Marxist Clarity in Times of Confusion and Despair

This article by Donald Parkinson was originally published in Cosmonaut at https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/08/marxist-clarity-in-times-of-confusion-and-despair/

There is no doubt that we are currently living in politically confusing times. Nihilism and despair reign throughout American society, with no shortage of reactionary and irrationalist trends seductively posing as opposition to the hegemonic liberal order that provide no solutions to the problems facing humanity. Instead, it promises us more war and global conflict, while the dispossessed majority of the world struggle to survive under conditions of economic insecurity. There is, of course, also reason to be optimistic – socialist ideas still spread among the youth and the labor movement is slowly gaining ground in new industries. The possibility of a rebirth of mass socialist politics remains, even if much of its potential is squandered. Still, our historical moment offers few easy answers for those of us looking for alternatives to the present state of things. 

The current political landscape is the product of a chaotic series of events that began to unfold in 2020. First was the defeat of Bernie Sanders at the hand of the Democratic National Convention, and his acquiescence to the Biden administration saw the US left almost overnight without a sense of direction or purpose. The cozy and grandfatherly Vermont Senator – who had filled progressive-minded people of the nation with hope for, if not a break from capitalism, at least a functional healthcare system – was no longer a force of insurgency against the elites who ran the DNC. This disorientation came in sync with an even greater historical force, the global COVID-19 Pandemic, an event that filled the American people with fear and paranoia. Anti-police demonstrations blew up in the heat of the pandemic, then fizzled out, partly due to the the NGO-ification of dissent as well as the failure of the radical left to cohere any kind of program for an alternative to the prevailing regime. Then, the center of political gravity became focused on a tumultuous presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. 

The tumult of the election peaked on January 6th, 2021, with what was ultimately a pathetic and poorly-planned attempted putsch on the part of an insurgent MAGA movement. By then, the energy of populist opposition was in the hands of the irrationalist right. Right-wing demagogues like Tucker Carlson framed themselves as the enemies of the ambiguously-defined “elite.” Meanwhile, Sanders and his allies in the Squad seemed dedicated to proving themselves the most loyal opposition that national unifier Biden could possibly have.  

Then came the war in Ukraine. Putin launching his invasion of Ukraine led to a wave of war fever amongst American liberals and much of the left. The argument went that Putin had to be resisted in the name of anti-fascism; in this case, that meant the US military-industrial-complex was now a great force of anti-fascist armed struggle. The left scrambled to develop a coherent response to the war, which was in essence the intensification of a conflict stretching back to the US-backed regime change operation of 2014. 

Meanwhile, the far right positioned itself as the most prominent voice of opposition to US intervention, framing the weaponization of Ukraine against Russia as “World War Woke,” – a clash of civilizations between Russia, a strong Christian nation helmed by a conservative patriarch, and Ukraine, a country that was simultaneously a den of both Nazis and LGBT feminists which stood for the World Economic Forum and the “Great Reset.” At the same time, the American right intensified the culture war it had always been brewing with attacks on sexual minorities and racial justice education – basically anything vaguely defined as “woke.” As I write this in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican-dominated state legislature have passed laws that politicize the simple act of going to the bathroom in a blatant attempt to target the transgender community, a favorite scapegoat of the new right. 

The response of the Democrats to these attacks on liberty and free speech by the new right is predictable – protect the system at any cost. And of course, the system will ultimately remain as strong as ever, partly thanks to how despicable the right-wing opposition is. While the war in Ukraine does create division, the war drive over China has bipartisan support, giving both parties a common project to unite over. All the contradictions of the global capitalist system point towards conflict with China, a conflict with the potential for economic dislocation that the Ukraine war will look like a mere preview of. Hope for stability, for a return to normal, is a dead letter. The United States and the world is entering a phase of conflict and crisis, and the current state of political confusion of the left will only intensify absent a Marxist intervention that can provide clarity and strategic direction. 

