We say that struggle resolves all contradictions. What does this mean? Part 3 of 3.

Our working-class and nationally oppressed peoples are in constant crises, and over the last decade or longer we have seen more of our people showing up with depression, anxiety disorders, social phobias, addictions, and more. We have seen some comrades move from the Left to the far-right not because they have changed their politics so much as they have strong emotional reactions to certain people or to conflict. This is political—this happens because capitalism is in crisis and throws people overboard. It would be one thing if we could put empathy into action and build groups to self-manage their care and healing, occupy a hospital or non-profit and put forward demands, and formulate a program and practice based on oppression and liberation to confront these crises. The comrades who criticize us for ableism and for not doing this are not wrong; we are failing to address crises, and we often view these crises as personal. But we do not have the tools, and we cannot get all of the tools needed, to address the crises that confront our people.

In fact, we do not talk much about “our people” and take responsibility for what is, after all, the country in which we live. Socialist and liberation movements the world over root themselves in the progressive national traditions of their peoples as they resolve the contradictions between their movements and the masses. We are barely in a place where we can talk about solidarity, but we are caught in a situation where some comrades want us to---or need us to---talk about and practice empathy and mutual aid instead, and they damn us when we do not. We need comrade doctors and comrade therapists badly. We are fighting a war of sorts, and every army needs a field hospital. But we also need to know and identify with several tens of millions of people here who are now strangers to us. The particular crises experienced by our people form material impositions by capitalism and also demonstrate our shortcomings.

These difficulties do not excuse us from serving the people and putting "serving" in the proper contexts so that it is not understood as charity or as mutual aid. I recently attended a Web event hosted by a militant Kurdish and Turkish socialist organization that had therapists speaking to their audience, calming and hopeful live music, and a compassionate woman comrade who facilitated the event and gave an in-depth political analysis. We can do this.  

The DSA chapter problems referred to here have taken place within particular contexts. These events transpired while the fascist attacks were underway in D.C. and Salem, or in their aftermath. They took place as a new political moment is opening, and one that most (but not all) of us worked for. They took place as COVID continued to take an out-of-proportion toll in our community. There are particular crises of capitalism present, one of which is increasing automation (and many fewer jobs to return to) as COVID continues and another of which is the purchasing of corporate debt and the consequences of that. The DSA chapter problems occurred as movements around us began to push back, and perhaps to advance. This push-back gives us new opportunities and challenges.

Those are some of the objective conditions that we work with. But there is a contradictory subjective set of conditions as well to consider. There is an experiential gap between leaders and members, and similar gaps between members, and McCarthyite anti-communism is sometimes present and is allowed. A woman comrade has to steel herself for certain meetings because she experiences mansplaining and sniping comments from other comrades. Chapter leadership does not collectively engage with members when backsteps occur. We have no base in the labor movement or in workplace organizing, although we have many union members. A couple of comrades tend to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, a few are anarchists, at least two are close to the Solidarity organization, and others fit well into DSA’s “big tent.” But one comrade opposes new anti-terrorism legislation aimed at the far-right, one wants to leave all political questions to “the workers” to settle after they take power, we are attempting to study the Labor Theory of Value because we do not have similar understandings of exploitation and oppression, we do not have unity around the question(s) of self-determination, we passed a resolution calling on Salem’s conservative mayor to lead an anti-racist effort and exceed his authority in certain areas without much discussion. and the comrade who advanced some caustic criticisms mentioned above was told that perhaps he should leave DSA.

In other words, we sometimes depoliticize ourselves, and this time we did it when having the right political line and practice is of special importance. And if what we do is not political, then it becomes personal and we are struggling with feelings and past slights that cannot be put away. We thus take on some aspects of our opposition.

The opposite of “big tent,” or the answer to it and to the movement-destructive behaviors that sometimes come with it, are neither narrow Left sects nor purges. Just the opposite is true: we need a more politicized DSA, with declared factions and tendencies and deep work among the working-class and nationally oppressed masses. There is a need in the U.S. right now for principled mass social-democratic politics and organizing, so let’s think about redesign. Principled mass social-democratic politics should be the right pole or wall of DSA, and with that being the space where DSA’s politics begin. People who are active every day and sharing leadership and activity and participating in actions find ways to resolve or work with their differences that others cannot. They develop a common rhythm of work, and they set about building capacity for struggle and leadership among workers and oppressed peoples. They do that, or they perish. If the numbers of people so engaged do not increase and do not take leadership---if the quantities and qualities of the peoples’ forces do not change for the better---we lose. A principled, mass social-democratic “big tent” organization is needed, but within that effort there should be room for organizations that distinguish between cadre members (the decisive force who unite, serve, and lead the people) and other members as well as organizations in which people are educated, tested, and given the space and means to evolve politically before they become full members. The contradictions between a “big tent” organization and other forms of organization can work for the good if we assume that clear thinking, unity through shared struggles, and a “no enemies on the Left” policy prevails.

