sell our labor to those owners (workers). With this understanding, we can see that societal progression, or regression, is the result of this dialectical battle. The sobering reality for the working class is that capitalists always have the upper hand because they have claimed ownership of the means we use to function and survive. And, while capitalist governments like that of the United States have awarded us some rights, and have occasionally given us some concessions, they are ultimately tools that are wielded by the capitalist class to maintain their dominance over us.

Thus, bourgeois (capitalist) democracy is a brilliant scheme for the (capitalist) ruling class because it gives off the appearance of freedom via constitutional documents, legal systems, voting, and a variety of supposed civil/human rights. Beneath the facade are extremely strict power dynamics represented primarily by these class distinctions (again, the minority class who own/control property and the means of production overseeing the majority class whose only basis of survival is our labor). The working-class masses are repressed and controlled in nearly every way possible within this arrangement. Injustice is a daily part of our lives that we learn to accept to survive the drudgery. 

In some instances, where gross injustices occur, we are awarded the "right" to appeal to the systems that exist on the surface, but this "right" always places the burden of proof on us. Therefore, since we have no time, money, energy, and resources to dedicate to these processes (because we're all working our lives away while living paychecks to paychecks), it is incredibly rare for any sort of justice to materialize against a powerful state/class that has seemingly unlimited amounts of time, money, energy, and resources to oppose us. In this never-ending, losing scenario, the ruling class and all of their institutions (including schools and media) can simply say: "we gave you inalienable rights and encourage you to use them if you feel wronged," knowing very well these rights, and the systems put in place to exercise them, are nothing but manufactured dead ends hidden behind virtual freeways.

This systemic understanding brings us back to the question at hand: can significant change come from bourgeois elections? If we were to look at the history of the US, we would surely conclude that it can, as noted above. However, when looking at capitalism as the regressive system that it now is — due to its fascistic foundation of claiming “private property” as a social relationship for capital to employ (exploit) labor; its birth from trillions of dollars of “free capital” generated by chattel slavery; its tendency to centralize wealth and, thus, political/social/governmental power; its cancer-like need for never-ending growth; its bloodlust for expansion and theft via war; and its array of elements that are riddled with internal contradictions which only worsen over time due to perpetually falling rates of profit — we should understand that it has reached a very late stage. In other words, the concessions that were made in the past are, quite frankly, no longer possible. The formation of an industrialized — albeit, mostly white — “middle class” was an anomaly only made possible by the unique stages of historical development that existed in the 20th century.

The capitalist coup called “neoliberalism” put an end to all of that. And it did so during a period of time (1970s/80s) when falling rates of profit were decimating the Keynesian model, the gold standard was removed, monopoly capitalism became entrenched, corporate governance (what Mussolini himself referred to as “fascism”) was cemented, and globalization and financialization became prominent factors in wealth extraction. Pro-capitalists will claim all of these things are “artificial mutations” of “true, free-market” capitalism, caused by “too much government involvement,” but the truth is they are mature stages of capitalism that were inevitable, absent a socialist revolution. Clever terms like “cronyism” and “corporatism” merely refer to natural developments caused by capital accumulation (and, conversely, widespread dispossession) and the concentration of wealth and power that has allowed capitalists to gain control of all aspects of society, including the entirety of government.

The sobering lesson from all of this is that any meaningful concessions from the capitalist class (via the electoral arena) will likely never materialize during capitalism’s late stages. The system has become so cannibalistic and riddled with crises that it has been feeding on itself for at least the past forty years. The industrialized “middle class,” or aristocracy of labor, has been all but destroyed, small capitalists are being devoured by big capitalists, and the economic system has become fully intertwined with the government. Thus, we are already decades deep into a very real transition from covert fascism to overt fascism, as the system scrambles to shield itself from crises after crises.

During this process, capitalism has been propped up by so many tricks and tactics coming from the capitalist state — corporate subsidies, quantitative easing (“printing money”), constant meddling by the federal reserve, etc. — that it is too far gone to respond to the needs of the people. These tricks and tactics are necessary for the system’s survival; or, in more precise terms, necessary to protect and maintain the wealth of the capitalist minority, by further degrading the working-class majority and perpetually “kicking the can down the road.” But, this road comes to an end. And we are fast approaching that end.

The only thing that capitalists and their state are concerned with now is protecting themselves from the imminent collapse, which means we’re already well into a significant fascist transition. The fact that unfathomable amounts of money are being thrown at military and police during a time when tent cities, homelessness, and drug overdoses are taking over every major city, and working people everywhere cannot afford rent or food, tells us that the US government, which is a direct manifestation of the capitalist class, is unable to see past its own interests to avert this collapse. So, it has chosen to dig in and protect the increasingly wealthy minority from the increasingly desperate majority.

West will not have a chance to win the election, and will likely not even capture a miniscule percentage of the vote. He may not even make the ballots in most states. And, even worse yet, if he were to win the election in some dream scenario and assume “the highest office in the land,” nothing substantial would come from it. Because the system was set up to represent wealth (or capital), not people. And the days of meaningful capitalist concessions are long gone.

Despite this, West and his campaign should approach the election with the intent to win, because that is the way to build genuine momentum. But, in this process, the focus must be on building a new world from the ravages of the inevitable collapse. This is where our time, energy, and resources should be, and should have been for decades now, but we’ve been too enamored with bourgeois politics to begin that transition. However, it’s not too late to regroup and refocus. And West’s campaign, like Bernie’s campaigns, can be a catalyst for this shift. Bernie sold out, chose his career, and failed. West can succeed in serving as a launching pad, for us, if he chooses the correct path.

Should working-class people support West’s campaign?

Working-class people should support West’s campaign, if he chooses the right path. We need to divest from bourgeois politics and the capitalist system. A campaign like West’s, which will ironically occur in the bourgeois electoral arena, can be a major catalyst in this divestment. So, what do we need to understand, and what will he need to do, to stay on the right path?

1. We need to understand that electoral politics are both a time suck and a dead end if the goal is to win elections, assume office, and enact legislation. Therefore, campaigns should only be used to educate, agitate, and form counter-hegemonic and liberatory institutions and organizations.

2. We need to understand that building working-class consciousness is the primary need at this moment in time. Challenging capitalist propaganda from mainstream media, providing knowledge and historical context, and offering reality-based narratives as a counter to the extreme paranoia and delusion pushed by capitalist media is the way to do this.

3. We need to understand that authentic working-class politics (aka a left-wing) must be built from the ground-up in the United States. It must initially be anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and rooted in the working-class struggle against the capitalist ruling class. In this process, any remnants of anti-communism, which are almost always products of fear and/or ignorance, must be ironed out.

4. We need to understand that liberal identity politics and culture wars are being disseminated by the ruling class to whip up hysteria among the masses, cause widespread confusion and misdirected rage, and keep the working class not only further divided, but constantly at each other’s throats. We must challenge this head-on by keeping the focus on class struggle while, at the same time, not allowing for bigoted elements to fester, as they are mere remnants of capitalist culture and naturally anti-working-class.

5. We need to understand that fascism is already here in the US, and it has always been here for many of the hyper-marginalized members of the working class. This understanding includes the knowledge that the capitalist system has become fully intertwined with the capitalist government and is being protected by both capitalist political parties. In other words, Democrats are not anti-fascist; they are just as much a part of the transition to overt fascism as Republicans are.

6. We need to understand that formidable working-class institutions and organizations need to be built NOW, because time is running out. These organization and institutions must exist completely outside the realm of electoral politics, which means they must be organized, funded, and maintained by us, with no ties to, or relationships with, bourgeois politicians, the capitalist parties, or the US government.

What will West and his campaign need to do to make this happen?

1. West and his campaign must understand that the purpose of this run is not to win, assume office, and enact legislation. It is also not to build a political party to do these things moving forward. If those things happen to occur as a corollary development, then fine, but the primary goal should be to use this platform to radicalize (aka educate) and organize the US working class.

2. West and his campaign must use this platform to promote working-class consciousness. This can be done by attacking mainstream (capitalist) narratives head-on, offering counter narratives based in reality, and deconstructing the hysteria and paranoia being disseminated by media.

3. West and his campaign must show what a true left looks like. This means that he must be unapologetically radical by exposing the roots of our problems, which are not things like immigration, inflation, and “corruption,” but rather are capitalist modes and arrangements of production, imperialism, and the bourgeois state, which has been intentionally constructed to shield these roots. He should expect red baiting and take ownership of it without fear of being “unelectable,” which is easy to do if you are not ultimately concerned with winning an election. He should be openly socialist. He should be clear about what socialism actually is — the people owning and controlling the means that are used to sustain society. He should be clear that the welfare state is not socialism, but rather a necessity of capitalism. He should be clear that social democracy is merely a softer version of capitalism that simply cannot be maintained because of the predatory nature of the capitalist class in this late stage. Using very clear wording, even technical wording, goes against West’s oratory style, but he must make an effort to include such deliberate terminology along with his traditionally soulful approach.

