Stephen Bannon Ain’t No Leninist; We are.

Whenever I read mainstream press analysis on Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon, I always come across this quote that he alleges he is somehow a “Leninist”. The quote, often going something like this:

“I’m a Leninist,” Mr. Bannon was quoted as saying by a writer for The Daily Beast who met him at a party in 2014. He later said he did not recall the conversation. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too,” the site quoted him as saying. “I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Reminds me of an interview the Guardian did with Hitler in 1923. In it, Hitler exemplifies an often overlooked practice that fascists have had since their inception, being students of the militant left, and re-appropriating the militancy to bastardize it and remake the meaning for their own reactionary methods. Attempting to win over working class or militant activists, this method is used to confuse those attempting to organize against the ruling class and for a better society with injecting a toxic mix-mash of politics and bigotry into the mix. In the 1923 interview with Hitler, he states something very interesting and along the same lines of Bannon’s misunderstanding of what Leninism means:

“”Why,” I asked Hitler, “do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?”

“Socialism,” [Hitler] retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, “is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.”

This re-appropriation, deliberate or not on Bannon’s part, is a crux in attempting to show militant credentials as well as put opposition in confusion. The fact that Hitler called himself a socialist was ludicrous, especially along the lines that the fascists saw socialists, Marxists, and anarchists as their first main enemy. The constant quoting of Bannon claiming to be some dangerous revolutionary misses the point that he is just simply claiming any revolutionary tendency to scare and confuse opposition to himself as well as buckle down on age old red-baiting that appears to be making a comeback since Sanders’ run against the Democratic establishment.

Modern imperialism and the working class

“In a way, this is a revival of the so-called ‘dependency theory’, where it is argued the rich imperialist powers are rich only because of the poor oppressed nations and economies. To this is added the argument that the working class of the North are better off only because of the super-exploitation of the South and so are no longer a progressive force in the struggle to end capitalism.

Well, I argued against that view. First, Marx’s theory shows that there will be a tendency to equalise the rate of profit between capitals (even under monopoly capital) – indeed this is how the higher rates of exploitation in the South end up in the profit rates of the North. But this process does not touch the sides of the wages of the workers of the North – it is a redistribution of surplus value between capitalists (and capitalist states).

And empirically, this is also true. The organiser of the workshop, Simon Mohun, published a paper a few years ago that showed only 1% of working people in the US got income from capital (profit, interest and rents) as their main source of income. The rest of Americans had to work to make a living. Sure, their higher wages and their social benefits may indirectly come from the super-profits of the multi-national companies they work for – but that is the result of the class struggle over the share of value going to wages, not directly as a result of imperialist exploitation.

Imperialism has two Achilles heels. The first is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as capitalism accumulates. Indeed, imperialism is a major counteracting factor to that most important contradiction of capitalist accumulation. The second is the proletariat – the gravediggers of capitalism – who are still growing in size across the world. John Smith showed that global proletariat has never been larger in the history of capitalism. In that sense, Marx’s prophecy in the Communist Manifesto 160 years ago is confirmed. Sure, the majority of the proletariat is now in the South and not the North. But, in my view, that does not mean the workers of the North will play no role in ending capitalism. On the contrary, they are the key to ending imperialism in its centre.”

Michael Roberts Blog

The IIPPE workshop in London on modern imperialism, organised this week by Simon Mohun, Emeritus professor of political economy at QMC London University, was highly appropriate for two reasons.

First, it brought together those scholars with the latest works on modern imperialism.  Both John Smith’s new book and that of Tony Norfield have been reviewed on my blog.  Smith’s book has won the prize from the Monthly Review and Tony’s has been included on the short list for the Isaac Deutscher prize for the best Marxist book of the year, previously won by many eminent leftists and Marxists.  And Lucia Pradella had a book  Globalization and the Critique of Political Economy: New Insights from Marx’s Writings, Routledge, 2014 that was also shortlisted for Isaac Deutscher in 2015.

