Kali Akuno and Doug Norberg
On Inauguration Day, we note the considerable range of the
opposition to Trump, from traditional activists to very mainstream folks. In
many respects the opposition mounted was unprecedented, on a day where
patriotic and jingoistic hyperbole is typically concentrated and loudly
broadcast more than at any other time, and when, traditionally, new Presidents
make appeals to the heart and to democratic unity while all who know how false
the claims are, bite their lips, party, and hope for the best. The opposition
struggling to find expression is broad and deep. But, nearly all expressions of
opposition are resorting to traditional methods of reformist oriented protest
while millions of people throughout the United States and the world are
discussing and debating how they are going to survive and resist the emerging
Presidential regime of Donald Trump and the rise of right-wing populism and a
resurgent “America first” white nationalism.
Given the nature of Trump’s politics and how he came to
power, comparisons abound between him and Hitler. Some of these comparisons are
compelling; several are strategically and tactically instructive for our
present predicament. But, while most activists focus on how and why Trump
captured the Presidency, or the nature of an ascending neo-Confederacy, most do
not address the crisis itself. Nor what the crisis practically implies, and
when, where, and how the Left and the people’s movements can and must intervene
to produce desired outcomes.
The crisis in question is the crisis of the capitalist
world-system, which has entered a profound state of economic and ecological
imbalance, social instability, inter-imperialist infighting, mass displacement,
increased suffering and rampant carnage not experienced on this scale at a
global level since the 1930’s. The crisis is rooted in the inherent
contradictions of the capitalist system, such as the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall, the need for constant expansion, uneven development within and
between socio-political units, and ecological externalization, to name a few.
The “Great Depression” of the 1930’s led to the second great inter-imperialist
war, more commonly known as World War II, which lasted from1936 through 1945.
The process of “creative destruction”, which war under capitalism facilities,
ended the depression and ushered in a new era in the imperialist system, the
era U.S. hegemony.
The first 20 years of U.S. global domination was perhaps the
greatest period of sustained capital realization in the 400 plus year history
of the inhumane capitalist system. This exceptional period, from the mid-1940’s
through the mid-1960’s, was the product of successfully implementing
world-system regulating instruments crafted by U.S. imperialism to structure
the process of capital accumulation on a global scale, mediate
inter-imperialist rivalry, suppress and corrupt the national liberation and
communist movements, and contain the Socialist countries within the Cold War
framework. The primary instruments crafted by U.S. imperialism on the economic
side were the Bretton Woods institutions, consisting of the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General Agreement on Tariff’s and Trade
(GATT), and its successor the World Trade Organization (WTO). And grand recapitalization initiatives like
the Marshall Plan (which rebuilt the economies of Western Europe after second
Inter-Imperialist War). On the political
side the primary instruments crafted by U.S. imperialism were the United
Nations (UN), the European Union, and a host of regional instruments like the
Organization of American States (OAS), and all enforced by the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO).
Beginning in the 1970’s in the effort to restore
profitability, capital slowly rejected the Keynesian strategy of capital
accumulation adopted in the 1930’s, and gradually adopted a cannibalistic
strategy that focused on privatizing public assets, destroying workers
organizations and social solidarity, commodifying as many social processes,
interactions and exchanges as could be monetized, and the evisceration of the
symbolic and false trappings of western bourgeois democracy. This new strategy
of capital accumulation is typically called “neo-liberalism”. Neo-liberalism
was first adopted wholesale by the murderous Pinochet regime in Chile in the
1970’s. It was forced wholesale upon the world once it became the official
strategy, ideological framework, and statecraft of the Reagan regime in the
1980’s. It was instituted domestically through the Volcker Shock at the Federal
Reserve and the policies of Reaganomics. And internationally, it was primarily
instituted through the IMF and World Bank that imposed neo-liberal “structural
adjustment programs” on all the nations that suffered through the debt crisis
of the 1980’s.
As we know from history, nothing remains static. The
neo-liberal strategy of capital accumulation and class restoration began to
lose both economic momentum and political coherence in the late 1990’s. The
fragmentation started with the Asian Financial Crisis and the Dot.com bubble
implosion of the late 1990’s. Despite the enormous amount of profit the
neo-liberal corrective was rendering to the trans-national capitalist class,
all it was delivering to the working class on a universal basis was shock, awe,
and misery. From the late 1990’s on, fewer and fewer of the social and
political promises advanced by the prophets of neo-liberalism could be met as
the costs of maintaining the Bretton Woods/UN/NATO system increasingly became a
hindrance to capital accumulation. Working class populations the world over
were becoming poorer and poorer as the race to the bottom being pursued by the
trans-national capitalist class kept tightening the screws trying desperately
to realize a profit and maximum rates of return on investment. This stimulated
the development of several breakaway political movements, like the
anti-globalization movement, and state reform efforts in Venezuela, Brazil,
Ecuador and Nicaragua to name a few.
