The Kenosha Uprising and the Need for a People's Revolutionary Party

By Maoist Communist Party

Originally published by the Maoist Communist Party under the title, “Kenosha and Our Strategic Orientation.”

[Editors Note: Republishing political programs such as these does not necessarily reflect an official endorsement by the Hampton Institute.]

The course of the George Floyd Rebellion has demonstrated unequivocally that the principle task of the communist movement is the work of party building: the provision of revolutionary organization forged in the fires of class struggle and capable of providing proletarian leadership to the mass movement. It would be pure delusion to suggest that any contemporary communist formation has the capacity to provide that leadership and shift the objective situation we now face in the direction of a revolutionary break – the spontaneous rebellion which continues to rage across the country, most recently stoked by the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI, is entirely outside of the control of the revolutionary movement, which now exists only in small-group form. The questions facing the communist camp revolve around our path forward and overall strategy: how to construct a fully constituted revolutionary communist party in our context, in the face of sharpening reactionary paramilitary aggression and a nearly unprecedented (at least in recent memory) wave of anticolonial uprisings.

The overall failure to seize upon the current juncture is an indictment of a left which has neglected to take seriously the anti-imperialist character of the popular struggle for black liberation, that is, the struggle for national liberation of the New Afrikan internal colony. Allowing the black liberation movement to be subsumed by a chauvinist politics of “class unity” has obfuscated the transformation of the white proletariat into a labor aristocracy which reaps a portion of the gains looted through superexploitation of the colonized. We have addressed the dialectics of this transformation elsewhere, but in short, any meaningful class analysis of the so-called u.s.a. context reveals a proletariat cut across by imperialist contradictions which must be resolved through struggle against white supremacy and settler colonialism. The fight against white supremacy must be considered as much a question of principle as of strategy; the liquidation of either component amounts to the liquidation of any practical path to revolutionary struggle itself.

Recognizing the practical limitations of the contemporary communist movement within the so-called u.s.a. – consequences of decades of sectarian squabbling, the hegemony of revisionism and white chauvinism, and the complete absence of a truly mass-oriented politics guided by a strategic revolutionary program – means also recognizing that the only path forward is one of constructing mass organizations with a burgeoning party formation at their core, and of uniting the struggle for black liberation with the struggle for socialism by putting politics, rather than dogma, in command.

The following theses summarize the general strategic orientation of the Maoist Communist Party – Organizing Committee in this regard:

i. The fight against white supremacy must take on a strategic priority. Recent events have demonstrated to the world at large what the black revolutionary movement and the agents of the settler-state apparatus have both recognized for decades: the oppression of the New Afrikan internal colony is the principal contradiction in the contemporary u.s.a. context. The intense repression of the black revolutionary movement – indeed, the construction of all new repressive apparatuses for this singular purpose – speaks to the fear which the old bourgeoisie rightly feels in the face of this national liberation struggle. Lenin, during the Third International, changed the course of the international communist movement by correcting its slogan, from the famous lines of the Manifesto (“Workers of the world, unite!”) to “Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!” Communist unity with the struggle of oppressed peoples for their liberation is not solely on the basis of national liberation struggles’ ability to ‘detonate’ the broader class struggle, but because the anti-imperialist struggle is the leading force in the world revolutionary movement today. A communist movement which is unable to unite the worker’s struggle with the black revolutionary struggle on the basis of anti-imperialism is destined for the dustbin of history. The MCP-OC directs its cadres to unite wherever possible with formations which organize for black liberation, principally the New Afrikan Black Panther Party and the United Panther Movement.

ii. The spontaneous uprisings across the country, in response to repressive violence against black people, are circumscribed by the overall level of mass organization existing in a given city. The broad success of the state apparatus and its nonprofit wing in recuperating the energy of the George Floyd Rebellion into nonthreatening (and even counterrevolutionary) programs is a direct consequence of the absence of mass organizations capable of transforming the struggle for immediate demands into a political struggle for power. Even the most militant rebellion will be limited to achieving only minor concessions from the state without the presence of revolutionary leadership armed with a political program. The task of our cadres in this context is not only to recruit for their own organizations, such as our For the People programs, which is ultimately a secondary objective. Instead, we instruct local cells to work towards the construction of organizations composed of the masses themselves, leading alongside militants. Such organizations must be made capable of resisting recuperation through ongoing and explicit political education and two line struggle; they must be made with the objective of protracting the fight against the class enemy, organizing for concessions from the enemy and operating as a “school of war.” Ultimately, they must be united with other mass organizations into a front under communist leadership.

iii. The experience of Kenosha – in particular, the murder of two demonstrators by the brownshirt Kyle Rittenhouse – not only speaks to the truth of the old adage “cops and Klan go hand in hand,” but provides an implicit critique of the liberal “abolitionist” line. We cannot be fooled by the illusion that the racist violence of the state is an anomaly of “policing” or the “carceral state.” Such rhetoric disguises the real class character of the repressive apparatus and its structural role – the amelioration of class struggle to defend the rule of the owning class. The repression of black people as colonial violence plays a structurally necessary role in the maintenance of capitalist domination – this will never be conceded so long as the capitalist system and its state apparatus continue to exist. Whether through traditional police officers or fascist paramilitaries, Capital will always defend itself. Thus, the fight for abolition must be connected with the revolutionary struggle and the initiation of people’s war. We reject the rightist line demanding “police abolition” as a political reform.

iv. As repressive violence escalates, the communist movement must respond by preparing the masses to defend themselves and their gains by any means necessary. The construction of community self-defense organs under the command of the mass organizations is an urgent task for our militants.

v. The rejection of the ballot as a tool for political struggle is a tactical necessity, not a metaphysical principle. The broad masses have already demonstrated their distaste for the electoral sham carried out by the bourgeois class dictatorship and have never attended the polls in high numbers; the passive electoral boycott of the masses must be transformed into an active electoral boycott that rejects the whole capitalist state system. Particularly as the electoral terrain is offered up by the class enemy as a site of struggle for “social justice” in order to recuperate the creative energy of the masses unleashed by the current uprising, our cadres must agitate around the electoral boycott and fight for revolutionary struggle. Elections, no! People’s war, yes!

The Great Bernie Bust and Why It Was Seemingly Inevitable

By Daniel Lazare

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

It is now all but certain that Joe Biden will be the Democratic candidate. 

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? The Bernie Sanders boom captivated the global left. Everywhere else, social democrats seemed to be on the rocks. Britain’s Labour Party was a shambles, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise was losing steam, while Syriza and Podemos were hardly more than memories of radical opportunities lost. Only in the United States did the story seem any different, thanks to Sanders’ long march through the Democratic Party.

But that was before the ‘Super Tuesday’ cataclysm on March 3 and then ‘mini-Tuesday’ a week later, when six states voted, including the all-important Michigan. After losing 10 of 14 states in the first, Sanders needed a sharp rebound in the second to remain viable. He did not get it. He came in 16 points behind Joe Biden in Michigan, 25 points behind in Missouri, six points behind in Idaho, and a whopping 66 behind in Mississippi. Only in North Dakota and Washington state did he eke out victories by 6.1 and 0.2 points respectively.

Sanders will still have a sizable bloc of delegates going into the Democratic national convention in July. But since he has promised to rally around whoever gets the nomination, he will have no choice but to pay homage to the odious Biden on bended knee.

This is certainly a dramatic turnabout. Hillary Clinton messed up so badly in 2016 that even the most skeptical Marxists assumed that the nomination was Sanders’ for the asking. But they proved to be wrong. What happened?

One possibility is that American exceptionalism turns out yet again to be nothing more than a myth and that any notion of the US left bucking international trends is a pipedream. Comparisons with Britain are striking. Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide leadership victory in September 2015 presaged Sanders’ dramatic breakthrough in the 2016 Michigan primary, while Corbyn’s disastrous performance last December paved the way for the latest debacle.

But in another sense the Bernie bust shows that the US is exceptional after all -- in a purely negative sense, that is. Not only is the American two-party system exceptionally old and suffocating, but it is exceptionally entrenched. In 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt bolted from the Republican Party to run as a Progressive, he was able to gain ballot access in all of the then 48 states. Today, the same feat would be impossible, thanks to sky-high registration requirements, designed to cripple upstart parties before they can even get off the ground.

Indeed, 1912 would be the last time that one of the two top vote-getters would be anyone other than a Republican or Democrat. (Roosevelt came in second behind Democrat Woodrow Wilson, while Republican William Howard Taft was third.) Since then, Americans have voted ‘Repocratic’ with depressing regularity. Since polls show overwhelming support for a third-party alternative, it is not because they want to, but because they effectively have no choice.

But the US system is not only restrictive, but exceptionally regulated. “Normally, democracies regard political parties as voluntary associations entitled to the usual rights of freedom of association,” the social democratic website, Jacobin.com, observed in 2016. “But US state laws dictate not only a ballot-qualified party’s nominating process, but also its leadership structure, leadership selection process and many of its internal rules ...”1  Rather than parties, as the rest of the world understands the term, the result is more akin to a couple of state-sponsored churches with intricate government-imposed rules concerning the selection of bishops and parish priests, weekly services, and so on.

It is a travesty of democracy every step of the way. Nonetheless, Sanders hoped to use a free and unbiased primary system to somehow leapfrog to a higher stage of development. He was wrong, not only because the party establishment turned against him at a crucial moment, but because primaries turn out to be shaped by moral assumptions that powerfully affect what voters say and do.

David Brooks, a New York Times columnist blessed with occasional moments of insight into America’s unique political system, summed up the problem neatly in the wake of Super Tuesday. The primaries, he wrote, showed that:

“Democrats are not just a party; they’re a community. In my years of covering politics, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like what happened in the 48 hours after South Carolina - millions of Democrats from all around the country, from many different demographics, turning as one and arriving at a common decision. It was like watching a flock of geese or a school of fish, seemingly leaderless, sensing some shift in conditions, sensing each other’s intuitions, and smoothly shifting direction en masse. A community is more than the sum of its parts. It is a shared sensibility and a pattern of response.2 ”

All those geese and fish call to mind Edmund Burke’s famous description of the people as “thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak,” as they silently chew their cud. But Brooks is right: rather than rational and deliberative, political parties in America are indeed leaderless mobs, held together not by a common program and ideology, but by a shared sensibility. In the case of the Democrats, that means devotion to the tradition of Franklin D Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Martin Luther King junior, even though they stood for very different things. But anyone who dares point out that FDR refused to support an anti-lynching bill or that King opposed LBJ’s war in Vietnam will be accused of failing to participate in the higher consciousness that the Democratic Party demands.

Worst candidate

That is why the party leadership was able to turn the race around so neatly. The process began two days after Sanders’s impressive 47% win in the Nevada primary, when house majority whip Jim Clyburn intervened on Biden’s behalf. When CNN asked Clyburn what he was “hearing from the Democratic caucus in the house about having, potentially, Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, at the top of the ticket,” he replied:

“I was in Texas about three weeks ago … I talked to the faith community down there, and they were very, very concerned about whether or not we’ll have somebody on the ticket that will cause down-ballot carnage. That’s our biggest problem among my members. We want to see somebody on the ticket that will allow us to expand our numbers, not having to run as some kind of a rearguard campaign, in order to keep from being tarnished with a label. So our candidates are really concerned about that.3 ”

They were concerned, in other words, about seeing their careers go up in smoke, thanks to someone using an s-word that they regard as irrelevant, threatening and unnecessarily disruptive.

But it was Barack Obama’s phone call to Pete Buttigieg four days later that really did the trick. Despite Obama’s disastrous later years, Democrats remember his administration as a golden age, especially after Trump. Hence, his influence is overwhelming. After months of Yoda-like silence, therefore, all he had to do was make a single phone call to Buttigieg on March 1, telling him to withdraw in favor of Biden to trigger an avalanche. Suddenly, word was out that Sanders was getting ahead of himself and had to be reined in.

With that, David Brooks’ school of fish reversed course. As he says, the response was not deliberative or rational, but intuitive. Democrats felt that Sanders was heading in the wrong direction and that Biden would be the wiser course. So they acted on instinct -- and radical-left hopes were dashed.

The debacle bears out American exceptionalism in another way as well: ie, by showing that the direction of American politics is now exceptionally disastrous. To be sure, the US is not facing national break-up the way the UK is. But it is hard to imagine a worse Democratic nominee to go up against Trump. The list of Biden’s Jerry Lewis-like pratfalls and missteps is too long to go into. Suffice it to say that he joined with the notorious southern racist, Jesse Helms, to oppose school bussing as a remedy for de facto segregation in the 1970s and then authored key legislation in the 1980s that ramped up the war on drugs and led to the mass incarceration of millions of poor people and members of racial minorities. He voted in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and, as vice-president, backed US intervention in Libya, Syria and Yemen -- all of which have turned out to be catastrophic. Thanks to a motor mouth he can never quite control, he let the cat out of the bag in 2014 regarding US policy with regard to Syria and al Qa’eda: “Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria,” he told a Harvard audience:

“The Turks … the Saudis, the emirates, etc - what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war … they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad -- except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and al Qa’eda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.4

The fact that Obama ordered Biden to apologize to the Saudis and others for his indiscretion confirms that the administration was not only unable to control their pro-al Qa’eda activities, but was determined to cover them up.5 ”

All of which will provide Trump with more than enough ammunition in the fall. But Biden suffers from another problem as well: significant cognitive decline. The contrast with the smooth-talking politician of just a few years ago is startling. Words tumble out chaotically, non-sequiturs abound and ideas break off in mid-sentence. Here he is trying to explain how to make up for the effects of school segregation in a presidential debate in September:

“…Make sure that we bring into the help the -- the student, the, the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home. We need - we have one school psychologist for every 15 hundred kids in America today. It’s crazy … now, I’m married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. We have to make sure that every single child does in fact have three, four and five-year-olds go to school - school, not day care, school. We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t want to help, they don’t want - they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television, the -- excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the-the-the-the phone, make sure the kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear four million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.6 ”

Exceptionalism

There are dozens of examples of such garbled word salads. Trump will undoubtedly make full use of them, just as he will make full use of Biden’s disastrous misadventures in the Middle East and his role in the Burisma scandal in the Ukraine. This does not mean that he will win -- after all, a lot can happen in the eight months prior to the November election. But, even if Biden prevails, he will be the American equivalent of a Konstantin Chernenko -- the semi-comatose commissar who ran the Soviet Union for 13 months in the mid-1980s and helped drive it into the ground.

That will be the final expression of American exceptionalism -- a brain-addled serial war criminal who is rushing the empire with exceptional speed to its demise.

Daniel Lazare is the author of, most recently, The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the Decline of American Democracy (Verso).

