[This article is part of a short debate series on Marxism and its relevance for left resistance in today’s challenging geopolitical and ecological climate, and for the continuing effort to win a better world beyond immediate crises. A previous ZNetwork article written by Michael Albert, entitled Should Our Resistance Enrich or Transcend Marxism?, was the catalyst for the debate, and the subsequent articles use this one as their jumping off point. You can see the whole debate series here.]
It is a difficult task responding my friend, Michael Albert’s recent polemic against Marxism. His lengthy look at the weaknesses of Marxism essentially repeats, and somewhat edits, critiques that he has offered over the years. The opening is very engaging and correctly demolishes the politics-by-quotation that so often traps leftists of varying stripes in a time warp. Had Michael stopped there I would have found the paper extremely useful and one that can be an instrument in awakening leftists of all ages to the necessity to always and in every case, make a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Michael, however, does not stop there and proceeds to enter into a lengthy critique of Marxism itself. It is not entirely clear as to why he has chosen now to make/remake/rearticulate his historic differences with Marxism.
When asked to write a reply to Michael Albert’s essay I had to pause. A total response would be book length. So, my response, as it were, will be both a reaffirmation of Marxism, but understood within the context of what was first identified as the “crisis of Marxism,” and has come to be known as the “crisis of socialism.”
Entering the path towards Marxism
I ‘fell in love with Marxism’ three times. In each case this was the result of a political problem or challenge that I encountered which I had difficulty resolving.
The first time was as a result of my exposure to the radical movements of the 1960s, movements both domestic and foreign, that were confronting imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism, male supremacy, and what I would later identify as social-imperialism (what many think of as post-capitalist, Soviet bloc societies that were, in effect, never able to break free of capitalism). I noticed that the leading forces in these myriad struggles identified with one or another variant of Marxism and saw within Marxism both a source of inspiration but also tools towards liberation.
Admittedly, as a young activist, I was gripped by levels of romanticism, myth, and one-dimensional thinking. I was ready to believe rather than fully study and question. In time I fortunately found myself within a setting of Marxists (who came out of what has sense been known as the “Maoist” movement—though we did not use that term) who had an approach to Marxism that asked questions and was focused on building power for the oppressed. This setting saved me from falling prey to dogmatism and sectarianism, and, indeed, despair.
Yet what was it, after all of the applause and chants, that made sense about Marxism? As much as Michael Albert wishes to ridicule the notion of dialectics it was, for me…dialectics. It was the notion that “contradiction”, the unity of opposites, the lack of purity of any phenomenon in nature, the lack of an inevitable resolution (besides death), and the notion that contradictions can—and must—be handled in different ways depending on the actual conditions within which one is operating. The symbol of the “yin” and “yang” is imprinted in my consciousness.
Dialectics became very important in appreciating the need for strategy and the recognition that at any particular moment, there is a principal battle that must be fought but it is never the only battle. To go forward with that analogy, and borrowing from the thinking of French Marxist Louis Althusser, every battle is a collection of additional battles and skirmishes, or what Althusser described as a situation being “overdetermined.” Putting it another way, there are no pure contradictions between two opposing forces in large part because there are no pure forces in the first place.
The summation of this understanding of dialectics helped me think through not only matters of strategy and tactics, but also, on a global level, the rise and decline of the October Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union. Contradictions inherent in a phenomenon and how they were addressed or not. Dialectics also helped me understand that history is not a one-way street but is one where U-turns, left turns, right turns, stalling, etc., can and frequently are made depending on the depth and nature of the contradictions that are encountered.
Forcing myself to think
In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the clear indications that China was on a national capitalist road, despite myself I stopped wanting to think. I noticed this tendency among many other leftists. Yes, there were those that abandoned left politics altogether, but the more prevalent tendency was a form of ceasing to think, at least ceasing to think about the big picture; a turning inward.
For me, the early 1990s brought with it a significant plunge into the national (and later, global) trade union movement. Particularly when I was working for the Service Employees International Union, I felt settled and engaged. I was in a union that was making history and within which there were many leftists occupying a variety of roles. The union was growing, and it was addressing significant issues facing the US working class and I had a great team with which I was working.
And then one morning I awakened and realized two things. One, I was on course to becoming a reformist. Not a reformist ideologically, but in practice. I continued to adhere to my larger Marxist beliefs, but I was not thinking through or significantly acting upon a radical politics that went beyond the trade union sphere.
Two, I realized there were a series of questions that were facing progressive and left movements around the world that were simply not being addressed, to my satisfaction, by non-Marxist or even semi-Marxist progressives, despite their best efforts. It was at this moment that I fell back in love with Marxism. As I have described it in the past, it was the feeling of reconnecting with an old lover, one you may have been with for a long time, and one that you now realize you have taken for granted.
