Music to read by:
It's a strange day
No colours or shapes
No sound in my head
I forget who I am
When I'm with you
There's no reason
There's no sense
I'm not supposed to feel
I forget who I am
I forget
Fascist baby
Utopia, utopia
Needed: A Marxist-Style Analysis to Understand and Combat the Extreme Left’s Hegemony
BApril 2012
Ironically, those opposing the current hegemonic ideas and political
forces in the United States and Europe must develop a Marxist-style
analysis of what has happened. To call the current dominant ideas and
political currents socialist, Marxist, Communist, leftist, progressive,
or liberal is not meaningful and conceals a great deal. The movement
must be understood on its own terms and on how it differs from its
predecessors.
The problem of revolutionary movements has been to find a group to be
the motive force in fundamentally transforming society. Next, they must
analyze which groups can be made into allies and those that must be
defeated.
The Marxist Analysis of the Social Battle
Marx and his followers identified the industrial working class
as that revolutionary force.
Here’s how the idea appears in the 1848
“Communist Manifesto”:
“Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each
other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
Marxists posited that the workers’ condition would worsen and that no
reform could improve their situation, forcing them to become
revolutionaries. Their main ally would be the lower middle class, wiped
out by big business and new technology :
“The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople,
shopkeepers and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and
peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat….“
In contrast, who are the revolution’s enemies? Capitalists, clergy,
and those elements that benefit from capitalism. And along with them:
“The `dangerous class,’ [lumpenproletariat] the social scum,
that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old
society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a
proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far
more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”
Note that in many ways the post-Marxist left reverses this analysis.
The lumpenproletariat becomes its ally along with those–many of them
prosperous–who benefit from the government’s management of capitalism.
In contrast, Marx’s description of the revolutionary forces sounds more
like a description of Tea Party members.
Why Marxism Failed
This is a complex subject but given limited time here are some key points:
–Capitalism didn’t decline but advanced, raising living standards
across the board. So Marx was wrong about capitalism. Rather than a
generalized misery (think of late nineteenth-century London), the
“victims” are mostly the 10 to 20 percent left behind. And even these
people receive welfare and other benefits beyond the wildest dreams of
the poor in every other country and every historical era in the world.
–The working class prospered, preferring material betterment rather
than a transformation of society. So Marx was wrong about the
proletariat, especially in the United States. What’s important to
remember is not that this group struggled to improve its life and
working conditions but that it succeeded.
–This adjustment of society to solve these problems was due to many
forces. One was improved technology and methods of organization, created
by the capitalist system. Another was reforms, usually brought by
liberal and social democratic parties and the institution of trade
unions.
–The workers were responsive—at time more than the elites—to the appeals of religion, patriotism, and traditional culture.
–Communist regimes failed miserably.
–Minority groups and women improved their status often–in contrast to
Marx’s conception–with massive support from the society as a whole.
Dramatic changes took place in relatively short periods. When Michelle
Obama said she was ashamed of her country she blotted out everything
from the Civil War to federal support for the civil rights movement, to
huge changes of attitude on the part of Americans. Note that a problem
of the post-Marxist left is to erase all of this good will and progress
in order to stir up grievances and hatred.
The Post-Marxist Left’s New Analysis
Gradually, Communists understood that things weren’t developing as
predicted. There were many attempts to adjust, ranging from Vladimir
Lenin’s theory of imperialism through such thinkers as Antonio Gramsci,
Georg Lukacs, the Frankfurt School, Third World oriented interpretations
like that Andre Gunder Frank (whose book Hugo Chavez gave to Obama),
Saul Alinsky, and the 1960s’ New Left. One of the most important new
left strategists from the 1960s, Carl Davidson, headed the Progressives
for Obama group in the 2008 election. Bill Ayers pioneered on using
education for indoctrination.
The new approach argued that the proletariat and lower middle class
had largely “sold out” and was now the enemy, clinging to guns,
religion, and hatred of those different from themselves. This treason
was related to racist and imperialist privilege. Swollen with
imperialist and “white-skin” privilege, the United States was the cancer
of the world. America was evil and Americans were the enemy, a stance
quite different from that of earlier left movements.
So what was the revolutionary strategy to be? The most important
basic principle is that the left must, in effect, wear a burqa,
concealing its true nature and goals, pretending to be liberal
or–stealing an old liberal reformist term also used by the
Communists—progressive. This is purely opportunistic, a descendant of
the 1940s’ Communist Party slogan claiming that “Communism is
twentieth-century Americanism.” In the current incarnation, left-wing
radicalism is said to be twenty-first century liberalism. Millions of
Americans accept these ideas with no idea of their origin or goals.