And then there was U.S. imperial overstretch to tip the
scales. The invasions and subsequent occupations of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq
(2003) strained the resources of the U.S. government, weakened its military
capacity, and soured the credibility of the U.S. It also weakened financial
markets around the world, which resorted to ever larger and deeper extortion
measures, like the financial runs on Argentina, Uruguay, and Myanmar, and the
eventual cannibalization of international financial institutions during the
collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 – 2008, like Countrywide Financial,
Northern Rock, Bear Sterns, Wachovia and many others. The housing bubble burst
caught the U.S. government and the forces of trans-national capital flatfooted,
resulting in the so-called “Great Recession” and the fictitious recovery we are
living through now.
By every measure the world-system is set for another major
global calamity, but with even higher stakes, given the depth of the climate
and ecological crisis produced by the exploit and plunder, expand-or-die
capitalist mode of production. The result?
Given the present balance of forces throughout the world, we are either
facing another great inter-imperialist war that will result in massive
destruction and the likely creation of a new “pecking order” of the capitalist
world system as occurred in the 1940’s. Or the global war will produce no
imperialist winners, but only result in dystopian barbarism, the collapse of
“civilization”, and the likely fulfillment of the 6th great
extinction event that many are coming to see as virtually inevitable.
We have to ask ourselves, are there other options? Other
possibilities? And if there are, what must we do to bring these into being?
We have to start with a clear understanding that the
“liberal” center of the world-system is exhausted, bankrupt, and cannot hold.
Resistance is growing and is just beginning to develop a revolutionary
imagination, and address the imperative need for revolutionary organization and
strategic focus. The relatively spontaneous, reactive, and largely
reform-minded movements we see in North America and Europe, from the
center-left (liberals and social democrats) and the right, against the
predominant neo-liberal order reveals that there is tremendous potential for
change. However, the change will only be substantive and beneficial to humanity
if what replaces our present unethical and inequitable world is truly
emancipatory. Spontaneity will not get us there, nor will the liberals,
centrists, or the resurgent forces of the right. A revolutionary force is
needed, one that is not yet born.
We argue, that the salvation of the human family is up to us
– the revolutionary left and the people’s movements. We must find a way to
align and unite our fragmented forces, and form a revolutionary,
counter-hegemonic force.
Some of the fundamental questions confronting emergent
revolutionary forces are how will the developing anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist struggle be unified? How will the revolutionary political
forces develop and struggle? And where should and will they aim their strategic
focus? As these forces develop and struggle for political and strategic
clarity, they will have to confront and overcome the demons that have weakened
revolutionary forces over the last several hundred years – internal democracy,
hierarchy, sexism, patriarchy, heterosexism, Eurocentrism and
settler-colonialism, white supremacy, xenophobia, the mental/manual division of
labor, electoral fixations, economism, revisionism, and reformism. While all of
these issues are of equal weight, the last three issues are of particular
short-term concern in the U.S. context, because if the struggle against them mishandled,
it will result in the emerging resistance movement being subject to the forces
and agenda of liberal faction of U.S. imperialism, the Democratic Party.
So, the question, how do we play a leading role in
facilitating and directing the current motion of resistance and transform it
into a revolutionary movement is paramount. The orthodox left urging in times
and conditions similar to these are to organize “popular”, “united”, or
“national” fronts to unite all who can be united in the struggle against
fascism. But these calls rarely take into account the inequality or lack of political
parity of the “uniting” forces, and have usually blurred or ignored the
difference between the fundamental unity required in strategic alliances, and the
temporary or limited unity of tactical alliances. United fronts (in which all
parties agree to subordinate or postpone their “secondary issues”) are
necessary to mount massive campaigns of resistance against right-wing
dictatorships and/or fascist regimes; but they have proven woefully inadequate
as vehicles of revolutionary social transformation. They are therefore
necessary tactically for defense, but insufficient for the purposes of
strategically advancing a revolutionary program.
At best, “united fronts” are instruments for restoring the
status quo ante, which in our case is the neo-liberal capitalist-imperialist
order that has dominated U.S. political economy since the 1980’s. The failure
of this order created the political vacuum that produced Trump and the resurgence
of white nationalism and neo-fascism. Restoring the failed neo-liberal order is
no solution. Nor is the attempt to campaign for the restoration of the welfare
or social democratic state a solution, as it to was (and is) a strategy to
maximize profits and pacify and disempower the working class, not social
liberation.
Many of the current liberal, progressive, and left-leaning
discussions about how to resist Trump and the neo-Confederates reflect the
limitations of this “united front” approach. Some, like Sanders and Nader,
project a combination left-right unity for economic collaboration with the
emerging neo-fascist regime. Others,
like Nancy Pelosi, says “the country can withstand the election of Donald Trump,”
why it's important to take a breath and why she says Democrats are doing the
Lord's work.
Other democratic pundits strike a laissez-faire “populist”
tone, exemplified by the “Wait for the Government to Collapse and then your in
Power” article in Politico, saying “the most likely outcome of this Republican
government is probably failure, which is a horrible thing for the country but
actually a very convenient one for the Democratic Party. So follow that
strategy, disassociate yourself from the outcomes, wait for the government to
collapse and then you’re in power again.”
