proletnous

[proletnous]

The Burning Question

A Marxist-Leninist analysis of the Communist movement in North America and what needs be done for historic progress.

This work is to be a fourth installment in a sort of series I and some comrades have collaborated on, beginning with “Why Democrats Lose”, “A Lame Donkey and a Rattlesnake” and “In Promise of Bread and Roses”. In the second of these, we had called for communists to move away from federalist politics and into regional and local politics exclusively. I have been asked by comrades in Proletnous, but also outside it, to expand on that point and give a full articulation of the thought. Particularly, to explain how it is beneficial for a mass movement – which we must remember, aims to progress not just the U.S. but all of North America – to remove itself from federal politics. “Why focus on smaller concerns when conservatives and fascists have seized The Government?” a few have even asked. Much could be said to such a question, not limited to “‘Seized’ is a funny way to say ‘were politely handed’,” “The Government?” “The previous ruling coalition weren’t conservatives and fascists?” but these would be superficial responses. The better reply is that the paradigm of the question is wrong in three important ways.

Firstly: there is the importance of the local and regional scale. If we must speak of smaller concerns, the progressive struggle within an individual country amounts to a local front at most. At the local level, we must choose where we spend ourselves and where we retreat. For the overarching struggle, the theater encompasses every nation, every country and every state; at that scale the front is universal. The whole of the proletarian class faces off against the combined forces of reaction, stagnation and entropy; the proletarian class as a whole is united by opposition to a common enemy in the global system of imperial-Capitalism; the proletarian class as a whole is united by a shared material interest in the destiny of universal communism. The universal struggle above is reproduced in local struggle below in accordance with local conditions, and local struggles determine the universal struggle. So, for communists and proletarians, struggle on any local front is struggle on the worldwide front. But we must consider the choice of local front. Vanguard formations must organize the movement on the most applicable scale relative to their political reality. In North America’s economic, bioregional and cultural patchwork, the most applicable scale will never be “The United States” (or “Canada”). Above the most local scales, regions like Cascadia or the North Atlantic coast have more economic and cultural commonality within themselves than they have with other regions. Among what those regions do have in common is antagonistic contradiction to the oppressive and atomizing bourgeois states which carve them up and pit them against each other.

Secondly: our objective is historic progress, not to occupy the Throne of Washington and Jefferson “communistly”. But opportunists do not really even want to do that; they concern themselves with federal politics over building a local or regional base or even a parliamentary coalition because they do not expect to achieve power. To them, the most visible federal contest is the supreme tool for marketing, fundraising and recruiting. One must think of the Sanders campaign, PSL and the Green Party (but also Trump’s 2016 campaign and Harris’ 2024 campaign). The only “base” these need is an anemic, top-down network of small donors and volunteers who become ever more isolated, atomized cells alienated from the workers and society generally. (Sending fresh-faced volunteers out with vests and clipboards is one of many methods for effecting social self-alienation, let alone forcing them to knock on the same door repeatedly as the Harris campaign did...) To be most impactful we must forget about empty solicitation and direct our activity to directly tackling the material concerns of the proletariat one by one. We must work up the chain from the micro scale, where the vitality of the masses is most intense and where they experience class contradictions most directly and obviously in their daily life, to the macro level of the abstracted logic of imperial-capitalism, money, stagnation, etc. We begin with addressing local concerns like housing, wages, food insecurity, debt, union struggle, etc., one by one and work up to dismantling the capitalist system. Beginning where proletarians are most physically concentrated (for example low-income urban neighborhoods and apartment blocks, rather than the corner outside the organic supermarket). We begin one by one and work up to the district scale, the city scale, the regional scale, one by one upwards until the continental scale. Starting at the lowest scale we have the ability to build real faith and trust within workers for our movement, and also develop the capability to address larger issues. By solving problems directly and immediately experienced by workers we construct a nexus, a real magnetic core to draw in the progressive masses and unmake the fractal atomiziation of North America.

Thirdly; our movement is concerned with the progression of all the masses in North America, not the progression of the states of North America. It is indisputable that the administration of imperial rule across the states in North America is turning rightward, but that is not a sign for communists to struggle harder for the liberalization of those states. It is a sign that the progressive masses must be organized to better come in contradiction with them. “Liberal” or “illiberal”, these states are alien and antagonistically opposed to communists and the workers as a whole. The North American states are imperial-capitalist states which are wholly of, by and for the monopolist syndicates, united as an anti-proletarian federation. Their right-wing turn is caused by their growing instability, anticipating the need for more aggressive repression of the proletariat, and more antagonistic relations with each other. United as they are against the proletariat, they are also rivals. A secondary map of real borders exists, one which delineates the fiefs of corporations and monopolies and is shaped by trade routes, biomes, and mineral deposits. The states are a layer on top which have long ago became obsolete, drawn up opportunistically in the colonial scramble with open disregard for life and economic reality. Their stubborn clinging to wheezing, coughing existence creates the conditions for further exploitation and atomization. To counteract them the proletariat must become a power unto itself, with our own economic life conforming to the economic reality underneath the imperial states to invert the system from bourgeois plutocracy to proletarian democracy.

