The Opportunism of the Synthetic Left Drives the Workers to Class Collaboration
Because Left and Right have been transformed into definitions of the Culture War, the Masses are increasingly alienated from both the mainstream Left and Right political parties.
In a sense, this is a good thing, because it helps weaken the Bourgeoisie State's control over the political discourse of society. But in another sense it's a negative, because it pushes the workers towards extreme ends of what is in essence still Liberalism as a political philosophy, and intensifies the contradictions within their ideas of society.
The State tries to use this to its advantage by promoting what are essentially caricatures of Class Politics, of Marxist political philosophy, where the essence of the possition is changed, but the form or aesthetic is kept. The State maneuvers its political forces against the workers by presenting the contradictions within society as purely social problems, as differences of Culture, rather than stemming from economic realities under Capitalism. The workers are guided towards solutions that, even if radical sounding, maintain the same old framework, such as “defunding” the police, which, even while mitigating some of the symptoms, leaves the fundamental cause of police violence untouched, and fails to address the economic realities behind the opression of Black Americans. Even more substantative, but ultimately incrimental reforms such as The Contract with Black America are dead on arrival; the fundamental goal of this bait and switch is to divert organizational effort and peoples’ energy and attention towards reforms that are unlikely to pass, and fundamentally harmless to the Ruling Class even if they do.
And when one or the other party of Liberalism in the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans, presents its position as a caricature of Socialism, an entirely absurd contortion of the Workers’ conclusions on a subject, it drives a portion of the workers away into the other party. The two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats each come to define the cultural divide between the Synthetic Left and Right.
For example, when the Democrats advance gun control meassures ahead of what Workers will generally support, it drives a portion of the workers over to the other Liberal Party, the Republicans. And when the Republicans advance social restrictions beyond what the workers support, such as “anti-wokeism”, or implies that welfare fraud and immigration are the causes of societal decline rather than symptoms of it, it drives a portion of the Workers over to the Democrats. While these social struggles may rally the minority of people who produce the majority of online content, or even an electoral majority within a voting population, the alienation of the Workers as a Class from both Liberal parties’ political process is undeniable.
Across all political spectrums, faith in the political system is in constant decline, popularity of both parties, congress, and the real, ruling institutions in our society are driven lower and lower by mounting crises which our Bourgeoise State has systematically failed to meaningfully address. The voting population represents a smaller and smaller portion of the country, in the face of increasing incarceration, and criminalization of society, and open corruption and the resulting futilitity in political participation. More of our lives are increasingly subject to legal considerations under a system we have declining control over, whether it is workplace conduct (espcially significant in the consideration of the recent Union movement), political organization, or our education, religious practice, or even our sex lives and reproduction.
The workers understand that the Bourgeoise State has harmed them, and will continue to do so, but have been unable to unite becaues of the Culture War the two branches of Synthetic Politics has created. While the main forces dividing the workers are the two major parties, when minor parties such as PSL or the Libertarian party propose less outrageous, but still contradictory programs, it furthers the divide between the workers in fundamentally the same way; they are driven towards the opposite end of the Liberal political divide.
The question to be asked is not simply whether the workers benefit from something; but whether it strengthens their organization as a class, and strengthens them towards taking power. While removing the Supreme Court, for example, would eliminate the ability to make legal maneuvers circumventing reforms such as Roe v Wade, it opens up a host of other dangers for the Workers; of immediate importance, it would make the Uhuru Trials even more dangerous to us by immediately establishing constitutinal precedent. Opening up political debate to minor parties would significantly empower the extreme left and right flanks of Liberalism, which would weaken the Workers’ independent organization by channeling effort into electoralism, even while it nominally provides them a wider platform to develop ideas. These programs contain contradictions that prevent them from being a net gain or loss for the workers. The reason that these programs, which attempt to improve conditions, ultimately fail is that under Capitalism, every measure is a double-edged sword; because the workers as a class do not dictate the organization of society, they are forced to compromise for concessions. Every victory within the Bourgeoise political system also brings a small defeat, because it is not won by the organized force of an independent Working Class, but by Class Collaboration.
This opportunistic use of the workers to pursue partisan goals within Liberal politics has oppened both Left and Right camps of workers to Class Collaboration, along these Social, Cultural differences Liberalism has cultivated in the population. The “Socialists” on the left will happily cooperate with the Bougeoise in pursuing their social politics like LGBTQ rights, abortion, healthcare, etc., against opposition by Workers on the right, and denounce anyone who cooperates towards Class Politics as being “on the right” or cooperating with “Fascism”. On the Right, this has pushed workers to cooperate with the Bourgeoise on social politics like religious opression and drug policy, while they cry that anyone left of center is a Communist, echoing the Synthetic Left seeing Fascism around every corner.