Second, rather than struggling to weaken the capitalist state to
overthrow it, the strategy was to work “within the system” to seize
control of the state apparatus in order to transform the society. Thus,
the state is to be strengthened as a tool for transforming society
rather than defeated.
Such a tactic, called “entryism,” is by no means new. Historically,
however, Communist forces ruined the effect by turning captured
organizations into “front” organizations that too obviously followed the
party line. They also lacked sufficient cadre to take over major
institutions and faced strong, conscious opposition. Now, however, the
New New Left had lots of cadre, money, and flexibility while opposition
was disorganized and unaware of what was happening. Victory was
astonishingly easy.
Third, structural changes in capitalism also indicated the best
strategy. These included a “new working class” of experts and
technicians along with the tilt toward managerial power over ownership
best foreseen by James Burnham. These people, along with the children of
the wealthy and capitalist, could be recruited to support the movement
through educational indoctrination and perceived self-interest.
Believing in efficient, “intelligent” management they would be inclined
to think that the government would be the best agency to run things
rather than the market.
Ironically, as a result, the radical left was better financed than
its conservative opponents for the first time in Western history. The
well intentioned could be manipulated by appealing to their concern for
the environment and the poor. Whole sectors could be won over by
appeals to self-interest through government payments.
Fourth, the cultural-intellectual battle was even more important than
economic appeals. A high priority was put on seizing control of
universities, schools, the news media, publishing, and the entertainment
industry. They would be used to indoctrinate people with the movement’s
ideas. As Marx wrote:
“The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and
upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed
circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change
circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. “
In other words, the new ideology argued for the abandonment of
Enlightenment and founding principles of open debate, fairness, and
professional ethics. It argued that these notions were phony means of
maintaining capitalist hegemony. Since there was no such thing as
objective truth and everyone was biased, there’s nothing wrong with
lying and silencing dissent to serve the revolution. A journalist can be
proud to slant his article; a professor pursued the grater good by
twisting reality. The educator should be indoctrinated and become, in
turn, the indoctrinator of others.
These efforts were not a coordinated conspiracy. Indeed, one of the
advantages of the “post-Communist” or “New New Left” is precisely this
lack of centralization. The Leninist model—a single disciplined party;
an idealized Communist motherland—proved to be major handicaps. Having a
party or party line would raise suspicions and opposition. Having an
idealized society–as the USSR had been–was counterproductive for the
left when thta society was shown to be horrible and their loyalties
shown to be against America. The battle was thus carried out by
like-minded cadre and loose networks. Even to argue that such a movement
and ideology existed–as this article does–is portrayed as a ridiculous
conspiracy theory.
At the same time, though, don’t doubt that these ideas, tactics, and
strategies were explicitly discussed within the movement. There is a
massive literature on this rarely used by critics. When someone does
exploit the evidence to show what has been going on—as with Stanley
Kurtz’s book on Obama, Radical in Chief—the
result is remarkably persuasive. And that is precisely why the
camouflaged revolutionaries who control the means of idea and
information prodction, who pretend they are just plain liberals, must
ignore or ridicule such explanations.
The strategy was greatly assisted by another factor, a new definition
of the revolutionary forces. The proletariat was replaced by elements
of the new technological-intellectual-managerial elites. Since these
people had high levels of education, power, and money they were far more
empowered than the proletariat had been.
Much of this sector was linked to the state. Increasing government
spending could be portrayed as something that would benefit “everyone”
with “free stuff.” In fact, such a policy was in the class interests of
those advocating it, including the recipients of government grants, for
welfare or other purposes, and employees of the state. Crony capitalism
benefitted those big companies that went along with the program (General
Motors, General Electric, “green energy” scams).
Much of the alliance wold be built on cultural-intellectual lines. As
Bill Ayers and his colleagues posited in the early 1970s, the key was
to use race and gender; Third World peoples (including illegal
immigrants and Muslims); gay movements, and other “out-groups,”
including a lumpenproletariat dependent on government payments. Even the
planet earth itself was co-opted into this coalition through global
warming.
This provided the movement with the cultural-intellectual equivalent
of nuclear weapons: any critic could be accused of racism, sexism,
homophobia, and Islamophobia. Those in the intelligentsia and
professional classes who would laugh at being called “enemies of the
working class” cringe and surrender at the hint of being called one of
these new “isms.”