From these critiques we can see working locally is the big picture. Working locally is the means to affect not just the “country” scale, but the whole world. It is the means to construct a real continental system for everyone. To accomplish this, there is little for us to gain from the rotten, gutted carcasses of liberal states already processed for their profitable meat by Democrat and Republican butchers, the marrow already sucked dry by lifestylist liberals and conservatives and “democratic socialists,” the opportunist carrion feeders on a sunsetting imperial state. Because we see the reality that all of North America exists in a shared continental market divided into regional markets, we can see the seams in the rock, we can see where to sunder the whole rusted substructure of the old order. But the means to do that, to sunder the whole world order of imperial-capitalism, is a radical departure from what the communists in North America are accustomed to. We must directly interface with the proletariat across North America, going into established proletarian enclaves and speaking with workers directly for the sake of accurate social diagnostics. We must put an end to leftist middlemen “interpreting the will” of the masses, most especially those smokey incense-wreathed economist divinators with edited theory texts preaching that “the people” want this rhetoric or that slogan but never ever any action! To direct our action we must work, using scientific diagnostics and experiment, critique, repeat to make ourselves useful to real workers.

Unlike the insurrectionaries, anarchists and Maoists who hate the proletariat and not so secretly dream of retreating to rural compounds and becoming small landholders, we do not seek to escape the world, relevancy or accountability. We embrace work and workers. We look forward to an urban, industrial future where technology enables everyone to be a worker, which is to be an active participant in the collective and conscious shaping of the material world. Instead of getting lost in romantic fantasies about subsistence living, we must build collectives across every city, throughout the urban and industrial infrastructure of the continent. Collectives for self-defense, collectives for distributing essentials, collectives for securing housing, collectives for queer healthcare and for keeping families of oppressed nations together, collectives for art and politics, collectives for peace and prosperity; all combined together by unbroken, unbreakable bonds of blazing steel! One great vanguard encompassing every nation, its burning soul an industrial furnace. Though the soot and smoke a radiant spear is forged, brighter then sunlight rays, risen up to pierce history.

Blossom of the Hundred Flowers∴

Illustration by Psy-1917∴

[proletnous]

Sapphic Boogie-Woogie

I do not dream of rolling green hills, Wooden cottage splinters, Rust red nails and brown soil. The daisy meadow manure Of Arcadian fairy tales. Old mother of ages, I can not weave another instagram handbasket. In the City, the stars so distant here Array in constellations on earth. Street lamps and bright windows, A necklace of pearls around a concrete nape, Their electric shining splendour calls me. The gentle curves of railway tracks, And her long raven hair of electric lines. Her heartbeat the pulse of a thousand-thousand. Under her warm breast of sky-scraping industry, Is thunder-beating the sanguine heart of the world. Wild, nervous, exited, anxious love. Steel hands sweaty with glistening morning dew. I am her blushing bride, And she waits for me at progress’ altar.

~ Psy-1917∴

[proletnous]

In the Promise of Bread and Roses

A Marxist-Leninist critique of “Democratic Socialism”, a trend for social stasis

In this period of intensifying American decline, the obstruction of historic progress and the frustration of the workers’ movement is the primary concern of the syndicates of monopoly-capitalists, and of capitalist states. It is natural, then, that this fever of reaction would breathe necrotic life into the various camps of opportunism. In the United States, the “democratic socialists” (the principal of those war camps) assemble around the blazing idol of a second New Deal, with the greatest of bonfires and loudest of trumpets.

It had been said that the original New Deal was the last and best hope for America and for Capitalism during the crisis of the Great Depression. While this is economistic flattery, it is ultimately what the democratic socialists believe and why they endlessly invoke the image of the New Deal. (They do not mind that the New Deal that was devised as a knife to further divide the body of the International Proletariat along American – “white” – national lines.) As the Second International did before them, the theoreticians of democratic socialism argue for increasing the “stability” of economic life under capitalism (read: securing the entrenchment of one or another capitalist syndicate and its national market) as a means to (supposedly) build the conditions for a peaceful “political revolution” to socialism, portraying the bourgeois state as an impartial mediator between the Proletariat and the capitalist syndicates to bring about labor reforms and somehow eventually resolve the contradictions between labor and capital.