The other reason, of course, was Brexit.  The decision of the British people to vote in a referendum to leave the…

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So You Think You Can Take Over the Democratic Party?

Instead of spending the next 10, 20, 30, or 60 years trying to take over a party that has demonstrated its rank hostility to leftists and their vision for a new world, why not begin the process of building a party organization from the ground up? A party organization that works alongside movements for change rather than coopting them. A party organization that recognizes that fundamental humanity of people both domestic and abroad. Why place such a revolutionary vision of society and economy within the tight constraints of two-party politics? Because if the Bernie campaign has taught the American Left anything, it is that Democratic partisans and their allies in the media will work hand-in-hand to snuff out any challenge that could threaten the dominance of neoliberalism within the party.We can do better.

We should do better. And if we trust in the collective efforts of those committed to political, social, and economic liberation, we will do better.

Source: So You Think You Can Take Over the Democratic Party?

Reminder

Reminder: Mainstream media is concentrated and owned by 6 companies in a country where the top 20% control 95% of the economy. These 6 companies control 90% of the news that is pumped out and are usually intertwined with law enforcement, counter-intelligence agencies, and corporate interests through and through. We have no reason to trust the misinformation they have consistently pumped out since Kent State on student activism and shouldn’t have much sympathy with their cries of being silenced by activists, such as the ones in ‪#‎Mizzou‬, choosing to rightfully to disengage with their disinformation. Stand in solidarity with Mizzou, push the voices of the unheard, and dismantle white supremacy by any means necessary.‪#‎ConcernedStudent1950‬ ‪#‎InSolidarityWithMizzou‬

Same Argument, Different Decade

A 17 year old African American civil rights activist is attacked by police dogs during a demonstration in Birmingham, Ala., May 3, 1963. (AP Photo/Bill Hudson)

“Then, as would be expected, the District of Columbia unit of the NAACP urged removal of the mural because the slave picture reflects on race and color of Negroes, thus encouraging anti-Negro sentiment. At first blush, this business of commercial, literary, and musical censorship seems only the foolish petulance of a hyper-sensitive and inferiority-complexioned racial group which is chagrined over its own characteristic color. On second look, the practice begins to take on a more ominous outlook, something in the nature of the distortions so terrifyingly portrayed in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four.” – William D. Workman, Case for the South (1960)

The ruling class lacks creativity to such an extreme extent that it’s ideology unknowingly plagiarizes itself, over and over and over again. This absurd auto-book review Roger Kimball did opportunistically validating his own book while dismissing any of the campus movements across the country as some cultural Marxist conspiracy is at best entertaining, at worst a re-shit of arguments much more literate bigots them himself have made. The fact this man thinks college exists in a vacuum away from the white supremacist terrorists, the mortality rate that has become the new normal on campus with weekly shootings, and asserting that the police don’t murder civilians at a higher rate than our pillaging armies mortality rate is beyond me. The idea that demanding equality, justice, and student participation in the college spheres is somehow fascist is just as sound as stating up is down, left is right, and the sensitive right wingers are the real victims here.

FERGUSON, MO – AUGUST 17: Police fire tear gas at demonstrators protesting the shooting of Michael Brown after they refused to honor the midnight curfew on August 17, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Main Enemy Is At Home! (Leaflet, May 1915) – Karl Liebknecht

Incredibly important historical pamphlet by Karl Liebknecht to the German people during the beginnings of WWI. This sentiment that Liebknecht tapped into, in solidarity with Lenin and the Bolsheviks political line that the main enemy was at home, became popular to the point where Russian and German soldiers ended the war for themselves creating Soldiers, Workers, and political councils in opposition to generals orders to slaughter the international working class. This appears to be applicable more than ever, especially in the United States.

Armed Spartacist troops.