Notes

1. . S Ackerman, ‘A blueprint for a new party’ Jacobin August 11 2016.↩︎

2. . D Brooks, ‘Biden’s rise gives the establishment one last chance’ The New York Times March 5 2020.↩︎

3. . The full exchange can be viewed at www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/02/28/rep-james-clyburn-democrats-concerned-down-ballot-carnage-sot-newday-vpx.cnn.↩︎

4. . The quote begins at 53:30 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcKVCtg5dxM.↩︎

5. . M Landler, ‘Saudis are next on Biden’s Mideast apology list after Harvard remarks’ The New York Times October 6 2014.↩︎

6. . The full quote is available at www.youtube.com
   /watch?time_continue=6&v=4AYVwgcAOMY
   &feature=emb_logo.↩︎

The New White Moderate: Liberalism, Political Coercion, and the Failed Electoral Strategy

(Illustration by Nat Thomas/St. Louis Public Radio)

By Joshua Briond

There’s a Jacobin article circling around titled, “Where Do We Go After Last Night’s Defeat?”  published a day after Bernie Sanders’ defeat on March 11th, 2020. The author writes, “the bad news is that the Democratic Party isn’t going anywhere. The good news is that today’s common-sense political demands are, almost unthinkably, democratic socialist ones.” The overarching theme of the article is that the almost undefeatable nature of the Democratic Establishment, in an historical context, is not a reason to move beyond bourgeois politics, but rather justification for being reluctant to look outside of the realm of the two-party system for solutions to our current reality. According to the author, this argument is supported by the fact that the Sanders’ movement, or rather moment, has won the “battle of ideas,” as if that’s something worthy of boasting. As if winning the “battle of ideas” within this arena has ever fed an empty stomach or liberated anyone. The article displays a lack of understanding of what socialism entails, far beyond mild liberal reforms, further proving Sanders’ moment has widely led to a miseducation of socialist ideals. In the end, the author provides the perfect encapsulation of self-congratulatory American chauvinism, symbolism, and unearned arrogance, largely present on all sides of the electoral political spectrum.

To begin, the article credits what is referred to as “five years of “Sandersism” for the “genuine leap forward in politics in the United States, a leap that dwarfs the past half-century of liberal stupidity and backwardness,” unknowingly and unapologetically depicting the vast disconnect present between Sanders’ moment (electoral canvassing) and colonized people (and our organizing and movement efforts). Which precisely demonstrates why national electoral canvassing, specifically as it relates to bourgeois elections, cannot be categorized as “working-class” organizing or movements when it is systematically disconnected from, and neglects the, most marginalized among us. For example, the article takes a braggadocious tone to make a note about how “in five years, we’ve moved forward fifty,” entirely neglecting to mention how state political repression and mass media’s anti-communist smearing following Black radical movements and uprisings in the last 60 years or so affected the political psyche of millions of people. And also how movements and moments, such as Black Lives Matter, #NoDAPL, and others, took place within the last five years and were instrumental in the shift in public discourse and moving politicians, including Bernie Sanders, further left (even if only performatively), with regard to racial and economic justice and state violence. 

The article, in true social-democrat fashion, reeks of liberal idealism and exceptionalism while complacently lecturing us on how our material reality is bad, but not so bad that we can’t endure our continued social and political subjugation with patience while waiting to vote for the next seemingly progressive politician(s) during the next election cycle. There is no emphasis on the local grassroots organizing (beyond campaigning among the electorate) that is already being done by non-white people who receive little-to-no support from the white moderates masquerading as “allies” and “progressives,” who chronically neglect organizers until it’s time to convince us to vote for their preferred candidate. The author tells us we should “reject” the “fantasy that now is the time we all throw ourselves into third-party work or militant protest activity” and that “there is nowhere for us to go.” Which prompts a question: who is this “us” he speaks of? C.L.R. James once wrote, “What Negro, particularly below the Mason-Dixon line, believes that the bourgeois state is a state above all classes, serving the needs of all the people? They may not formulate their belief in Marxist terms, but their experience drives them to reject this shibboleth [principle] of bourgeois democracy.” The entire article reflects an approach that is not only a product of a widespread culture that lacks political imagination beyond liberal idealizations but has not intellectually or politically struggled with persons of the Black race before, at least not ones who are poor. The author is clearly not from the same hue as the colonized and oppressed people, in desperate material need of far more than even what his beloved Democratic Party is willing to offer, on their best day. But what’s fascinating is just how confident the author is throughout the entirety of the piece with his shit-eating and ramming the politics of electoralism down our throats. And all of this despite the disappointing losses by the most popular progressive politician in the US in back-to-back elections to morally and politically inferior candidates. I pondered on the possibility that maybe this article wasn’t written for me, or us, as in non-white people—but its “colorblind” and race-neutral approach clearly depicts otherwise. However, even the worst of what the white-American community has to offer is undeserving of such a disturbingly bleak and imperious political outlook. 

In his famous letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes about the white moderate who will constantly say, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action" and who “paternalistically feels [he] can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a more convenient season." And I ask, how is this descriptor laid out by the late great MLK, regarding the white moderate in the 1960s, any different than the rhetoric displayed by liberal reformists masquerading as “leftists” in the article? By telling us we need to remain patient for the US political stratosphere to miraculously adopt a conscience and allow moderate and largely temporary reforms through the electoral approach and the Democratic establishment. This is telling the most oppressed people that you can paternalistically set the timetable for our liberation.

The author writes that there are 12 million members of the Democratic Party, the largest membership number of all parties in the US—as a means of emphasizing an unfounded and irrelevant point about the American people’s reliance on the party—while failing to connect the dots to the lack of alternative political options being presented for people to resort to, which leads to a coerced “support” for millions of people who consistently “vote blue.” The author deliberately fails to recognize that the US has a population of over 300 million, and it doesn’t take a mathematician to understand that there are millions upon millions of people who are not members of the establishment and/or simply do not vote—due to disenfranchisement, socio-political status, and/or strategic disinvestment. Millions of people, largely made up of the colonized and/or racialized, who are disinvested and have long rejected the two-party system and are desperately looking for an alternative to their current social, political, and economic material realities. Instead of defeatism under the guise of electoral hopefulness within the Democratic Party, we should be proving to them that socialism, beyond the electoral and welfare statist approach that Bernie offers, could serve as that alternative. 

We, in America, never truly “choose” our political representatives—the ruling class does—even with the largely performative and symbolic facade of allowing some of us to cast votes every couple of years. Sure, we’re granted the opportunity to emblematically “choose” our next plantation owner or subjector-in-chief, but only after having our beliefs filtered and heavily influenced by the stranglehold that mainstream media, or rather mass propaganda machine, has on our psyche. With that, the electoral college stands as a means of allowing ruling elites to have the last say of who they want as their figurehead of empire run by corporations—oftentimes regardless of the popular-vote results. This, along with the fact that we’re constantly forced to choose between possibly slightly improving our material reality and the continued brutalization of those in third-world and global-south countries. It’s nothing more than constant political coercion. A democracy is not just being “allowed” to “choose” your representatives but having representatives that actually politically and morally align with its peoples’ material interests, with a fighting shot to win. If we can understand this illegitimate process and American hypocrisy, as the often “transporter” of democracy, we have to understand how the game is rigged from the jump—and we end up losing every time regardless of who is occupying office, as the ones with the most power and influence are oligarchs and corporations, and their financial interests. So how can you, as a self-proclaimed leftist, progressive, or radical, advocate for the continued reliance on a system that is inherently rigged against us? 

The fact of the matter is: Bernie Sanders is losing. And unless something drastic happens in the coming weeks, he will not be the democratic nominee. The electoral strategy has proved, once again, to be largely ineffective as a legitimate threat to capitalist exploitation and imperialism. So, you would think the most obvious solution would be to align ourselves with organizers, movements, and ideologies that can bring about the radical shift that marginalized people need to survive, right? But no, the new white moderates, leeching onto a party that has proven time and time again that those of us who want something radically different than milquetoast neoliberal establishment candidates and politics, are not welcomed. And honestly, it’s about time we listen. This conception asserted by the author, that somehow “we’ll get ‘em next time,” despite not offering much of a historical context or substantial answer as to why we should be optimistic about this approach or how we could achieve such a thing, is not just politically naive but downright potentially fatal—especially as we approach pending human-induced climate doom and deteriorating material conditions. It’s leading people into a burning building indiscriminately with little care for the lives that’ll be harmed and/or lost, in the meantime. 

Bernie Sanders should be seen as the compromise candidate that he truly represents. A physical embodiment of capitalism’s last hope, the “peaceful” alternative to sustain capitalism, imperialism, and pending climate doom, beyond its life expectancy and to avoid addressing the actualities of what this country is, at its roots, for a couple years longer. Instead, it’s clear that these self-proclaimed “progressive” political figures are considered end-goal saviors to many of these white moderates who claim that the Bernie Sanders’ or Elizabeth Warren’s of the world are merely a means to an end. And, as we’ve seen time and time again, their work will be finished if and when they succeed in electing them to the most powerful office in the world. If the DNC will not accept the mild reforms that Bernie Sanders is offering then that should tell us all we need to know about the reality in which these gains will not be attained through the ballot.

The new white moderate bombards us with disingenuous questions such as, “what’s your solution then?” when they encounter those of us who do not vote, as if opting not to engage in the coercive nature of lesser evils every election cycle, or refusing to vote for and electing the next terrorist-in-chief, is somehow more morally repugnant than the contrary. As if divesting from national electoral politics and not electing imperialists who are sure to enact terror on colonized people globally isn’t a substantial alternative, in and of itself. The new white moderate is desperately clinging on to the glimmer of hope that the Democratic Party and the United States of America, in their entirety, are not beyond redemption. They constantly tell themselves this because believing in the contrary would force them to reckon with not only their sense of identity, which they’ll find is inextricable with Americanism, but also with the reality that everything they think they know about their beloved country, and all of its institutions and global affairs, is categorically false. The claims implied in the article, that the Democratic Party is just simply incompetent, are not true. But minimizing their structural issues to something like incompetence largely lets their existence as a for-profit-over-all-else political party off the hook for its crimes while implying that these issues can be fixed with a slight overhaul in leadership. Democrats heavily rely on the lesser-of-two-evils approach that we see every election cycle. It is all they know and is very much deliberate; it’s not incompetence. As the author notes, they are perfectly fine with masquerading as the “opposition” party to Republicans, even in the Donald Trump regime era—while resisting little-to-none of their fascist policies or acts—as long as it means disallowing even the most mildest of reforms that could potentially come from a Bernie Sanders presidency. 

White moderates are no longer just raging, traditional centrists intent on maintaining the capitalist, white-supremacist status quo, but instead are also self-proclaimed “progressives” and “leftists” telling colonized, racialized, and oppressed people to wait our turn to begin building something revolutionary, something bigger than us all, while they continue underperforming and flat-out losing their electoral strategies. These new white moderates, masquerading as “progressives,” “leftists,” and oftentimes even “radicals,'' are very much keen on allowing the US—with their beloved Democratic Party at the forefront—to maintain its status as the unjust global police of the world, as long as they’re reaping the benefits of such a position through minimal “domestic” progress through welfare statism. And this is why they can so easily advocate for the continued dependence on the liberal establishment. With a condescending smugness, the author writes: “And, of course, there will be some wacky proposals that promise us a shortcut to power. Sectarians will encourage everyone to funnel their rage into ill-fated third-party efforts, and some will demand an insurrection at the Democratic National Convention.” But what’s more “wacky” or “ill-fated” than proposing to reconcile oneself to age-old tactics that are bound to continue to fail—with little-to-no evidence that a different outcome is even remotely possible? What is more doomed than sitting on your hands while people continue dying, and allowing the rage derived from the disappointing defeat of the most well-known progressive politician since FDR to funnel into more electoral opportunities coming along in the future instead of taking said rage and strategically and politically putting it toward building a sustainable movement toward people power, on the ground and in the streets? This failed electoral strategy, while disguised as being optimistic and pragmatic, is nothing more than a politically-naive and deliberately-obtuse attempt at preserving the dead end that is the Democratic Party, an organization that has historically served as a hindrance to radical movements because of its subservience to capital. It justifies futility. Because god forbid we do something beyond gathering signatures, door knocking, and bar-hopping between book clubs.

A Mutating Neoliberalism, Socialist Transitions, and Their Foreign Policies

By Fouâd Oveisy

Leftist politics often discounts the opposing camp’s strategy. In the leftist strategic imaginary, it is usually the case that a stagnating world is moved to progressive motion (or brought to a halt) by the left and its motors of history, a mindset reflected in the hegemony of the ‘establishment’ versus ‘radical left’ allegory of contemporary politics. Just as philosophy of praxis is the intellectual property of the left, or revolutionary transitions involve tasks to simply organize and accomplish by the left. When the political right is credited with an agency or a plan of its own, it is integrated into the iron laws of accumulation of capital or tied to the contradictions of the camp of capital. Mistakenly, the left tends to view components of a rightist grand strategy as manifestations of local or tactical aggressions and concessions. Often it is long after the event, decades into epochal transitions to a new era of capitalism such as neoliberalism, that the left catches up with the material and metaphysical ambitions of rightist projects.

Are we amid another such transition, now, and did and do the fronts represented by Bernie Sanders have a counterstrategy for it? Jeremy Corbyn and The Labour Party of England did not seem to have a Brexit strategy.

It will be immediately objected that bourgeois democracy “itself is the principal ideological lynchpin of Western capitalism, whose very existence deprives the working class of the idea of socialism as a different type of State.” And this is correct. It is absurd to argue that the left will simply take over a bourgeois party, because that is to forget the ultimate Marxist lesson that the Democratic Party is set up as a mode of production of rightwing power. Try to change the people in charge and the system produces the same old rightwing product (e.g. Hillary in 2016, likely Biden in 2020). All the same, I use the case of recent British and American elections as a foil to exhibit the limits of the objection. With or without a working class party, parliamentary elections and the political right’s reasons to win them remain of utmost strategic import to the global left, for the reasons that follow.

I recall an interview with Tony Blair in 2017 on some rightwing thinktank’s podcast. Blair’s unsolicited response to a question asked about potential threats to the United Kingdom’s security, with the interviewer listing adversaries ranging from China to global warming, was ‘Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders’. But the threat then and now was not as much that lefties such as Corbyn and Sanders might take power, but that they take it now that neoliberalism is mutating, capitalism is shifting to a multipolar world order, and the rest of the field are adjusting their transition plans to the emerging realities. State control by the left in this critical juncture, in respectively the oldest and biggest national territories of capitalism, was and is a nightmare scenario for capital. The rise of either of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn to supreme political relevance is of course a function of the latest crises of capitalism and liberalism; however, the camp of capital had and has plans of its own for steering this seismic shift to its own advantage. A sense of poise and urgency evidenced by the chiasmic contradictions of the pro Remain versus Leave capitalists in England, and the Hillary versus Trump contest in the United States.

In contrast, large factions of Labour’s metropolitan base were more or less sentimental about their Europeanness and lost sight of a historical mission and opportunity to fulfill: a leftist exit from a monopoly of capital on the way to perhaps, one day, a more decisive transition. After the left’s misadventure, no amount of promising the same old social democratic policy to the British masses (who proved more attuned to the event if not its articulation than their vanguard) compensated for lacking a clear and concrete strategy vis-à-vis a historical crisis and transition of capital that the Tories reengineered, campaigned on, and monopolized to win.