4. West and his campaign need to keep the focus on class struggle by avoiding the inevitable pitfalls of liberal identity politics and culture wars. This does not mean ignoring the social realities of marginalized identities, which of course are naturally intertwined with class oppression, but rather by constantly keeping the focus on the basis of class. This is something West has done exceptionally well in the past and there is no reason why this should not continue moving forward on this particular stage.

5. West and his campaign need to express the reality that fascism is already here in the United States and is in a transitional period from being covert (in that it has always existed in the margins as well as in the foundation of both capitalism and the United States) to overt. He must explain that fascism is capitalism in decay. He must explain that the exponential funding of military and police by the capitalist class and its government will naturally come home to roost on the entirety of the US working class. And he must publicly rid himself of the belief that Democrats are allies in the fight against fascism.

6. West and his campaign must use this platform to build actual organizations and institutions, on the ground, throughout the country, funded and maintained by the people. These organizations and institutions must be constucted to last far beyond this campaign, and must be built with the understanding that they will never work with bourgeois institutions, including the government and political parties owned by the capitalist class. These organizations should exist to meet the most basic needs of the people: food programs, clinics, self-defense, political education, ideological development, etc. all rooted in a working-class culture formed in direct contrast to bourgeois culture.

A means to an end?

From a dialectical perspective, Dr. Cornel West’s announcement to run for president of the US is a seemingly positive development for the working-class masses, in our struggle against the forces of capital. This is not necessarily saying much, as we have had very little reason to pay attention to, let alone participate in, bourgeois elections for quite some time. Thus, this is not positive because West has any chance of winning or assuming office — he does not — but because it provides us the opportunity to finally break away from the stranglehold of bourgeois politics and the two capitalist/imperialist political parties. We should seek to use this campaign as a way to build our own proletariat infrastructure throughout the country — community centers, clinics, food programs, networks, schools, etc. — something that will be needed as both the capitalist system and US government continue their rapid descent into overt fascism.

As West throws down the gauntlet against what he, and many others, see(s) as systemic ills, he will find himself stuck between two vastly different worlds: one where the masses of people desperately need, and I believe are ready for, an unapologetically radical candidate from the left; and another where dominant society and its very real mechanisms of capitalist violence and oppression will simply not allow this need to be delivered. The best thing West can do in this moment is dedicate himself to serving this need. Whether or not he and his campaign choose to use this opportunity as such a catalyst remains to be seen.

By all signs, Cornel West is a social democrat. And, history tells us we should be very wary of the compromising nature of social democrats. So, we should be skeptical. We should continue working on our own efforts and projects to construct authentic, working-class organizations and institutions. We should pace ourselves and not throw too much energy, physical or emotional, behind West and his campaign. But we should also give this a chance to serve our needs — use it as a potential tool whose frequency can increase if we find it on the right path, or decrease and even discarded if it becomes clear that it will not be fruitful. We should attempt to steer it in the right direction because it is the best option we have been given on this type of platform, if only for the fact that it exists outside the Democratic Party.

Our present reality is dismal. Our immediate future is dystopian. Capitalism is rotting away and taking us with it. Fascism is here. The capitalist government and all of its institutions are clearly responding by choosing an increasingly-predatory and barbaric direction. We must forge our own way, dig ourselves in, and prepare for the absolute worst, while building our own institutions that show the promise of a better world. West and his campaign are a potential tool in starting to build this future.

Petro/Márquez and the Question of Democratic Socialism in Latin America

By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso

On September 11th, 1973, a US-backed military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile led by Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende. Given his own success, Allende believed that electoral means could bring about socialist ends. Despite this optimism, the coup took his life after he responded to the attack by staying inside the presidential palace to defend it at all costs. Following the tragedy, Cuban revolutionary and then-Prime Minister Fidel Castro said the following:

“The Chilean example teaches us the lesson that it is impossible to make the revolution with the people alone. Arms are also necessary! And that arms alone aren’t enough to make a revolution. People are also necessary!”

“Chilean revolutionaries know that now there’s no alternative other than revolutionary armed struggle. They tried the electoral way — the peaceful way — and the imperialists and reactionaries changed the rules of the game. The reactionaries trampled the Constitution, the laws, the Parliament — everything.”

Twenty-five years after Castro uttered these words, Latin America experienced a phenomenon now known as the “Pink Tide.” This refers to a wave of elections that saw many socialist executives take power democratically across the region. It began with the 1998 landslide victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Chávez was followed by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina. Many of the region’s more robust electorates soon rejected this trend, however — namely those of Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Argentina -- electing conservative leaders soon after. It wasn’t until the late 2010s that a second Pink Tide took hold — this time, featuring the likes of Andres Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, Pedro Castillo in Peru, Gabriel Boric in Chile, and, most recently, Gustavo Petro in Colombia. Petro’s election last year rocked the status quo, as decades of pendular motion between liberals and conservatives had cast aside the prospects for socialist leadership.

Petro is a product of the leftist guerrilla movements that emerged in Colombia during the mid-1960s, a development in political militancy largely born out of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. From 1974 to 1987, he was a member of the 19th of April Movement — colloquially referred to as M-19 — an urban guerrilla effort with the goal of expanding electoral democracy in the country via armed struggle. The future premier would go on to pursue a prolific political career, serving in the Colombia House of Representatives from 1991 to 2006, the Senate from 2006 to 2012, and as mayor of the capital Bogotá from 2012 to 2015.

Petro’s chosen vice president, Francia Márquez, is an equally momentous figure. A native of Yolombó — a small mountain town located in the Cauca region — she began working as an environmental activist at 13, participating in the Ovejas River defense from 1994 to 1997, an effort to prevent the development of dams in an important water source for her community. In 2014, Márquez led a direct action of 80 Afro-Colombian women. The demonstrators marched from the Cauca to Bogotá, demanding an end to illegal mining in the region.

Their efforts were successful. By the end of 2016, the Colombian government had disassembled and removed all illegal mining machinery. This victory earned Márquez the 2018 Goldman Prize for excellence in environmental protection. She is also the first Afro-Colombiana vice president in the nation’s history.

During their presidential run, Petro and Márquez outlined a platform of five reform agendas:

1. Labor: shorten the workday, increase access to overtime pay, and regulate short-term contract work.

2. Pensions: provide a guaranteed 223,000 Colombian pesos per month — roughly $155 adjusted for purchasing power — to the 75% of Colombians whose incomes currently do not qualify for a pension.

3. Taxation: raise $5.6 billion in revenue by raising wealth taxes, eliminating corporate exemptions, and raising export tariffs on oil and gas.

4. Political System: prohibit private funding of political campaigns and lower the age requirement for congresspeople.

5. Healthcare: transfer the responsibility of selecting private health providers from individuals to municipal and provincial governments.

Since the inauguration of Petro and Márquez in August of last year, only tax reform has found legislative success, having passed in November of 2022 with a revised fundraising goal of $4.2 billion. The labor and pension reforms remain in congressional limbo while the political reform has already died, having been canceled by Petro in March of this year after legislative changes severely transformed the proposal from its initial iteration. As for healthcare, the reform has prompted notable scrutiny and opposition by all parties, including President of Congress and Petro ally Roy Barreras. This backlash caused Education Minister Alejandro Gaviria to resign. Revised language has since softened the proposed healthcare reform considerably.

Beyond the minutiae of legalese, however, the ambitious aims of the administration’s reform agenda have placed a legitimate target on the backs of Petro and Márquez. At best, they’ve become the subjects of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless criticism. At worst, they’ve become victims of attempted acts of violence.

While campaigning, Petro had to cancel a visit to the nation’s coffee-growing region after learning of a credible death threat against him. The threat came from La Cordillera, a paramilitary organization with ties to the drug trade, law enforcement, the Colombian military, and far-right politicians. Márquez has faced similar challenges.

She narrowly survived two assassination attempts this year alone. The first happened in January when seven kilograms of explosives were found near her home in the Cauca. The second took place in March, when explosives were found near an airport Márquez was passing through in the Choco region.

Since then, right-wing demonstrations against Petro and Márquez have become commonplace. The most notable of which took place on May 5th. The event was held at Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolívar, and featured thousands of retired military personnel as well as law enforcement officials. The occupational character of the crowd triggers bitter déjà vu for anyone familiar with democratic socialist history in Latin America at large. After all, the successor to Allende in post-coup Chile was none other than Augusto Pinochet, the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army during Allende’s short-lived presidency.