Despite the fact that capitalism has met past “group” grievances, new
complaints are continually manufactured to ensure that opportunity,
past reforms, and capitalist productivity will never get credit for
solving problems. Just as the Stalinist USSR had to create
counterrevolutionary agents, the New New Left must create accusations of
racism, etc., to argue that American or Western or capitalist society
can never offer justice.
Equally important, the left could not compete on complaining about
low living standards generally, since Western–and especially
American–capitalism had achieved tremendous gains. It therefore switched
to the argument of inequality: the injustice was not poverty as such
but difference. Marx argued that the workers would never be able to
purchase goods, say–in today’s context–automobiles, television sets, or
homes.
Obama complains that not everyone has the same quality goods. The
tactic, then, is not nationalization of the means of production–which
remain in private hands–but redistribution of wealth. This may be more
economically damaging than a socialist economy, since successful
capitalism is simultaneously left in place and sabotaged.
Historically, radical Marxists defined the capitalist state as bad.
Since it could never be used to do what they wanted, it must be
subverted. In contrast, the New New Left views the capitalist state, if
they control it, as the best base for furthering their agenda. That is
why the former were revolutionaries while the latter practice what Obama
called “fundamental transformation.” A “revolution” so subtle they can
persuade millions of people that it isn’t even happening.
An icing of populism was thrown over the whole movement as a mantle.
The attempt to sell the slogan of the ’99 percent versus the 1 percent”
is a prime example of that tactic. One could easily argue that the
self-conscious revolutionary cadre are the “1 percent” That “1
percent” took over leadership of the approximately 25 percent of the
population that is non-radical liberal, adding on various constituencies
through material benefit or misdirection (those who want to help the
poor, fight racism, etc) until a majority is achieved in elections.
Thus, “false consciousness,” traditionally a tool that
revolutionaries thought benefited their enemies is now turned into an
asset by those who have mastered the art of public relations and all of
the modern methods of manipulation. One might call this system the mass
production of false consciousness. That is why the New New Left seized
control of these instruments, leveraging them into political control.
Historic Marxism was the exact opposite, getting into control of the
means of material production to seize state power.
All that was needed is a leader who embodies those characteristics.
In that sense, Obama is not so much of a Manchurian candidate but a
Manichean candidate, that is someone who seems to embody all that is
“good” (young, black, hip, handsome, intellectual, compassionate,
modern, urban and urbane, etc.) and able to conceal the true import of
the movement and its goals. What’s important is not where Obama was born
but where the ideas he espouses were born.
Finally, since the existing society was evil and rotten, those
warring against Western democratic states were external allies. And in
the early twenty-first century that means predominantly revolutionary
Islamists along with some radical nationalists (notably, for example,
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez).
Any attempt to counter this movement, its ideology, and its control
of key institutions must begin with a proper understanding of the enemy.
Moreover, it should be emphasized that those people who know most
precisely that the above analysis is true are those who are quickest to
ridicule it.
Yet to portray what is happening now as merely a typical example of
past liberalism misses the point and plays completely into the radical
forces’ hands. And real liberals face precisely the same task as their
ancestors, particularly in the 1930s-1960s era: How to oppose the far
left that seeks to corrupt their ideas and throw it out of their
institutions. This task has not even begun.
One weakness of the radical movement, however, is clear. The old
revolutionaries created a new regime that ensured their hold on power.
Failures, such as economic inefficiency, could be ignored by using
repression and other measures. The New New Left, however, is trying to
run an existing capitalist society in which its misfit policies
inevitably produce failure and even disaster. What they are doing is
somewhat akin to trying to get your computer to boot up by hitting it
with a club. Their are also big holes in its control over information,
allowing reality to shine through.
Thus, the failure of their program will be increasingly obvious and
sooner or later they will be voted out of power. There is a big
difference, however, between “sooner,” when the damage might be
reversed, and “later,” when things have gone too far, too many people
bought off or indoctrinated, and too much debt accumulated.
This article originally appeared at PJmedia.com under the title "Needed: A Marxist-Style Analysis to Understand and Combat the Extreme Left’s Hegemony" on 10 April 2012.
Sophie: "Last Exit to Utopia" is a reference to a book of the same name by Jean-François Revel on the Socialist Left's reaction to the demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I highly recommend it. You will understand that, according to European intelligentsia, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc does not prove that Socialism/Communism is a failure and unworkable. In fact, it proves the exact opposite. You see, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Krushchev, Tito, Rákosi, Brezhnev, Ceaușescu, Nagy, Dubček, Honecker, etc., all "perverted" Marxism.
Real Marxism has never been tried, they argue, so how could it have failed?
Great book. Worth a tumble, especially if you want to understand the European perspective.
Related Reading:
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Great Read...
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