It’s the old mad illusion of democratic pendulum swings, but with a
caveat: “this is bad for the country and
the way things go badly might result in horrific tragedies, so that’s a grim
prospect, but if you’re simply analyzing the political calculation, that’s
available to the Democrats…. at times they’re going to have to balance their
political interests against policy outcomes. So if you have a chance to bargain
with the Trump regime, in a way that averts humanitarian catastrophe, you could
trade away some of your political leverage to do so, to negotiate minor details
on Obamacare so that you can avoid subjecting millions of people to hardship,
then that’s probably worth doing. Climate would be another area where that kind
of bargain is worth doing—giving them bipartisan cover in order to mitigate the
damage of the policy agenda. But otherwise, if you’re just analyzing what’s in
the political best interest, it’s almost never to cooperate.”
Such arguments are promoted by liberal Democratic figures
and echoed by reform-careerists, in order to hold more privileged
“middle-class” folks to a loyalist agenda, and in order to silence more radical
and demanding activists and critics. In
other words, Democrats should ride the discontent and direct it toward
non-involvement with Trump initiatives, so the pendulum will swing back
mechanically to the Democratic Party retaking power. Many will, (unfortunately in this view) be
thrown under the bus -- "for the common good."
This argument appeals to the reform left who, long
accustomed to playing the single-issue reformist game a la “NGOism”, who will
fit right in and help throw radicals and all manner of anti-system activists –
like those struggling against the police, prisons, poor education, inadequate
health and childcare, substandard and unaffordable housing, gentrification,
domestic violence, anti-surveillance, whistleblower, animal rights, transphobia,
climate justice, Islamophobia, BDS, anti-fascism, etc. – under the bus for
"the greater good", so as not to spoil the "strategic deal” of a
projected pendulum reversal.
But the views of the millions "thrown under the
bus" historically and today are not unknown, though routinely denied,
dismissed, deemed divisive, and often outright criminalized. Many activists are
easily swayed by such arguments, in part because of decades of single-issue
reformism, and also the utility of commonplace appeals to “united fronts”
historically, which have not been critically examined. In times of great
capitalist crisis, severe systemic repressions combined with age-old
oppressions throw many people on the defensive, and often move many to be
dismissive of attempts at revolutionary challenges to the system. In such a
time it’s crucial to examine these illusory “pragmatic” maneuvers (surrenders)
against the reality, from the perspective of those who have been, and will be,
thrown under the bus – the unmentionables and untouchables throughout the US
political arenas.
We have to counter the narrowness of the standard “united
front” approach and build a political force and a social movement that aims for
social and economic emancipation, and not just a restoration of the “good ole
bad days” of the Obama era or the 1950’s and 60’s. This force must be built by
the broad totality of the working class in all of its (ethnic, racial,
national, spiritual, and gender) diversity, serve its broad interests, and be
self-organized and self-directed. By working class, we do not mean a narrow,
monolithic subject of the AFL-CIO trade union ideal--the old, idealized, white,
heterosexual, male-bodied, industrial worker. The working class encompasses all
those who are structurally dispossessed from owning and controlling the means
of production, and whom are dependent upon selling their labor, labor power, or
their bodies and reproductive capacity in order to survive. This includes
everyone from computer programmers to sex workers, from teachers and waged-slaved
doctors (both traditional and alternative) to farm workers, from prisoners to
the structurally unemployed, and to the vast numbers of unrecognized “gray
market” workers in household, caregiving, home and auto maintenance, food
preparers, and others. Given the increasing automation of production, this
force must call for and organize a liberatory program based on the
decolonization of land and knowledge systems, the democratization of the productive
forces, the full automation of the productive forces, the decarbonization of
the economy, the full democratization of markets and the processes value
exchange, and a regenerative social order based on zero-waste the restoration
of the biosphere.
This is not a vision and a program that can be led and
advanced by a narrowly focused “united” or “popular” front and the convoluted
class-interests that such unequal alliances represent. Given the urgency of the
situation, particularly from an ecological perspective, the universal interests
of the working class cannot be entrusted to and constricted by liberal
bourgeois forces of privilege, whom historically tend to dominate popular and
united fronts with their positionality and resources, and who often
intentionally work to dilute and obscure the politics of struggle for social
(class, national, racial, sexual, and gender) liberation in order to sustain
their position and preserve the bourgeois order.
The key to understanding and acting in a revolutionary
manner in a period of profound social instability and upheaval is to recognize
and rally forces to the strategic emancipatory opportunity, even while uniting
broadly for defense against the serious threats and attacks. The fragmentation
of power, of social hegemony, means that there is space for revolutionary interjection,
intervention, and innovation from subaltern class forces. What we lack is the
organization, resources, and initiative to intervene in sustained and
determined manner. But, these are not normal times, and the opportunities to
create the means of seizing the initiative can be found and created. Capitalism
is driving humanity and all complex life on earth to the brink of extinction.
Trump, the Tea-Party neo-Confederates, and the rising neo-Fascist forces
throughout the world are just a reflection of this dynamic of collapse. The
situation demands that we, the Left and the People’s Movements, rise to the
occasion. Although profoundly difficult, history says we can. Let us make this
era the most luminous period in human history.
We can.
We must.
We will.