Your Wars, Our Dead (Vos Guerres, Nos Morts)

The opportunism of the U.S. political class is so shamelessly lacking self-awareness that they let a war criminal like Clinton speak on terror. As CBS bangs the war drum with shifting the Democratic debate on how much more we will make the international working class suffer, whether from racist Islmaphobic militarism or blatant concessions to the brutality of capitalism, we continue to see the consolidation of a line of argument: stay in your lane, take lead in valuing only Western lives, and don’t question the Western empire that has terrorized those both abroad and at home with militarism, surveillance, and a police apparatus larger than other countries militaries. Their wars, but our dead, yet they continue to posture that they speak for us, that their ignorant and politically motivated stereotypes our our’s, and that no cost is too great for nationalism, yet when it comes to the ruling class to pay for it.

I understand the solidarity with the victims of all terror attacks by ISIS, from France, Rojava, Damascus, Yarmouk, Beirut, and as far as Libya, yet we should not let this solidarity with victims blind the historical context of where this backlash is coming from. Do not be fooled: ISIS does not come from religiously oriented organizational practices that outdate capitalism, but the far-right, and the political mirror of the neo-conservative and neoliberal brutality that has been unleashed into the Middle East in the modern era, and has been present with every counter intelligence operation since Operation Ajax overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh.

The answer to these issues of poverty, war, and oppression is not capitalist wars and ideals of closing borders to “protect” our interests, but to understand that the real enemy is at home. The enemy is not the working people or immigrants, but the antithesis, the political opportunists of the ruling class opportunizing on workers misery to fuel their hate fueled crusade to only benefit the only thing these people are interested in: profit.

As Democrats and the psuedo-Socialist Sanders debate whether undocumented immigrants or “Islamic Jihadists” will bring about the downfall of America, the real downfall is already happening, between two parties that are present on different sides of the same capitalist coin. These parties have allowed horror after horror to be paid for by working people, and not the sons and daughters of the rich, internationally having to deal with each intervention, coup, and airstrike destroying their communities. As police officers murder more civilians in the U.S. than have been killed in combat of our illegal wars, we continue to see pandering by both the American and international media towards the comfortable narrative of attacking those we perceive as simplistically barbarians. We must not allow this pandering, and seek a emancipatory alternative, one that doesn’t involve the suffering of working people, but the freedom of oppressed communities and ultimately the working class.

The Leviathan’s Shadow: ‘Accelerationism’, ‘The Dark Enlightenment’, and Late Capitalisms NRx’s Rise

“The life of a man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes; Chpt. XVIII, Ln. 30)

“The thing that is common to all these people, whether it is Pétain mournfully preaching ‘the discipline of defeat’, or Sorel denouncing liberalism, or Berdyaev shaking his head over the Russian Revolution, or ‘Beachcomber’ delivering side-kicks at Beveridge in the Express, or Huxley advocating non-resistance behind the guns of the American Fleet, is their refusal to believe that human society can be fundamentally improved. Man is non-perfectible, merely political changes can effect nothing, progress is an illusion. The connexion between this belief and political reaction is, of course, obvious. Other-worldliness is the best alibi a rich man can have. ‘Men cannot be made better by act of Parliament; therefore I may as well go on drawing my dividends.’ No one puts it quite so coarsely as that, but the thought of all these people is along those lines: even of those who, like Michael Roberts and Hulme himself, admit that a little, just a little, improvement in earthly society may be thinkable.” – George Orwell, December 4, 1943

The Shadow is Cast: #Accelerationism, the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ , and the Legacy of TINA