I will return to the Tories’ reasons. For now, it is more useful to resituate the contemporary left: not as the sole agent of transitions but as caught up in multiple counterrevolutionary transitions overseen by the political right at any point in time, anywhere in the world. Because the only thing that is clear at this point in history is that Marx did not live long enough to fully theorize, not outside The Eighteenth Brumaire, how capitalists might functionalize the contradictions of capital to their own advantage. And how they do this every time by re-functionalizing the crises of capital in transitions to new social orders, via fascism, neoliberalism or imperialism. What István Mészáros later called the “personification of capital” under different “forms of rule”.

True to Marx’s vision, capital self-expands despite and because of its immanent contradictions, but it is also true “there is no such thing as a process except in relations”. Economic and crucially political relations between the right and the left, capitalists and anti-capitalists. These dynamic relations lend themselves to visions and strategies devised to advantage the rule of one side over the other, in order to reproduce the metabolic asymmetry that is at the concrete core of Marx’s notion of class struggle. Perhaps then, after Benjamin’s formulation that the state of emergency has been made permanent, we must add that counterrevolutions are no longer the political right’s reactions to leftist events but rather the movement of the status quo made permanent.

Leftist organizing remains central to balancing this asymmetry and steering a world moved by the algorithms, machines, images and weapons of capitalists and their cronies. Masses are both force and lever in any socialist transition. But to continue to presume that we might ‘one day’ eclipse the enemy’s hegemony by simply growing popular leftist fronts is to reproduce, once more, a domesticated and “internalist” copy of Marx. A well-documented strategic fact that somehow continues to elude leftist organizing.

The consequences of the left’s internalist modus operandi are more severe in practice. First, the prevalent lack of a counter-counterrevolutionary strategy in both theory and practice, as in the war of position waged in England over Brexit, and the war of maneuver in Rojava over the future of the Middle East (I have written extensively about the latter dynamic). It is as if egalitarian mobilization will readily overcome wave after wave of counterrevolutionary force and cunning that either overwhelms or exploits the strengths and weaknesses of egalitarian mobilization. And when it takes generations to develop a revolutionary base and cadre, but only years of counterrevolution to lose them to corruption or crackdown. Indeed, by some accounts a founding text of the American Cold War era strategy, George Kennan’s The Sources of Soviet Conduct works with the premise that the Soviets organize and strategize around and through their historical mission to create a classless society –– that thing Lenin called fighting not against but for something. And insofar as the United States manages to drag the Soviets time and time again into difficult political situations where they are forced to make poor or immoral decisions, the collective Soviet faith in their collective mission will deteriorate and, over the long term, the USSR hegemony will collapse internally. Essentially, Kennan advises disarming, confusing and then finishing off the Soviets made hopeless, and he teaches that cunning may ultimately outmanoeuvre any egalitarian hypothesis. The rest is history, even if Kennan’s imperialist strategy is not the only reason that the late Soviet market socialist, state-capitalist machine came apart. Kennan’s intervention did however provide external impetus to the domination of hierarchical forms of capital over Soviet politics and economics.

The allegory about Kennan also leads to a second and cofounding consequence of the left’s internalist presumptions: the priority of the domestic and national conduct of politics and economics over the international, and to that extent the foreclosure of the imperialist foundations of the hegemonies of domestic capital and the international divisions of both labor and force. A criticism as old as Marx’s Capital but somehow sidelined ever since.

Of course, as I write, the battlefield is enormous and the left is in retreat (despite what one might see or hear). Often we focus on local resistances just to remain relevant. But as witnessed in the Grexit and then the Brexit storylines, the problem and the problem makers are no longer local. Critically, no socialist transition will readily redistribute, at the domestic level, the global foundations of a local capitalist economy, and not when any major capitalist economy is first and foremost a war economy. A war machine not only for neocolonial loot, imposing structural advantages on markets, legitimizing the markets’ juridico-political organs (e.g. the UN or IMF), and ultimately reproducing the material advantages of metropolitan working classes in the West over their counterparts in the peripheries. But also, as W. E. B. Du Bois articulated the relation between the “poor white worker” and the “black slave” long ago, a metropolitan war machine privileges “the vanity” of its domestic working classes. The capitalist war economy forges hegemony domestically, and pauperizes working-class solidarity internationally.

If the American and British underclasses have been exhibiting signs of rebellion against their ‘establishment(s)’, in the first and crucial instance this is due to their deteriorating living conditions, and then it is because the empire and its prospects are waning. In 2018, I spoke to fishermen in Scotland who could not fish because Scandinavian fishing giants were cleansing the sea floor from the small fish and crustaceans that sustained the underwater ecosystem vital to fishing Cod or Halibut. And I spoke to farmers in northern England and they were angrier, but mainly about Corbyn’s refusal to see that England could not ‘punch above its weight in Europe anymore’. The empire no longer provides because it cannot. There is a humility in this admission that is lacking in the leftist vanguard’s hyped up visions of social democracy or autonomy.

Indeed, the general mood in the United States is and has been ‘fearful’ for a decade, and not only in the 2008 recession’s aftermath. The ‘efficient’ rise of Chinese state capitalism, and the imperialist ambitions that go with it and sustain it, are serving as an alternative model of capitalist development and hegemony for expansionist states contending for the markets, from Russia to Turkey and Iran, and also for the old national and liberal territories of capital. In this new economic and political climate, the American working and middle classes are feeling the tides of China’s rise and a global reversal of old fortunes. They are growing weary of the waning prospects of the United States and its liberal vision of the world markets, because everyone knows that the United States is not economically, militarily and ideologically hegemonic anymore.

In the first place, the asymmetric accumulations of industrial capital and military superiority, which once founded and propelled the advantages of Western capitalism at the expense of the peripheries, are no longer as lopsided or decisive (for many reasons that I cannot review here). Without this advantage, a multitude of peripheral states and multinational corporations chip away at the West’s monopoly over the markets, and further the erosion of old advantages. In the meantime, accumulating the old advantages came at the expense of making a mockery of the West’s cultural values, in the name of which colonialist and imperialist wars were waged in the peripheries. Now, the postcolonial capitalist states in charge of the peripheries harness this mockery to assert the rule of local and regional social imaginaries, from Modi’s Hindu vision of India to Putin’s Eurasianism. They do this because holistic visions of autochthonous organicity seamlessly supplement local and ‘natural’ transitions to the (Chinese) authoritarian capitalist mode of production.

In this critical conjuncture, Western capital, no longer capable of bankrolling its middle and working classes’ social welfare at the expense of the encroaching peripheries, risks losing State control to the likes of Corbyn and Sanders. Herein lies the political import of the recent English and American elections despite their bourgeois form, and also what they revealed about a proportionate leftist strategy or its lack thereof. I will return to this point after outlining the camp of capital’s own response to the crisis.

Western capital had two ways out of the mess. The first was Obama and Clinton’s vision of forming new economic blocs, the likes of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which is a strategy of pulling the resources of Western and developing capitalist states together in order to create larger markets. Markets capable of competing in terms of size and diversity of the labour pool with the Chinese alternative. Raising the minimum wage, providing ‘Obamacare’, etc., would serve to ‘dampen’ the havoc these new markets would wreak on the lives of the domestic working classes of the new blocs. As for the foreign policy of this market strategy, the United States would continue to guarantee the military security of these blocs as it did for the post-WWII blocs of capital in Europe and the Pacific, nearly a century ago. In this way Obama foreign policy’s historic “pivot to China” followed in short order, requiring new deputies such as Iran along the way in critical geopolitical junctions, and securing the new alliances with the likes of the historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement.

Then there is Brexit and Trump’s bolder vision: accept Anglo-America’s diminished role and place in the emerging new order, but with a safe and ‘graceful’ transition for US and English capital. As for the working classes, make American and British labour ‘more competitive’ by gutting its welfare and social protections even further, and so lower its price (wage) for capital and reverse the flow of jobs over the long-term. Then close the domestic labour markets to the foreign worker with a dash of fascism added to make it all organic and ‘democratic’. A strongman like Trump requires such a base if he is going to war against the neoliberal establishment and the working classes. On the foreign policy front, not needing to secure the frontiers and market access for other economies, the task is to reimagine the NATO and resurrect old allies such as the Saudis and Turkey who share the new vision (even find a ‘frenemy’ in Russia). Make ‘bilateral trade agreements’ the keyword here because China aside the United States has no one to fear in asymmetric two or three-way trade agreements. As for China, the need to restrain its imperial ambitions being unavoidable one way or another, start a trade war and transform Obama’s pivot into the “Indo-Pacific Partnership”. A logistical sphere of regional states fearful of China’s rise, from India to Australia, which surround China and its naval trade routes with US allies should push ever come to shove.

Here, neither the need for the anarchic force of “interstate politics” to steer the course of capital’s latest crisis (symptomatic of Italian, Dutch and British capital’s fall from hegemony in bygone eras), nor capital’s turn to statism to harness the crisis (found in Roosevelt’s post-Depression New Deal and Hitler’ Reich) is really new. It is really the same old neoliberalism but after a dialectical turn, mutated. The ‘free market’ still prevails because it never existed; austerity remains austerity. Only, the markets are discarding their ideological husks and what is perhaps different is the postcolonial additive of capital’s latest iteration. Neoliberalism is fulfilling its mission to ‘end history’ by fully coopting vernacular capital(s); a global capitalism with many indigenous and civilizational faces.

Indeed, the political right is writing openly about the new realities and their impending embrace by establishment Western liberal democracies. Obama’s friend, Emanuel Macron, dealing with his own revolting working class, Le Pen and Mélenchon, and catching up with the frivolous prospects of a TTP or TTIP bloc after Trump withdrew the United States from these treaties on his first day in the White House, has been gradually transforming France’s domestic and foreign policies into establishment copies of Trump and Brexit’s vision. It is almost safe to predict that if and when Sanders loses to Biden, no matter who wins the White House in November it will be Trump and Brexit’s vision that prevails in Washington for the foreseeable future.

This new climate casts the political right’s candidates in a favourable light. When Johnson promises harnessing the new realities with harsh but familiar measures, Corbyn promises revolutionizing it but seemingly without a grand vision or plan. Here, the political right’s candidates are viewed as capable because they are of the system and as ruthless as the leaders of contender states led by Putin, Macron or Erdogan. Just as what Trump and his base call ‘the establishment’ (e.g. the corruptors of capitalism) is not the same as Sanders’s referend of the same term (e.g. the corruption of capitalism), which should provide some commentary on populism as a sensible leftist strategy and on why Sanders has not done as well as hyped or hoped with working class constituencies that he promised to wrest away from Trump.

The Sanders campaign somehow misread the signs of the times, even if many on the left have been warning about the new manifestations of neoliberalism for some time, and Trump’s ways of harnessing them. Indeed, despite his promise to organize a revolution, Sanders offered the past, i.e. America now Scandinavia, when Scandinavia is sinking into crisis and fascism. The Sanders message might have been ‘new’ in the context of US politics, it is transformative and necessary, but it banked on a populism without a popular vision. He resorted to hackneyed syndicalist programs of organizing people around particular demands when he should have assumed the mantle of a strategist and ideologue who reimagines and reorganizes the chaos in broad and concrete strokes, as Lenin once did. If the masses of Detroit, Michigan shifted back to the centre and voted for Biden, it was because Sanders’s timid vision could never compete with the anarchy Trump is wreaking on the working class lives. Leftist politics has once again discounted the opposing camp’s strategy, and the ‘Sanders revolution’ was lacking a boldly revolutionary vision because of its provincial and internalist mindset and vanguard.

However, it is for all the reasons outlined above that the Sanders movement must pass the test of this critical political conjecture and win in November –– and hopefully it is not too late. But I will not offer a domestic version of such a winning strategy here. Bernie’s growing movement needs to envision, educate and articulate its domestic strategy at the grassroots. Just as we need to organize the working masses around epochal and concrete visions of mass transformations by educating and empowering a strategic mindset at the grassroots. Rather, I focus on Sanders’s foreign policy. First to demonstrate how the internalism and provincialism of his ‘revolution’ poses a threat to revolutionary politics elsewhere, especially in Iran. And then to relate the timidity of his revolutionary vision for Americans to the ambiguity and absurdity of his foreign policy plans. I make the point that transitioning to socialism will remain out of reach insofar as the left refuses a proactive and internationalist politics that steers the historical course of global capital against the grain of local capitalism. For this task we need the humility of accepting that we (and the working classes) are not the sole motor of history, and that we must use capital’s will-to-anarchy everywhere as a motor of developing anti-capitalism anywhere.

On the way to such a vision and strategy, we need to disavow internalist modes of leftism that find their epitome in Slavoj Žižek’s naive proclamations of four years ago, about an utter lack of distinction between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. An indistinctness that translated domestically into prisons for migrant children, and internationally as wars, ethnic cleansings and coups sponsored by Trump’s cronies in Yemen and Bolivia. Critically, the grand master’s pseudo-strategic prescription, i.e. the deteriorating state of life under Trump will ‘wake up’ the masses, was seemingly clueless about the mutating state of neoliberalism (to which the masses were already waking up at the time). Painfully, it reeked of the same romantic and humanist naivety that he ridicules elsewhere. Otherwise, he would and should have made a distinction between the establishment’s ‘liberal’ neoliberalism, and the coming establishment’s authoritarian neoliberalism. As Judith Butler remarked four years ago, under Hillary we would not lose so much ground to fascism on top of everything else –– and she was right.

It could be that we are finally headed for a world police state, and Žižek’s prescription did after all accelerate the dawn of a decisive global struggle! The trouble is that the left is awfully shorthanded in such military matters, when it delegates state control to the likes of Trump and with no alternative in store but ‘waking up’. The United States spends more than 20% of the proceeds of the largest war economy in the world on its military apparatuses. With close to 3.2 million active employees, the US military is also the largest employer in the world, with millions more affiliated as off-duty members, veterans, or families and dependents of members and veterans. And all this in a country where the wider population is marked, as Perry Anderson put it, “by the provincialism of an electorate with minimal knowledge of the outside world, and a political system that has increasingly given virtually untrammeled power to the executive in the conduct of foreign affairs, freeing presidencies, often baulked of domestic goals by fractious legislatures, to act without comparable cross-cutting pressures abroad.” It is simplistic to suggest that socializing domestic US economics and politics can happen without dismantling and replacing its largest and most powerful corporate conglomerate, the US military industrial complex and its political wings in the Pentagon and the State Department. It is just as absurd to suggest that accelerating this undemocratic juggernaut, toward a final confrontation or collision course with China, might somehow inspire the pauperized masses of the world to unite and revolt. Quite the contrary, and more so in a country with entrenched capitalist convictions and habits.

Žižek’s provincial politics ultimately forced the masses to the ‘safe’ centre. And so it is even more absurd when Sanders promises an unworkable vision of US foreign policy to guide and steer his revolution in today’s turbulent global waters. The US left must hold its “revolutionary” leaders to higher standards.