The reader presented here hopes to be a part of such an intervention in these confusing times, an attempt to lay out what a possible strategy for a disoriented left would look like. Cosmonaut Magazine was founded in 2018 by myself and a group of individuals influenced by works like Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary Strategy and Lars Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered (among many others) as well as our own experience organizing in the US left. I myself was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World for some time, and my own negative experiences with various Leninist sects (as well as the dead-end vague populism of Occupy) left me susceptible to the infamous “infantile disorder” of left communism. I eventually founded a small sect known as the Communist League of Tampa, which was essentially a glorified reading group that did occasional propaganda work at strikes and demonstrations. Eventually it fell apart, yet the rise of the Sanders campaign and the DSA produced new political opportunities which I was initially hostile to. I caved in and joined DSA anyway, as my own studies of history and Marxism (as well as frustration with the political aimlessness and nihilism of the milieu I was part of) led me away from my ultra-leftism. In retrospect, I can confidently say this was the correct move. 

In working to found Cosmonaut, my colleagues and I sought to create a space where Marxism could thrive and develop to address the existing challenges of the modern era. We were not in as politically tumultuous a time as we are now, but the Trump presidency nonetheless was an environment that called for the serious political thinking that Cosmonaut sought to cultivate. We believed that Marxism was ultimately a project of scientific socialism, which meant that we would take questions of both natural and social science seriously. Cosmonaut would be unapologetically Marxist. As Lenin famously said: “The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defense of bourgeois oppression.”

Yet we would not let our confidence in Marxism lead us into a thick-skulled dogmatism, where we would simply preach our truth and expect the masses to follow our lead when economic crisis (or rapture, if you will) came. We believed not in starting another sectarian group, but in engaging the existing left in dialogue and debate. This meant a degree of pluralism, or a willingness to publish opinions we disagreed with. We did not want to create a stereotypical sect rag. Cosmonaut was to be a space where real dialogue and debate about Marxist theory and political strategy could occur, even if it meant sometimes entertaining the occasional crank. If it inspired interesting discussion, why not? 

Our willingness to engage in principled debate with the left and our devotion to a truly scientific socialism were also joined by a belief in democratic-republicanism and partyism. The democratic strain of Marxist thought, something that was key to writings and political work of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, had been obscured by years of Cold War history. Reviving Marxism would mean reviving the radical republican tradition that Marx himself came out of. Democracy is not simply an instrument for achieving socialism, but is itself part of the content of socialism. Socialism must free humanity – not merely from the arbitrary whims of the market, but also the arbitrary domination of kings, oligarchs, bureaucrats, technocrats, patriarchs and militarists. This is, of course, a tall order – our studies of 20th century socialism, another important part of Cosmonaut, show us the immense difficulty of overcoming all the muck of class society and its attendant tyrannies. Changing the world is hard stuff, and requires clear-headed political realism rather than empty political sloganeering. Yet, “this is hard” is never a justified excuse for a revolutionary. 

Cosmonaut’s partyism followed from this democratic-republicanism. The United States today, contrary to its pretensions, is not a democracy. Any project for socialism in the US will have to come to terms with this and wage a struggle to overcome the anti-democratic constitution that holds the capitalist class in power. And the only means of doing this, based on the scientific analysis of Marxism, is by uniting the proletariat and its allies around a program for a democratic republic of the Paris Commune type. In other words, we need a political party; so, party-building would be the guiding telos of our intellectual activity in Cosmonaut. Yet contrary to the habits of much of the Marxist left, by party-building we did not mean the construction of a sectarian grouping based around adherence towards a particular theorist – a downgrade to the traditions of utopian socialism. Rather, what was needed was a party in the tradition of the Chartists, whose unity was built around a People’s Charter that expressed the common aims of the movement in programmatic demands. What we needed, in other words, was a mass party, organized around programmatic unity rather than theoretical unity. 

