Against Class Struggle

I have chosen a provocative title for this piece but it is chosen for a specific context. At present, socialism-communism is on the back foot worldwide and has been at least since the fall of the Soviet Union. The United States exerts authority over a majority of world states, even if it does not have the loyalty of the people under those states. Only two states with major economies have demonstrated willingness and ability to militarily resist the United States: China and Russia. At the same time, government abuses in both countries are well-known to Westerners and protests against these regimes are active and ongoing.

As populist socialists (i.e. socialists primarily interested in the welfare of the people) and anti-imperialists, we’re often asked to support such movements in China and Russia as well as other anti-US countries such as Venezuela. We’re asked to choose between class struggle on one hand (i.e. support all protests that agree philosophically) and geopolitics on the other (i.e. supporting states that oppose the US). The accusation seems to be that choosing geopolitics disqualifies one from identifying with populist socialism. It’s in this context — forcing a choice, at this moment in history, between class struggle and geopolitics — that I am against class struggle.

Of course, anyone thinking seriously understands that this is a false choice: class struggle and geopolitics are irrevocably interlinked. This can be, understandably, difficult to articulate when presented with a specific ongoing situation. Someone who is focused on geopolitical matters may not actually understand the reason to oppose any specific event while understanding correctly that the geopolitical situation takes precedence. I will aim to explain some of the common responses given to these propositions of supporting anti-government movements in anti-US countries. The main thing I want to do is to lay out systematically why, at this time, geopolitics takes precedence over shows of international anti-state solidarity. Note that this recommendation is primarily based on the global situation at the time of writing (i.e. this is not a for-all-times suggestion); I will talk more about this later.

I remind you, reader, that Lenin returned to St. Petersburg on a German train. Lenin agreed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Lenin was a practical man. I bring this up for a reason: a successful revolution requires options for outside support. If Germany and Russia had not been enemies in 1917 and instead been allies, there may have been no communist revolution in Russia. The Haitian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution both received aid from the United States, the 1911 Chinese Revolution was aided by Japan and the 1949 Revolution by the Soviet Union, and it’s well-known that the American Revolution was supported by the French monarchy.

The French and Iranian Revolutions are probably the two most geopolitically significant exceptions (at least at a quick overview) but both overcame governments which were weak for reasons not related to revolutionary activity. At base, the revolution requires enemies of the state which they struggle against, enemies who are strong enough to threaten that state. The provision of arms, training, soldiers, and sanctuary are critical to avoid the government smothering the movement, if it is at all possible, and to allow the revolution to reach its goals despite state resistance.

It is crucial to move past seeing socialism as a happy ideal and move onto seeing socialism as an actual goal to build. This is crucial because it will always be necessary for a socialist project to play sides against one another in order to secure its position in the world. Failing to see that the project is a real thing allows us to easily miss this concept in favor of only accepting and supporting governments who exactly conform to a preconceived ideal system. The error that such people often cling to is that they simply don’t support any state or social system. We should not think that state allegiance is a stationary decision; rather, it is like a current. If you don’t decide to be against it, or if you deceive yourself that you can move in two directions at once, you will just be carried along. As the stream curves and changes width, you may find yourself more constrained than you had thought you would become.

Moving against state allegiance is not moving against the state as a concept, it is simply moving against the allegiance to a particular state. It’s an illustration of how refusal to choose means accepting the status quo, whether one is honest about this or not. This leads me to why the immediate goal of the socialists must be geopolitical at this moment. The false choice between class struggle and geopolitics presumes most of all that there is no direct relation between the two. This is clearly false, as I hope I have shown.

Even on the level of public policy, it’s known that many popular policies adopted by capitalist countries were taken up (in part or in full) in order to prevent their citizens from being attracted by socialism and communism; this includes the New Deal programs in America and the National Health Service in Britain. Both countries would also ban communist activity outright at different points. The availability of alternatives to the current capitalist system is necessary for class struggle to rise to a point where the government is threatened. Only a group like this has a chance of actually overcoming capitalist forces.

One reason stands above all others when asking why geopolitics is important: the American empire. In order for any class struggle to be permanent, the American empire must collapse and be dismantled. A few countries have so far successfully shaken off the direct American yoke, this is true. However, those countries still exist in a global system where America has towering influence. The US has more full aircraft carriers than all other countries combined; with its European allies (bringing 6 more), America controls the world’s oceans and therefore wields authority over most shipping, meaning they control heavy global trade. America effectively steers the United Nations, giving them political power, and NATO, giving them the ability to wage war without it seeming like a solo decision. The US retains control of the internet. The dollar remains (for the moment) the most commonly used reserve currency worldwide, further bolstering the US’s economic dominance. The fact that states like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran publicly stand against the US does not necessarily mean that they can be considered rivals.

The pervasive existence of the capitalist/extractive form of economics is what motivated the New Economic Policy in Russia and so-called state capitalism in China. Despite the success of their anti-capitalist revolutions, the omnipresence of the West’s wicked system of things meant that both were moved to readopt extractive economy so as not to become too weak relative to the threats they faced. In other words, they had no other option. There was no external group for these states to rely on as partners so that they could rationalize their new systems through trade.

The reversion to extraction allowed local extractors, who were formerly persecuted, to tap back into networks, be reacquainted with contacts, and generally operate in a way which the socialists governments previously could not due to political rejection of the socialist project by foreign commerce. Russia was almost totally friendless when the NEP was developed and, by the time China adopted Deng Xiaoping Theory, Russia had economically degraded too far for them to be a solid trade partner to China (talkless of the Sino-Soviet split). It is best that we aren’t currently surrounded by thieves if we want to switch our wallet to a different pocket.

