The Left Must Start Over

The American people are generally unsatisfied with the way the country is going. There is large-scale discontent. Trump's election is a sign of this, that people are worn out from the existing political system and economic situation. There is a housing crisis, a cost of living crisis, a student debt crisis. The productive forces are not developing, but have been developed. The country has deindustrialized, the country has shifted to more service and finance based economic activity. In other words, the current system is dying. The normal day-to-day life may seem fine, but the underlying system is unsustainable. Most economic growth in America is cyclical investments and loans and finance, not actual material production.

This is natural. Marx spoke of this. When the productive forces and material base no longer fit the current system, the current system is abolished through a (usually violent) revolution. The next stage after capitalism is communism. The only problem is that there needs to be a mass movement of the working class to actually establish communism.

So, is there such a working class movement in America? No. Not in the slightest. The only question is why. Mostly, this boils down to the legacy of the cold war, programs like COINTELPRO, anti-communist propaganda, a lack of education, and the compromising of actual communist doctrine.

Firstly, the big one. The cold war is where most people get their idea of communism from. The Soviet Union and China, the most iconic communist countries of world history. Communist countries whose internal economy was essentially just state-run capitalism. Communism is supposed to follow directly after capitalism establishes the productive forces of a nation. But with nations like Russia and China, these productive forces did not exist in any meaningful sense. Instead, the revolution first took control of the state, then the bourgeoisie was allowed to develop the productive forces under the supervision of the state. This is essentially backwards to what Marx had described. And notably, the nations attempting this method either collapsed, as the Soviet Union did, or just became capitalists with a communist aesthetic, as China did. Still, when people think of communism, it is typically of these two regimes. Shortages, authoritarianism, mass repression, and so on. Not a genuine movement of bottom-up solidarity and cooperation. People don't see communism as a total change in production and class relations, but instead see communism as just state-run capitalism.

This ties in directly to the second issue with the modern communist movement. People just don't know what communism is. People throw around terms all the time, without a proper understanding of their definitions.

Many people think that the difference between proletarian, bourgeoisie, and petty bourgeoisie is just a matter of how much wealth you have. They don't understand that you can be a wealthy proletarian or a poor bourgeoisie. The defining characteristic is the relation between the individual and the means of production. A proletarian does not own the means of production, and so must sell his labor-power. Think of a factory worker or a warehouse worker, even a football player since they don't own the stadium. A member of the petty bourgeoisie owns his means of production, but must combine it with his own labor. Think of a handyman or a tractor-trailer driver or an owner-operator farmer. A member of the bourgeoisie proper owns the means of production and does not labor for his survival. This would be factory owners, financiers, and so on. Elon Musk, for example, may work at Tesla in an administrative capacity, but it is not for his survival. Marx traces developments of the means of production as a means of production for subsistence. Firstly farm tools, then the infrastructure to support and create those farm tools, then to support that infrastructure, and so on. It all comes down to subsistence. While a factory owner may labor in a factory, it is not for his subsistence. Generally, the moment a person has employees under him, when his labor is no longer necessary for his subsistence, he becomes bourgeois.

Another distinction is private and personal property. Private property, means of production, capital, these are all the same thing. When a communist speaks of private property, he does not mean a house or a car or books or clothing. He is talking about factories, tools, machinery. This is a major distinction. Still, many people do not really know the difference, and use or understand private and personal property as interchangeable terms. Or the state, for another example. The state is not the same as government. The state is the entity facilitating collaboration and mediation between classes. Without classes, there can be government but there can be no state, as there are no classes to mediate for. Yet when people say that communism is a stateless society, people think this to mean that there is no government or leadership whatsoever.

Another issue with definitions is that of capitalism, feudalism, communism, socialism, and fascism. Capitalism is when the means of production are concentrated in the hands of a few people, it is the private, individual ownership of capital. Communism is when capital is owned by the people as a whole, there are no separate classes, and no money. Socialism is the transitory stage between capitalism and communism, often involving measures to ease the people into the new system, such as non-transferrable labor-vouchers to replace money. Feudalism is a specific mode of production where serfs or peasants, legally bound to their land, produce for the ruling class. Serfs have an assured existence independent of the market forces. Meanwhile, capital is generally weak, and production is managed by guilds in various towns, forming their own unique class system. Finally, fascism. The one everyone struggles with. Fascism is a system of class collaboration through a powerful state that uses nationalism as a response to the growth of a working class movement, in order to protect the system of capitalism. Fascism cannot exit under feudalism or communism. Fascism does not necessarily have to be jingoistic or militaristic. People such as FDR are considered fascist, for using nationalism and class collaboration (Social Security Administration, National Labor Relations Act, Work Progress Administration, etc.) as a response to the growing movement of socialists and communists to 'reconcile' the system to the people, and prolong the existence of capitalism. Fascism doesn't always look like Hitler. But it often disguises itself as socialism, as a direct way of appealing to that growing working-class movement.

Aside from definitions and the cold war, there's the issue of the leftist movements in America's past and present. During the cold war, the American communist movement was generally stifled through programs like COINTELPRO that used tactics like assassinations or smear campaigns against important civil rights or communist figures, as well as hundreds of FBI informants inside the actual Communist Party. This isn't anything unique, but still incredibly damaging to the movement. Other than this, after the end of the cold war and the shift to a more service based economy, the working class in America has seen a sharp decline. So, many of the supposed leftists in America instead seek reforms, rehabilitation, are harshly against violent action even as their own members are beaten and killed, and encourage the people to vote for one of the two political parties rather than rejecting the bourgeois democratic-republican apparatus in America. The Communists talk more about issues of gender and queer politics, rather than concerns of a material nature. The communist movement in America is made largely of middle-class professionals, out of touch with the actual working class. The working class movement must come from the working class, not from the upper class.

So again, the issues with the communist movements in America generally stem from a lack of understanding of what communism actually looks like, or what terms like communism even mean, as well as decades of counter-revolutionary activity by the state and the bourgeoisie through violent repression or rehabilitation. The true movement in America is essentially nonexistent, and must begin from the ground up. The left has to start over.