Luckily, this correlation has not gone unnoticed, as Petro himself took active steps to counteract the trend’s more worrying manifestations late last month. On April 26th, he announced the resignation of seven ministers in his cabinet in hopes of removing the internal dissonance and gridlock the cohort had been struggling with, particularly with regard to his proposed health reforms. In early May, Petro also tweeted out, saying, “Why are they conspiring for a coup? Because they are terrified that we will end impunity. The truth intimidates them so much that they despair.”

Cautionary measures and public denouncements notwithstanding, Petro and Márquez should brace for what is to come. They must embrace the optimism of Allende alongside the cynicism of Castro. For the belief in electorally derived socialism cannot mean the dismissal of its most glaring shortcomings. Only by taking heed — pushing their agenda onward while remaining wary of undemocratic attacks — will this administration entrench a legacy of democratic socialism in Colombia and serve as a success story for prospective socialist nations across the region.

Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso is a Colombian Marxist. In his writing, he seeks to interrogate the nuances of socialist thought and praxis.

Reject Anti-Intellectualism

By Erica Caines

Republished from Hood Communist.

A disingenuous trend is reemerging, bastardizing concepts of “accessibility” to attack and suppress radical efforts at political education. The focus on consistent ongoing political education is shot down as disconnected from the needs of the people. But these critiques should be seen clearly for what they are: anti-intellectualism masquerading as a faux concern for the elusive “everyday person”. These are not genuine concerns for how people learn (ignoring the array of techniques like creating glossaries, audio recordings of written materials, visual aids or establishing group reading environments), these are attacks on the acts of learning and studying.

As an article in Studio Atao explains, anti-intellectualism is more than “mere hostility towards acquiring knowledge, or the byproduct of the lack of a formal education…it is a pervasive and popular mindset because it encourages us to cling to our most fervently held beliefs, with little or no supporting evidence.“ 

We are in the midst of a propaganda war. As such, the growing insistence on collapsing the structure and institution of academia with intellect and literacy (i.e. anyone who appears to be literate or “smart” are said to be beholden to the academy) feeds into anti-intellectualism, which mis-characterizes reading and study as elitism. 

After years of this narrative, the intellectual dishonesty about the necessity of reading is firmly being spearheaded by supposed leftists and prominent progressive figures. In a Vanity Fair article, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remarked, “When people say I’m not Socialist enough, I find that very classist. It’s like, ‘What—I didn’t read enough books for you, buddy?’”.  AOC weaponized anti-intellectualism to subvert any and all criticisms of her support of US imperial aggression against sovereign global south nations decrying reading as a pastime of the elite and depicting foreign policy as too worldly for “the everyday person.”

The pushback against engaging theory is the summation that reading does not tackle one’s immediate needs under the primary contradiction of imperialism. Yet, books like Robin DG Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression gives great detail to how sharecroppers with little to no formal education engaged Marxist theory. The Black Liberation Army Study Guide, written and studied by lumpenproletariat and poor working class African youth expounds on how to put theory into practice. What of the many African revolutionaries that have centered political education to successfully carry out revolutions like Amilcar Cabral, Samoa Machel, and Thomas Sankara? What of the expansion of a literate masses post-revolutions because it was centered in the “new society”, like in Cuba, Grenada and Nicaragua? Or the emphasis on literacy during the reconstruction period post civil-war that served as a catalyst for what would become the civil rights movement as detailed in Ibram X. Kendi’s The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution? 

When 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old – about 130 million people – lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, the aggressive anti-intellectualism increasingly growing online and spilling over should be cause for alarm. Anti-intellectualism is not simply informed by reactionary opinions, but shapes, constructs and upholds the ideas of those in power— the ruling class— ultimately undermining new knowledge and new ideas as “irrelevant”. This ultimately undermines our organizing capabilities. It is a counter-revolutionary agenda being cloaked under  the language of “accessibility”. As a result of that rejection, there has been an ushering in of unprincipled and reactionary opinions all given validity because it’s how someone feels.

The distortion of “accessibility” is evident through the prevalence of political education via memes, as well. Online, slides of bright words on carefully picked colorful Canva app backgrounds or a sassy 69 seconds or less AAVE spouting breakdown of current events becomes a substitute for historical and dialectical materialism. Nothing needs to be cited, it just needs to be emotionally appealing. So one can engage in hashtag activism and make claims about nations in the crosshairs of western imperialism without providing anything more than thoughts and opinions on the matter. They are not required to make a full argument, provide primary sources or define anything.  But because it is made “accessible”, it is taken in as fact and spread around like wildfire. 

It is a critical matter in organizing when aggressive anti-intellectualism is being normalized as radical. It speaks directly to our conditions as colonized Africans in the confines of the empire that applauds and encourages anti-intellectualism through a bogus colonial education system. It also speaks directly to the global north/ western chauvinism that is deeply embedded in this society of people who have never carried out a revolution, are nowhere near organized to carry out a revolution, very loudly opinionated on what it would take while refusing to read, study and engage revolution and its class characteristics. These actions are the remnants of a collectively non-literate people.

Surely colonized Africans have an understanding of their conditions to the extent that the US is a racist nation and thus acts accordingly. What is not understood are the ways that a grounded political education expands on the US not only being a racist nation, but a settler colonial one and what that means, how that manifests, and how we should organize to stop it. Logically, of course, one can understand that the pressure to survive under domestic imperialism interferes with the ability for many to understand what they are facing through collective political education and organizing. The material conditions are dire and need solutions, but much of the reason our conditions keep worsening is because we are collectively not nearly equipped to comprehend and verbalize the causes of our conditions that (collective) reading and organization helps us better understand and fight to win.

“There’s no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom.”

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Erica Caines is a poet, writer and organizer in Baltimore and the DMV. She is an organizing committee member of the anti war coalition, the Black Alliance For Peace as well as an outreach member of the Black centered Ujima People’s Progress Party. Caines founded Liberation Through Reading in 2017 as a way to provide Black children with books that represent them and created the extension, a book club entitled Liberation Through Reading BC, to strengthen political education online and in our communities.

"Everything That Is Human Is Ours": The Political and Cultural Vanguardism of Antonio Gramsci and José Carlos Mariátegui

By Christian Noakes

Republished from Monthly Review.

Within the heterogenous tradition of Marxism there are two diametrically opposed conceptions of popular culture: the elitist and vanguardist. The former is far from unique to Marxism, and it could be argued that such positions are antithetical to the popular sentiments of Karl Marx’s revolutionary thought. Such an orientation represents a dominant intellectual trend more generally, wherein the popular culture of the masses is considered devoid of positive value and categorically distinct from so-called high culture.1 Within Marxism, this elitism tends to assume that the ruling class has an absolute monopoly on popular cultural production. This position is perhaps best represented by Theodor Adorno, who categorically dismisses popular culture as insidious and debased. In his analysis of popular music, he goes as far as to distinguish between popular and “serious” music.2 Such positions overlook popular agency and the need to combat capitalist ideology on a social, rather than individual, level.

In contrast, vanguardists consider popular culture as a fundamental vehicle for mass education and the propagation of a particular worldview, in concert with a corresponding and underlying socioeconomic order. Proponents do not dismiss popular culture outright or conceive of it as inherently “bad” or “low,” but instead ask: popular culture for which class and toward what ends? Vanguardist praxis treats popular culture as “a terrain of contestation.”3

Another distinguishing characteristic of vanguardism is the belief in the intellectual capacity of the populace. Vanguardism is not simply a matter of being the most advanced. It also implies the ability to lead or give direction to the masses. On the intellectual field of culture, this entails a raising of consciousness. In response to the critique that ideas put forward in socialist publications were too complex for the working class to grasp, Antonio Gramsci observed the following:

The socialist weeklies adapt themselves to the average level of the regional strata they address. Yet the tone of the articles and the propaganda must always be just above this average level, so that there is a stimulus to intellectual progress, so that at least a number of workers can emerge from the generic blur of the mulling-over of pamphlets and consolidate their spirit in a higher critical perception of history and the world in which they live and struggle.4

Gramsci, therefore, rejects the extremes of both infantilizing anti-intellectualism (i.e., tailism) or isolated elitism. This is illustrative of how vanguardists can meet the people “where they are,” so to speak, and then work to move them to higher levels of class consciousness.

Gramsci and the lesser-known Peruvian Communist José Carlos Mariátegui—who is himself often compared to Gramsci—were not merely theorists of vanguardism. They actively practiced it and indeed, led this aspect of the class struggle in Italy and Peru, respectively. Both treated cultural and political issues as being deeply intertwined and sought to promote politically and intellectually developed popular culture for the working class and oppressed peoples in order to counter the dominant popular bourgeois culture. Their revolutionary praxis materialized in publications such as Gramsci’s L’Ordine Nuovo and Mariategui’s Amauta.