Sanders’ mediocre foreign policy record as a senator speaks for itself. His intention to continue to drone to the near and middle East will not age well either. On the question of Ukraine and Russia, “the framework put in place by the Obama Administration” seems to work for a hypothetical Sanders administration. It even foresee strengthening the sanctions on Russia, a strategy that has only strengthened the monopoly of oligarchic capital in Russia. His position on “Africa” (as a whole) is less ambiguous: “America must create room for Africa to play a greater role in setting the global agenda”, which is perhaps a good start, only it is “global institutions like the IMF, World Bank and UN Security Council” that should “take charge” here. I will return to Saudi Arabia later, because Sanders correctly recognizes that “relying on corrupt authoritarian regimes to deliver us security is a losing bet”, which is an improvement over his 2016 campaign mode of insisting that Saudi Arabia provide its fair share of the cost of global wars. As for what inspires Sanders, the greatest foreign policy accomplishment of the United States since WWII was the Marshall Plan, because “we helped rebuild their economies, spending the equivalent of $130 billion just to reconstruct Western Europe after World War II.” This is the same vision that in its Pacific counterpart put the Japanese Zaibatsu, the top criminal and capitalist class of Japan before and during the WWII, back in charge of Japan in order to quell the rising tide of postwar Japanese socialism. It is the same plan that set up the west German keystone of American imperialism against the spread of Soviet socialism to western Europe.

But Sanders is also vehemently anti-TPP and TTIP; he recognizes that the “authoritarian” mode of Chinese capitalism is an ever bigger global threat. He admirably remarks: “Right-wing authoritarians backed by a network of multi-billionaire oligarchs are forming a common front. We who believe in democracy must join together to build a progressive global order based on human solidarity.” To be fair he does identify the problem of the mutation of capital that I outlined above, even if this recognition is bereft of a vision or strategy to supplement it. However, putting his overall vision together, from bits and pieces gathered from other sources and interviews, adds up to a post-Trump Obama 2.0 foreign policy plan. For example, to quote the entirety of his response on Iran in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations:  

The agreement achieved by the US, Europe, Russia and China with Iran is one of the strongest anti-nuclear agreements ever negotiated. It prevented a war and blocked Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon. I would re-enter the agreement on day one of my presidency and then work with the P5+1 and Iran to build upon it with additional measures to further block any path to a nuclear weapon, restrain Iran’s offensive actions in the region and forge a new strategic balance in the Middle East.

It is indeed a great idea to remove the sanctions on Iran, but beyond that the Sanders plan falls apart from its inner inconsistencies. And here the devil is once again in the fluid context. 

The recent removal of fuel subsidies — which sparked the last round of Iran protests in November of 2019 — were part of a larger program of surgical austerity politics in Iran that prepares the country’s bourgeoning state capitalism for the deregulated free markets. Indeed, the Iranian Reformists who engineered and brokered the JCPOA agreement with Obama have been at the forefront of injecting neoliberal austerity measures into the Iranian economy, destroying working class movements and unions inside Iran, and the killing, incarcerating and harassing of Iranian labour leaders and activists. Such measures are taken to make Iran’s young labour market ‘appealing’ to global capital (a la Trump’s war on American labour) and with a view of a reconciliation deal between Iran and the US, which is a highly welcome prospect for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s imperilled political establishment. The IRI is suffering from the most severe crisis of democratic legitimacy inside Iran since the 1979 revolution (with only about 30% of the population voting at the last round of parliamentary elections in Iran). Here, the JCPOA’s unequivocal reinstatement would effectively amount to a legal and official sanction of the IRI establishment by its declared mortal enemy and the international state system. Critically, the recognition restores the IRI establishment to domestic legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian bourgeoisie who are unhappy with the economic pitfalls of IRI’s nuclear adventurism, and further sidelines the radical aspirations of the oppressed labour, women, democracy and student movements inside Iran.

It will be objected that with or without the JCPOA, Iran will stay the current oppressive course. This is correct. It will be objected that without the JCPOA, Iran might opt for a military nuclear program. This is also correct, even if it is true that Iran might well go nuclear sooner or later, without or without such an agreement. It will be objected that Sanders has promised to pair the JCPOA’s reinstatement with putting pressure on IRI’s human rights’ record. This too is correct; however, it is not altogether clear why Sanders will not negotiate another deal with Iran that empowers the various democracy and labour movements in Iran while addressing the stated concerns. And if Sanders refuses to ‘intervene’ altogether, it is a prospect all-the-more promising; all Middle Eastern people await such a day. The trouble, however, is that he intends to intervene in the name of the left and, seemingly, at the expense of the Middle Eastern left. Just as the Sanders plan is to work with the Turkish state “in a way that recognizes the rights of the Kurds”, when Sanders should be speaking of building an alliance with the pro-labour and pro-minority rights People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and the millions that back its grassroots movement in Turkey. What is more, under the banners of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Peoples’ and Women’s Protection Units (YPG/J), ‘the Kurds’ have been struggling against NATO’s second largest army in Turkey for more than four decades; the PKK has one of the largest active bodies of leftist and anti-capitalist membership anywhere and across the world. The Sanders foreign policy’s language is both statist and patronizing.

Critically, when it comes to intervening against IRI, it is not clear how a Sanders administration would “restrain IRI’s offensive actions in the region and forge a new strategic balance in the Middle East”. I have written extensively about the ways in which IRI’s genocidal games in Syria were instrumental simultaneously to giving the Iranian Reformists leverage in the JCPOA negotiations, and to holding down the labour and democracy movements inside Iran in the name of securing Iran against ‘external influence’ (that old redbaiting excuse). This was the same hybrid IRI strategy executed mercilessly by the same General Qassem Soleimani that some on the left were mourning earlier this year. Obama promised IRI the long-term prospect of entry to global markets and acting as the new US deputy in the Middle East (which drove the Saudis and Israelis completely mad), in return for improved behaviour in the region and especially in a Syrian conflict that was instrumental to his pivot to Asia –– I will return to this last point. Heavy US military presence in and around the region was the stick holding our the carrot to IRI.

Now, Sanders promises to reinstate the same old JCPOA, and contain IRI in the Middle East –– when the Syrian, Yemeni and Libyan civil war maps have entirely changed since Trump’s withdrawal from JCPOA –– and then to withdraw US troops from the Middle East in the meantime! It is not entirely clear what stops (in this plan) the IRI’s savvy and ruthless decision makers from exploiting the strategic loopholes of the Sanders logic. In this plan, they could transition the Iranian economy to the capitalist markets with a Sanders sanction, strangle the remainder of radical movements inside Iran and bury them under the neoliberal media’s forthcoming celebrations of ‘Iran’s return to normalcy’, and then add a military nuclear program in due and opportune time, for good measure.

What is however clear is the domestic logic of the Sanders foreign policy plans for Iran. Only weeks after the latest round of Iran Protests, during which the IRI regime killed between 500-1500 protestors, Sanders and Elizabeth Warren met with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the Iranian diaspora equivalent of the Israeli American Council (IAC) and AIPAC. As an unofficial IRI lobby tried in American courts for its explicit and implicit links to the Reformist establishment in Iran, NIAC’s executive body has been at the forefront of whitewashing, falsifying and defending the IRI’s bloody suppression of the latest round of Iran Protests. Opinion pieces by NIAC’s executives in The New York Times and The Independent even fooled Democracy Now into hosting a renowned IRI ideologue as an ‘expert’ on Iranian politics and Iran Protests. NIAC’s promise to Sanders or Warren could have been the millions of bourgeoise Iranian-Americans living in crucial election states such as California, over whom NIAC exerts massive and systematic influence as a demographic and donor base. After all, NIAC represents the largest network of Iranian–American capital and NIAC has been quite explicit about the harms of Trump’s Maximum Pressure campaign for the interests of Iranian capital represented by the IRI Reformists. And so NIAC members campaigned long and hard for Sanders. Even Noam Chomsky appeared in a NIAC forum to campaign for Sanders, in a panel alongside one of the writers of the infamous, vicious and ultimately withdrawn academic letter on condemning the Iran Protests and its incarcerated student leaders.

I cannot wager on whether Sanders was aware of NIAC’s machinations or not. Ultimately, his plans for effecting a socialist transition in the US were tied to effecting a transition to global capitalism in Iran under the auspices of IRI. This seems to also contradict his point on the Saudis and not ‘betting on corrupt authoritarian regimes’. Critically, and here we come full circle, the stretch of land jointly held by Iran in Syria (with Bashar al-Assad’s genocidal army) happens to coincide with the land map of China’s new Silk Road. The new silk road is one of the ways in which China plans to bypass the Indo-Pacific partnership arrayed against its trade routes, and so, following in Obama’s footsteps, a hypothetical Sanders administration would be ‘wise’ to flip the land and its expansionist and neocolonialist owners in Syria for a profit. Here it is not as much the geopolitics of the new silk road that is at stake but the imperialist intentions and claims to impose and reaffirm. It is no secret that Sanders has been outspokenly for containing China militarily with the help of the “international community”. But I cannot wager on whether this is all an unfortunate coincidence or not, because Sanders offers no concrete vision of his Chinese foreign policy either.

Regardless, it is altogether not clear how a Sanders administration would “build a progressive global order based on human solidarity”, when it seemingly plans to resurrect the Obama axis in the Middle East and utilize it toward maintaining imperialist American interests in the region, against the encroachments of Chinese neoliberalism. It is not clear how the Sanders vision of a socialist transition inside the US might benefit, in the long run, from destroying one of the oldest labour movements in the Middle East in Iran. It is not also clear what is revolutionary or even remotely innovative about the overall Sanders foreign policy vision. It is indeed misguided to claim that Sanders is “rethinking the fundamental position of the United States in the world.” In the best case scenario, what Sanders seems to offer the Middle East is not human solidarity but dumb solidarity.

For all these reasons, the Western left must hold its leaders as well as its popular base to higher standards. By virtue of its monopoly over radical and academic media in the West, the Western left is prone to amplifying its own ideological blind spots vis-à-vis dilemmas of domestic and foreign policy elsewhere. To that extent, entities such as NIAC and IRI, and the neoliberal media anywhere, might functionalize the Western left’s false and unsuspecting narratives in order to burry dissenting voices from the subaltern left in places like Iran and the Middle East and to monstrous ends. It is high time that we on the left practice meaningful and strategic international solidarity against the mutating state of neoliberalism and late capitalism.

Revolutionary Struggle With the New Afrikan Black Panther Party: An Interview with Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is Minister of Defense for the New Afrikan Black Panther Party. He carries out his duties while imprisoned in the US. This interview originally appeared on his website.

What can we learn from the history of revolutionary struggles about the transition from bourgeois forms of security and policing to proletarian forms of state security

As a class question, we must of course begin with distinguishing between bourgeois and proletarian forms of state power. The state is nothing but the organization of the armed force of one class over its rival class(es). The bourgeoisie, as a tiny oppressor class that exploits or marginalizes all other classes to its own benefit, organizes its institutions of state power (military, police, prisons), that exist outside and above all other classes, to enforce and preserve its dominance and rule over everyone else.

To seize and exercise state power the proletariat, as the social majority, must in turn arm itself and its class allies to enforce its own power over the bourgeoisie.

Which brings us to the substance of your question concerning what lessons we’ve learned about transitioning from bourgeois state power (the capitalist state) to proletarian state power (the socialist state). In any event it won’t be and has never been a ‘peaceful’ process, simply because the bourgeoisie will never relinquish its power without the most violent resistance; which is the very reason it maintains its armed forces.

Well, we’ve had both urban and rural models of such transition. Russia was the first urban model (although subsumed in a rural society), China was the first successful rural one. There were many other attempts, but few succeeded however.

What proved necessary in the successful cases is foremost there must be a vanguard party organized under the ideological and political line of the revolutionary proletariat. This party must work to educate and organize the masses to recognize the need, and actively take up the struggle, to seize power from the bourgeoisie.

In the urban context, (especially in the advanced capitalist countries), where the bourgeoisie’s armed forces are entrenched, this requires a protracted political approach focused on educating and organizing the masses and creating institutions of dual and alternative collective political and economic power, with armed struggle prepared for but projected into the distant future (likely as civil war).

But in the rural context, where revolutionary forces have room to maneuver because the bourgeoisie’s armed forces are much less concentrated, the masses may resort to relatively immediate armed struggle, with political work operating to keep the masses and the armed forces educated and organized, and revolutionary politics in command of the armed struggle. This was Mao Tse-tung’s contribution to revolutionary armed struggle called Peoples War, and with its mobile armed mass base areas these forces operated like a state on wheels.

But the advances of technology since the 1970s, have seen conditions change that require a reassessing of the earlier methods of revolutionary struggle and transition of state power.

The rural populations (peasantry) of the underdeveloped world who are best suited to Mao’s PW model have been shrinking, as agrobusiness has been steadily pushing them off the land and into urban areas as permanent unemployables and lumpen proletarians, where they must survive by any means possible. Then too, with their traditional role as manual laborers being increasingly replaced by machines, the proletariat in the capitalist countries in also shrinking, and they too are pushed into a mass of permanent unemployables and lumpen.

So the only class, or sub-class, whose numbers are on the rise today are this bulk of marginalized largely urban people who don’t factor into the traditional roles of past struggles, with one exception. That being the struggle waged here in US the urban centers under the leadership of the original BPP, which designated itself a lumpen vanguard party. As such the BPP brought something entirely new and decisive to the table.

As the BPP’s theoretical leader, Huey P. Newton explained this changing social economic reality and accurately predicted their present development in his 1970 theory of “Revolutionary Intercommunalism,” and met the challenge of creating the type of party formation suited to meeting the new challenges of educating and organizing this growing social force for revolutionary struggle.

The BPP was able to create a model for developing institutions of dual and alternative political and economic power through its Serve the People programs creating the basis for transition of power to the marginalized under a revolutionary intercommunalist model instead of the traditional national socialist model.

The challenge in this situation where such work has been met with the most violent repression by bourgeois state forces is developing effective security forces right under their noses to protect the masses and their programs.

This is the work we in the NABPP are building on and seek to advance.

What has your experience of being a hyper-surveilled, incarcerated revolutionary taught you that is broadly applicable to the secure practice of revolutionaries in general

For one, the masses are our best and only real protection against repression. So in all the work we do, we must rely on and actively seek and win the support of the people, which is the basic Maoist method of doing political work and is what the imperialists themselves admit makes it the most effective and feared model of revolutionary struggle.

I’ve also learned that a lot of very important work fails because many people just don’t attempt it, due to policing themselves. Many fear pig repression and think any work that is effective must necessarily be done hidden out of sight, fearing as they do being seen by the state.

Essentially, they don’t know how to do aboveground work, and don’t recognize the importance of it, especially in these advanced countries. They think for work to be ‘revolutionary’ it must be underground and focused on armed struggle. And even those who do political work they stifle it by using an underground style which largely isolates them from the masses.