Thomas Hobbes, writing the Leviathan in opposition to the English Revolution, sought out to counter what had ultimately become the final push for the transition of the socio-economic order of feudalism to ultimately the new mode of production; capitalism. In the Leviathan, Hobbes constructs an opposition to the nominally democratic narrative of the rising bourgeoisie to a rhetoric that changes itself to the shifting material conditions, coming out as one of the most fervent counter-revolutionaries, or reactionaries, of capitalist ideological history. Following suit to the tradition of reactionary activity in opposition to growing emancipatory movements, today we as well see a slowly growing neo – reactionary movement on what is beginning to appear as more or less as a reaction to the cusp of neoliberal collapse or instability. Whether neoliberalism will collapse or not, is not the question, but “when will another world appear?”, is what the emancipatory movements of the Arab Spring, the Squares Movement, OWS,  BDS, anti-austerity leftism, and Black Lives Matter pose for the sake of the oppressed’s survival. However, this neo-reactionary movement (NRx/ Dark Enlightenment) premises itself from the fomenting far-right movements of the past, from the intellectualism of eugenics to the social determinism of technological advancement will render humans useless through “accelerating” the self destruction of capitalism. This neoreacitonary movement, although pooling misfits from milieu’s of internet forums with a social-Darwinist bend, is becoming something more than just an intellectual interest of the future Goebbels reenactors or the next posturing nietzschean bickering on the internet of the futility of modern dating, but a spiteful collection of capitalist apologists bringing humanity to it’s knees before the ultimate Übermensch to strong-arm the forces of the market and retain the heirarchical character of this sociopathic system, even if this strongman is not man, but machine.

A collection of ideological arguments borrowed from the Marxist left, the Dark Enlightenment’s main thinker comes from across the pond with Continental philosopher and writer, Nick Land. Land, embodying the “common sense logic” of the apocalyptic implications of Capitalism’s “eternal” growth and concessions to Marx’s correct analysis of capitalisms self destructive tendency, presents an argument that opposes all forms of egalitarianism and universalism. Taking a direct opposition to the tradition of the enlightenment, we see Land through sci-fi narratives and cyber-punk motifs, create a manifesto of his own against the fostering egalitarian trends in the late 90’s and early 2000’s in the Dark Enlightenment. This movement, being cherished by bitter libertarians and white supremacists, is seen as the basic logic of the Darwinian apologism of capitalism that “only the fit survive” where AI eventually will devour humanity and that hierarchies constructed of bitcoin economies will prevail.

It is not surprising that the far-right of today would be drawn to Land’s open ended stance against egalitarianism and universal values. This is the basic logic that underlies capitalism, that although democratic values are espoused, they are rarely guaranteed by the ruling classes internationally that rule over capitalisms anarchic growth. Yet, like a conductor loosing control of a train crash, we see that the way white supremacists, neoreactionaries, fascists, and conservatives have in common, is that this is humanities final frontier, and whatever happens afterword is only a concern to what rights are guaranteed for my preferred ethnic or religious identity, or at least class position in tact. This absurdism, accepting the insufficient logic of capitalism as inevitable, pushes for capitalisms collapse and eventual anarchic reign of Murry Rothbard’s “libertarian” dream of investors and capitalists individually ruling over society with the capitalist market still in tact.

Land’s view is:

“For the hardcore neo-reactionaries, democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself. Fleeing it approaches an ultimate imperative… Predisposed, in any case, to perceive the politically awakened masses as a howling irrational mob, [neoreaction] conceives the dynamics of democratization as fundamentally degenerative: systematically consolidating and exacerbating private vices, resentments, and deficiencies until they reach the level of collective criminality and comprehensive social corruption. – The Dark Enlightenment; Part 1. Neo-reactionaries head for the Exit

Peter MacDougald, covering Land in his excellent piece, the Darkness before the Right, shows the pervasive attitude of numbness that Land’s politics relies upon in both forum and circles of the far-right. MacDougald describing their view of capitalism as a

“Brand of authoritarian capitalism [that] has a certain fascist sheen, but in truth it’s closer to a rigidly formalized capitalist technocracy. There’s no mass mobilization, totalitarian social reorganization, or cult of violence here; governing will be done by the governors, and popular sovereignty replaced by the market Mandate of Heaven. There is a strange sort of disillusioned cultural conservatism here as well, albeit one absolutely stripped of moralism. In fact, what’s genuinely creepy about it is the near-sociopathic lack of emotional attachment; it’s a sort of pure incentive-based functionalism, as if from the perspective of a computer or alien. If a person doesn’t produce quantifiable value, they are, objectively, not valuable. Everything else is sentimentality.” 