It would, of course, be preferable if the entire American system was smashed at once. This isn’t likely, though, nor is it necessary. All that is needed at this moment is that the US is reduced to the point that it at least has an equivalent counter-balance. More rivals arising means that more movements will rise in more places and so such movements will have more chances to succeed. It’s also not necessary that every socialist movement ally with the same great powers. This may be a point of doubt for some. Socialist movements who make agreements with powers should do so cynically and with as little repeated contact as possible. The aim is not for moral consistency but the actual success of each particular movement. We must remember that pure forms are rarely achieved and serve far better for debates than they do for the reality of life. The important thing is to use what exists to build what we wish to see.

It is incorrect to view this line of thought as a rejection of morality; it is instead a proper understanding of responsibility. Some weeks ago, the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the US held a “People’s Summit” to oppose the US government’s already-disastrous Summit of the Americas. I put the PSL summit in quotes because, despite the press it got, it was not attended by official representatives of any foreign country and made no promises of material support to those countries. The fact that a smattering of Latin American states sent thanks can be seen as an indictment, a sign that the American left wing couldn’t even have been expected to do more. I raise this admittedly painful point not out of malice but to illustrate the weak position that socialism in America is currently in.

Given this situation, it is supremely arrogant to believe that our personal positions on foreign movements have any bearing on whether or not those movements will succeed. To act as though we have a responsibility to side with any particular anti-state movement is simply not making a clear distinction between morality and responsibility. When we understand this, it follows that we should keep our focus first on our own domestic class struggles and second on the global class struggle, and this global struggle is far more affected by geopolitical events than the fate of any particular anti-state movement. When one’s own socialist project is far enough advanced to have the ability to provide material aid to other groups, that is when responsibility to display solidarity through deeds begins to gain weight and become necessary to grapple with.

By the preceding, I hope I have shown that a multipolar world is both necessary for socialist movements to succeed and worthy of prioritizing before the full political support of all ideological allies. Even so, I do not wish to suggest that we ignore the terrors that happen to dissenters under some anti-US regimes. This is a hard decision which must be made. When I say that our responsibility is negligible, that does not mean that our sympathy must be. Now it is common for what we might call left geopoliticists to denigrate the concerns of those who support such foreign dissenters. There are many people who recognize the truth of what I’ve been saying but have not fully examined their own views.

These geopoliticists (a description that includes me) tend to accuse these dissenters of being nothing more than fascists waiting to sell their countries out to the U.S.; we reduce such movements to nothing but how they affect the geopolitical situation. This tendency must be heavily criticized. This is not because it is strictly wrong: for one, many such groups do have US backing (which they are self-justified in accepting since their first priority is fighting their state), and for two, they can and do create situations whose upshot is an increase in US global power. This tendency to denigrate must be criticized because its primary characteristic is an incomplete and unnecessarily vindictive understanding of why geopolitics should have any focus at all.

In my view, the main reason that geopoliticists meet strugglist causes with contempt is the geopoliticists’ own guilt. When a strugglist accuses a geopoliticist in the US about not caring about autonomy protests in Hong Kong, they are effectively accusing the geopoliticist of not standing by their principles and of abandoning comrades to disgraceful fates. The most direct response to this accusation is to completely disavow such dissenters as politically illegitimate on this or that ground. Whether it’s true or not is not important; several movements have been less backed by US elites than is rhetorically convenient, yet they are still often characterized as mere puppets. This response is misguided if we take it as more than a shut-down tactic. Even should the accusation be true, it is only worth investigating in one of three circumstances: 1, the dissenter movement is close to gaining power; 2, they have already gained power; or 3, your own socialist project is strong enough to offer material support. Absent any of these, there is no intellectual need to respond venomously to this kind of challenge because it is irrelevant at present.

A common charge against those who prioritize opposing the US’s global hegemony is that doing so just means supporting Chinese or Russian imperialism instead. As I have demonstrated, this accusation is at best immaterial. This caution would be warranted if either Russia or China was poised to immediately assume the US’s position as brutal global hegemon, but they nor anyone else is close to this. What is more likely to happen is that the US decline will be steady and its rivals will begin competing with one another to gain the best position. In such turmoil, socialist revolutionaries are more likely to find foreign friends and to catch their government at a moment of weakness. Both are necessary for such a revolution to succeed. Whether China or Russia, or both, have imperial ambitions does not change their usefulness in terms of the global class struggle.

What I’ve presented here is the reasoning behind my view that the present priority, especially for anti-state actors in the west, is the collapse of the west. We shouldn’t presume that our input is necessary or useful in another country. Further, though I’ve presented the reasoning behind “prioritizing geopolitics”, this is not the real issue for those who venerate a brocade class struggle. The real issue is that no one who problematizes “prioritizing geopolitics” has a theory about destroying or dismantling the current system. Reformism is a dead end, this has been proven repeatedly through history; revolutions may fail but they are not built to fail in the way that reformism is. There is a refusal to answer the hard questions, to make decisions, in favor of an untested idealism where you can win by backing everyone you agree with at the same time, as if your resources are unlimited. When every discussion of this issue effectively shrugs when brought to this question it proves that they are not interested in how a revolution actually happens, they are only interested in it as a rhetorical position. This sort of thinking should be rejected.