I think Huey P. Newton summed it up aptly when he stated,

“Many would-be revolutionaries work under the fallacious notion that the vanguard party should be a secret organization which the power structure knows nothing about, and that the masses know nothing about except for occasional letters that come their homes in the night. Underground parties cannot distribute leaflets announcing an underground meeting. Such contradictions and inconsistencies are not recognized by these so-called revolutionaries. They are, in fact, afraid of the very danger they are asking the people to confront. These so-called revolutionaries want the people to say what they themselves are afraid to say, to do what they themselves are afraid to do. That kind of revolutionary is a coward and a hypocrite. A true revolutionary realizes if he is sincere, death is imminent. The things he is saying and doing are extremely dangerous. Without this … realization, it is pointless to proceed as a revolutionary.

“If these impostors would investigate the history of revolution they would see that the vanguard group always starts out aboveground and is driven underground by the oppressor.”

Do you see it as a vulnerability to have our leaders organizing from prison? Some comrades refuse to engage in party/mass organizational work if it is conducted from prison. Don’t we sacrifice our best leadership if we don’t work directly/organizationally with our incarcerated leaders?

It can be a disadvantage, because it slows down development. But it is also an advantage, and our party is an example of this.

Historically, most revolutionary parties began on the outside and ended up targeted with repression, which included imprisonment of its cadre and supporters — fear of repression served as a deterrent for many would be revolutionaries as it was intended to do. For the NABPP, we developed in exactly the opposite direction. We began inside the prisons and are now transitioning to the outside.

Our cadre are getting out and hitting the ground going directly to work for the people. Look at our HQ in Newark, NJ where our chairman got out and has in less than a year led in developing a number of community STP programs, organizing mass protests that have shut down a prison construction project, given publicity and support to the people facing a crisis with lead in the water systems, etc.

So unlike the hothouse flower we’re already used to and steeled against state repression. The threat of prison doesn’t shake us — we’ve been there and done that. Like Huey asked, “Prison Where is Thy Victory?,” and John Sinclair of the original White Panther Party said, “prison ain’t shit to be afraid of.” And it was Malcolm X who was himself transformed into the great leader that he was inside prison who called prisons, “universities of the oppressed.”

All of my own work has been done from behind prison walls, and I have the state’s own reports and reactions of kicking me out of multiple state prison systems to attest to the value of what I’ve been able to contribute.

So, I think that, yes, some of our best leadership is definitely behind these walls.

Consider too that some of our best leaders developed inside prison: Malcolm X, George Jackson and Atiba Shanna aka James Yaki Sayles, for example. Which is something our party has factored into its strategy from day one. We’ve recognized the prisons to be potential revolutionary universities. Since our founding the NABPP has actively advanced the strategy of “transforming the prisons into schools of liberation,” of converting the lumpen (criminal) mentality into a revolutionary mentality.

In fact we can’t overlook remolding prisoners, because if we don’t, the enemy will appeal to and use them as forces of reaction against the revolutionary forces. Lenin, Mao and especially Frantz Fanon and the original BPP recognized this. What’s more, with the opposition’s ongoing strategy of mass imprisonment, massive numbers of our people have been swept up in these modern concentration camps. We must reach them with the politics of liberation. They are in fact a large part of our Party’s mass base.

How do you vet leadership and cadre? On what criteria to you make your judgement? Organizationally and personally.

Ideally this is determined by their ideological and political development and practice. But we expect and give space for people to make mistakes, although we also expect them to improve as they go. So we must be patient but also observe closely the correlation between their stated principles and their practice.

How should underground work relate to aboveground? How can the masses identify with the work of underground revolutionaries without compromising the security of the clandestine network?

Underground work serves different purposes and needs. One of which being to protect political cadre and train cadre to replace the fallen. Also to create a protective network and infrastructure for political workers forced to go to ground in the face of violent repression.

In whatever case the aboveground forces should actively educate the masses on the role, function and purpose of underground actions while ensuring that the clandestine forces consist of the most disciplined and politically grounded people. It must also be understood that these elements do not replace the masses in their role as the forces that must seize power.

In your assessment, has the balance of forces between the police and the potential of revolutionary mass action fundamentally shifted over the past 5 decades? How does this affect our ability to form organs of political power among the masses?

What shifted, but I don’t think is generally recognized by many, is the PW theory is today too simplistic. Today we must organize and create base areas under the nose of the bourgeoisie with the growing concentration of marginalized people in impoverished urban settings. As I noted earlier the traditional mass base of rural peasants who feature in the PW strategy is shrinking. And Maoist forces in rural areas have been pushed to the furthest margins of those areas unable to expand.

There is little opportunity for New Democratic revolution in these countries, which calls for alliances with the native national bourgeoisie who are now being rendered obsolete by the rise and normalization of neocolonialism and virtual elimination of nation states.

***

BOOKS BY KEVIN “RASHID” JOHNSON:

PANTHER VISION

Panther Vision: Essential Party Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, Minister of Defense New Afrikan Black Panther Party

"The original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense challenged the prevailing socio-political and economic relationship between the government and Black people. The New Afrikan Black Panther Party is building on that foundation, and Rashid’s writings embrace the need for a national organization in place of that which had been destroyed by COINTELPRO and racist repression. We can only hope this book reaches many, and serves to herald and light a means for the next generation of revolutionaries to succeed in building a mass and popular movement.” --Jalil Muntaqim, Prisoner of War

Available from leftwingbooks.net, AK Press, and Amazon

DEFYING THE TOMB

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin 'Rashid' Johnson
With Russell 'Maroon' Shoats, Tom Big Warrior & Sundiata Acoli

PLEASE NOTE THAT DEFYING THE TOMB IS NOW AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON AS AN EBOOK

"Your mission (should you decide to accept it) is to buy multiple copies of this book, read it carefully, and then get it into the hands of as many prisoners as possible. I am aware of no prisoner-written book more important than this one, at least not since George Jackson s Blood In My Eye. Revolutionaries and those considering the path of progress will find Kevin Rashid Johnson s Defying The Tomb an important contribution to their political development." --Ed Mead, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade

Available from leftwingbooks.net, AK Press, and Amazon

WRITE RASHID

Rashid has been transferred out of state yet again, this time to Indiana. He is currently being held at:

Kevin Johnson
D.O.C. No. 264847
G-20-2C
Pendleton Correctional Facility
4490 W. Reformatory Road
Pendleton, IN 46064

Bernie Sanders Should Run Solo if Democrats Dirty-Break the Democratic Process

By David Goodner

Two nights ago in Tacoma, during a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders attended by thousands, Seattle City Councilor and Socialist Alternative leader Kshama Sawant called for an independent Third Party for the working class. 

Last night on the debate stage in Nevada, every Democratic presidential candidate except Sanders refused to commit support for a plurality primary winner, escalating the possibility of a screwjob during a potentially brokered convention in Milwaukee this summer.

Bernie Sanders is likely to continue to rise in popular support and cleanly win the Democratic party nomination and then the White House in November – making this a moot point. At this time, mass popular social movements should take advantage of the momentum and continue to work with or alongside the Sanders campaign to challenge the party from the inside, exposing the sharp contradictions that come with fighting for social justice in a system that is designed to cater to capital.

However, Sawant's call for a third party this year absolutely makes sense if billionaire Michael Bloomberg buys the nomination outright or there is convention fuckery in Milwaukee that robs Sanders of the nomination. 

If either of these happen, it is imperative that the movement respond in kind by winning a Sanders presidency on a third-party ballot. There is no time to wait. An independent Sanders run against two bipartisan billionaires could realistically win a plurality of the general election vote, but we don't just want an independent sitting-in as president, we also need a new party structure that grows and lives on beyond Bernie.

Independent candidates can gain ballot access in most states by submitting the required number of petition signatures by August or September. These numbers can range anywhere between a few hundred and twenty thousand, but all are doable for a movement that has already shown impressive turnouts on the ground.

Small groups need to quietly begin working in the few states with earlier ballot access requirements. This doesn't have to be widely advertised or become a distraction from our main work right now, but it must become a priority if and when the Democratic party sabotages the movement by obstructing Sanders’ ascendancy.

We also need to ramp up movement organizing around the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. If Sanders is going to win the nomination cleanly, he'll need backup inside and outside the convention hall. And if he loses, there must be a powerful and immediate response on the ground. The city itself will be militarized with riot police. We will need 50,000 or more people ready to contest for space in the streets in addition to all of our delegates and observers inside. 

If Bernie Sanders is not the nominee this year, the core of an independent workers (third) party must be formed from: 

1. Bernie Sanders and the Sanders campaign, including Squad surrogates AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Andrew Yang, and all of their followers; 

2. The Democratic Socialists of America;

3. The umbrella network of community organizations dedicated to electoral power independent of the Democratic Party, such as National Nurses United, People's Action, and their allies; 

4. the groundswell of Black, Arab, Muslim, Hispanic, and Latino organizations already backing Bernie this year;

5. The remnants of the Green Party and Libertarian parties.

The current momentum that has been generated by the Sanders campaign is impossible to ignore. More importantly, the corollary movement that is building alongside this momentum, which has radical characteristics that appear to be carrying folks beyond the limitations of not only the capitalist political arena and the Democratic party, but also beyond Sanders himself (a good thing), is setting a foundation that can successfully uproot capital’s grip on the public agenda.

The presidency of the United States has always served as the CEO of global capital and imperialism. Ignoring its occupant will inevitably bring us closer to a fascistic reality, something we are witnessing in real time. Getting Sanders in this office, while representing a small step in the right direction, can slow this tide. Therefore, it behooves us to keep our eyes on the prize and push to elect him state-by-state on the Democratic Party ballot - by doing electoral politics better and cleaner than everybody else. 

But we have to keep our eyes open, too. We need to start anticipating the rearguard and flank attacks inevitably coming our way, instead of always reacting to them after the fact like we have been doing. If Billionaire Bloomberg wins the Democratic party nomination, or a brokered DNC convention robs Sanders of the same, we have to respond in kind. The rhetorical and practical groundwork for a third party run needs to be laid now.

Returning Libertarianism to its Proper Place: The Current Fight for Socialism within the U.S. Libertarian Party

By Colin Jenkins

The following is an email interview with Matt Kuehnel and Dane Posner, two members of the Libertarian-Socialist Caucus (LSC) of the Libertarian Party. The interview took place over the course of a few months, between December 2018 and February 2019. The LSC may be contacted and followed on Facebook and Twitter. If interested in learning more or interacting, the LSC welcomes prospective members to participate in their discussion group on Facebook.

Colin Jenkins: Please tell us a little about yourselves, your personal political paths/evolution, and about the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the Libertarian Party?

Matt Kuehnel: Born and raised in Macomb County, Michigan, home of the Reagan Democrats, I'm 35, he/him, skilled trade worker, former candidate for Michigan's State House of Representatives and currently organizing a committee to run for mayor of my home town of Warren, MI.

Bordering Detroit, Macomb County is a mix of rural and suburban communities that has shaped it to be a thermometer on the electoral pulse of America. I was raised in the upper middle-class city of Sterling Heights, but found myself attracted to the realness of the more poverty-stricken southern communities and people. The suburbs, to me, was fake people living fake lives trying to put on their best show for each other, to appear well-adjusted and successful.

My first awareness and resentment of authority was school. I got into drugs and vandalism, bounced around schools, and by senior year I dropped out. I then attended an alternative school and got my diploma. Started my professional career in food service, then CNC machining, residential construction for almost a decade, got my associate degree at age 32 for HVAC (heating and cooling), and I've been doing commercial maintenance for 4 years now.

My political beginnings were largely shaped by my middle-class parents who are Reagan Democrats, now Trump supporters. My first presidential vote was for Bush's second term, then I voted for Obama his first term, and it was then I became disenfranchised with the two parties following Obama's betrayal re-signing the Patriot Act his first week in office. I found the Tea Party, expected revolt. I showed up to the first rally in camo, masked up, with a sign that said, "eat the rich, burn the banks." This was a preclude to me finding the Libertarian Party, where I have an upbringing that should connect me with these conservative middle-class white people, but I reject the identity and advocate for those forgotten, or often vilified, by the suburbanites. I'm able to communicate and be heard, but my priorities and ideals are radically different. I realized that what I was doing was confronting toxic ideas in their safe space. In a way, I see it as de-platforming, challenging them on their own turf. I now consider myself a libertarian, a socialist, and a communist, and I'll use those terms interchangeably. I see ideology weaponized often, treated as religion, and for that reason I refuse to proclaim myself as a specific sect of socialist. I believe all revolutionary ideas hold value, some more than others, but ideology without praxis is nothing more than debate.

Dane Posner : My name is Dane Posner, currently 26 years of age. I've considered myself an anarchist since I first discovered punk rock towards the end of elementary school. Of course, I didn't understand most of the subject matter at the time, but as I transitioned into adolescence, I felt I could certainly relate to the alienating feeling of distrust of authority espoused in those lyrics - especially faced with the assertion from my so-called "superiors" that as a youth, I was discouraged from questioning this hierarchical relationship, as if my elders were somehow infallible. All the while, I was spoon-fed heaps of imperialist propaganda from American textbooks, telling me that everything our government did was for "the greater good", regardless of the human rights violations we committed in the name of "freedom", "liberty" and "justice for all".

I abstained from involvement in the electoral process until around 2015-2016, though I had paid attention to political matters for quite some time before that. I supported Ron Paul in 2012 from hearing his anti-war rhetoric, along with his rhetoric about the importance of personal civil liberties, but I didn't want to get involved with the Republican Party, and I saw how the corporate media controlled the narrative in the first place. During the 2015-2016 primary season, I discovered the same sort of corporate propaganda unleashed upon the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. Of course, it all made sense, as the rhetoric he espoused was fundamentally at-odds with the corporate agenda. I finally learned firsthand that the two-party system was not at all concerned with democracy, liberty, or the people's best interests. I had registered as a Democrat to vote for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primaries, then traveled from Houston to Philadelphia to protest the dog-and-pony show that was the 2016 "Democratic" National Convention. I immediately "Dem-exited" following that farcical event in which the more unpopular candidate somehow "won" the party's nomination, then proudly voted for Dr. Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka in the 2016 General Election.

I had long identified as an anarchist, and throughout my teen years, as a libertarian, though I was definitely turned off by some of the poor-shaming rhetoric I had heard from that crowd, coming from a background of poverty myself. In early 2018, I learned about a "socialist infiltration" of the Libertarian Party. That certainly piqued my interest, as I had long-identified as "left-leaning." but didn't quite adopt the "socialist" label until late 2015. I had read Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's famous work What is Property sometime during intermediate school, and as I learned more about the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the Libertarian Party, I was able to draw parallels between that text (in which Proudhon famously declared "Property is theft!") and the phrase "libertarian-socialism". "Finally!" I thought to myself, "a label that I can truly identify with!" I started reading more works by the likes of anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin and communalist Murray Bookchin and got more and more involved with the so-called "commies" in the Libertarian Party. Finally, I decided to travel to New Orleans to attend the 2018 Libertarian National Convention, to support self-proclaimed "an-com" (anarcho-communist) Matt Kuehnel, who was running for Libertarian National Committee Chair, along with other members of the LSC-LP who were running for various offices within the Libertarian Party (infamous stripper James Weeks for LNC Vice-Chair and Povertarian Caucus founder/LGBT-rights activist Mike Shipley for LP "At-Large"). Unfortunately, no members of the LSC-LP were elected to any offices within the LP, however our very presence there sent shockwaves throughout the Libertarian Party. I personally caught quite a bit of attention by flying and donning the famous red & black anarcho-syndicalist flag of the Spanish Revolution as a cape on the Convention floor. To many of the capitalists' ire, we made it known that the socialists were there to stay.