Nick Land, author of The Dark Enlightenment

This feeling of a inactive existence with sentimental or emotional attachment has become a common motif amongst those that critique emancipatory politics to those who seek out individualistic terror activities such as mass shootings or racial intimidation. Acting as if the rational scientist at heart, todays neo-reactionaries bring back a similar mythos that has been present since capitalism’s athena like birth from the head of feudalism: the constant anxiety for superiority.

The Distinguishing Features of Leninist Political Practice – Paul Saba (1977)

The Distinguishing Features of Leninist Political Practice

Introduction

We are seeking to practice the scientific approach to politics of Marx and Lenin. Thus the text which follows seeks to elaborate systematically what constitutes a Leninist political practice. Essentially, the objective of Leninism is the establishment of a communist society via socialism, the transition period of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Many would agree with this objective but reject Leninist practice. This rejection manifests itself in a fixation with a particular organisational form or type of struggle. Leninist political practice does not have fetishes, but considers the likely consequences of a particular form of struggle and opts for the form most likely to promote its objectives. It is, therefore, not “unprincipled”, because the objectives to be achieved are clear, and inform the practice. Thus, it is clearly distinct from a political practice which eschews principles, i.e., opportunism, and also from the opposite deviation of being politically paralysed by too many “principles”. Such paralysis generally arises from the error of elevating a strategy or tactic to a principle An example should clarify this.

Based on their understanding of the bourgeois state, Leninists reject attempts to achieve socialism through electoral struggle. But rejection of parliamentarianism does not rule out participation in electoral or reform struggles when they can promote short-term advances. Fundamentalists fail to make this distinction and thus reject any involvement in electoral or reform struggles “on principle”. Opportunists, by contrast, are satisfied with only the short-term gains and thus will engage in reform struggles as ends in themselves – to win better wages, more party members, or whatever.

What constitutes a Leninist political practice in contradistinction to these other tendencies is outlined in the text, which sets out three classes of conjuncture, describing in broad terms the type of party activity appropriate to each class. Such a classification is not a substitute for conjunctural analysis. Quite the reverse. Leninists must have a detailed knowledge of the situation in which they are working and the possible courses of development in order to intervene effectively using a political programme developed primarily from their analysis. The classes of conjunctures are specified to provide a directed research programme, just as preliminary categories and definitions are drawn up in all scientific research. They also enable us to analyse new situations as they arise. It must be noted, however, that there is no necessary sequence of movement between types of conjuncture: history is not a straight path but a route which zig zags and turns back on itself. When Leninists suffer a reverse they need not necessarily advance over the same ground or by the route by which they retreated.

Looking at the particular types of conjuncture outlined some points should be noted. Revolution is not possible in all social, political and economic conditions. Contrary to the belief of many on the Left that the manifestations of contradictions at the economic level inevitably imply a revolutionary situation, reality is much more complex. Economic crises do not necessarily develop into political crises, let alone into a military crisis, a necessary feature of revolutionary situations. In a revolutionary conjuncture, the choice is between a reestablished capitalism and a defeated working class, or socialism – the dictatorship of the proletariat and the erosion of the capitalist mode of production. The choice is never between capitalism or communism, let alone socialism or barbarism. As Lenin said, those who expect a revolution in which the bourgeoisie are all lined up on one side and the proletariat on the other will never live to see it. In non-revolutionary conjunctures the options appear even less distinctly. In particular, in a restructuring conjuncture it may appear that Leninists are faced with the choice of supporting capitalism by opting for a particular form of restructuring, or supporting the proletariat by calling for all manner of resistance to all forms of restructuring, but this is a bogus choice. In a situation where the conditions for a revolution do not exist, as in Britain at present, it is inevitable that capitalism is going to restructure itself, the form of restructuring being determined by political struggle. Leninists, then, have two choices.