Gramsci looked with admiration at the strides made by the Soviet Union in making the arts accessible to the working class and the proliferation of revolutionary cultural institutions such as the Proletkult. The revolutionary fervor in the Soviet Union and the increasing militancy of Italian workers inspired Gramsci to create an institution for the development and propagation of proletarian culture in Italy. Out of this desire came the newspaper, L’Ordine Nuovo: Weekly Review of Socialist Culture, which Gramsci founded in 1919 with a group of intellectuals and revolutionaries that would later become a core group in the Communist Party of Italy. In its pages, readers found works of political prose alongside theater and literary criticism. The paper also introduced many to Communist artists and intellectuals from abroad, such as Anatoly Lunacharsky, Maxim Gorky, Henri Barbusse, and Romain Rolland. Reflecting on the initial impetus for the publication, Gramsci said,

The sole sentiment which united us… was associated with our vague yearning for a vaguely proletarian culture.5

The June 21, 1919, edition marked a significant shift in the publication from this somewhat eclectic initial phase into an organ for a concrete political program. Ordine Nuovo became not only a publication, but a core group representing something of a tendency or faction within Italian socialist politics—with a particularly heavy influence on labor struggles in Turin. Central to this solidification of political purpose was the factory council movement, which Ordine Nuovo fueled with its program to turn internal commissions of Turin factories into Italian soviets or councils. By directly empowering the workers to manage production themselves, Gramsci asserted that the councils would prepare the working class of Italy to take power and provide them with the competence to build and maintain a socialist society. The Ordine Nuovo group put its energies toward fostering a culture, by means of the councils, in which the workers would see themselves as producers within a larger cooperative system of production, rather than as atomized wage-earners.6 This culture was organically fostered through direct dialog with the workers themselves. With an air of satisfaction, Gramsci remarked that “To us and to our followers, Ordine Nuovo became ‘the newspaper of the factory councils.’ Workers loved Ordine Nuovo… [b]ecause in its articles they found part of themselves.… Because these articles were not cold, intellectual architecture, but were the outcome of our discussions with the best workers. They articulated the real feelings, will, and passion of the working class.”7

At the request of the workers, Gramsci and other members of Ordine Nuovo spoke regularly at council meetings. In September 1920, the revolutionary potential of the councils reached a high point when workers occupied factories and took direct control over production. At this time, the publication ceased, and Gramsci and the other members joined the workers in the factories “to solve practical questions [of running a factory] on a basis of common agreement and collaboration.”8

While the editorial line of the newspaper became more defined and motivated by concrete political goals, it still focused on fostering an organic popular culture of the working class, which it treated as an integral part of building socialism. This included the creation of the School of Culture and Socialist Propaganda, which was attended by both factory workers and university students. Among the lecturers were Gramsci and the other members of Ordine Nuovo, as well as several university professors.9 Such efforts were vital in the intellectual and ideological preparation for the establishment of an Italian socialist state, at which time “[b]ourgeois careerism will be shattered and there will be a poetry, a novel, a theatre, a moral code, a language, a painting and a music peculiar to proletarian civilization.”10 While Italy would soon see the horrors of fascism—rather than the establishment of this proletarian civilization, and thus the full development of a national proletarian culture—the militant working class culture fostered by Gramsci and Ordine Nuovo could never be fully snuffed out by the Mussolini regime. The cultural politics of Gramsci would also have a lasting influence beyond Italy.

Such influences are apparent in the works of José Carlos Mariátegui, who had been in Italy at the time of the founding of its Communist Party and identified most closely with the Ordine Nuovo group. After returning to Peru, Mariátegui put his newfound Marxist convictions to use in a variety of endeavors, including the production of the journal, Amauta, which was heavily influenced by Gramsci.11

Published from 1926 to 1930, this groundbreaking and visually stimulating journal was Mariátegui’s primary vehicle for uniting the cultural and political vanguards of the time.12 In his introduction to the inaugural issue, Mariátegui states: “The goal of this journal is to articulate, illuminate, and comprehend Peru’s problems from theoretical and scientific viewpoints. But we will always consider Peru from an international perspective. We will study all the great movements of political, philosophical, artistic, literary, and scientific renewal. Everything that is human is ours.”13 Along these simultaneous lines of inquiry into Peruvian society and internationalism, Amauta brought together leading artists, intellectuals, and revolutionaries of Peru, Latin America, and Europe. In addition to featuring much of Mariátegui’s most enduring works, it featured other key Peruvian figures, such as the feminist activist and poet Magda Portal and leading indigenist artists José Sabogal and Camilo Blas. Reaching beyond Peru’s borders, the journal also featured contributions by Diego Rivera, Pablo Neruda, Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, and Georg Grosz. Likewise, its readership was also international. In addition to being available throughout much of Latin America, it was also distributed in New York, Madrid, Paris, and Melbourne, Australia.14

Mariátegui was at the center of the vanguardista movement in Peru. This youthful and creative movement concerned itself with the creation of a “new Peru,” which would break from the prevailing oligarchic traditions inherited from Spain.15 While diverse in focus and orientation, vanguardistas sought to create new social, political, and cultural forms. According to Mariátegui,

A current of renewal, ever more vigorous and well defined, has been felt for some time now in Peru. The supporters of this renewal are called vanguardists, socialists, revolutionaries, etc.… Some formal discrepancies, some psychological differences, exist between them. But beyond what differentiates them, all these spirits contribute to what groups and unites them: their will to create a new Peru in a new world.… The intellectual and spiritual movement is becoming organic. With the appearance of Amauta, it enters the stage of definition.16

For its part, Amauta promoted anti-imperialism, gender equality, and internationalism as core principles of its national vision.

A new Peru would have to resolve the “Indigenous question”—the most pressing issue for Mariátegui. To aid in this endeavor, the journal laid bare the semi-feudal/semi-colonial nature of Peru’s economy, which relied on the socioeconomic subjugation of the country’s Indigenous population, and acted as national forum and network for otherwise regionally isolated Indigenous peasant organizing.17 Every issue also promoted a plurinationalism that included Quechua and Amari people in the Peruvian identity and body politic. In stark contrast to the national bourgeoisie, which saw Spain as the source of Peruvianness, the journal promoted a national identity and culture centered around the country’s Indigenous population, as was reflected by the majority of its content. This included articles analyzing racialized relations of production, Indigenous-centered art, and even the very name of the journal, Amauta being Quechua for “wise one” and a title given to teachers in the Inca Empire. As Mariátegui states in his introduction of issue 17 (September 1928), “We took an Inca word to create it anew. So that Indian Peru, Indigenous America might feel that this magazine was theirs.”18 Previously excluded and infantilized, Indigenous people were central to the pages of Amauta, and to the national culture it fostered.

Amauta aimed to polarize Peru’s intellectuals and bring readers under the banner of Marxism-Leninism.19 Its content was particularly important in organizing and providing direction to the country’s rural and Indigenous populations.20 It also helped to establish Indigenismo as Peru’s dominant school of art, thereby fostering a national culture in opposition to the colonial culture inherited from Spain.21 As the most popular Latin American journal of its time, it was central in the propagation of an Indigenous and peasant-centered Marxism that would come to characterize socialist movements throughout Latin America.

The works of Mariátegui and Gramsci were instrumental in the development and dissemination of popular subaltern culture. Through dialog and collaboration, Amauta and L’Ordine Nuovo would come to be leading outlets in the education of the masses along explicitly revolutionary lines. In contrast to both anti-intellectualism and elitism, the cultural projects of Mariátegui and Gramsci represent the vanguardist conviction that the masses are capable both of understanding complex or advanced ideas and of developing their own organic culture divorced from the ruling.

Christian Noakes is an associate editor at the journal Peace, Land, and Bread.

Notes

1. Peter McLaren, “Popular Culture and Pedagogy,” in Rage and Hope: Interviews with Peter McLaren on War, Imperialism, and Critical Pedagogy (New York: Peter Lang, 2006) 213.

2. Theodor Adorno, “On Popular Music,” in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, ed. John Storey (Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 2006).

3. McLaren, Rage and Hope, 214.

4. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgas and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (Chicago: Haymarket, 2012), 33.

5. Quoted in Giuseppe Fiori, Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary (New York: Schocken 1973), 118.

6. John M. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), 95.

7. Quoted in Antonio A. Santucci, Antonio Gramsci (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 68.

8. Fiori, Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary, 139.

9. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism, 81.

10. Gramsci. Selections from Cultural Writings, 50—51.

11. Marc Becker, Mariátegui and Latin American Marxist Theory (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1993).

12. David O. Wise, “Mariátegui’s ‘Amauta’ (1926—1930), A Source of Peruvian Cultural History,” Revista Interamericana de Bibliografia 29, no. 3—4 (1979): 299.