We have some great advancements to point to that illustrate this dynamic of people learning to work together and moving Leftward: Salem DSA’s socialist environmentalism, the Chapter’s abilities in initiating and carrying though on some community projects, our ability and willingness to take part in an important coalition effort despite being a minority within that coalition, participation in some electoral work and an almost-won in a City council race, and a willingness by some comrades to study the Labor Theory of Value and engage with basic Marxism. This inspires and empowers people to do additional planning for 2021. One question that we have to answer is if this forward motion weighs more than our backsteps. Another question is how we deliberately correct backward motion.

The primary contradiction is between the working-class and oppressed peoples and capitalism. The secondary contradiction for us is between ourselves and the working-class and nationally oppressed peoples. You can either love the people or hate the system; the choice you make will put you in one place or another. This is one link between the two separate contradictions. The primary contradiction and how we respond to it with the masses are all that we should have room for dealing with in our movement and in DSA. Our work starts with grasping the contradictions. Our growth comes with understanding the overall nature of contradiction and development—and not just with understanding these, but with working with them and applying what we learn in every aspect of our lives. Expect contradiction and conflict, but look at each situation and ask how it arrived at a specific stage and what is happening within it and around it and is moving it forward or backward. We should not over-emphasize negation, but we should not lead with conciliation either. Apply this to relationships in the here-and-now because all relationships are areas of struggle, and all relationships and struggles are joined.

What does this mean in practice for us? Study, engage in mass work, form political factions within DSA as our mass work moves ahead, recognize and respect differences within a socialist framework, reject liberalism and defeatism within and amongst ourselves, let those who do the work speak first, agree that there is no right to speak without first understanding what is at issue, help people develop within and through the organization rather than quickly place them into positions of responsibility, broaden our base and our leadership more carefully than we do, move people and ourselves to the Left, understand this this movement to the Left occurs in stages, and understand that the contradictions between ourselves and the ruling class are fundamentally and irreversibly antagonistic but that the contradictions between ourselves and the masses are not. These methods of work have been formed and tested in every successful revolution. Political debates and discussions are not arguments, and they should not be sources of bitterness. If differences are handled correctly the discussions over differences should lead to greater unity. And remember what Amilcar Cabral said: "Responsible members must take life seriously, conscious of their responsibilities, thoughtful about carrying them out, and with a comradeship based on work and duty done. Nothing of this is incompatible with the joy of living, or with love for life and its amusements, or with confidence in the future and in our work...." All of this is what we mean when we say that struggle resolves all contradictions.

The working-class and nationally oppressed peoples are our only bastions, our only means of defending ourselves. They are the only forces that can lead a revolution. If it seems that the people are opposed to us, or that they consider us to be their enemy, this is because we have not correctly resolved the contradictions between us.

Further and better reading:

1. Mao's On Contradiction: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

2. Zhou Enlai's Guidelines for Myself: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

3. Stalin on dialectical materialism: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm

4. M.N. Roy on patriotism: https://www.marxists.org/archive/roy/1923/06/12.htm

5. Marlene Dixon on the oppression of women: https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/dixon-marlene/class-struggle.htm

6. Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism:https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsofma0000unse

7. Amilcar Cabral Tell no lies, Claim no easy victories: https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1965/tnlcnev.htm

   

We say that struggle resolves all contradictions. What does that mean? Part 2 of 3.

To this point this has been a poor and second-hand introduction to dialectical materialism. Here is how this works out in practice in a political organization, and here is how we answer the question of what we mean when we say that struggle resolves all contradictions.