After all, Marxist theory is important and will always guide us. But it is also a living body of work, full of internal contradictions and ambiguities. Debates over the correct understanding of Marxist theory will never end, and if this were to happen, it would forfeit any claim to a scientific understanding of the world. Such debates have enlivened the space of the Cosmonaut webpage and sharpened our understanding of the world. Yet in the end, it is politics, the project of universal emancipation and the abolition of class society, that unites us above all else. No two individuals have complete agreement on all the details of Marxist theory unless they are in a dogmatic sect guided by a lone theory guru, so to demand that a party have strict unity on questions of Marxist theory can only result in exactly that – with endless splits and fracturing whenever disagreements arise.

Guided by these principles and united by various debates within the milieu we created around Cosmonaut, a number of us came together to organize a political intervention. We were DSA members that were frustrated by the shape of the organization. Tailing the Democratic Party was the norm, and without Sanders to give everyone a common goal, we were in the midst of internal struggle over where to go next. Yet we also saw political opportunity and potential in DSA despite this. In many ways, the absence of Sanders was a liberation of sorts, and an opportunity for something new to provide a direction for the organization that the majority of politically-active socialists in the country were coalescing in. Marxist Center, the organization that sought to provide a “left” alternative to DSA, was ultimately going nowhere and would soon collapse. It only made sense to make an organized political intervention in DSA and put our ideas to the test. Hence was born the Marxist Unity Slate: a series of resolutions and amendments that our small group was putting forward at the 2021 Convention. 

Using Cosmonaut as a platform, with an existing readership and audience in DSA, we were able to attract support for our resolutions and find allies around the country for our agenda. While our most important agenda items (the most important being around programmatic unity) failed at the Convention in 2021, we had made an initial political intervention and found potential allies in the organization. We were also able to have influence on the drafting of the National Platform that was accepted at the Convention, in part because of the prestige we had attained through our articles on the question of the minimum-maximum program. Our debut as a slate at convention created the ground for forming a proper mass-membership caucus, something we planned to do but wanted to be careful and patient about. After all, many of us had been part of earlier attempts to form left-wing caucuses in DSA like Refoundation that simply ended up producing a grab-bag of incoherent politics.  

Thus, Marxist Unity Group would be birthed with a specific strategic vision; our members would be educated in the key texts of classic Marxism that defined our politics. These politics were defined by our Seven Points of Unity, which are reproduced in this manuscript. They represent a broad sketch of what our politics actually mean in practice in the specific context of the DSA and the United States broadly. While they were a collaborative effort of several founding members, I would like to credit Ben Grove especially for his key role in articulating a vision of socialist politics that is rooted in the political realities of the current USA. Following these Seven Points of Unity are immediate practical tasks that the Marxist Unity Group has taken up and the Perspectives document that was voted on at our first mass-membership-based convention (where a leading central committee was elected to replace the small group that made up the original Marxist Unity Slate). These aforementioned documents all represent the basic political vision that the Marxist Unity Group pursues, regardless of whatever differences we have regarding how to best do this. 

The first series of articles we present puts our focus on winning the battle of democracy in the United States front-and-center. Ben Grove’s agitational pamphlet “Fight the Constitution, Demand a New Republic” centers a national political struggle for regime change, making a clear case that the US Constitution is an undemocratic obstacle to social progress that must be taken down entirely – not chipped away at through reform after reform. JR Murray’s “Whose Democracy?: An Introduction to Oligarchy in the United States” goes into further detail about exactly why the United States is not a democracy, and like “Fight the Constitution….” can serve as an agitational pamphlet of sorts. 