13. José Carlos Mariátegu, “Introducing Amauta,” in “The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism”: Selected Essays of José Carlos Mariátegui, 75—76.

14. Wise, “Mariátegui’s ‘Amauta’ (1926—1930),” 293.

15. Kildo Adevair dos Santos, Dalila Andrade Oliveira, and Danilo Romeu Streck, “The Journal Amauta (1926—1930): Study of a Latin American Educational Tribune,” Brazilian Journal of History of Education 21, no. 1 (2021).

16. Mariátegu, “Introducing Amauta,” 74—75.

17. Mike Gonzalez, In the Red Corner: The Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui (Chicago: Haymarket, 2019).

18. José Carlos Mariátegui, “Anniversary and Balance Sheet,” in José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, ed. Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 128.

19. Wise, “Mariátegui’s ‘Amauta’ (1926—1930)”; Jesús Chavarría, José Carlos Mariátegui and the Rise of Modern Peru, 1890—1930(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979).

20. Harry E. Vanden, National Marxism in Latin America: José Carlos Mariátegui’s Thought and Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1986).

21. Wise, “Mariátegui’s ‘Amauta’ (1926—1930),” 295.

What is Nkrumahism-Touréism?

By All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP)

Republished from Hood Communist.

The Africa which exists today, as well as the one we are struggling to build, is not the old Africa but a new emergent revolutionary society; a classless society in which a new harmony, a new cohesiveness, a new revolutionary African personality and a new dignity is forged out of the traditional African way of life which has been permanently changed by thousands of years of Euro-Christian and Islamic intrusions and by the historical development of the competing and conflicting slave, feudal, capitalistic and newly emergent socialist modes of production. A new emergent ideology is therefore required. That ideology is Nkrumahism-Touréism!

Nkrumahism-Touréism takes its name from the consistent, revolutionary, socialist and Pan-African principles, practices and policies followed, implemented and taught by Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Seku Touré; two of the foremost proponents and practitioners of the scientific strategy to liberate and unify Africa under scientific socialism. These principles, practices and policies are recorded in their speeches, writings, actions, achievements and life. In a larger and more complete sense, Nkrumahism-Touréism is the synthesis of the accumulated practical and theoretical contributions and achievements of centuries and generations of mass, revolutionary Pan-African and larger socialist struggles. Nkrumahism-Touréism is the application of the universal laws of revolutionary growth and development of the particular conditions of Africa and her children. Its concrete living manifestation is to be found in the creative contributions of the present day African Revolution.

Nkrumahism-Touréism provides the masses of African People with a program of human transformation turning individual defects into qualities by living the ideology. It is a Pan-African ideology that breaks the web of complexes put on us by the dominant culture and enables us to reclaim our humanity, reassert our dignity, and develop a new Revolutionary African Personality. It provides a revolutionary view of Africa and the world applying the universal principles of scientific socialism in the context of African history, tradition, and aspirations. It gives us a set of analytical tools which enable the masses of Africa People to correctly interpret, understand, redeem African culture and reconstruct Africa by way of the Cultural Revolution. Nkrumahism-Touréism provides a complete social, political, philosophical and economic theory which constitute a comprehensive network of principles, beliefs, values, morals and rules which guide our behavior, determines the form which our institutions and organizations will take; and acts as a cohesive force to bind us together, guide and channel our revolutionary action towards the achievement of Pan-Africanism and the inevitable triumph of socialism worldwide. Nkrumahism-Touréism includes the following principles:

The Primacy and Unity of Africa

The concept of the primacy and unity of Africa has its origins in the emergence of the modern Pan African movement which was characterized by our Peoples resistance to foreign domination in the 15th century. This foreign domination was soon followed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and full blown colonialism which culminated in the European partition of Africa agreed upon by the colonial powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884 – 1885. The primacy of Africa dictates that we reject these artificially imposed colonial borders. A united Africa, the concept of continental African unity is the source of our strength and the key to our liberation. As Nkrumah says:

“African Unity gives an indispensable continental dimension to the concept of the African nation…Unity is the first prerequisite for destroying neo-colonialism. Primary and basic is the need for a union government on the much divided continent of Africa.” (Neo-colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism p.253) We cannot accept any other version of our land, to define Africa as anything less than the entire continent including its islands is to accept the neo-colonial strategy to divide and conquer. The primacy of Africa also speaks to our primary identity as African people. We are African. Rather than promoting our micro-national identities such as Nigerian, Ivorian, Kenyan, Ethiopian, Jamaican, Brazilian, African-American, etc. we must focus on the common denominator which is African. For us as Africans and Pan-Africanists as Nkrumah says, “the core of the black revolution is in Africa and until Africa is united under a socialist government, the black man throughout the world lacks a national home… All people of African decent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean or in any other part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation.” (Nkrumah, K Class Struggle in Africa)

The Integrity Of The Revolutionary African Personality

The African personality is the product of the evolution of African people’s conception of the world, way of life, their ethics and moral principles which are a particular reflection of African culture. This African cultural personality has been under attack by capitalism /colonialism and its extension neo-colonialism which have developed in diverse and sometimes subtle ways a moral, intellectual, and cultural superiority complex towards us as an oppressed people. Sekou Touré says, ”the science of depersonalizing the colonized people is sometimes so subtle in its methods that it progressively succeeds in falsifying our natural psychic behavior and devaluing our own original virtues and qualities with a view to our assimilation”. (Touré A. S.The Political Leader Considered As The Representative Of A Culture p.3) We are clear that the assertion of the cultural personality of an oppressed culture becomes the catalyst for its national liberation movement. Nkrumah and Touré both call for the revival and integrity of the African personality, it is this re-personalization, which constitutes the successful affirmation of the cultural personality of the oppressed culture. Re-personalization for Africans means re-Africanisation to be accomplished through the Cultural Revolution. Nkrumah says that the revolutionary African personality “expresses identification not only with Africa’s historical past, but with the struggle of the African people in the African Revolution to liberate and unify the continent and to build a just society.”(Nkrumah,K Revolutionary Path p 206). The Revolutionary African Personality is a pan-Africanist concept which identifies us not by our language, religion or geographical location but in terms of our goals which are dynamic, just and noble. Thus, the Revolutionary African Personality puts emphasis on our ideological identity over anything else. It is this ideological identity for which we must consistently struggle which can only be ultimately realized through the success of the Cultural Revolution.

Humanism, Egalitarianism and Collectivism

Humanism, Egalitarianism and Collectivism are the cluster of humanist principles which underlie traditional African society and define the African personality. Respect for human beings and social solidarity, coupled with a keen sense of fraternity, justice and cooperation between men and women are the very foundation of traditional African society.

However, Sekou Touré adds to this that “ society has been marked by the existence of two natures of life, two natures transposing themselves in thought, action, behavior and in the options of (wo)men, whether political, economic, social or cultural. In other words there are two human natures in mankind and in each People; we have the People [interests] itself and the anti-People [interests], with a permanent struggle being waged between the two, the class struggle.”…(Touré A.S. Women In Society p26)

The imperialist incursion into Africa has exacerbated these contradictions, and the battle against the anti-people’s class has dictated that we incorporate in addition to our class analysis the national and gender aspects of the struggle to include the full scope of our Pan African reality. Our ideology teaches us that the first principle of the Revolution is that everything we have earned in life is a reflection of the struggles and contributions of the People and that the masses of People are the makers of history. Included in this principle is the understanding that (wo)man is not merely treated as a means to an end but also as an end in themselves. This is the revolutionary operational principle that forms the basis for the egalitarian, humanist and collectivist character of our ideology.

In fact the (dialectical) relationship between (wo)man and the People shows that the Peoples interests are (wo)man’s interest because it is the People that generate (wo)man. Further more the value and level of the historical evolution of a People is faithfully measured by the condition of the women in society.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism

Revolutionaries want Revolution because it means a qualitative change in the oppressive conditions of the status- quo of capitalist society. In order to bring about this change, revolutionaries must study the science of Revolution. Dialectical and historical materialism is the essence of revolutionary science. Through the study and application of revolutionary ideology, which includes the scientific laws of dialectical and historical materialism, revolutionaries are able to understand the most general laws of the development of nature, human society, and thinking. It is therefore an indispensable instrument of scientific analysis and revolutionary transformation of the world. Sekou Touré says dialectical materialism “studies the general connections between the elements of nature, the laws of evolution of the objective world and the action that these laws exercise on human consciousness.”.(Touré, A.S.Strategy and Tactics of the Revolution, 52) “Dialectics is the method of scientific analysis which all [people] Christians, Muslims and atheist alike can use. Historical materialism is scientific. It objectively proves the rule of historical evolution from the production system. The changes society experienced, the succession of different regimes from the primitive community to socialism can scientifically be explained by historical materialism. Here dialectics deals with the method of analysis and explanation of facts of social and historical phenomena. Historical materialism made it possible to enlighten the process of changes recorded in every man’s life and characterized by the existence of production systems with properties and features different from one another.”(Touré, A.S. Africa On The Move vol xxiv chapterVI,Revolution and Religion p185) 

Historical materialism is the dialectical method applied to history. Historical materialism analyzes and explains the historical processes of evolutionary and revolutionary changes in society characterized by the changes in production systems with properties and features which differ from one to another. Historical materialism does not list the stages of the evolution of society, it analyzes society to show the specific origin of every stage of it’ s evolution, how every qualitative change originates and the specific characteristics of every stage.