Most of the labor and radical political organizations that I have been involved with have had a group of leaders and activists and a rank-and-file who tune in and out. Whether the leaders and activists intend to or not, they often build a moat around themselves. They do ever more work but their energies and numbers diminish over time. At some point some of them turn on one another or turn on the rank-and-file. The rank-and-file, for their part, might have a transactional or user mentality, or they may have signed on because they are good with the organization’s program, or because they want to give financial support but not do more, or because the right person or the right moment needed to move them has not arrived. Leadership may also fall into transactionalism, meaning that inducements of one kind or another are used to get members or to build projects. Or leadership may conciliate with members’ inaction, or they may keep looking for the right thing or a right moment to move people.

Being a socialist does not mean that one is free of all capitalist influences or individualism. And being a socialist now, when much of the U.S. Left has arrived where they are through the Occupy and Sanders movements or through a battered labor movement, often means that counter-culturalism, so-called “identity politics,” forms of liberalism and anarchism, tendencies to work for change “from above” rather than with workers and nationally oppressed peoples at the grassroots, going to the many manuals for social change that are out there for answers, living in the world of the non-profits, and not engaging with the classics of socialism runs pretty strong. We have seen in a very short time the practical disappearance in many areas of a traditional, militant, self-educated Left made up of workers and nationally oppressed peoples. And it is not only that we have seen this disappearance, but that it has been a forced disappearance in some sense, driven by ageism, nihilism, anarchism, and liberalism on the Left.

What we know, or what we think we know, is that if you do not build activism into an organization from its first minutes you end up with inactivism, busyness (not organizing), or division. And we know, or we think we know, that if you do for people what they can do for themselves you diminish their ability to lead and limit their identification with the organization. We know that not all motion is forward motion, but it is questionable if we can identify backward motion when we see it and if we know how to stop it. We should know that learning history is a subversive act, and that we have a responsibility or right to insist that everyone take up the tools of theory and practice as they enter our organizations. We know, or we should know from the labor movement, that an organizer can spend all day preaching unity, but when one person says “Maybe we’ll get fired if we protest” the group falls apart. The Left has our equivalents: personal attacks, anti-communism, the “white fragility” line all set activity back. We know that people will enter a house with many wide-open doors, but we should also know that not everyone coming through the doors is someone you want planning your next party and deciding who is going to serve the punch at the party. We should know that we cannot tell people to bugger off and expect heir cooperation or open ears.

When these problems occur in the context of a “big tent” socialist organization like a chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) the undemocratic underpinnings of the organization become more problematic. We should not expect a socialist organization in the U.S. right now to be fully democratic, fully participatory, and fully attuned to what the working-class and oppressed peoples are thinking and doing. And it is not that DSA is primarily undemocratic in its structure or decision-making, but that the “big tent” formulation is, in itself, undemocratic. “Big tent” means, on the one hand, that all “democratic socialists” are welcome---a good thing when “democratic” refers to democracy in motion but a bad thing when it refers to a specific social-democratic tradition or some form of Left liberalism. On the other hand, “big tent” also means that there will be problems with decision-making, focus, and attention to national projects. People will drop in and out. What we think of as “political line” and “mass work”---the two necessary aspects of activism that are in non-antagonistic opposition to one another---will not be taken up by the entire organization, or at least not in the same ways and at the same times.

A comrade who is not engaged in mass work but who has a long history of activism and leadership will be prone to take occasional swipes at other comrades, and especially those in leadership. His comments can be caustic and can be heard as blow-offs to the Chapter, although this is not his intention. This is what isolation accomplishes in many situations. The leadership is feeling burdened with the work that they do and the relatively low numbers of people involved; they are understandably defensive when attacked. Both the comrade who is attacking and those who are feeling the attack understand that there are openings for DSA and for socialism that are being missed. Both are aware that each meeting creates more work, and neither is completely confidant that they are moving in the right direction quickly enough. The former cannot hear the others asking for his participation (too often on their terms, and not on his), and the latter keeps on taking on work as if their energy is infinite and as if their methods of work are democratic.

Because we have a “big tent” organization we cannot find unity on questions of self-determination, defunding the police or putting police under community control, some of the basics of exploitation, and the role of the state. We do not have a commonly shared analysis of colonialism and imperialism. We have not discussed or come up with a shared analysis of the coup attempt in D.C. or the fascist threat here in Oregon. The people in the organization who have backgrounds in Marxism and organizing drop the ball when it comes to discussing these questions, engaging in education, and doing practical work in these areas---or we conciliate with liberalism or anarchism.

