marxist

While it is true that the complete emancipation of women (and men) can only be achieved in a classless society, it is equally true that such a society can only be achieved through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Women cannot be expected to put to one side their immediate, pressing demands and await the arrival of socialism. The victory of the Socialist revolution is unthinkable without the day-to-day struggle for advance under capitalism.

Marxists must fight for even the smallest reforms that can serve to improve the living standards of the working people under capitalism for two reasons. In the first place, we are fighting to defend the workers against exploitation, to defend living standards, democratic rights and the most elementary conditions of a civilised existence, to defend culture and civilisation against barbarism. Secondly, and most importantly, it is only through the experience of day-to-day struggle that the class can acquire a sense of its own power, to develop its organisational strength and raise its collective consciousness to the level demanded by history.

This website is a cesspool of identity politics. Although ideas do need to be hashed out and discussed, so much of the “discourse” here revolves around crowning the champion of the oppression Olympics, or telling people they have no right to discuss an issue that they don’t personally experience, or claiming that one section of the working class benefits from the oppression of another. This is false, as well as dangerous.

This only blurs the gaping fault lines in society that exist between those of us who own nothing but our ability to work, and the parasites who exploit us. It throws doubt on the possibility of united class struggle. It endlessly bemoans oppression without offering any path towards fighting it. This is incredibly convenient for one group of people, and one group of people only: the capitalists.

The highest moral aim is to free humanity from oppression and needless toil, so that we can unleash the productive forces through a democratically planned economy, erasing the material basis for scarcity, hunger, conflict over resources, and all forms of hatred. The way to arrive at that aim is to relentlessly build the greatest weapon of attack against the roots of society’s ills—class consciousness—and with it, the confidence and unity of the world proletariat. Marxism is the method we use to understand this, and it doesn’t need anything else.

And it’s in the imperial core so it would automatically liberate its neo-colonies!!! Grrrr!!!

Some elements of the above post are sort of true. Plenty of countries in recent years have had workers’ revolutions, only there was no revolutionary leadership to ensure their success or instill genuine class consciousness. That will probably keep happening, and as long as the US remains in the hands of a capitalist state, anything that poses a threat to global capital will face a very powerful enemy.

But the US working class is a powder keg.

The workers’ movement in the US has been absolutely stunted by the red scares, trade union leadership betrayals, and the image of the left being tied up with the most rotten identity politics. But this also means there isn’t a huge layer of careerists masquerading as communist leadership, it means that the party being built today doesn’t have the baggage of dozens of betrayals under their belt, it means that the working class hasn’t been tested. Things tend to turn into their opposites rapidly once the conditions have been prepared. And the conditions are being prepared—events will have a much more profound effect on mass consciousness in the US than decades of half-baked scare tactics and the manufacture of culture wars.

American youth have experienced nothing but crisis and steeply declining living standards, facing much worse economic prospects than previous generations. They are educated about the “American Dream” and witness the world’s first trillionaire waving a chainsaw around in a grotesque imitation of Milei (also evil, to be sure) while their parents lose their health insurance and face mounting debt, while their jobs cut hours and intensify their labor. They live in the wealthiest nation on earth, which is an empire in decline. They lost their homes in the 2008 crisis, they saw Bernie Sanders run as a Democrat and betray all of his stated principles in the following years, they saw BLM protests repressed by Democrats and Republicans, they lived through a disastrous response to a pandemic that was undercut by the absurd restrictions of vaccine patents and respirator shortages, then they wore respirators to protect themselves from wildfire smoke and the pandemic that still exists by the way, the few jobs that used to promise limited upward social mobility are now being automated by one of the most environmentally devastating technologies in existence, the President that some of them supported because he promised no new wars and the end of rampant inflation and the opening of the Epstein files has soured on them as he fails to deliver on any of his campaign promises, the economy sits on a house of cards of fictitious capital and speculation which most of their parents’ retirement savings are tied to (if their parents have been able to save for retirement at all). They are told that capitalism holds boundless promise, which rings discordant with the reality they face. We are only seeing the beginning of what will probably be one of the most devastating economic collapses of all time, and people are only beginning to wake up, and yet already this year we’ve had the first de facto general strike in about 80 years, and some pretty heroic displays of class solidarity with immigrant workers, each time learning from the last and escalating their tactics.

I can’t find the quote right now, but in Engels’ Synopsis of Capital he describes how the catalyst for class struggle is not dependent on the absolute living standards of the working class, but rather sudden declines or severe contrasts between the wealth of the ruling class and that of the proletariat. This isn’t just true because Engels said so. It’s been proven in history time and again.

I can’t say that the US will be the first successful workers’ revolution in the wave to come. But it will happen much sooner than you think.