The Harmony between Religion/Spirituality and Revolution

For Nkrumahism-Touréism, a revolutionary ideology coming from African culture there is and cannot be any contradiction between Revolution and Religion. In fact Revolution and Religion/spirituality are in harmony and are complementary aspects of culture. Religion and spirituality are dominant features of the African Personality. Nkrumah points out that “The traditional face of Africa includes an attitude towards man which can only be described, in its social manifestation, as being socialist. This arises from the fact that man is regarded in Africa as primarily a spiritual being, a being endowed originally with a certain inward dignity and value” ( Nkrumah,K. Consciencism p68).

For African people there is essential harmony in our faith in the Creator and the African Revolution. To fulfill our obligations to our religion or spirituality we have an obligation to properly serve one another, Gods’ highest creation. Man and Woman, the true servants of God and the People, have the duty to fight for the liberation of those deprived of liberty, whether an individual or a People.

Revolution is the collective action and struggle of an oppressed People guided and supported by a consciously planned process (ideology) and determination to qualitatively change an old, backward and oppressive political-economic condition (capitalism), into a new progressive and just system that will work for the People’s interests (Socialism).

Religion is a set of beliefs and principles that affirm the existence of one or more supreme beings or God(s) which govern us all. Religion influences and motivates social behavior in the sense that it serves as a moral guide and provides reassurance to People that in spite of what may seem to be an overwhelmingly negative situation, through the practice of religion and serving God, peace, justice and prosperity will prevail. Religion holds respect for human dignity and human virtue. Religion can also project man’s existence onto the next world, and reserves for a future world positive or negative existence according to their life conduct in this world. However as Sekou Touré, a revolutionary who practices Islam,  points out “The Revolution does not intend to deny this future world; it only wishes that the struggle against evil be not `deferred` or postponed, and this is actually what all sincere believers and the dispossessed, regardless of race, sex or nationality are pressing for.” (A. S. Touré, Revolution and Religion, Africa On The Move volxxiv).

Both Revolution and Religion share common values which they want people to reflect, and even more they want People to become the uncompromising and faithful advocates of. Some of these values are justice, peace and freedom for mankind, the nation and the laboring masses. Revolution and Religion proclaim, organize and conduct a permanent struggle, a universal struggle which, for the former is class struggle, the clash between antagonistic interests represented by classes that are opposed in the process of production, distribution and utilization of goods. While for the latter it is a struggle between good and evil, good embodying truth, justice and beauty, and evil embodying exploitation, lies, oppression, in essence all that is contrary to good.

Suffering, sweat and sacrifice are considered by both Revolution and Religion as necessary and ongoing on the long road to freedom. An important part of Religion and Revolution involves the unity of the philosophy and the behavior it advocates. In other words, not only is there is a constant struggle for the honest adherents of both Revolution and Religion to live up to the principles of each, but both Revolution and Religion have also been misused by corrupt men and women as a tool of exploitation and oppression.

Hence we should judge Revolution and Religion primarily by its principles not necessarily by its adherents. We know that our People’s faith and belief in righteousness and justice, which is upheld by their religious and spiritual faith must reinforce the need to engage in revolutionary political activity to defeat the enemies of God and the People on earth. The essential harmony of Revolution and Religion can only be affirmed in the struggle to build a just society.

The Necessity For Permanent, Mass, Revolutionary, Pan-African Political Education, Organization and Action

Following the 5th Pan-African Congress in 1945, the mass political party emerged within the mass political movements as a qualitative leap and superior form of organized mass struggle, although mass political movement remained the dominant form of struggle. Some of these political movements can and do topple neo-colonialism, as most puppet regimes are weak. But generally speaking only mass-based revolutionary parties unified by a monolithic ideology will be strong enough to seize and sustain state power when confronted with imperialism’s counter-offensive of political, economic, military and psychological terrorism. Only mass-based parties with revolutionary ideology will maintain class struggle as a strategic principle and properly organize the class struggle along clear-cut class lines to defeat the internal and external enemies of the People’s class. Only ideological monolithic mass parties of conscious cadre are capable of organizing socialist transformation. 

A dialectical relationship exists between mass political movements and mass revolutionary parties. Revolutionary mass parties are a product of mass political movements. The mass movements remain relentless in struggle against oppression and for a better way of life. They serve as a source of sustenance and bulwark of defense for revolutionary party building. The wider mass movements stand as an inexhaustible reservoir of revolutionary mass potential, which ultimately must be tapped to realize our mass party. Revolutionary party building is integrally connected with and seeks to be a catalytic force with respect to ideologically transforming the broader mass movements into one revolutionary mass Pan-African party. Through ideological education and struggle, the Party seeks to progressively raise the level of class-consciousness. This transformation largely depends on acquiring the special Competence of ideologically recruiting and training cadre on a mass scale.

Revolutionary Ideology as The Greatest Asset

Nkrumahism-Touréism puts emphasis on the fact that the fundamental task facing Africa is the ideological transformation of man and woman. This transformation begins in the realm of morals and values:

“Africa needs a new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest, informed man [and woman] who submerges self in service to the nation and mankind. A man [and woman] who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man [and woman] whose humility is his [her] strength and whose integrity is his [her] greatness.” (Nkrumah,K. 1975 Africa Must Unite p.130).

Both Nkrumah and Touré held ideology as the crucial element and the greatest asset in the African revolution. Touré teaches us that “Culture is the framework of ideology. Culture is the container, which carries ideology as its contents.” Africa has her own culture and thus must have her own ideology thereby conforming to the African personality. Nkrumah informs us that philosophy is an instrument of ideology and must derive it’s weapons from the living conditions of African people and that it is from those conditions that the intellectual content of our philosophy must be created. Nkrumah teaches us further that…. “a united people armed with an ideology which explains the status quo and illuminates our path of development is the greatest asset we posses for the total liberation and complete emancipation of Africa. And the emancipation of Africa completes the process of the emancipation of man.” (Nkrumah, K. 1964 Why The Spark p.2).

Touré echoes Nkrumah’s position that political freedom is a prerequisite for economic freedom and adds that political revolution is part and parcel of the ideological revolution. Hence ideological revolution is the fundamental requirement for political and economic revolutions. Likewise, political independence is incomplete unless it is followed by an economic revolution. Touré shows revolutionary ideology as the critical element in developing revolutionary consciousness as he teaches us the laws of developing consciousness. When he says,

“ Without revolutionary consciousness there is no Revolution! All those who have had to conduct revolution have been able to verify this. But where does this revolutionary consciousness come from, since it is certain that it is not basic datum, nor does it come into being and develop spontaneously? History teaches that it is created and developed through ideological education and revolutionary practice. We can equally affirm that without ideological training and without revolutionary action, there can be no revolutionary consciousness.”

Sekou Touré

To achieve a decisive impact on or recruit from mass movements the Party must have ideologically strong cadre and a program of ideological development. With the mass party our masses can bring forth and strengthen the best attributes of the mass movement into the qualified expressions of the mass revolutionary party characterized by mass revolutionary consciousness and mass ideological power as the guiding force to revolutionary practice.

The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) is a permanent, independent, revolutionary, socialist, Pan-African Political Party based in Africa. Africa is the just homeland of African People all over the world. Our Party is an integral part of the Pan-African and World Socialist revolutionary movement. The A-APRP understands that “all people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any other part of the world, are Africans and belong to the African Nation”. — (Kwame Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa, page 4)

What is Socialist Revolution?

[Pictured: Thomas Sankara meets with Fidel Castro in the early 1980s]

By Nino Brown

Republished from Liberation School.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and other imperialist countries have repeatedly declared that history is over, meaning that humanity cannot transcend the capitalist system, which is elevated as the pinnacle of human development. As Margaret Thatcher claimed “there is no alternative” to capitalism, and the best we can hope for is a kinder, gentler, and more “humane” form of it. According to the capitalist class, the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrated that “socialism doesn’t work” and socialist revolution is foolhardy, so we shouldn’t preoccupy ourselves with fighting for it.