And because we all live in the U.S. and drink deeply from this culture, we see our failures in individual terms, we excuse them as matters of personal angst or exhaustion, we burn out, or we conciliate in less-than-principled ways---or we gather up our toys and go home angry and sulk. Political disagreements are taken as personal affronts, and this is sometimes inescapable when political line is distorted and expressed in caustic terms. Anyone active in the labor and Left movements meets a good number of alcoholics and dopers, burn outs, angry people, mansplainers, too-busy people, and droners. What they share in common are unhealthy relationships to power and individualism that negate collective work and power. We over-emphasize the role of negation in making change, if we think about how change happens at all. But for us, as socialists, the problem should be less about what is healthy or unhealthy and more about what it takes in terms of our relations to the masses to get on and stay on a path to working-class power.

These turns signify bourgeois or petty-bourgeois intrusions into our movement, or at least an absence of criticism and self-criticism and support for those of us who want to grow and do better. They have their complementary political positions in opposition to theory and intellectual development on the Left, political defeatism and indecisiveness, a distrust or rejection of paths to power, and an inability or unwillingness to think dialectically and work with the push and pull of political struggle. This is where we get Trotskyism and reflexive anti-communism and anti-Stalinism from. This is where unprincipled coalition activity (and not united fronts) comes from.

Go here for Part 3.

We say that struggle resolves all contradictions. What does that mean? Part 1 of 3

We say that struggle resolves all contradictions. What does that mean?

In the sense that we use the word, “contradiction” we are talking about opposition that occurs within and between people, and within and between contending forces and within and between things as well. Opposition and struggle---contradiction---are natural and universal. Opposition and struggle are the means by which things change, and since everything is in development and motion then change is also on-going and constant. Contradictions may be antagonistic or non-antagonistic, but they are ever-present.

It is not that unrelated people or forces or things come into contact and conflict with one another, but that there are interrelationships at work, and that people and forces and things have distinct stages of development and self-development. If we want to understand someone or something, we must look at a web of relations and relationships, the history of development that is at work, what is intrinsic and what is external, and what contradictions are present. You must enter and experience the environment of what it is that you are studying in order to know it.

Grasping contradiction is a way of understanding the mutually exclusive and opposing tendencies that develop within, and are present in, everything within us and around us, including our thoughts and thinking and even motion itself. The most common way that we have of talking about this in talking about water. When water is heated to certain point it becomes steam, and in so doing the quantity and quality of the water is changed. Motion (heat) creates changes in quantity and quality. Heat is itself the product of opposing forces. But even without heat water will undergo other changes as well, although it appears to be still: evaporation, or freezing to become slush or ice come readily to mind. The parallel for us is that the “motion” of social movements creates changes in the qualities of societies and changes in the numbers of people involved and in the qualities of their thinking, their work, and their cultures.

Since contradiction and change are universal and constant, then, something of the past, something of the present, and something of the future is always present. The quantities and qualities of what is around us are changing. What is new supersedes what is old. Old conditions (old forces, old quantities, old qualities, and old contradictions) may be defeated, but some part of the past goes into the new thing that has been created and new contradictions and struggles are born. Interdependence means that in the process of change the aspects that exist within something become their opposites. Think here about how the organisms that eventually made human life possible developed in stages over long periods of time.

Here we also often use the example of capitalists and capitalism: the capitalists were a subordinated force within feudalism, and capitalism existed in an embryonic state, but through a clash between rival means of producing and distributing commodities the capitalists and capitalism took power. This was “progressive” in the sense that productive powers were freed up and the mechanisms of production and distribution could acquire social characteristics---more people involved, triumphs for science, an end to a dying order that was being crushed under its own weight---but it was oppressive in the sense that the new order rested on the subjugation of working-classes and nationally oppressed peoples and new levels of environmental destruction and slavery continued and took new forms. Also, capitalism continued and deepened the contradiction between people and nature. The primary contradictions that quickly emerged were between capitalism and capitalists, on the one hand, and the working-classes and nationally oppressed peoples on the other hand.

Socialism must emerge as a new form of production and distribution and take on the task of restoring to us a place within nature. Socialism will not come as a clean slate, but will carry something from capitalism within it. It took changes in quantities and qualities---of people, of the means by which things were produced and distributed, of thinking and science, of class relations, of cultures---to give capitalism its victory. But in its victory capitalism created its opposing forces in the forms of workers and nationally oppressed peoples. Just so with socialism: something from capitalism will be present, the work of building socialism will; be present, and in this work are the seeds of communism.