The first option is to try to affect the course of that restructuring for the benefit of the working class: for example the development of greater class polarisation, with increased class cohesion and strengthened working class ideology; the weakening of the material bases of ideologies which divide the working class, eg racism, sexism, nationalism; the increased self-confidence of the working class in its collective ability to take charge of society. If a crisis is not revolutionary, restructuring must take place under the existing state power. If the working class is to influence the restructuring, it must make demands on the state. However, in fighting for reforms, communists never lose sight of their eventual aim or permit the belief that the existing state apparatus can serve as an instrument of proletarian state power: reformism must be strenuously opposed. Reformism is the idea that socialism can be achieved through a gradual accretion of reforms won by constitutional means and without the overthrow of bougeois state power. Our view is that the struggle for reforms can only prepare more favourable conditions for the future overthrow of bourgeois state power.

The other option is confinement to propaganda work, disregarding changes in material conditions, whether on the grounds that the restructuring cannot be influenced or that involvement in reform struggles will only foster illusions in the working class.

To the first objection one can say: “Suck it and see!”; at the very least the analysis and experience of political struggle gained will be valuable. To the second, the obvious retort is that there is no inevitability about the outcome of political struggle. The outcome depends on the relative strengths of the forces involved. Leninists cannot intervene and lead the struggle in a revolutionary crisis without having already developed their political, ideological and organisational practices. These practices cannot be developed in a political vacuum. If Leninists have always waited immobile or stood aside for fear of being contaminated with reformism, when all the conditions for a revolutionary situation exist they will be unable to influence its outcome. Communists must be aware of the possibility of deviations, but must not become paralysed and impotent in the face of these dangers. As Lenin pointed out:

The greatest, perhaps the only danger to the genuine revolutionary is that of exaggerated revolutionism, ignoring the limits and conditions in which revolutionary methods are appropriate and can be successfully employed.

Fifty Years Since Its Founding: A History of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) (Viewpoint Magazine)

“The legacy is very wide and can be observed in multiple dimensions: political, social, cultural, aesthetic and ethical. I’m going to restrict myself to the political dimension. In that, there are several aspects that we can emphasize. On the hand is the programmatic content of the MIR’s proposal: this organization put forth, and fought materially in that sense, for the construction of socialism in Chili. Today, when the alternatives to capitalism are configured in a diffusemanner, many young people and many revolutionary organizations are returning to argue for the necessity of constructing socialism. What kind of socialism? We don’t know; but the debate about its contents and orientations is a fundamental demand of our era. And with regards to that, the Miristas and the Mirista program have a lot to say.

On the other hand, the first generation of the Miristas and the one formed after that, in the struggle against the dictatorship, put forward a political example and an ethical challenge. It concerns generations of revolutionaries whose generosity and commitment led them to give their lives for their ideals, without asking anything in return. So far from the contemporary political class (old or young), that makes of their career in public office a strategy of enrichment and power. The moral stature of those revolutionaries influences, without a doubt, in an important way the political attitude of anti-capitalist militants today.

Finally, it’s necessary to emphasize the requirement of organization. Many today, after moving along the roads of a sterile movement, accept that political organization, the political vanguard, constitute an irreplaceable element of every revolutionary process. The successful historical experiences demonstrate it (Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua). That revolutionary organization, provided by a revolutionary strategy, that takes into account the particularities of a region (Latin America) and a country (Chile), must construct itself from within the workers and the people. It must adjust itself to the new situation and historical context. That lesson of the dialectic of history, the MIR constructed with commitment, courage and self-sacrifice.” – Igor Goicovic Donoso, Fifty Years Since Its Founding: 
A History of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) (Viewpoint Magazine)

Bautista Van Schouwen, Marcello Ferrada-Noli and Miguel Enriquez in their college days. Photo courtesy of Marcello Ferrada-Noli