Despite this prognosis, socialist revolution is very much on the table in the U.S. and all over the world. As we are facing multiple existential crises for humanity and the planet, socialist revolution is not just possible, but an absolute necessity to ensure our collective future.

Wherever there’s exploitation and oppression, there’s resistance, and the capitalist system generates the conditions for this continued resistance. However, while resistance ebbs and flows, there are particular moments when, as Marx and Engels put it, the broad masses are “sprung into the air” [2]. Today, resistance to capitalism, imperialism, and all systems of oppression is increasing. However, to make a socialist revolution, resistance is not enough. Socialist revolution requires the class-conscious intervention of the working and oppressed classes to dislodge the political power of the bourgeoisie, collectivize and plan production, and create a new state in which the masses of people are in control.

This article introduces what a socialist revolution is—in contrast to anti-communist and bourgeois mythologies that caricature it as an impossible and hopeless project. Socialist revolution anywhere cannot be prescribed and certainly is not an automatic development of any single or foundational contradiction; it requires explicit mass socialist consciousness and organizing.

Further, a socialist revolution cannot take place without society entering into a profound crisis. The Russian leader V.I. Lenin, whose Bolshevik Party led the first successful socialist revolution in 1917, put it this way:

“A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for ‘the lower classes not to want’ to live in the old way; it is also necessary that ‘the upper classes should be unable’ to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses” [3].

Revolutionary opportunities arise neither as a result of the objective conditions of society nor the class consciousness of the masses alone. Instead, revolutionary situations open when the cascading contradictions of capitalism, imperialism, and oppression force the current order to a standstill. Such objective conditions can emerge from economic, political, social, military, or ecological crises: such as the cascading crises of automation and the resulting job losses, the delegitimation of basic institutions of U.S. bourgeois democracy like presidential elections, the climate catastrophe, and the U.S. war drive against Russia and China. But by themselves the contradictions of capitalism, which inevitably lead to crisis, do not make a revolution.

There are many revolutionary situations but fewer revolutions. This is because revolutions require the combination of the above-mentioned objective conditions as well as the subjective forces capable of seizing on the revolutionary opening. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is dedicated to building a party that can seize these revolutionary openings when they appear in the United States.

When society enters into a revolutionary crisis, it presents the opportunity for socialist revolution but, as Lenin points out, there have been many revolutionary crises that did not become successful socialist revolutions. What was missing in virtually all those cases was “the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break or dislocate the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls’, if it is not toppled over” [4]. This for example, is what happened in Egypt in the wake of the popular uprising that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak in early 2011. The revolution was led by working and poor people—especially young people—who created new organizational forms during the course of the uprising. Because of the systematic repression of the Left, however, there was no working-class party capable of transforming the revolutionary opportunity into a revolution. In the absence of such a party, the most well-organized forces assumed leadership.

Political and social revolutions

When Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders first declared his run for presidency in 2014-15, he announced that his campaign would spark a “political revolution to transform our country economically, politically, socially and environmentally” [5]. His campaign resonated with a broad progressive base of the working class and some elements of the middle class.

Sanders was calling for major changes in society, many of which would have benefited the working masses, but was this really calling for a “revolution”? From a Marxist point of view, what Sanders proposed was actually a series of major reforms. Reform movements are often large and powerful, pulling vast numbers of people into struggle against the ruling class for basic democratic rights. The movements for health care, affirmative action, better wages, union representation, expanded marriage rights, and abortion rights are examples of powerful reform movements that have won important victories. All of these movements led to progressive changes to the political and legal superstructure of society; while progressive reform movements can change how society is run and operated, they do not fundamentally alter the economic system as a whole and are always resisted by the ruling class.

In order for us to realize such popular and necessary democratic and progressive reforms we need an entirely new social system, a socialist system, in which the working class has political, social, and economic power. To do this, a social revolution must dislodge the bourgeois ruling class from power.

Marxists use the term “social revolution” in a very precise way. Whereas political revolutions change the form of social rule and can bring important gains for the oppressed, they leave the fabric of the capitalist mode of production intact: private ownership of the means of production and capitalist control over the state apparatus. Political revolutions are significant shifts in political leadership, such as those that took place during the Reconstruction Era and the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements of the 1950s-70s. Each brought about substantial changes in the political and social order but stopped short of changing the underlying structure of the economy [6].

Distinguishing between political and social revolutions doesn’t mean that we view them as separate and unrelated. In fact, historically, socialist revolutions have combined struggles for political and social transformation. Think, for example, of how central the struggle for a legally-regulated working day was to the Bolshevik’s line of march toward socialist revolution.

A socialist revolution in the U.S. would end the private ownership of the means of production, factories and mines, transportation systems and communication networks, banks and agriculture, etc., by a tiny clique of capitalists. Such a change in the mode of production would also have far-reaching consequences for the social hierarchies of exploitation, altering—and providing the material basis for eliminating—the social subjugation of all oppressed groups.

A socialist revolution, a radical rupture with the capitalist system, would mean many things, but principally it would mean that working class and oppressed peoples would, among other tasks:

1. Dismantle the old bourgeois state machinery and replace it with a new type of state, a workers’ state where working class people would govern society at every level.

2. Collectivize the means of producing and sustaining life. These would be controlled by the working class and its organizations, making them public property to be administered in the interests of the many and not just a tiny clique of unelected capitalists.

3. Implement a planned economy where production would be geared towards meeting people’s needs and sustaining the planet’s ecosystem, not for maximizing profit.

Socialist revolution and the question of violence

Capitalist politicians, media, and educational institutions portray socialist revolutionaries as bloodthirsty idealists, and revolutions are popularly described as incidents of mass violence. The capitalist ruling class, which itself came to power through violent revolutions and state-sanctioned and individual acts of conquest and dispossession, aims to foreclose the revolutionary path of the proletariat by presenting it as blood-soaked and misguided.

It is true that figures like Marx, Engels, and Lenin sometimes foregrounded the inevitability of violence in social revolutions. However, this is not because socialist revolutions necessitate violence in an abstract way.

In fact, Marx once suggested that, compared to the immense violence that brought the capitalist class to power, the socialist revolution would be relatively peaceful. The reason is that the capitalist revolution entailed “the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers,” whereas the socialist revolution entails “the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people” [7].

If violence is often a feature of social revolutions it is not due to the preference of the workers. On the contrary, it is because the capitalist ruling class will resort—and, in fact, already does resort—to the most extreme forms of violence as a means of protecting its property interests.

Lessons from history

No successful socialist revolution occurred during Marx and Engels’ lifetimes. However, they did witness and support the Paris Commune of 1871, when workers seized control of Paris and established, for a limited time, a revolutionary government based on workers’ self-rule. The bourgeoisie allied with the aristocracy against the rising revolutionary class—the proletariat—in order to brutally crush the Commune, killing tens of thousands of workers. This led Marx and Engels to reconsider the revolutionary proposals included in The Communist Manifesto. In the preface to the 1872 German edition, they wrote that they would formulate these differently because of “the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months.” “One thing especially was proved by the Commune,” they continue, which is “that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes’” [8]. This lesson would be vital in the success of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent socialist revolutions across the colonial world.

The inter-imperialist rivalry of WWI created a unique opportunity for the Bolsheviks to break the weakest link in the imperial chain, seizing state power in Russia and establishing the world’s first sustained workers’ state. “Revolution,” Lenin put it in 1917, “consists in the proletariat destroying the ‘administrative apparatus’ and the whole state machine, replacing it by a new one consisting of the armed workers” [9]. In order to do so, the working and toiling masses need to be organized to successfully combat the highly disciplined armies of the ruling class. A vanguard party of revolutionary cadres provides the leadership necessary to guide the organized workers to a successful revolution.

The Russian Revolution was a social revolution in the sense that it changed the social relations of production and the overall class order of society. It is essential to recognize, however, that this project was not simply economic, in a reductive sense, as some of its uninformed detractors have proclaimed. In order to begin building an egalitarian society, the Bolsheviks pursued the project of socializing the means of production and redistributing land, slowly but surely building up a society in which everyone had the right to housing, education, healthcare, and employment, and more. At the same time, they directly confronted the legacies of social chauvinism, nationalism and racism by introducing a substantive democracy in which all nations had the right to self-determination and the plethora of cultures and languages within the USSR was celebrated [10].

In addition to directly combating dehumanizing practices, which are so integral to capitalism, the Soviet leadership undertook to dismantle the system of domestic slavery that subjugated women. “Under Alexandra Kollantai, people’s commissar for social welfare,” Valentine Moghadam explains, women were granted “an eight-hour day, social insurance, pregnancy leave for two months before and after childbirth, and time at work to breast-feed,” in addition to the legal codification of marital equality, the right to divorce, and more [11].