The new most often replaces the old in a capitalist society when there is clarity among the working-class and oppressed masses around what the primary and secondary contradictions are and when antagonism defines the struggle between contending ideas and social forces. Antagonism is not always necessary or present, but it is a stage in contradiction and struggle. We have implied or said so far that contradiction and struggle are not the same, that as something is negated something else is created, that this is on-going and constant, that changes in quantities and qualities are most deeply imbedded in these processes, that the new supersedes the old and carries in it something of the old and the present and the new, that there is a unity in opposites in the sense that every thing is identified by the opposing forces within and around it and by its history of development, and that under certain conditions opposing forces with some thing can coexist and “become one another” by creating a new identity. Negation is of course a necessary step or stage, but negation is itself negated through development and the role of negation should not be over-emphasized.

Some of our critics object by saying that cooperation and mutual aid are responsible for development. We respond that even in situations where mutual aid is predominant, it is so because existence is itself a contradictory state (life opposing death or decay, motion as a contradictory state, apparent solidarity existing as necessity) and so it is a matter of struggle. Some of our critics object by emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, but we respond that these are limited factors in development and exist in relation to (as relative to) other forces. Some of our critics say that we should be agnostics, or “objective,” in our approach, but we say that (human) activity is primary in all things and that it is through action and understanding action that relative truth comes to be understood; there is no limit to (human) activity and understanding. Some of our critics say that we leave no room for idealism, and they are correct in the sense that we do not believe that ideas have power or meaning by themselves. Other critics say that we make no room for freedom or will, and we say that we understand freedom to be the recognition of necessity and that it is the people---and people alone---who make history. We add to that that history is the “space” in which human beings develop.

Go here for Part 2.  

Some Notes On Our Present Moment---Part Three Of Three

Salem, Oregon---our town---has been highlighted as a center of far-right terrorism and activism. Here is recurring fascist violence, and the right-wing won most of the local and state electoral contests in November and controls the County Commission and the School Board. Attending the counter-protests can be unsafe, and they are not organized on a united-front basis that builds and broadens our capacity to fight and win. A door opened for broad anti-fascist and anti-racist unity last spring and then closed and has remained closed. The pandemic has been disempowering---or our response to it has been. Radical forces have not consolidated and put forward an all-people’s political program while the right-wing has consolidated and put forward a program of sorts, or a warped explanation of what’s going on. Liberals have erred on the school reopenings and the matter of school district liability for the spread of COVID at work. Liberal faith in the system seems to have been strengthened even as the system falters. They continue to take a top-down approach in many areas, and they continue to write off the working-class except when our votes are needed.

Attempts were recently made by the far-right to intimidate staff from the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration at their homes while the right-wing Freedom Foundation seeks to bust public employee unions, and now anti-maskers are attacking retail workers on their jobs in Salem. Intentionally or not, they are working hand-in-hand against working people. Where are our liberal and radical friends when it comes to attacks against workers and our unions? Where are our unions when it comes to leading an all-peoples front against our enemies? We return to the point that solidarity is not a two-way street in Salem, and we add that it sometimes feels that this is by design and intent by some people.

Our City Council appears to be progressive in much the same way that a few members of our School Board and the Superintendent once appeared to be progressive, but the people now have only two or three voices on the City Council (and none at the School Board). The real estate industry, the Chamber of Commerce, the banks, and the Salem Leadership Foundation are positioned to head off progressive change, and they are probably relieved that they have not taken heat for their roles over the past year. The police and the people who work behind the scenes at the County, City, and School Board levels work very hard to redirect that heat and deplete our progressive energy. Many non-profits help to soften the blow and redirect our energy and heat as well.

Politics here remains a matter of personalities---Paul Evans’ push for power, Shemia Fagan’s extended run for Governor, the short-lived Tina Kotek/Janelle Bynum controversy and deal, Bill Post on the radio, the right-wing focus on Kate Brown. Politics should be about political programs, struggle, and forward motion. It should not be about agreeing to disagree or conciliating or convincing people that we’re all on the same team; there is an “us” and a “them” that needs to be understood and used correctly. What force is there in Salem, or in Oregon, that can make politics all about a working-class and oppressed peoples’ struggle for forward movement?