Continuing the theme of democracy and the state are two pieces of a more theoretical type. Gil Schaeffer’s “Lenin and the ‘Class Point of View'” is a polemic with Chris Maisano of Jacobin Magazine. Schaeffer gives Maisano credit where credit is due, but finds Maisano’s perspective weakened by various inconsistencies and reformist illusions about the United States. In polemicizing with Maisano and other interlocutors like Tim Horras (of the now-defunct Marxist Center) and Tatiana Cozzarelli (of the Trotksyist publication Left Voice), Schaeffer outlines Lenin’s approach to the struggle for democracy as a counterpoint, providing a bit of personal biography to tell the story of how he came to his understanding of Lenin. For this reason, it serves as a proper example of MUG’s “Lenin as Democrat” reading of revolutionary history, influenced by historians such as Lars Lih and Neil Harding. Following this is “Making State Theory Revolutionary”, a short article by myself on debates in Marxist state theory and their shortcomings, as well as how a focus on democratic republicanism can help bring a revolutionary focus back into the often overly-abstract and academic field of Marxist state theory. 

Closing out the first section is Luke Pickrell’s “Marxism and the Democratic Republic”, a piece that serves as a perfect summary of the Marxist Unity Group’s position on the Democratic Republic as well as its own position in Marxist thought. As Pickrell demonstrates in his essay, Republican thought was a key part of Marx’s own development as a political actor and philosopher, raising themes from freedom from dependence and domination. This continued in the Marxism of the Second International but was de-emphasized by later generations of Marxists. In reversing this de-emphasis and centering the question of the democratic republic in Marxism, Pickrell shows the way forward for a modern renewal of Marxism in the United States that centers the question of our political regime and its structure. 

Section II focuses on the question of partyism and our approach to a political program. It opens with one of the first articles I wrote for Cosmonaut in 2018, “From Workers’ Party to Workers’ Republic”, where I lay out my vision of what a mass party should look like based on the lessons of the First, Second, and Third International. Next are two pieces that outline what has become MUG’s basic understanding of the party program, “Why Have a Political Program?” by Parker McQueeney and “The Revolutionary Minimum-Maximum Program” by myself. McQueeney’s is another article from the earliest days of Cosmonaut, showing the beginning of our polemical efforts to bring serious programmatic thinking to the left. “The Revolutionary Minimum-Maximum Program” laser-focuses on Marx and Guesde’s Programme of the Parti Ouvrier, making the case that this document serves as key for understanding Marx’s political thought and can serve as a model for future political programs despite its age. Both articles unapologetically make the case for the minimum-maximum program as the path forward for the left, in contraposition to the Trotskyist approach of the Transitional Program. 

After these articles establishing the model of the minimum-maximum program are two polemics against autonomist and spontaneist approaches to Marxism. Cliff Connolly’s “Create a Mass Party!” polemicizes with arguments put forward by the organization CounterPower, while my own article “Without a Party We Have Nothing” is a response to Taylor B’s “Beginning of Politics: DSA and the Uprising”, also published in Cosmonaut. Cliff’s article engages with the historical examples put forward by CounterPower, demonstrating the faulty premises that their arguments for a vague “Party of Autonomy” rest on. My own article tries to match Taylors B’s level of abstraction, making a more philosophical argument for the necessity of partyism to the emergence of revolutionary subjectivity in opposition to arguments influenced by Sylvain Lazarus which amount to a reliance on spontaneism through ruptural “events”.1

Finishing the Section on Party and Program are Myra Janis’ “Building the Mass Party” as well as her “Socialism with American Characteristics”, co-authored with Luke Pickrell. “Building the Mass Party” represents some of the early thinking of Cosmonaut around practical strategy for building a mass party in the United States, describing an “anti-entryist” approach to electoral politics and the Democratic Party that is worth revisiting regarding debates around the correct approach to electoral races today. “Socialism with American Characteristics” is a more recent article that takes the CPUSA to task for its loyalty to the existing institutions of the US government, particularly the Constitution, as well as its tailing of the Democratic Party. Janis and Pickrell argue that the roots of this flawed strategy can be found in the earlier days of the Party with their Popular Front strategy, and make the case that this strategy must be rejected by the Marxist left if it is to ever build an effective oppositional force to the existing social order. 