This Social Struggle has pushed the Socialists on the Left into Opportunism as a general characteristic, and support of Imperialism in practice. And on the Right it has pushed some sections of the workers into openly Nazi-istic ideas of National, Racial, and Cultural struggle (though it would be a mistake to think the majority of the workers on the right support either Fascism or Naziism), and embeded collaboration with Capital as the default, and caused it to be seen as a viable strategic option for Class Politics, rather than stemming from momentary events in an evolving war. Opportunists like the Party for Socialism and Liberation will denounce and try to smear projects like Rage Against the War Machine, simply because the Libertarian Party is primarily petit bourgeoise, even while they cooperate with their own Petit Bourgeoise through the ANSWER coalition. The difference is that the Socialists within RATWM have not closed themselves off from the workers because of their opinions on Social issues; Marxist and Libertarian workers happily cooperate to ending the US’s Imperialist wars, even while coming into the fight under different flags.
The greatest advantage we can give to the Bourgeoise State is to abandon Class Struggle for Social Struggle. This is the very basis on which they divide the Workers, and prevent effective organization as a Class within society; this is how PSL shows its opportunism, even while it pays lip service to Anti-Imperialism. The only Anti-Imperialist struggle the Synthetic Left cares to support is one that can advance a narrative based in race, religion, gender or sexual identity. While the Opportunists may support the Houthis in Yemen, the Revolutions in Africa, and even support China’s challenge of US dominance, they will also refuse to support the Russian people’s anti-Imperialism in Donetsk and Luhansk. They will refuse to acknowledge and challenge the threat Imperialism poses to the Serbs in the Balkans.
Emblematic of the problems of Synthetic politics generally, the alliance of different class interests in the Social Struggles has separated the left from the Class Struggle. This does not mean that the Synthetic Right represents Class politics against Social politics, or that the right-leaning possitions are closer to accurate; it simply means both sides of Liberalism have come to represent incorrect, and increasingly absurd possitions that are fundamentally incompatible with Class Struggle. It means their contrarianism has made both Left and Right oppose the politics of the Working Class in favor of the politics of the Culture War. Where RATWM differs is that it is a single-issue coalition; the sole purpose is to oppose foreign wars, something inherently in the interests of the workers as a class, and does not engage in social politics as a coalition, though its members of course may freely act as individual people and organizations.
The Left Opportunists use the argument that we cannot work with and organize Right leaning workers, because of these social politics. Because they may not be pro LGBTQ, or religious, or have been influenced by racist propoanda, etc., the Left says these workers must be abandoned, and simply cope with the world others would make for them. Parties like PSL will never say so openly, but disgise their Opportunism by arguing that the organizations the right-leaning workers concentrate around are Fascist, or that working with them is “an alliance with Fascism” or “class collaboration”. They may theoretically support organization of all workers, but when it comes time to actually organize outside of the Left, there is always an excuse at hand for why doing so somehow betrays the workers they claim to want to organize.
More pointedly, they refuse to contest the genuinely Fascist attempts to sway right leaning workers; they say that participation in RATWM gives platform to reactionaries, but that platform already exists; they either cannot understand, or simply refuse to admit, that if they do not reach out to these workers, someone else will. One of Lenin’s central ideas of What is to be Done? is that a call to action can only be made by those who are there at the critical moment where action is to be taken; that we have to lead directly from the front of the masses, not direct them from behind. And today this necessarily invites the question, if these “socialists” want to oppose Fascism, to win all the workers over to their side, can they do this when they are not there to oppose the Fascists? Given that the Synthetic Left has failed to organize the workers on any meaningful scale beyond the Trade Unionism that is instinctive in the Proletariat, the answer seems to be a definitive ‘no’. It is impossible for them to bring these workers over to Socialism if they will not connect with them, and go among them as brothers and sisters.