Still, we must ask how is it that Rep. Nearman may have let the fascists into the State Capitol on December 21, that Rep. Cliff Bentz supports Trump and the right-wing terrorists and holds office, that Rep. Bill Post can waffle on the coup attempt and still hold office and be named as Assistant Deputy Leader of the Oregon House Republicans? Post’s case is instructive: he is no doubt getting support and protection from agribusiness for his effort to cut the agriculture minimum wage for workers under 21 years of age.

We have been through the fires, but rural Oregon continues to suffer. We are hitting a high point in new COVID cases, and Marion County’s infections and deaths are way out of line with our population numbers and our healthcare systems. Houselessness appears to be growing. These are systemic problems that are not going to be solved by individual effort, but saying this does not get individuals off the hook. If we dwell only on the bad news and our desperation, we disempower ourselves and one another. Radicals here are indeed surrounded. Breaking out of this encirclement can only be done by building relations with the working-class and oppressed peoples and through strategic united front (coalition) work.

Some Notes On Our Present Moment---Part Two Of Three

A statement from Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) reinforces what gets called “liberal identity politics” when they say, “This was scripted white supremacist violence instigated by Trump.” We agree with DSA that Representative Ilhan Omar’s impeachment attempt and Representative Cori Bush’s effort to expel Republicans who tried to block the election deserve full support, but DSA is misstating what fascism is and they aren’t talking about building or consolidating an anti-fascist united front. A statement from Howie Hawkins of the Green Party (remember them?) on January 1 took the Left to task for supposedly retreating to the right. Hawkins prescribed less unity for the Left as his cure and put forward no ideas on how to fight and win in the present moment. The “We knew this was coming!” crowd didn’t know this was coming, or wasn’t prepared even if they did. The people who scoff and say that this insurrection or attempted coup was poorly prepared forget that the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 was also a sloppy job. Coups and insurrections often do not succeed on their first or second or third attempts---think of Turkey----but they are staging grounds and they consolidate power. The liberals must be pushed and pulled to follow through on impeachment and prosecutions of Trump and his allies; this a moment to open political options and build unity, not to further confine ourselves.

We do not defend science and logic, or reason, only because they are under attack by our enemies, but because science and logic are political questions. Each class---workers, the middle-class, the bosses---has a science and logic that meets its interests and needs, whether they fully realize this or not. The workers have dialectical materialism. That is a political matter. But for reason of any kind to hold sway, reasonable people must hold power---and the question of power is also a political question. The broad question of this moment is one of who will hold power, who will be excluded from holding power, and under what conditions this will take place.

Our radical friends who return from the future with prognostications of “all will be well” or “we are all doomed” should at least have the good graces to bring the winning Lotto numbers back with them if they really wish to be helpful.

It is now a true saying that if Georgia shows then way, then D.C. shows the stakes. But there is something else: it is not our liberal friends, or even many of our revolutionary comrades, who form the directly opposite and absolutely necessary opposing force to what happened in D.C. The necessary effective counter-push against the right-wing is coming from the Solid and Black Belt South and from workers in industries and professions most directly affected by the pandemic and people of color in communities where the police killings have happened and where there are existing traditions of fighting back. But these people cannot fight alone and win. The concept that solidarity is a two-way street built from necessity has been sacrificed and must be repurposed.

We should share with the liberals an absolute abhorrence of seeing the Confederate flag carried in the Capitol, or anywhere, and react with the same abhorrence and anger to the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirts. We should hold up the union statements condemning the fascists and use them to organize fellow union members into the movement. We should look soberly at the election numbers and stay with the base, the grassroots, and figure out how to win people over during the pandemic.

The media and certain politicians have been building narratives that will allow some Republicans to survive this moment politically and go on to win future elections by giving space to the Republicans who suddenly oppose Trump and street violence. That sets a low bar, but it feeds bipartisanship and may be used by Democrats to justify compromises. “We finally found some moderate Republicans!” The media and certain politicians have also been working for quite a while to find the roots of our crises in Russia, and not here at home. A liberal friend even sent along a meme of the Republican leadership under a hammer and sickle yesterday. Much is being done by the Centrists to salvage part of the right-wing and strengthen the Democratic party's Centrists, once more excluding the Left. It is not that the Democratic Party’s Centrism should not be reconstructed or saved, but that a Left-Center alliance would be of greater help, and would be more viable, than an alliance between the media and the center of the Democratic party or an alliance between centrist Democrats and the Right.