CJ: Historically and logically speaking, "libertarian socialism" is essentially anarchism - with its primary focus on eliminating coercive, hierarchical structures from both capitalism and the state. Thus, to many anarchists, it is a redundant term. But the redundancy has become necessary in the U.S. due to the capitalist cooptation of the term "libertarian." So, being in the U.S., I suspect you've received a lot of confused responses from folks (the "socialism is anything the government does" lot) thinking "libertarian socialism" is an oxymoron. As well as from those who incorrectly label anarchism as a right-wing ideology. How do you respond to this?

MK: It depends on who I'm addressing. When I hear "libertarian socialism is an oxymoron" from someone who genuinely doesn't understand, I do my best to educate patiently. I understand that the right wing has hijacked the term libertarianism in the US. They did this purposefully and they considered it a victory. When I encounter a right-wing libertarian who proclaims the ideas an oxymoron, I attack, I ridicule, I make an example of them. It exposes the ignorance and hypocrisy of US libertarianism. They are proud of being anti-authority, often posturing against each other as the "most-libertarian" libertarian. This competition to be anti-authoritarian makes them easily manipulated by those of us that oppose authority not just by the state, but in all human interaction. I did learn their ideologies, I learned their language and ideas, and it makes me a formidable opponent in debate.

DP: We encourage those individuals to read up on the origins of libertarian thought, by citing the writings of early anarchist thinkers such as Joseph Dejacque, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Errico Malatesta, etc., as they all predate the works of American libertarian thinkers such as Murray Rothbard and Milton Friedman.

CJ: Touching on the term "libertarian" some more, leftists are often more aware of the rich history of left-libertarianism than others, especially in the U.S., where the term has become bastardized. This history includes the "first socialist schism" that occurred within the First International, where the Bakunin and Marx camps had their differences, leading to the expulsion of Bakunin and his brand of anarchist socialism. It's found in Dejacque, an anarchist communist who is known for the original use of the term "libertarian" in 1857; and in Kropotkin's subsequent work that cemented the philosophical basis for anarcho-communism as a formidable socialist current.

Do you have an educational component that focuses on this history? Or do you take the approach of avoiding too much "dead white-guy theory" (something that's becoming more popular alongside attempts to "decolonize" anarchism and political education in general)?

DP: We try to frame the history of libertarianism not only in the context of its linguistic origins in 19th-century Europe, but also within the context of natural society, as espoused in Peter Kropotkin's work Mutual Aid or Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Libertarianism is the natural state of being. Non-hierarchical collectives have existed throughout human history, far predating any capitalist or proto-capitalist system such as feudalism. Of course, "libertarian-socialism" is a large umbrella term representing various philosophies ranging from anarcho-communism to mutualism or individualist anarchism. Ownership of the individual product of labor is the basis for this socio-economic philosophy, which can then be applied in various ways, either through voluntary distribution, or self-sustainability. Sometimes we frame it in terms of the Marxist doctrine, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs," however our disagreements with Marx, in conjunction with Bakunin, stem from the methods used to achieve such a goal. We as Libertarians reject the initiation of force to achieve social or political goals, however we do view economic exploitation as an act of aggression, often backed up by theft-funded state force. This is why we argue that private ownership of the means of production, or the protection of absentee private property, cannot exist without a state or state-like entity.

MK: I honestly try to avoid being overly philosophical these days. Ideals are, by definition, unrealistic. I appreciate philosophy and theory, I think it does have a place in educating. Especially when defending the caucus's presence in the party, it's essential to combat their ideals because it's a party that prides itself on theory and purity. It can be persuasive when dealing with other nerds who read theory, but it's kinda useless with the general population. In my public interactions, I try to keep things simple, focus on policy where the most common ground can be found. It's hard enough to get people over apathetic tendencies of feeling helpless, let alone sell them on the idea that we can have some perfect, specific theory. Anything man makes will be imperfect, and expecting to get a whole community or whole nation to adapt and organize a perfect government is naive. I focus on immediate needs, immediate solutions, and that's where I find the most success.

CJ: Tell us about your experiences thus far within the Libertarian Party. How are you being received overall? Tell us about some of the debates and relationships that have formed with USAmerican libertarians within the party.

MK: I joined the party in 2016 to support Gary Johnson. Being a former Reagan Democrat, he was the perfect centrist to me at the time. He was the compromise candidate, he won my trust on a personal level, and I was raised to judge the person's character more than their politics. Immediately, I realized how small and disorganized the party was. Macomb County is one of the largest counties in Michigan, and the local affiliate was comprised of two elderly couples and a young guy who was their secretary. They were supporting Trump. Me and others had to create a new affiliate and ended up absolving the other affiliate and being recognized as the official Libertarians of Macomb County. It was exciting, because it was a bunch of us younger, new activists just finding our way through the political process. The bonds I formed locally have been what had kept me in the party despite the pushback I've received.

I had no idea of theory prior to the LP. It was there that I was exposed to anarchist philosophy and it started my journey. Originally, I was fighting with the anarchists for supporting Gary Johnson, then I was fighting the "pragmatists" when I took to anarcho-capitalism. Then, I found mutualism and started questioning and challenging capitalist rhetoric. I just kept reading, learning, and drifting further and further left, slowly losing most of my friends and allies in the party. I ran for their national chair position in 2018, the first ever open communist to run for that position to my knowledge. I had enough support at that time to get enough tokens at the national convention for my chair race to make the debates. I don't think I have that 5% support anymore. The Audacious Caucus was where most of my support was, and they are a radical anarchist caucus. Many of the original LSC members were from that caucus. When I received the dual nomination from the Socialist Party of Michigan, an affiliate of SPUSA, for my state representative race in 2018, I lost a lot of that support. I took on more pragmatic positions, and that caused backlash. It also exposed the anti-communist beliefs many of the LSC members hold, referring to things as "authoritarian socialism" and "state communism." which I find to be oxymoronic. It's now been a fight for me within the caucus, to defend against anti-communism and capitalist sympathies. I'm still in the party, still in the caucus, but it's a fight for solidarity and understanding of fellow socialists.

DP: While it has certainly been an uphill battle educating the right-wing Libertarians on libertarianism's leftist roots long predating the Libertarian Party, we have found many left-libertarians who have been waiting for an organization such as ours to spring up for quite some time. The Libertarian Socialist Caucus has only existed since August of 2017, but we've been making waves ever since! At the 2018 Libertarian National Convention in New Orleans, I even got thrice-elected Libertarian National Committee Chair Nicholas Sarwark to admit to me in a room full of capitalists that American capitalists stole the word "libertarian" from the likes of individuals like Proudhon and Bakunin - though to not completely ruin his reputation, he did add "but it's ours now," (as is the capitalist way). "True" libertarians don't believe in intellectual property rights, but it's the principle behind the right's attempted erasure of history that irks me.

CJ: What do you view as the main problems with the U.S. version of libertarianism?

DP: The emphasis on private property rights is fundamentally at odds with opposition to a theft-funded state. The way I see it, a "private security company" is not much different from a gang of police officers, perhaps besides how they receive their funding. I support the right to defend one's own personal property by any means necessary, or the right to collectively organize to defend common property, but the ultimate goal, of course, is to ensure that the basic needs of all individuals are met. "If liberty does not exist for all, then liberty does not exist at all." - Benjamin Dryke, LSC-LP member, former State House candidate for Michigan's 36th District and presidential candidate seeking the Libertarian Party's nomination in 2020. We share many common goals with right-Libertarians, such as dismantling the surveillance state, police state, ending the drug war, decriminalizing all non-violent offenses such as sex work, etc., however we feel that many of them are a bit misguided when it comes to our ideas of what a post-state world might look like. Personally, I would rather live in a unified community in which all necessities are readily available to all than a land of unnecessary competition and constant struggle for land rights and access to other natural resources.

MK: Shaming the poor and idolizing the rich is by far the biggest issue. Racism and sexism is also rampant and largely accepted in the party. Social Darwinism is a common theme. The right has done an excellent job forming an ideology based on ideals of morality that justify the most immoral ideas. The party attracted me for their anti-war and anti-police-state stances. Finding opposition to civil rights was the first eye opener for me. Then discovering how stances such as abolishing public education and welfare would have the greatest impact on marginalized people helped snap me out of the dogma I had originally bought into. I think most just don't recognize this, but some are fully aware and proud that they would be operating and depriving marginalized people. There is a very real libertarian-to-alt-right pipeline. The LSC has put a fork in the pipeline, diverting at least some newcomers to the left.

CJ: The left in the U.S. is known for sectarianism. One of the main wedges is that between anarchists and so-called "tankies" (Communists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, etc). This wedge is often described as "libertarian" vs. "authoritarian," something that represents a vulgar interpretation, but nonetheless prevails. What are your views on this particular split? What are your experiences working with "tankies"? How do you view sectarianism in general?

MK: I mentioned before, ideology gets weaponized and treated as religion. I find it so toxic. I have comrades throughout organizations like SPUSA, IWW, and the DSA. Prioritizing ideology over things like racism, misogyny, transphobia, ableist, etc., causes unnecessary division. So much stems from confusion, propaganda, and just the general combativeness of politics. That's why I prefer to focus on realistic reform and direct action, where the most common ground is found across ideologies. Even among the LP, that's where I can connect with many people. I like to say that I'm for working class solidarity, not left unity. In practice, we could all be socialists, creating a new and unique application of the ideals without following a specific ideology just through solidarity with our neighbors. I think ensuring organizing spaces are safe and inclusive is the most important factor in exclusion, not purity and conformity of philosophy.

DP: The roots of our disagreements tend to stem from what we interpret to be the most viable methods of achieving our idea of a classless, stateless, non-hierarchical society. The libertarian-left feels that the abolition of involuntary hierarchy cannot be achieved by replacing one hierarchy with another, especially through violent means. That said, we are willing to work with anyone who shares our common goals of dismantling the classist and racist institutions such as the police state that prevent us from living the way we choose.

CJ: A section of your Statement of Principles reads: "We concur that imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive, and free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist - as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others."

I anticipate that many leftists would view this as problematic for a number of reasons, the most obvious to me being the insinuation that a classless society where the means of production are owned and operated in common could be imposed on anyone? As if people would not want more control over our lives. In other words, contrary to capitalist propaganda, a true communist society seems perfectly in line with that of liberty ("the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.") Can you explain the thought process behind including this section and what it means to you? Have you received any negative feedback from it?

MK: There is a struggle of tactics and goals within the LSC. My tactics are that of agitation, my goal would be to fill and usurp the party with actual leftists. Others believe it better to blend in and persuade current membership to accept our presence with the goal of creating an anti-state coalition. The platform was created democratically, and there's very few obstacles to becoming a voting member, although roadblocks are being created to combat a supposed "tankie takeover." The most active members are those that were already party members, so they not only hold less than socialist views, they also have bonds and alliances with party members that they are afraid to lose. I honestly loathe this language, and the idea of pandering to anti-communism to appease capitalists is one I am constantly fighting against. I prefer to appeal to actual socialists, and I would encourage leftists to join and help me combat the right, but I can't in good faith without being honest about what you're getting into - a horribly toxic party and a caucus where we have to combat toxicity in our own space. That's politics, though. A large part of my activism is just showing how easy it is to participate. There's elitism for sure, but, for the most part, all you need to do is show up and speak up. It takes away the feeling of powerlessness we've been accustomed to with politics. I'm able to be an open communist in the Libertarian Party; and the Party, as well as the caucus, cannot figure out a way to get rid of me. That's all we need to improve - good people showing up and speaking up, and we should do this in every party, organization, union, etc.

DP : The working class has never fully owned the means of production under any so-called "socialist" or "communist" regime. Socialism, as we define it, means "worker ownership of the means of production and products of labor", whereas communism is a "classless, stateless society in which the means of production and products of labor are commonly-owned". State ownership of the means of production and products of labor is not by any means the same thing as worker ownership.

As long as involuntary hierarchies exist, neither socialism nor communism has been achieved, in my view.

CJ: A section of your Platform that stood out to me reads, "We reject attempts to do away with the violent state's 'crutches' for the most marginalized and at-risk among us, while still maintaining its 'teeth,' and we seek abolition now of its most violent and oppressive elements." Can you elaborate on this a little?

MK: This is a plank I fought for, and it's meant to allow for incrementalism and pragmatism. If you took the philosophies encompassed in what we call libertarian-socialism and applied them strictly, in that the state should not exist, it could lead you to support anything from repealing the Civil Rights Act to public schools. It is my belief that we cannot operate with this mindset, because it feeds into the already oppressive conditions for the biggest victims of state and capitalist oppression. The proletariat must have their needs met in order to be able to fight. The caucus and philosophical ideal are equal distribution through mutual aid networks, but those should come first and eliminate the need for govt assistance programs. Otherwise, it's a social Darwinist 'sink or swim' mentality until inequality is addressed and eliminated. So, the biggest intersects that we share, not only with current party members but also the general population, is the major structures that uphold oppression by the state. By those, I'm referring to the imperialist military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industrial complex, corruption, and pollution. These big problems are staring us straight in the face and a good 50% of the population can immediately find themselves in agreement against them. Those are where the greatest number of victims are created, where the largest amount of protection and tools for oppression by the capitalist class are found. I think there should be MORE assistance given, like Medicare for All, until these large systems are eliminated, making equality possible. And that's kinda the point of this plank, allowing members to reject idealism for pragmatism.

DP: Militarized police forces serve as a theft-funded tool of oppression and nothing more. The police serve to protect the property of the "haves", oftimes at the expense of the "have-nots" - that is to say, they exist to protect the possessions of the rich at the expense of the working class, who pay more taxes in proportion to their income than their wealthy fellow citizens (through sales taxes, rent, etc.).

CJ: Staying on this topic regarding the Welfare State and mutual aid, your platform reads, "We reject the offensive and paternalistic premise that ordinary people of modest means are unable to run their own lives and need government to 'help' them. Thus, we reject the coercive redistribution of wealth and call for the voluntarily mutualization of the welfare state through a compassionate transition to voluntary, community-based mutual aid networks."

Can you tell us what you mean by "the coercive redistribution of wealth" and how this transition from welfare state to "voluntary, community-based mutual aid networks" would take place and what it would look like?