The Cold War had ended, and neoliberal globalization was riding high. The crisis of socialism was hammering Left movements, and there was a retreat underway in many sectors. It was not just the collapse of the Soviet bloc or even the curious development of China. Previously left and anti-imperialist parties, movements, and nation-states were capitulating to neoliberal globalization and praying at the altar of social democracy having lost any real sense of the nature of a Left project in the late 20th century/early 21st century. In that context I realized that I needed answers, or at least to seek out those who were addressing these various quandaries. I found myself actively seeking out the work of Marxists, such as the late Samir Amin; reading Monthly Review and the Socialist Register; and engaging with those who were grappling with a changing world. This included individuals, organizations and parties that appeared to be asking the right questions, e.g., Refundacion Comunista in Italy, the South African Communist Party, the Brazilian Workers Party, and were willing, at least in part, to commit a little heresy in the name of facing reality.
At that moment Marxism provided a lens to examine the expansion of capitalism into neoliberal globalization and, in the opinion of some of us, the growth of a transnational capitalist class. It was also a moment to examine more closely the failures of the Left in the 20th century. If there is one significant component of Michael’s essay it is a call for a blunt examination of the socialist (and, indeed Left) experience in the 20th century.
The crisis of socialism involves both the challenges faced in the advanced capitalist world in constructing a strategy that can put us on the socialist road, but it also involves the actual experiences of countries that have claimed to be on the socialist road. That socialism-in-power did not start in the advanced capitalist states is a recognized truism with the resulting complications, such as underdevelopment of the productive forces. That socialist states faced the ferocious retribution from the capitalist states is as obvious as it is denied by the capitalist states when they point at the experience of the formerly (or allegedly) socialist states. The crisis of socialism resulted in a situation that some comrades of mine would describe as being, the masses may hate capitalism, but they fear socialism.
The Soviet experience forced the entirety of the revolutionary Left to grapple with a concrete circumstance of what to do—and not do—when a revolutionary force claiming to represent the working class—and the oppressed populations—has taken power. In the 21st century it is easy to forget the tremendous global excitement resulting from the October Revolution. It was an excitement not only in the advanced capitalist world but in the colonial and semi-colonial world, as revolutionaries saw an opportunity to break the imperialist chain, and ultimately to break imperialism.
Yet quickly questions emerged. Beyond rebuilding a country devasted by civil war, what, precisely, is the socialist road? How should internal contradictions be resolved? How should decisions be made on any number of questions? What should ‘worker power’ mean in the real world? Should all of the formerly Russian-oppressed nations within the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have genuine national self-determination? How should national chauvinism be challenged? How should gender roles be altered/liberated resulting in genuine emancipation? What should be the relationship between the USSR and countries and peoples around the world grappling with the complexity of confronting their own oppressors? And this is only in the context of the USSR, not to mention the myriad questions emerging from socialist and anti-imperialist struggles around the world.
These are the sorts of questions that not only faced the USSR, but in many ways continued to face every experiment attempting to embark on the socialist road. The importance of answering these questions is that it gets one beyond an examination of the personality or psychology of any one individual or any one individual party leadership. Each one of these questions must be globally contextualized, not in order to diminish the importance of the question(s) but in order to help one grapple soberly with the choices that were made, and the possibilities that may have been ignored.
Daring to face the Gorgon
An examination of these questions goes way beyond the scope of this essay but it has been these questions that started to get serious engagement in the 1990s and have continued to this day, except that some who have faced these questions have, in ideological fear, turned to stone terrified by the possible answers. This takes us to the third moment of falling in love with Marxism, a moment both exciting and troubling.
I felt the change in the early 2000s. After what appeared to be an openness to asking tough questions, there was a noticeable slowing down if not retreat. Although there was clear evidence of this tendency in 1989 in the wake of the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, and the response by some on the Left to support the crackdown on dissent in the name of defending socialism, the early 2000s brought with it the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the so-called War Against Terror, the invasion of Iraq and the hubris of US imperialism. The aggressiveness of US imperialism was obvious, and various efforts were undertaken by the USA and its allies to, once again, subvert progressive and democratic efforts around the world at social transformation and national sovereignty.
It was in that context that Marxism and the laws of contradiction became especially important and, often, painful, particularly the notion elaborated upon by Mao Zedong of “one divides into two.” To clarify, Mao argues there is no pure entity and that within any entity there are contradictions unfolding that, along with external conditions, influence the future of that entity. Where there is unity, in other words, there will be differences or contradictions, the resolution(s) of which will shape the evolved entity. And, as a result of those contradictions, the ‘entity’ may split. Though this formulation has sometimes been used opportunistically to justify sectarianism, it is very useful in recognizing that all unity is temporary and that unity must always be fought for rather than simply announced. It is also useful in refuting the notion that the breakdown in unity is largely the result of this or that opportunist rather than examining deeper concerns and contradictions.