Our liberal friends walk into the media trap with their glasses off. Some of our radical friends either insist that the Left should have no ties to the center and that we should not consult the liberal media, or their criticisms are formulated in ways that prevent building unity. It’s as if the hard-fought election that we just went through didn’t teach us anything and that we didn’t win and lose ground in the elections in the same moment. The most capable voices on the Left analyzed the election results and argued that a Biden/Harris win would give us a new terrain to struggle on, and that waging that political struggle is all-important, but many of us remain mired in ultra-leftism and instinctively reject an organizing strategy and tactics that take us beyond Left circles and to the masses.

Some Notes On Our Present Moment--Part One of Three

It is understandable that people will respond to the multiple crises of the current moment reflexively, reaching for what is past and comfortable to sustain them in a new and difficult time. Armies are always fighting the last war. Revolutions perform seances to find their justification in the languages and personages of the past. Liberalism still looks to Rousseau’s Social Contract of 1762. When we speak of what is reactionary in honest terms, we are describing what has arisen in reaction to progress, or in reaction to forward movement. We are thus describing that familiar and comfortable political space that is a refuge from reality. Change, struggle, and contradiction form our material reality; everything within and around us is constantly in motion and development. Every reactionary idea or trend denies those aspects of reality and provides an alternate myth (racism, misogyny, false histories). We now find ourselves having to defend science and logic against a New Confederacy, a particular form of fascism that looks back 100 years to the racism and xenophobia and anti-union corporate-led offensives of the 1920s, and even further back to the defeat of Reconstruction, and then still further back in time.

Looking for comfort in the past and sentimentality are understandable, but they are things to struggle against and to defeat within ourselves and around us.

The “slow-motion coup” from the far-right that has been unfolding for years now has accelerated in recent days. It may change its form, but its essential content will remain and it will threaten progress for years to come. Bear in mind that this movement organized and consolidated as revenge, as a death cult, as a revolt against science and logic, as offensive tactics and strategies of the New Confederacy, as a force that at once does the militant and political work of a section of capitalism and, at the same time, is a response to globalism and neoliberalism.

Revenge because the far-right, steeped in racism, could not abide the Obama presidency and political advancements by people of color, however insufficient that administration was and however tenuous these advancements have been. A death cult because deteriorating social conditions are causing widespread misery and addiction and lifespans are generally decreasing. A death cult because the far-right has no answer to the pandemic and will surrender to it, or will sacrifice large numbers of people to the pandemic who they regard as expendable and as surplus populations. A death cult because individualism in the U.S. conspires with powerlessness and a lack of critical thinking skills to the point that self-harm and suicide, and not collective action, are our responses to oppression. Masses of people, and particularly white working-class people, struggle to come to terms with the reality that the capitalists have played us like chumps, and they seek refuge in self-destructive behaviors. A revolt against science and logic because these disprove superstitions, challenge the right-wing ideologically, challenge the death cult, and point to a human future.

The New Confederacy drew its strength from the remnants of the southern planters and aristocracy, their political servants, the segregationists, and the industrialists who moved production to the south. These forces then allied with other reactionary forces allied with agribusiness and meatpacking and sections of heavy industry in a desperate attempt to maintain profits. The south’s competitive edge has been dulled as automation has increased and as China becomes responsible for greater shares of the world’s gross domestic product. The New Confederacy thus represents a brutal form of economic and political management, or dictatorship we might say, that divides workers by race, age, gender, and citizenship/immigration status. Every murder by the cops has come as a means of taking revenge on people of color and the poor and as a means of disciplining all oppressed peoples and the entire working-class, regardless of the color of our skin. White privilege exists, and racism and class oppression are the fault lines of American society, but being “less oppressed” should not be confused with privilege.

When we say that the New Confederacy is consolidating as a fascist movement what we mean is that it is finding its political identity as an explicitly reactionary movement, that it is finding internal unity and is becoming self-aware, that it is gaining a consciousness of its role in carrying out the policies and actions required for racial and class oppression, and that its gangs are building cohesion through street brawls with BLM and anti-fascist demonstrators and the cops. The sudden abandonment of “Back the Blue” by the New Confederates here in Oregon signifies a stage of consolidation in their movement, a stage that occurs in most fascist movements. They experience internal contradictions and divisions, they’re aren’t without fault lines, but they also have unique aspects; their protests and violence are not spontaneous, and they will conform in every respect to other fascist movements.