MK: The "coercive redistribution of wealth" is opposing systems imposed by states to direct resource allocations. It's basically saying 'taxation is theft' in leftist terms. This plank may accurately describe ideals, and a big part of why it's included is to be cannon fodder against right libertarians when they call us "statists". How we transition from a state tax system to voluntary cooperation can be answered in so many ways by so many people. Many in the caucus would envision a stateless free market of competition allowing socialist market practices to outcompete capitalist modes of production rendering capitalist businesses few or obsolete. Others might say that capitalist modes of production are inherently aggressive and worthy of defensive action, essentially outlawing them through a collective rejection, boycott, strike, or insurrection making wealth redistribution unnecessary following the transfer of the means of production into the hands of the working class. An example of what a voluntary system would look like might be like GoFundMe or UNICEF. Organizations of people collectively and voluntarily working towards shared commonwealth, justice, and relief. Ultimately, this plank and others are shared ideals but not necessarily with uniform solutions, tactics, and ideas of how to achieve them or what they might look like.

DP: We believe that without a state, the legal claims to absentee private property will become null and void. It is a shared view amongst most libertarian-socialists that natural resources, as they exist without the additions of human labor, cannot be legitimately claimed or protected without the use or threat of force, however we feel that instead of fighting over these resources, it would be far more beneficial to the community as a whole to voluntarily share these resources amongst ourselves to ease the suffering of all of our fellow humans. Most of us advocate a push towards a post-scarcity world, in which all goods are available to all people free of charge. The innovations of technology in the modern age have pushed us closer than ever to achieving such a world, however, we feel that the state, on behalf of those who claim the most capital, has hindered the human race from achieving that goal. Modern technology has significantly diminished the demand and necessity for human labor, and has made mass food production a possibility, which could ultimately end world hunger, even without leaving a huge carbon footprint (by incorporating green technology and diverting away from the use of fossil fuels). Even healthcare could ultimately be provided to all people with little to no human labor required, however our ideal for the current day and age is a transition to worker-owned healthcare cooperatives through the systematic dismantlement of corporation and state, which currently exists to accumulate profit at the expense of the sick, disabled, and those in pain.

CJ: You mention the 'free market' a few times in your platform and even refer to the free market as "a cornerstone of a free and prosperous society." You also call for an end to "the government enforcement of capitalist property laws and exploitative financial systems" in this vision. Can you elaborate on this? What would your version of a free market look like, as opposed to the capitalist version?

MK: In the libsoc (libertarian-socialist) understanding, the term 'market' is economically agnostic. In a market, you might have some elements of capitalism, some of socialism, and maybe ones we haven't thought of yet. A free market is one absent of restrictions, especially imposed by a state, self-regulated by its natural forces and conscious actors. Some believe that by simply eliminating the state, and thusly the structures that defend and uphold capitalist norms, capitalism would not be possible, especially at the current level. Not all libsoc's are communist, and therefore we are not in full agreement that markets should exist. I'm in favor of abolishing markets altogether, as markets are inherently competitive. I prefer communist ideals of cooperation. Putting ideals into practice, my state rep position included abolishing private property. The way I would describe that in practice as a state rep, is that I would support any measure to give a worker more control over their labor, an individual more control over their possessions, and a community more control over their resources. I'm running for mayor of Warren this year on the platform of banning evictions. This means having our city courts refuse to process, approve of, and aid in evictions as another way to address the destructive nature of private property and offer a solution to strip the owning class of power over our means of shelter.

DP: What we view as a "free market" is a system of trade free of involuntary hierarchy, i.e. government and corporate intervention. "Free market socialism" is not an oxymoron, by the definitions I used earlier. We believe that the individual owns that which they individually produce, and if a collective of individuals decides to collaborate to increase production and productivity, then they should most certainly have the right to do so. This, we feel, is the essence of a truly free market. The complications come when we start figuring out how to trade with entities that exist on a hierarchical, for-profit system, however many basic needs can be met through localization. How is it that humanity was able to thrive in the Americas for millennia, prior to European colonization?

CJ: Under the Labor section of your platform you state, "the exploitation and control of labor, slavery, both direct and indirect, has been the single greatest violation of the liberty of individuals throughout history. We oppose this violation." Can you talk a little bit about this point and tell us what role you believe capitalism has played here?

DP : Income inequality has long been a problem throughout American history, even prior to our declaration of national sovereignty at the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783. It should not be ignored that this nation was built on the backs of slaves and other involuntary laborers such as indentured servants, who had no real choice but to labor for so-called "lords of the land" for the "opportunity" to survive in colonial America. But by what right does man claim dominion over another, either through direct coercion or deprivation of vital resources?

Private property rights in America were claimed through the initiation of force in the form of genocide against the mostly peaceful indigenous peoples of this land. This harsh reality cannot be ignored, regardless of the fact that it is was the past. The enslavement and forced assimilation of indigenous peoples, both in the Americas and Africa, built this country from the ground up. Private property rights were claimed through systemic violence, and passed down from generation to generation. That is how we got to where we are today. The so-called "Founders" of this country, according to our history textbooks, were a union of wealthy, white male landowners, who for the most part inherited their own wealth from generations past. At the founding of our country, many fortunes were made through the systemic exploitation of involuntary labor, maintained through the use of force and the threat of death. Even following the executive order of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which allegedly freed the slaves, and the bloody battles fought between the Union and Confederacy during the US Civil War, black and brown men and women struggled for well over a century to be recognized as equal beings who deserved the same rights to land and resources as their Caucasian counterparts. To this very day, there is a blatantly stark contrast between the economic conditions of whites and non-whites. While it is true that white people exist in poverty, per capita, black and brown individuals make up a far larger proportion of the lower economic classes. This does not denote a difference in productivity between races - rather, this is the manufactured design of the American capitalist system. When private ownership of the means of production can be claimed by European colonizers through the use of force and passed down for generations, while depriving non-whites of their rights and subjecting them to forced labor for the accumulation of individual personal wealth, it cannot come as a surprise that the current socioeconomic racial divides exist as they do.

MK: This is an attempt to articulate wage theft, along with any other forms of exploitation of labor. The LP is very much into the idea of things being voluntary, so almost everything gets analyzed in the lens of consent. I don't always like when things that aren't slavery get called slavery, because it minimizes the atrocities committed through chattel slavery, but it's common on the left to consider capitalist exploitation as wage slavery. You're forced to participate, it's coerced consent to surrender portions of your labor to your boss. This becomes a big talking point against what right Libertarians will call voluntary.

CJ: I appreciate what you all are doing and for taking part in this interview. I think your efforts are an important part of the socialist revival we are witnessing in the U.S. That being said, what are your short-term and long-term goals for this Caucus? Where do you see this movement in another few years?

MK: Short term is just to have a presence in the party. Just being there, despite being largely outnumbered, has had a huge effect. What I would love to see long term is a full takeover of the LP, and it would be so easy if people would just show up locally. Most counties don't have affiliates, most affiliate can't even break double digit attendance to their monthly meetings. The national convention had less than 1000 delegates. It is completely possible for the left to swallow up the LP by 2020, but I just don't see the interest in it yet. Even myself, I'm losing interest and prioritizing my non-partisan mayor run and considering running as a Democrat in 2020, assuming I lose the 2019 mayoral race. I'm glad the caucus exists, flaws and all. I'm proud of my involvement and the work we've collectively done. I think taking over the party would be a symbolic and significant victory, but just having the caucus exist is a victory in itself for leftist ideals. The LP is a great place to start your activism, to learn political processes, to practice public speaking, but I find all third parties ultimately ineffective to getting elected. My goal originally wasn't to get elected, but just use the platform to advance my ideals. I've since evolved, I enjoy being a public speaker and giving a voice to those who previously had none. There's often fights between reform and revolution. I support both, but, until a revolution is actualized, people need relief and reform can provide that. I would say my future in the caucus and the LP is undecided, but regardless I hope that the caucus continues to grow, takes on more true socialist tendencies, and continues to challenge and disrupt the LP.

DP: We hope to provide the anti-authoritarian left an outlet for sharing their ideas for achieving our common goal of a world set free. Though we exist as a relatively small organization within a minor political party, our focus is not solely on electoral politics. We encourage direct action, as a more "pragmatic" means of achieving this goal. We hope to build our organization up to include like-minded individuals from various walks of life; a multiracial, multicultural amalgamation of free spirits - like a modern-day "Rainbow Coalition" - working towards the liberation of all people, through peaceful and voluntary means. We want to unify as one resounding, echoing voice that cannot be ignored by the masses currently distracted by the farce and fraud of the bipartisan false dichotomy known as our so-called "two-party system," which ultimately exists to serve the same capitalist masters. We hope to establish voluntary cooperatives all across the nation that can end our communities' dependence on the oppressive institutions that govern our daily lives, forcing us to depend on them or face incarceration for the crimes of free movement and challenging the status quo. We hope to become a force to be reckoned with that expands far beyond the electoral system, that could ultimately change the world for the better by achieving liberty for all in a world truly set free. Our goal will certainly not be easy to achieve, but what have we got to lose besides our chains? Give me liberty or give me death!

What About Kurdistan?

By Daniel Rombro

A people's right to decide their own fate is undeniable. And for the majority of those on the revolutionary left, this principle (referred to as national self-determination) is a fundamental part of liberatory politics. For the last several years, one issue of national liberation has been, generally speaking, in the forefront: Kurdistan. However, to truly understand the Kurdish issue as it exists today, and to develop the correct position one should have on it, we must also understand the origins of the modern Kurdish nation and its political aspirations.

With the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, the Kurdish nation was divided by the Great Powers among Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Whereas before the Kurds had been mostly united and receiving somewhat beneficial treatment from the Ottomans, now there was division and persecution.

In Turkey, the Kurdish population was subjected to a state founded on intense nationalistic values, collected in an ideology known as Kemalism (after the nations founder, Kemal Ataturk). Kurds were not even seen as Kurds, but referred to as "Mountain Turks". Their language and cultural traditions were outlawed, all a part of a nationalistic assimilation campaign. Attempted Kurdish uprisings were put down violently.

In the predominantly Arab countries, the Kurdish people were no better off. In Syria, with the rise of the Ba'athist party, and the failure of several attempted uprisings, the Kurdish population had their citizenship systematically revoked, rendering them stateless. As well, the Syrian government initiated a campaign of ethnic cleansing, forcing Kurds off their land and implanting Arabs from the South.

Iraq was much the same story, once the Ba'athists came to power. However, Kurdish revolts in response to discriminatory policies were treated differently. Instead of widespread revocation of citizenship, outright slaughter and ethnic cleansing ensued. From the years 1986 to 1989, Saddam Hussein's government committed countless massacres along with an intense "Arabization" campaign. This offensive, dubbed the Anfal campaign, included the use of chemical weapons, with the most deadly episode being the Halabja massacre. Nearly 5,000 Kurds were murdered by chemical weapons. Estimates for the number of Kurds murdered during the Anfal campaign vary, but numbers are estimated from a low of 50,000 to as high as 150,000.

Finally, there was Iran, where Kurdish organizations were suppressed and Kurds were considered Iranian, but which never quite reached the level of oppression as the Kurdish people endured in neighboring countries, with sporadic on-again off-again small scale Kurdish insurgencies.

Yet in these incredibly difficult times, consciousness still managed to thrive. Two movements of note would arise in two different parts of Kurdistan, representing very different streams of thought. In Iraqi Kurdistan, with a Kurdish populace distinct from the rest of their brothers, the traditional Sorani Kurdish tribal leadership built and led a movement founded on traditional nationalist secular values. This movement became organized into a party known as the Kurdistan Democratic Party. A later split, the more social-democratic-oriented Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the PUK, would go on to challenge the KDP for power and influence. The Kurdistan Democrats oriented themselves towards the West (mainly the U.S. and Western Europe), cooperated with political rivals of Hussein's Iraq, and launched numerous uprisings and guerrilla campaigns, culminating in the establishment of a de facto independent Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

In the northern reaches of Kurdistan, a different kind of movement was being built. Inspired by the Turkish New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, several Kurdish and Turkish adherents of the movement took the newly-cemented position of Kurdistan as an oppressed nation to new levels.

Led by Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdistan Workers Party (or PKK) was established. With a small initial cadre, the PKK initiated an insurgency that began with nothing more than "propaganda of the deed" acts, before culminating into a full-scale war that would engulf the entirety of Turkish Kurdistan. The PKK would grow to become an organization with a strong presence in all four parts of Kurdistan along with the diaspora. However, in 1999, Ocalan was captured in a joint MIT-CIA operation (MIT being the national intelligence agency of Turkey), signaling a new turn in the PKK's political evolution. Negotiations were opened with the Turkish state, reforms implemented, and the electoral process was engaged in by PKK-supporting individuals.

The most notable change came in the ideological realm. While in Prison, Ocalan familiarized himself with the works of a former American anarchist, Murray Bookchin, and his recently-developed social theory of Libertarian Municipalism, among others. Discarding the New Left-inspired and partly Maoist-tinged "Marxism-Leninism" of their past, the party quickly adopted Ocalan's newly-adopted ideology of Democratic Confederalism, which stressed the democratic organization of the people counterposed to the militaristic nation-state.

After decades of both progress and setbacks, the PKK was finally given a chance to begin building their social project. Based on Ocalan's new theories, the Syrian affiliate of the PKK was able to storm into the mayhem of the Syrian civil war, taking control of the primarily Kurdish northern areas (Known as Rojava) from the Assad regime in a mostly peaceful handover.

Syrian Civil War, Da'esh, and Developments in Iraq

Forming a political entity, today named the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, the PYD (the PKK's Syrian affiliate) quickly went to work securing their statelet and implementing Democratic Confederalist values, which included a commitment to ethnic and religious pluralism, women's liberation, and a form of cooperative economics. Yet, for both the PKK and KDP projects, the ability to finally realize their deepest aspirations would only become possible when everything around them began to crumble and burn. In 2014, amidst the Syrian Civil war and a continued armed Iraqi resistance, the region was shaken to its very core. An Iraqi Salafist group, commonly referred to as ISIS, or Da'esh, launched a blitzkrieg style offensive, seizing nearly half of Iraq and, later, half of Syria in a matter of days and weeks.

ISIS declared war on all foreign involvement in the region, along with every other government, religious group, and social strata that didn't fit its image of an ideal fundamentalist caliphate. A wave of reactionary brutality was unleashed against the peoples of the region that was truly heinous. And yet, in the midst of this lightning advance, the Kurds were able to secure their best hope for a bright future.

In Iraq, the KDP/PUK-led forces were able to secure disputed areas between them and the Iraqi government, whose forces collapsed rapidly in the face of Da'esh's offensive. The most notable gain among these areas was the city of Kirkuk, often referred to as the "Kurdish Jerusalem", whose surrounding oil reserves are some of the largest in Iraq.