A socialist revolution is a total transformation that reorganizes, in the name of equality, the entire socioeconomic system, which includes—among other elements—its class, racial, gender, and national orders. It is significant, in this regard, that the successful socialist revolutions that occurred in the wake of the Russian Revolution took place in the colonial world rather than in the capitalist core.

Lenin himself had anticipated that the revolutionary storm would move eastward as colonized peoples rose up against imperialist domination. Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh was among them. He described how he yelled out with joy as he read aloud and slowly came to understand Lenin’s message to the colonies. “Lenin,” he wrote, “was the first to realize and assess the full importance of drawing the colonial peoples into the revolutionary movement. He was the first to point out that, without the participation of the colonial peoples, the socialist revolution could not come about” [12].

Making a socialist revolution in the U.S.

We should take inspiration from the history of the struggles for socialist revolution, knowing that our party is situated squarely within this lineage. The tradition that we are part of is the one that has practically demonstrated its ability to make real, substantive gains for the working class, and notably for the most oppressed and exploited members of the international proletariat. In spite of what the capitalist ruling class would like us to believe, decay in the advanced capitalist countries is daily on display, and the socialist movement continues to grow around the world.

We find ourselves, however, in a unique situation since we in the belly of the beast, the U.S. Empire, which has over time built up a political system and broader culture that is profoundly reactionary. All of our creativity, insight, and revolutionary enthusiasm will be necessary to find effective ways of bringing the working class into the struggle for socialism. While there is no road map to revolution, there is a deep, international tradition of revolutionary organizing from which we need to learn, while also adapting it to our unique circumstances. In doing so, we can take hope and inspiration from the fact that, as we each do our own part, we are contributing to a collective struggle for the future of humanity and planet Earth.

“The socialist revolution is not one single act, not one single battle on a single front,” Lenin wrote, “but a whole epoch of intensified class conflicts, a long series of battles on all fronts, i.e., battles around all the problems of economics and politics, which can culminate only in the expropriation of the bourgeoisie” [13]. As we contribute to these battles, developing new tactics to edge out our opponents, let us never lose sight of the global class war that will decide the future of us all. For this is what is ultimately at stake in the question of revolution: shall we continue to live under an exploitative and oppressive system that is destroying humanity and the biosphere, or should we reorganize society to satisfy the needs and aspirations of the overwhelming majority?

Building mass socialist consciousness

There is no formula, blueprint, or silver bullet to get us to socialism. We know that the class struggle is a school for the working class in organizing itself to do battle with the bourgeoisie and win social gains here or there, but the class struggle in and of itself does not automatically lead to socialism. We can study and learn from socialist revolutions in history, but the conditions under which those revolutions were won are fundamentally different from the conditions that face us today in the U.S. No serious Marxist would argue that the socialist revolution develops the same way in every country. Lenin reminds us that “in different countries, the revolution develops differently. It always proceeds over a long time and with difficulty. Bad is the Socialist who thinks that the capitalists will abdicate their rights at once” [14].

So how do we get from here to there? From capitalist society to socialist society? For starters, economic, political, and social struggles are schools through which we can build the subjective forces necessary for revolution. Socialism can only develop out of the class struggle against the capitalists; it will not fall from the sky or come from the minds of some “ingenious” individuals. But, as we stated before, just recognition of and even appreciation for the class struggle does not end up with socialism or even socialist consciousness. The ruling class owns and operates an immense state apparatus and has access to tremendous resources to crush the resistance of the working class and hold back revolutionary consciousness. In order to overcome this, the working class and oppressed need their own political instrument(s) to fight the bourgeoisie. This means mass organizations of our class, in various forms from labor unions tenant associations to broad-based coalitions and single-issue organizations. Ultimately, the key instrument in socialist revolutions is a revolutionary Marxist party that’s able to unite the different mass organizations together under a coherent political program and strategic outlook.

The historical task of the working class is not just to emancipate itself, but all of humanity, from the shackles of capitalist exploitation and oppression. However, the path to victory inevitably goes through setbacks, defeats, and retreats, materially and ideologically. Conceiving of revolution today requires acknowledging this reality, but also proposing an organizational form that can readily assist the class and guide the struggle towards victory: the capture of state power by the working class. It is here where Leninism provides a battle-tested theory and practice to help revolutionaries battle with the capitalist class and build the revolutionary power and unity vital for defeating the capitalists and building socialism. For revolutionaries in the Leninist tradition, history has demonstrated with numerous examples that it is not the task of the revolutionary party to “make” the revolution with independent action divorced from the masses. In order to overcome the political and ideological indoctrination by the capitalist class, which has only strengthened over time with the rise of mass media and communications, it is necessary for revolutionaries today to embed themselves within workers’ struggles so as to help workers connect the concrete and specific contradictions of capitalism (police brutality, housing struggles, workplace fights) to its general functioning and motion.

As capitalism continues generating compounding crises affecting both the ruling class and the ruled, as spontaneous rebellions and revolts emerge, it is vitally necessary to continue building class consciousness of workers’ struggles. The organizational independence of the working class, through its own political party, is indispensable. For after all, a revolutionary crisis, while invoking chaos and confusion among the ruling class and oppressed classes, does not automatically lead to socialism. Reactionary elements, for example, may seize the time during a crisis; the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol to overturn the election results, the first phase of a coup attempt, are an indication of this possibility [15].

To make a socialist revolution requires more than spontaneous rebellions, more than idly waiting for the objective conditions to ripen; it requires working-class mass organization, discipline, unity of the oppressed, and a political party that can provide theoretical, strategic, and tactical clarity throughout the course of our various struggles. Socialism does not arrive ready-made: it is a result of the class struggle for state power, and thus requires socialists, but most importantly of all a revolutionary socialist party to guide, learn from, and organize the working class and its allies on the path to victory.

The time to build the revolutionary party is now. There is no time to waste. The extreme problems and contradictions of U.S. society mean that a deep crisis is inevitable, though neither revolutionaries nor the ruling class can determine when a revolutionary situation will develop. As many historical experiences have shown, it is difficult but not impossible to create the party needed to turn a revolutionary opportunity into a revolutionary victory once the crisis is underway. For all those who hope for revolution and a new socialist society, building the party is the key task.

References

[1] V.I. Lenin, “Letters on Tactics,” in V.I. Lenin,Lenin Collected Works (Vol. 24): April-June 1917, ed. B. Isaacs (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1918/1980), 44.
[2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,The Communist Manifesto, trans. S. Moore (New York: Penguin Books, 1888/1967), 232.
[3] V.I. Lenin, “The Collapse of the Second International,” in V.I Lenin,Lenin Collected Works (Vol. 21): August 1914-1915, trans. J. Katzer (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1915/1980), 213-214.
[4] Ibid., 214.
[5] Andrew Prokop, “Bernie Sanders’s Political Revolution, Explained,”Vox, 28 January 2016. Availablehere.
[6] Social revolutions make a sharp break from one social system to another, although not all social revolutions aresocialistrevolutions. The 1979 Iranian Revolution, for example, overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah, installed in a 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically-elected Mossadegh government. In the period before the revolution, millions of people took to the streets and eventually won much of the armed forces to their side. Again, however, because of the intense repression of trade unions and the communists under the Shah’s brutal rule, socialist forces were unable to turn the revolutionary opportunity into a socialist revolution. At the same time, by overthrowing the U.S.’s primary colonial outpost in the region and establishing an independent and anti-colonial government, the Iranian Revolution did significantly change the makeup of the social system.
[7] Karl Marx,Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Vol. 1): The Process of Capitalist Production, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York: International Publishers, 1867/1967), 715.
[8] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Preface to the German Edition of 1872,” in Marx and Engels,The Communist Manifesto, 194.
[9] V.I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” in V.I. Lenin,Lenin Collected Works (Vol. 25): June-September 1917, ed. S. Presyan and J. Riordan (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1917/1980), 491.
[10] See Eugene Puryear, “Nations and Soviets: The National Question in the USSR,”Liberation News, 06 June 2022. Availablehere.
[11] Valentine Moghadam,Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993), 78-79.
[12] Ho Chi Minh,Selected Writings (1920-1969)(Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2001), 37.
[13] V.I. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” in V.I. Lenin,Lenin Collected Works (Vol. 22): December 1915-July 1916), ed. G. Hanna, trans. Y. Sdobnikov (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1916/1977), 144.
[14] V.I. Lenin, “Speech at a Presnya District Workers’ Conference,” in Lenin,Lenin Collected Works (Vol. 28), 361.
[15] See Party for Socialism and Liberation, “The Paralysis Ends: Trump, Fascism, and the Capitalist State,”Liberation News, 13 January 2021. Available here.