Italian Black Shirts parade in front of Fascist Party leaders (Mussolini pictured center), c. 1921
The reason is that these Left Opportunists dismiss much of the teachings of Marxism’s most influential theoreticians, particularly Stalin and Mao but also Lenin to a lesser degree, and have based their understanding of Fascism on a false history which excludes the anlysis of Fascism that the Communist parties were developing at the time. They refuse to acknowledge that the Liberals have historically always abandoned the worker for Fasicsm when the moment of crisis comes. They will not acknowledge that the Social Democrats in Germany stood by while the Nazi party purged the country, beginning with the Socialists and Trade Unionists. Because they do not incorporate the study behind these conclusions, and apply these lessons to new information we have gained about previous societies, they do not understand that this phenomenon only found a convinent division to exploit in Race politics, in social politics generally, but that Fascism as a historical phenomenon has nothing to do with the opression of minorities, but is based in violent defense of the existing systems of exploitation within society. The Opportunists try to disguise the fact that these systems have been based in Class, from the Sumerians and the Egyptians, to Rome and through today, Fascism has always been a product of the Ruling Class defending their exploitation of society through violence. They pointedly ignore the fact that Capitalism does not exploit minorities because they are minorities, but because they have less Capital, and therefore must sell their labor power to Capitalists.
To support this Revisionism, the Opportunists must also change the meaning of Progressive, to have a meaning based in their Social politics, rather than in the real history of Class Struggle, and the different economic stages of human society. Rome did not understand race as we do today, there were simply the Roman World and the Barbarians, and its Fascism adapted itself to this reality. Feudalism was what ended the exploitation of the people through the Roman system of Patrician economics, not the struggles of the Slaves against their masters, or even the non-Roman peoples against Rome. When the Barbarian Tribes overtook the territory of Rome, their local economies came to mirror what occured under Rome, because the Economic history of their societies had not yet developed to a new stage; they simply adopted the old Roman system to administer the masses of alien peoples they now ruled. A new Mode of Production had not developed, and so the results of their societies were identical to the old Roman model, and the Social changes within society under Feudalism were only a product of the changed Economic life of society as it developed without the slavery that held back the old Roman system.
If we apply this historical lesson to today, we see that the Opportunists such as PSL, and the other Left Liberals like the Anarchists, are arguing that Socialism can only win through Social Struggle. They argue that these social changes produce changes in Economy, when in reality the opposite is true; while the ideas and understanding of society obviously influences its interactions and development, in all of recorded history fundamental change in these social relations has only come from organic changes in the Economic relations of the society, or from external conquest by an alien power which forced these changes. The Opporunists want us to think that historical Progress is measured in the Social life of people, and not the Economic relations which create this Social life. The Opportunists want us to abandon the Class War for their social struggle, for the Culture War.
The core argument of the Synthetic Left is that their Class Collaboration is justified because it includes Social Stuggle, but any efforts by the Workers to organize for their intersts under the reality of Synthetic Politics must be Reactionary, because it includes people who are against their ahistorical understanding of Progress. While directly claiming that organizations like Rage Against the War Machine are chauvanistic, fascist, racist, etc. would be easily disproven, the Opportunists would like us to belive that cooperating with workers who are influenced by these ideas can only strenghten those ideas. They have written the workers off as inherently, and unchangably racist, as reactionary, as “despicables”; but the Communists must embrace the people. In On the Chungking Negotiations Mao wrote:
“We Communists are like seeds and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them”.
This doesn’t mean that the Marxists should oppose these Social Struggles, that we should oppose Black liberation, or LGBTQ equality and protections, etc., or even that we should dismiss them as unimportant, or secondary. What it means is that the Workers’ interests as workers are not identical and synonymous with the interests of these social minorities under Capitalism; it means that the Class Struggle is not the same thing as these Social Struggles, and treating them as synonymous would be a mistake. It means that the Workers should support these minorities in their struggles as separate and independent allies; that we can both support these oppressed minorities in their struggle for liberation, and we can organize the workers of all beliefs towards their interests as workers. These identities are not exclusive of each other, while they are simultaneously distinct.
But succsess truly comes when we understand that people are brought together, are united in their histories by Common Struggle. When we organize the workers independent of these other social groups, they are (for the very first time) able to organize, and to act as real allies, as equals, in pursuit of common goals they both would benefit from. When we both free the Class Struggle from these other social struggles, and avoid subordinating them to the Class Struggle as lesser partners, as mere followers, they will all finally act as a united force against Capitalism. Anti-Imperialism is in the interests of all oppressed people, whether they are oppressed as a Class, an ethnicity, a nationality, etc., and their common struggle against Imperialism can shape and change their understanding of the Social relationships within society. The Marxists can free the people from the influence of Synthetic Politics, and unite all of the Masses, but only if we undrstand that they can be brought together only by a common struggle against Imperialism.