Syrian Kurdistan was a different story however. Newly established, and without western support, both factors that the KDP/PUK had going for them, the PYD and YPG (the PYD's military arm) were militarily unprepared for what came next. Declaring the Rojava administration to be atheist communists, ISIS launched an offensive into Kurdish-held lands, seizing much territory and culminating in the battle of the city of Kobane, with some observers said was reminiscent of the battle of Stalingrad. As all looked lost, and the defenders of Kobane were pushed to the brink, the tide turned.

With international pressure mounting, the U.S.-led imperialist Coalition, sensing an opportunity to expand their influence in the region, which had previously been maintaining its interests in Iraq, intervened directly in a large scale manner in Syria for the first time. With continuous American air strikes, and an influx of Kurdish volunteers from across the border, the YPG managed to push Da'esh out of Kurdish areas, and then, under the direction and leadership of the Coalition, eventually seized Raqqa, ISIS's self-declared capital, as well as many other Arab-populated areas, effectively spelling the end of Da'esh's territorial rule. Kurdish-held and administered territory was at its peak in modern history, and it looked as though the survival of the existing Kurdish projects was assured. But nothing is ever certain, and Kurdistan was no exception.

In late September 2017, the KRG, the KDP/PUK-led autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, held a long desired independence referendum. With a participation rate of over 70 percent and a "yes" margin of over 90 percent, the Kurdish people's choice was obviously clear. Despite this, the position of the Iraqi government remained firm, and the government itself threatened harsh consequences if the referendum was held.

The KRG took these threats in stride, hoping that their aid in the war against ISIS and years of Western support would translate into support for an independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Their hopes were misplaced; the Western powers were more concerned with maintaining influence and some semblance of control over a united and federal Iraq. With no fears of foreign government intervention, Iraqi federal forces and Shi'ite militiamen invaded KRG territory several weeks later, routing Kurdish military forces that remained and negotiating for others to withdraw. The disputed areas were secured, Kirkuk lost, and the KRG brought to heel. Any hope for an independent Kurdish nation in Iraq was squashed for the foreseeable future.

Across the border in Syria, their compatriots fared little better. The offensives into ISIS-held lands had pushed far enough west that there seemed to be a distinctly strong chance that Rojava's westernmost outpost, the area around the city of Afrin, would be united with the bulk of land held to its east. This possibility was violently struck down however when the Turkish government, fearing a PKK-linked independent Kurdish entity on its borders, invaded in conjunction with Syrian opposition forces the area around the city of Jarabulus, dashing any immediate hopes for uniting the Kurdish areas. For months, this situation remained static, with brief skirmishes occurring along the Manbij-Jarabulus border area.

On January 18, 2018, however, Turkey finally launched its anticipated offensive into Afrin, after years of blustering. The timing made sense, as the imperialist Coalition was less likely to intervene due to Da'esh being all but defeated. The offensive itself was brutal, with reports of hundreds of civilian casualties, chemical weapon use by Turkish forces, and the enforcement of Sharia law by Syrian rebels, who made up the bulk of the invading manpower.

Afrin remains under Turkish/Syrian rebel occupation, with sporadic unconfirmed reports of Kurdish guerrillas attacking occupying forces. Erdogan, Turkey's president, has threatened to move east into more Kurdish-held territory. Whether he will follow through waits to be seen.

Kurdistan and the Western Left

What is a revolutionary's response to these recent events? What is a revolutionary's response to the wider Kurdish struggle? The radical left is hardly unanimous.

Some, those often guilty of wholehearted unconditional support to anti-Western bourgeois regimes, blow the Kurds off as nothing more than shills, undeserving of nationhood and deserving of whatever abysmal fate eventually befalls them. These leftists, labelling themselves as "anti-imperialist", more often than not forget those basic tenets of revolutionary thought. They point to the horrifically corrupt and nepotistic tribal run regime of Iraq Kurdistan as justification for condemning all Kurds. They argue that since the Iraqi Kurdish authorities are nothing more than a puppet government of the western imperialist powers (which is indeed true) and that the Rojava government has essentially become a base and partner of U.S. imperialism, that any hopes, desires, and fight for nationhood among the Kurdish people only serve to strengthen western imperialism in the region, at the cost of other powers.

To deny a people's right to self-determination, for the notion that this will somehow strengthen western imperialism's hand, is nothing less than coddling the ambitions of the anti-western capitalist powers they hold so dear. To this we must say, did Lenin scream for the Kaiser's victory? Did Luxemburg plead for French soldiers to march into Berlin? One must be against their own nation's imperialism first and foremost, yes! But not at the cost of becoming nothing more than a shill for different capitalist nations' bloody conquests.

At the other end, however, is a crime that is even more unforgivable in the history of the revolutionary movement. Some so called "leftists", seeing the destruction and slaughter that a carefully built up national arsenal can reap on a people, declare their support for imperialist intervention by their own nations! When the Kurds are used as the tools of imperialist powers, seizing Arab areas, infringing on the Arab nation's right to self-determination, they cheer it. "Who cares? It is only reactionaries and murderers whose land they take."

These leftists are fools and poor students of history at that. It matters not what reason your own nation's imperialism justifies itself, what matters is that it is indeed imperialism! And if there is one elementary position above all in revolutionary politics, it is that imperialism must be defeated at all costs.

What is counterposed? What is the alternative? First and foremost is that basic principle, sewn into the very fabric of revolutionary politics by Lenin, of national self-determination. Kurdish military forces and political organizations, protecting and representing Kurdish majority areas, must be defended. Kurds have a right to decide their own fate, as an independent nation or otherwise, against all who would oppose them.

When Kurdish soldiers defend Kurdish lands, we raise our voices in support, and will do everything in our power to aid their cause. When Afrin is invaded by Turkish military forces and their cronies, we should all say: Turkey out of Syria, victory to Kurdish forces in self-defense! We say the same if Turkey threatens to move into other Kurdish-populated areas. We say the same if Iraqi forces move into Iraqi Kurdish lands! We call for the defeat of invading forces, we call for support to Iraqi Kurd forces! Yet no political support to the feudal Barzani regime. Kurdish history is one of blood and betrayal, a nation is the least they deserve.

We must also speak up when mistakes are made. When Kurdish forces are used as mercenaries in the service of imperialist agendas, when they host large contingents of imperialist troops, when they sign long-term agreements with imperialist governments (as the Rojava administration has done as well), we must speak up!

When Arab national self-determination is violated, it matters little if the government that dominates them claims to be multi-ethnic and multi-religious when their administration is dominated by Kurds in all aspects. We must voice our opposition to Kurdish complacency and cooperation with imperialism. This is said with the truest hopes for Kurdish nationhood in our hearts, as the closest friends and strongest allies. You will never be free and safe so long as imperialist hands guide your decisions.

The Kurdish nationalist movement faces the utmost danger. Danger of both war and defeat, but also danger of being led astray down paths that put a different sort of chains on their people. While leftists can only do so much, it's important that we are right and correct in our positions according to revolutionary theory and history. We cannot tarnish our past if we hope to build a brighter future.

Daniel Rombro is a revolutionary Marxist who served with the YPG and Turkish comrades in Northern Syria for 6 months, from January to August 2016, in a military capacity.

Here We Go Again: Socialists, Democrats, and the Future of the Left

By Charles Wofford

In his article "Want to Elect Socialists? Run Them in Democratic Primaries," Daniel Moraff, a self-described democratic socialist, demonstrates a thoroughly liberal and pedestrian understanding of how social change occurs. There are several errors of history and of reasoning in the article which I hope to illustrate here.

Our problems begin in the first paragraph, where Moraff conflates "winning elections" and "building power." As a socialist, one would think Moraff would understand that power is in the People, in the mass movements and organization that takes place in communities by and for community members. The People provide the labor and do the dirty work upon which the political class maintains its privilege. If the People get angry and decide in sufficient number not to participate in the system anymore, then the basis of political privilege will teeter and possibly collapse, and those in power would generally rather give up what's been demanded of them rather than lose their power entirely.

In the second section Moraff references Kim Moody's article in Jacobin magazine titled, "From Realignment to Reinforcement." Moraff writes, "One cannot argue with Moody's contention that those currently in control of the party are rich, powerful and odious. They are also, as Moody points out, firmly determined to repel left challenges within the party. These same interests poured millions into the Hillary Clinton campaign, and pour millions more into incumbency protection every cycle." Moraff misses however the part where Moody says, "The party structure and establishment has been fortified against its rivals, external and internal." Moody is correct; the party structure has been fortified against its rivals. Moraff falls into an individualist fallacy when he argues that it is simply about "odious" people, as though we can simply replace the people and the whole system will work. A socialist ought to know better.

If it were merely about corrupt people, then we wouldn't need to be anti-capitalist at all. All we would need is to make sure "progressives" got into political an corporate offices. Then we could have total, unfettered capitalism, and because those with power aren't "odious," we wouldn't need to worry about exploitation, environmental destruction, war, etc.

Some basic Marxist philosophy can help to clarify the point. In "The German Ideology," Marx writes, "The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means they find in existence and have to reproduce...the nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production." In other words, people are born into their circumstances, not the other way around. The structures in which people live and work have greater influence on who they are as individuals than vice versa. So we cannot simply pin the problems of the Democratic Party on the "odiousness" of its leaders. Just as we condemn capitalism as a system, so must we recognize the Democratic party is part of that system which must be condemned.

Moraff asks throughout his article what alternatives there can be to running socialists as democrats. If you assume that winning elections is the same as building power (or the only way to do so) then it's hard to see an answer. But here are a few examples of progressive change in recent American history that I think illustrate the distinction between being in office and having power.

The first is the signing of the 1965 Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson. President Johnson did not sign that bill into law because he was a benevolent philanthropist and really felt for the struggle of colored folk. Remember, this was the president who escalated the Vietnam War into the hideous conflict it became. Descriptions of him by those who knew him and extant audio recordings show Johnson to be possibly the most arrogant president in American history. Yet he signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Why?

Because one of the main functions of the president is to preserve the nation. And as the demonstrations, boycotts, riots, strikes, and other forms of disobedience and popular organization and resistance began to take their toll on society, the power-that-were recognized the precariousness of the situation. The bottom was coming for the top, and the top had to do something. And, as stated above, those in power would sooner give up a little bit of their power than lose all of it. So in the end Johnson, as a representative of the power-that-were, was compelled to sign that act into law by virtue of the mass popular pressure applied to him.

A second example is Richard Nixon ending the Vietnam War. Anyone who thinks that Nixon was some peace-loving progressive has never opened a history book: Nixon's name is practically synonymous with the warmongering arch-conservative. Yet he ended the Vietnam War. Why?

Exactly the same reasons as above: the resistance at home, and the resistance of the military in Vietnam which was starting to collapse. Nixon, despite his personal wishes, was compelled to end the war because of the popular pressures placed on his administration and his duty-as defined by the structure of the institution-to preserve the nation.

Those are two recent examples, but that is how social change always happens. If we continue to divert our energies into the black hole that is the Democratic Party, then socialism will never come. You cannot elect socialism: it can only come about through a revolution that will overturn the legal fiction of private property, the protection of which the U.S. government is constitutionally predicated.

The lesson is this: We need not look to the powerful; we need only remember who the powerful truly are.

The Democratic Socialists of America seems to serve two functions: one is to be a kind of transition group for those who are gradually disconnecting from liberal ideology. The other is to act as a net to catch those who might otherwise go to actual radical organizations. There are DSAers who support democrats, and there are radicals in the DSA too. But sooner or later the DSA as an organization is going to have to choose which side it is on: the capitalists, or the revolutionaries.

Was Super Tuesday Rigged?

By Jerry Kroth

Social scientists have long known that releasing poll information early, before polls have closed, has two effects: first it decreases voter turnout by about 12 percent,[1] and it increases the bandwagon effect, where people hop on and vote for the winner, by about 8 percent. [2]

On the morning of Super Tuesday, before anyone had voted, the Associated Press released a story that Hillary Clinton had already won. She was the "presumptive presidential nominee" and the victor. AP had made that announcement because of a super delegate count and decided she already beat Sanders.

Other media outlets then piggy-backed on this story, and virtually every American woke up that morning to headlines that Hillary had won-and remember, that is before anyone voted on Super Tuesday.

What a surprise! By the time you had your morning coffee and went off to the polls, you already knew Mrs. Clinton was the winner. Did that bias the election? Did it discourage people from voting? Did it create a "bandwagon effect?"

If one looks carefully at the percentage totals for Clinton versus Sanders totals for those primary states, it is clear the so-called "landslide" victory of Clinton on that day was fully within this margin of bias created by the bandwagon and voter turnout effects.

In other words, the AP story determined the outcome of this election.

Strong words? Well, let's look at the data.

Three days before the election, a Yougov poll showed Clinton leading Sanders by two points in California. But after the Associated Press released its story, Clinton beat Sanders not by two points but by 13! Hillary got an 11 point "bump."

From somewhere.

The same effect happened in New Mexico. Sanders was ahead of Clinton by a wide margin 54 to 40 percent. [3] By Super Tuesday, the situation reversed and Clinton beat Sanders 51.5 to 48.5. That surprising result gave Hillary an additional 13 points. Surprise! A 13 point "bump."

In New Jersey, poll results just before Super Tuesday showed Clinton leading sanders 54 to 40 percent [4] but on election day she beat him 63 to 36, another unexpected 9 point "bump" in Hillary's favor.

In South Dakota, a poll showed Sanders ahead of Clinton by 6 percentage points [5] just a few weeks before the primary, but on Super Tuesday Hillary pulled another rabbit out of her hat and beat Sanders by two points; an 8 point "bump" for Clinton.

Those are the only states where we can calculate pre-post results. Hillary got an unexpected 9 points in New Jersey, 8 points in South Dakota, 13 points in New Mexico, and 11 points in California. All unexpected. All unpredicted. All quite different from polls held just days before Super Tuesday.

And all very suspicious!

If one tries to rebut these findings alleging they all are within the margin of error for polls, then Sanders should have had just as many spurious bumps as Clinton. Didn't happen! All went to Hillary. The skewing is not random! The statistical anomalies are consistently prejudiced toward Hillary.

Sixteen European countries ban reporting election results before voting occurs, and in the UK, reporting poll data on the day of the election is forbidden. [6]

All for good reason.

Serious attention should be paid to declaring these primaries invalid. Furthermore, the possibility of investigating media entities, in particular Gary Pruitt, CEO of the Associated Press, for any alleged collusion with the Clinton campaign should be aggressively pursued. Even if there is no corporate media complicity, it can still be argued that the AP's desire for an early morning scoop determined, biased and corrupted this entire election.

Jerry Kroth, Ph.D. is Associate Professor Emeritus Santa Clara University. He may be contacted through his website, collectivepsych.com

Notes

[1] http://www.politics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/2797/FrenchVoting_13.pdf

[2] http://rap.sagepub.com/content/1/2/2053168014547667

[3] http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/whos_leading_in_polls_as_nj_primary_approaches.html

[4] http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/whos_leading_in_polls_as_nj_primary_approaches.html

[5] https://www.isidewith.com/poll/801555698/9333341

[6] https://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/me/mea/mec03c