The Dream Café

I saw a tweet go by that referred to Putin as “America’s worst enemy.” My response seems to have generated some confusion, so let me try to clarify.

Whenever you talk about an enemy of America, or a friend of America, or American national interests, stop for a minute.

America, like every other country, indeed, every other thing whether social or natural, is a unity of opposites in conflict. Sometimes, for some purposes, the unity is what we want to consider, sometimes it is the conflict. When considering a confection that features sugar and lemon juice, I must be aware of the pieces and how they inter-relate if I want to prepare it right, but when it’s time to eat, what someone eats is the whole confection.

But we aren’t talking about a confection, or about sugar. We’re talking about a political entity, the United States of America, in 2016 (by one day). It is ruled by an elite group that runs it in the interests of maximizing their profit—this was true before Trump was elected, although he is certainly the most open, naked, vicious representative we’ve seen yet. When the talk is of “America’s interests” it is the interest of the 1%. It is not my interest, and it is not yours. My interests lie with those being overworked in Russia, repressed in Palestine, bombed and murdered in Syria and Libya and Iraq, and yes, exploited in Israel.

This is the lie—deliberately spread by union bureaucrats, politicians, and apologists for capitalism—that permits so many to accept not only the bombing of children in the middle east, but tries to explain the under-employment crisis in terms of competition with workers in other countries, which serves to derail and misdirect the struggle here that could actually fight for decent wages.

A “traitor to America” is a traitor to the ruling elite. “America’s interests” are the interests of the ruling elite. This does not mean that any “traitor to America” is necessarily doing something good, but it means whenever you use phrases like “national interests” without questioning them, you are simply accepting at face value the biggest lie of all. “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” is only true if by “America” you mean Wall Street. This is what President Obama meant at the post-election press conference when he referred to the election as an “intramural scrimmage.” As far as he and his class is concerned, that is, indeed, all it was. How about, as we fight through the question of how best to organize against Trump, we begin by rejecting the fundamental assumption that living within certainly artificial geographical boundaries somehow means we have the same interests as anyone else living within those boundaries. We don’t.

There’s a tendency among Marxists to be dismissive of certain sorts of questions: the ones that start, “Under socialism, how would…?” There are good reasons for being dismissive. For one thing, in many cases, the answer is, “We’ll have to figure it out.” For another, these questions have, in the past, most often come from people who aren’t serious; that is, people who see the whole thing as a purely intellectual exercise, a mind game, and there are better uses for a revolutionist’s time than satisfying the idle curiosity of someone who has no intention of becoming involved in the struggle. For a third, some of these questions give one the impression that the questioner is trying to score points, rather than understand what sort of future socialists are trying to build.  And for another, really, with the imminent threats of nuclear war and climate change, two problems capitalism is incapable of solving, what choice do we have?  When the alternative is destruction of 90% of humanity and a reduction to barbarism, certain details like whether I can own a houseboat or who gets to eat the caviar appear pretty trivial.

But.

Things have changed. The election of Donald Trump has put direct, massive attacks on the American working class on the agenda, and anyone who imagines that the working class can be attacked without responding is living in a dream world. What sort of response will it be, what form will it take, and what will be the result? I clearly remember how, when Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed his union-busting bill, there came spontaneous calls for a general strike, and the union bureaucrats had to work double- and triple-time to suppress it, to convince everyone to behave and count on the electoral process. My point is, the instinct to fight back is inevitable. This fight is called the class struggle. The class struggle carried to its conclusion is revolution.

The conditions for revolution (I am not, here, talking about whether the revolution is successful, just whether it takes place) are well-known: a massive distrust of and disdain for the government, rage among the oppressed about the conditions they are forced to live under, and a sense among the masses that there is a chance to make things better. When the last is lacking, you may have riots, possibly even an uprising on a limited scale, but not revolution, which is a conscious—I repeat conscious—effort by the masses to take history into their own hands.

So, as I said above, things have changed.  The struggle, the conflict, is inevitable, and for there to be a successful outcome, there has to be that awareness that we can make it better, that it can work, that channeling the anger into a disciplined and organized force is worth the effort. This means socialist consciousness, and that means, all of a sudden, the questions about whether socialism can work are much more immediate. One huge question has to do with the Russian Revolution, which I’ve done my best to answer in a series of posts last year.

As for the rest, well, go ahead and ask. I might say, “we’ll have to see.” I might decide some of the answers require their own posts. I may spend a lot of time pointing to some of the things in what I somewhat ironically call my socialism FAQ.  I honestly don’t know how this will work, except that I’m pretty sure I’ll learn something.

When I refer to a socialist society, I mean, simply, an economy based on collective ownership of all means of production, and a state that is controlled by the class that produces value.

So, what do you want to know?

Wouldn’t it be stupid to expect the same “rust belt” workers and rural white poor who helped elect Trump to turn around and defend immigrants, reproductive rights for women, freedom of affectional preference, and racial equality?

No. It wouldn’t be stupid at all. It would be, in fact, entirely reasonable and practical.

As a side note, I do not agree with those who simply say that everyone who voted for Trump is, ipso facto, a bigot; it is absurd as to say that everyone who voted for Secretary Clinton is a servant of Goldman-Sachs and supports war crimes.  And you know all of those who kept saying things like, “Prove to me Trump is a racist!”?  Well, our first thought is a quite reasonable, “If you really don’t think Trump is a hardened bigot, you are so far in denial there’s no point in talking about it,” but our second thought ought to be to realize that the denial, absurd as it is, is a testimony to the fact that even they think racism is a bad thing and should be denied.

However, let’s skip over that argument and get to something that is, in my opinion, more significant:

Where do you begin your analysis, with what is in someone’s head, or with the search for objective truth? Do you see ideas as the primary focus, so your first catagorization is “liberal” “conservative” “Clinton supporter” “Trump supporter” “racist” “sexist” and so on? Or, on the other hand, do you begin with objective social relations, regardless of an individual’s opinion: wage-worker, poor, capitalist, petty-bourgeois? I beg to submit for your consideration the following two propositions:

1. The objective is superior to the subjective.
2. The actual, objective interests of “rust belt” workers and the rural poor are exactly the same as their class brothers and sisters, and it is in their objective interests, however many of them do or do not agree at any given moment, for there to be racial equality, freedom of affectional preference, reproductive rights for women, and freedom of movement for everyone.

The media is a powerful force, no question: and the barrage of propaganda insisting  that racial and sexual lines are what really divide the country, must not be under-estimated. It has an influence, and we have seen the results in the presidential election. To combat these ideas, to argue for what is objectively true, is not easy. It takes work. But the work is made easier by the understanding that you’re right, that truth is on your side.

I believe that it is vital to build socialist consciousness among the working class, to build a revolutionary party for the overthrow of capitalism; this is why I support the Socialist Equality Party. But many of you don’t agree, at least yet, that this is a practical possibility. So, okay, baby steps: If you can recognize at least two fundamental truths, it is enough to start working:

1. The class that produces all the wealth has a common interest against the class that appropriates the wealth the toilers produce.

2. The class that produces all the wealth must be politically independent from the parties that represent and work in the interests of the exploiters.

If we can just get that far, we can start to unite into a force that would make Donald Trump tremble. Until we do, we cannot hope to defend ourselves.