Leftists around the world were increasingly confronting regimes and parties that, at an earlier period, had claimed the mantle of progress, if not being explicitly revolutionary, socialist, etc. Yet, in the context of the rise of neoliberal globalization and the crisis of socialism, the rhetorical and practical stance of many of those same parties and regimes rang hollow…at best.
Though this hollowing out or division within the socialist and anti-imperialist Left was in clear evidence in the context of the Tiananmen Square massacre, further events made the growing gap increasingly apparent. For me, personally, it hit the fan in the context of the brutal repression unleashed by the regime of the late Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Mugabe, a well-known leader of a major anti-imperialist struggle that ended white minority rule in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, had increasingly cracked down on opposition, all while proclaiming his revolutionary bonafides. Much of the left denied evidence of Mugabe’s repressive side seen in the early 1980s, let alone his embrace of structural adjustment. When he opportunistically united with liberation war veterans demanding land redistribution, he used this in order to wrap himself in the nationalist flag and condemn all those who opposed him as agents of imperialism. This was remarkably reminiscent of the approach taken by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran when students took US diplomatic personnel hostage. It became a means to isolate and smash opponents.
The debates surrounding Mugabe were followed by similar such debates coming to a head in 2011 with the so-called Arab Spring uprisings. The basic question revolved around when is dissent and open opposition permissible against regimes that claim to be socialist or anti-imperialist? The rift within the Left—one divides into two—was more and more in evidence as some leftists chose to identify any regime that was in opposition to Western imperialism as being progressive, or at a minimum, worthy of support. The nature of the regime and what it was conducting vis a vis its own people was to be ignored in such formulations. Thus, the uprisings against tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt were to be supported, whereas uprisings against Qaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria were to be condemned as pro-imperialist because the latter two regimes laid claims to being anti-imperialist! Regardless of the internal contractions with regard to those latter two states, the formal claim to anti-imperialism and secularism was to be accepted without question and seen as the sole criteria of truth.
In returning to Marxism, one finds a central theme until the rise of the Stalin group in the USSR. The theme is summarized in the slogan: workers and oppressed people of the world, unite! Note, it does not say oppressed regimes hated by imperialists. It lays at the foundation the notion of workers and oppressed peoples of the world. Practicing the implications of this slogan demands a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. To put it another way, a sober and accurate analysis of the conjuncture. Who are the forces on the ground? What is the nature of the regime? What facts are we grounding our analysis upon?
This return to Marxism was not, for me, only a matter of the international situation, as important as that was, e.g., the need to oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It had a direct impact on how one understands and responds to the actual situation in the USA over the last 40+ years.
The repression of progressive social movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s contributed to a strategic paralysis across the board. While there were certainly progressive victories, the growth of the so-called New Right, spoke to a major counterattack against the forces of progress. This was more than the overused term “offensive of capital.” It represented a fusion of segments of anti-democratic capital along with reactionary social movements that have sought to ‘repeal’ the victories of the 20th century.
Though Michael is correct that, within Marxism, there are currents that are deterministic, an accurate reading of Marxism at its core demonstrates anti-determinism. In other words, and contrary to Stalin, there is no inevitable path in human development. Capitalism did not necessarily need to follow feudalism/tributary societies, and there is no inevitability in socialism or communism. There are different scenarios or possibilities that can unfold depending on the nature of the class struggle and the struggles of the oppressed as a whole. Determinism, which is actually an enemy of Marxism, precisely led to the ridiculous notion held by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) of “after Hitler us,” i.e., an expectation that the Nazis would demonstrate their charlatan nature and the road would then be open to the socialists and communists. History played itself out in a very different way.
Many left currents in the USA could not conceive of the possibility—short of a military coup—that a rightwing populist mass movement could emerge and evolve into a fascist movement, and begin the process of destroying most of, if not all of, what millions of people had fought for over the last 100+ years. These same segments of the Left also failed—and we see this every day—to appreciate that in order to combat the forces of darkness, there is an essential need for a broad front opposing the far Right. Again, returning to dialectics, one is asked, what is the principal contradiction at this moment? And, who are the forces that must be arrayed to resolve that principal contradiction to the benefit of subaltern classes and social movements?
While there are many on the Left who will use Marxist language to justify purist politics and inaction, treating that as Marxism is the equivalent of treating a pyromaniac as being the equivalent of a forest worker clearing dead underbrush in a forest. Thus, it is a red herring to even suggest that proponents of purism should be treated as practitioners of Marxism.
Dialectics can help one examine and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of one’s opponents as well as one’s own forces. This is the key to the development of strategy and was the practice of some of the greatest revolutionaries of the last 100+ years. In this sense, Marxism proves its relevance again and again as long as one appreciates that the practice of Marxism is not the repetition of formulations by Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc., ad nauseum. Except in one case: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” [Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845]Email