The militant political work of a section of capitalism was accomplished in the Malheur occupation (a front for agribusiness), the giveaways to the energy sector and the repression of protests against the pipelines, the police and extra-judicial killings of people of color, the decimation of unions, the pressures brought by the anti-maskers and the people who want to keep businesses running during the pandemic. The thugs in the streets and in the suits are all about doing this work, and they use one another. We say that this is a response to globalism and neoliberalism, and that the street thugs and suits use one another, because our enemies do not come all from one social class and they are not (yet) of one mind. Some have no objective interest in the system and do what they do out of anger and despair and because they are losing whatever economic security they had and because it is so difficult to come to terms with being played by the capitalist elites. It is easier to blame the person of color---or, if you are a right-wing person of color, take on a colonized mindset---or an immigrant than it is to take responsibility and fight your boss, your landlord, the banks, and their defenders. The suits, on the other hand, represent some parts of finance capital (parts of the banking and real estate industries), agribusiness and meatpacking, and parts of the energy sector. If they could settle their disagreements with the larger financial sector and basic industry, and resolve problems of trade and hold on to world market share at the same time, we would find ourselves in a fascist state as soon as they felt threatened and motivated to take power. We’re not there yet, but we’re closer to that and to civil war than most of us realize.

Still, we spend too much time looking for one sign or another of fascism, instances of this or that class moving to the right. We follow Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark, we allow talk of “white trash,” we spotlight particular corporations. And so we lose sight of Clara Zetkin’s famous point that the nucleus of fascist movements are "the politically homeless, the socially uprooted, the destitute and disillusioned." The fascists themselves have said “We want to glorify war---the only cure for the world---militarism, patriotism, the destructive gestures of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for women.” (Flippo Tommaso Mainetti, founder of the Futurist movement and a supporter of Mussolini) The initial incoherence of the movement is not its failure or something for us to ridicule or debate; this incoherence is the movement’s strength.

Our liberal friends want to dissect and ridicule this incoherence and are shocked, shocked to find that Hillary Clinton’s deplorables would attempt a coup here. “This is not America!” they say. But the United States is the home base of coups the world over. “Our democracy!” they say. But this has always been a democracy for the wealthy---a democracy worth defending against the fascists and racists, but still a democracy for the wealthy. “Our democracy is sacred!”---but it isn’t. Democracy here is relative, as it is everywhere and always, and it is not above or beyond human beings and human experiences. “This is white privilege!”---but this mistakes a stage in fascist consolidation with the entirety of the fascist project and implies that anti-racism is, by itself, the counter to fascism.

And we have more liberal outrage: “Where the hell were the Capitol Police!” and “These people are traitors!” and “They should be tried for treason!” and “So disheartening to see the unrest/protests that are happening in our Nation's capital…I don't care what your political views are or who you voted for, this is NOT right. This is AMERICA!” and “Seditionists and domestic terrorists!” ---but this appropriation of conservative rhetoric does harm because it gives the work of defending democratic principles over to the police, it can be used against those of us who have or will occupy government buildings for good reason, these words come back to bite us whenever we use them, and this rhetoric privileges and obscures the true nature of the imperialist United States. It does matter who voted and who people voted for. The implication is that coups are okay elsewhere, but not here, and that the events of this week are something other than political. Forgotten is how and why the ball got dropped in 2015 when attempts were made at the federal level to list the fascist organizations for what they are and hell broke loose.

We and our radical friends have our own versions of this outrage. “This has killed the Republican Party!” and “This is a dreadful day for the right….The case can now be made that the entire GOP is bent on wrecking democracy, and the cops in every state have been actively involved. This is not a coup. It's a premature orgasm.” and “Trump is finished at this point. The failed lawsuits, street scuffles with militia yahoos and Proud Boy wannabes, and endless talking about 'Trump's coup' and whatever else is a distraction from the real struggles.”---these back-from-the-future pronouncements have yet to be realized, they say or imply that our opposition has imploded, they don’t look at how political struggle occurs, they talk about “real struggles” that do not (yet) have mass support and action.