Section III gives the reader an idea of MUG’s own approach to electoral strategy. Jack Lundquist’s “When We Fight, We Win! For an Agitational Socialist Electoral Strategy” is a direct intervention in DSA debates around electoral strategy, particularly in New York City where DSA members comprise several elected officials. Using the example of the 2022 budget and the failure of DSA electeds to use the budget as an opportunity to agitate against the capitalists interests in the Democratic Party, Lundquist stresses an electoral strategy that puts agitation against the ruling class front-and-center. My own “Debating Electoral Strategy in the Comintern, 1920: The Bulgarian Situation” focuses instead on a historical example, looking at how Bulgarian Communists argued against abstentionist approaches in the Comintern and put a revolutionary electoral strategy into practice in their own country. 

Most important in Section III is Ben Grove’s “A Twelve-Step Program for Democrat Addiction”, which acts as a “pre-MUG” manifesto of sorts. Making an appeal for political independence to the DSA rank-and-file in the wake of the victory of Joe Biden, Grove lays out how this political independence is not merely an abstract fantasy but a practical political possibility – in fact, a necessity if the socialist movement is going to progress toward victory. Its optimistic vision is still of great relevance to DSA, which as a whole is undecided on both the possibility and practicality of political independence. The “Twelve-Step Program” also makes the case for why DSA is the best area of development for the US left, which I believe still holds to this day. 

The final section, Section IV, addresses Labor and Unions. The question of how DSA should relate to the labor movement is heavily contested among our ranks, as well as the ranks of MUG itself. Questions of day-to-day tactics are something we are decidedly non-dogmatic on, with our Immediate Tasks stating: “We do not have dogmatic attachments to any singular model of organizing, and we are eager to learn and grow alongside our comrades”. The articles in this section aim to give the reader a sample of the thinking within MUG regarding the labor movement and how socialists relate to it. Marisa Miale’s “Worker and the Hydra” pushes against simplistic ideas of class consciousness organically developing towards communism through confrontations with employers on the shop floor, and instead argues that labor strategy must be incorporated into a broader revolutionary political strategy if it is to advance beyond economism. Two articles by Anton Johannsen are next. “Communists and the Unions in the 21st Century” puts forward a vision of a communist union strategy that focuses on the democratization and politicization of unions while campaigning against repressive labor laws like Taft-Hartley. His next piece, “Of Course Labor Law Advances the Class Struggle” further focuses on the issue of labor law, challenging the IWW-affiliated blog Organizing.Work on their myopic and economistic perspective. Johannsen’s articles point to struggles of labor law as a potential avenue for the politicization of the labor movement against the existing state regime. 

Closing the collection is a historical piece, Veronica Darby’s “Trust the Bridge That Carried Us Over: The Failure of Operation Dixie 1946-53”. Operation Dixie was a failed post-war CIO campaign to organize the South, with the textile industry being a key target. Darby explores how Communist Party members were able to develop a more successful labor strategy than other unionists for organizing in a Southern landscape defined by the Jim Crow racial regime. Ultimately anti-communist campaigns would still see the CIO purged of many of its best organizers, and Operation Dixie would leave the American South the union-hostile hellscape it still is today. Learning from the failure of Operation Dixie and the mix of failures and successes of the classic CPUSA will be essential for the revitalization of a militant labor movement; one that will not only organize workers at the point of production but join the battle for democracy under the red banner of socialism. 

These articles can help provide a sense of political clarity in these dangerous and confusing times. There are no magic bullets here – merely potential paths forward, none of which are the path of least resistance. Yet the path of least resistance is not an option – it is acquiescence to the prevailing order and failure to actually build an oppositional movement that legitimately challenges the institutions of the system we hope to overcome. With these articles, I hope that the reader can be convinced that genuinely anti-systemic politics today are possible, and that it is feasible to pursue revolutionary ends through pragmatic means. If you need no convincing of this, then I hope our interventions have helped you clarify your own revolutionary efforts. Either way, you are welcome to join the conversation at Cosmonaut Magazine by writing to us.