Somehow, posit the democratic socialists, the capitalists (who have all the economic power in society and their own means to violently enforce that power) will go along with this (after a stern talking to I suppose) and further yet somehow these particular (eventual)reforms will slowly produce a critical mass of “democracy” which will at some indeterminate point in the (always distant) future precipitate the simple and immediate dissolution of the capitalist class, by that time so thoroughly irradiated by exposure to “democracy” that they lay down their cudgels perhaps without even being asked. (“After all,” Kautsky’s reanimated corpse croaks, “would it be democratic to disregard the wishes of the bourgeoisie, and take power before they were ready to relinquish it?”) Even then, some “democratic” “socialists” (truly straining language) will admit they don’t care if the capitalists ever “dissolve” in this “democracy”, openly favoring the dangled but ever-retreating reforms as an end in themselves! Their “socialism”, it turns out, was never a destination, only the endlessly reimagined fantasy of mild “democratic” reforms to dream about along the way! (The way to where, exactly?) The absolute comfortable self-security of opportunism!

The “democratic socialists” chant revolutionary slogans and wave red flags, defaced imitations of the Peoples’ banner, insipid and empty of significance. They are a copy of a copy of a copy of Kautsky, made ever more nonsense by two centuries of moribund capitalism and the lack of a realized opponent. But the acts of these “democratic socialists” betray the truth behind their progressive-sounding rhetoric. The Proletariat across North America already show their understanding of this opportunism, having already long spoken about the betrayals of AOC, of Sanders, the absurdist melodrama of the Greens and the like! Most recently of the democratic socialist acquiescence towards the monstrous colonization of Palestine by America’s client, but the list of betrayals is long. The democratic socialists say progressive-sounding slogans while on campaign, only to loose such teeth in office. They speak of “unity” and “compromise” with Democrats while their actions shout the truth of total support of imperial-capitalism and Americanism! That these democratic “socialists” can walk without immediate irreconcilable contradiction among liberal reformers opposed to socialism and vise versa shows more then enough that there is completely no potential for historic progress within this tradition!

The effective function of democratic socialism is to redirect the masses into becoming more enmeshed with and reliant on capitalist syndicates and the imperialist system for their meager sustenance. The masses are directed away from their progressive potential, away from developing their own economic life, away from a realized proletarian self-concept, and away from heightening the contradiction between proletarians and capitalists. It is an insane proposition. During the period of Soviet ascendancy, capital was prepared to make certain temporary concessions, to those workers sufficiently conformed to the American national identity. (We can note how quickly capital began to deconstruct the welfare state as eligibility expanded and the Soviet threat receded.) Today’s democratic socialists are in a weaker position, needing to convince all the masses to refrain from biting the hand of national capital in case capital might, if it feels like it, on a good day, lose a scrap from between fork and mouth. But in all times, in all conditions, democratic socialism cultivates a mood of subservience and dependency on some presumed “beneficent” faction of capital, instead of the Proletariat building their own power and economic life. This ultimately makes the Proletariat’s condition more precarious, placing them even more at the whims of a fundamentally unstable and tumultuous system of regular crisis, war and exploitation.

Certainly, communists must work to stabilize the lives of the Proletariat even within capitalism, but that goal is incompatible with the stabilizing of the imperial market, which depends on precarity of Proletarian life! We instead need to work on developing the Proletariat’s class consciousness, their self-concept as a separate economic force in history in contradiction with capitalism, via the means of organizing their economic life away from markets and competition wholesale and towards collectivist planned enterprise above the market. In which each person gives what they can and gets what they need, free from “trade” and scrambling, far beyond disorganized “cooperative” firms competing with one other. As a byproduct, this will necessarily destabilize the national market, which intensifies the contradictions, with both positive and negative effects on the movement. This must be considered and prepared for with further thoughtful and mindful planning, which requires an organ of the Proletariat and the workers’ movement which is most theoretically advanced and positioned to plan for the fullness of the masses: a Vanguard of the Proletariat.

Even at the height of an intensified imperialist crisis, when a node of the international workers’ movement has self realized in contradiction with hegemony and is nearing victory in a country and the capitalist class become actually open to the concessions the opportunists clamor for, if the movement were to give in and “stabilize” the economy by accepting reforms, it would lead again to precarity. To use Lenin’s example, when the workers’ movement disbanded its activity in the 1905 revolution and the organized opportunists accepted the state Duma (a powerless organ of the Tsarist regime where Nicholas II had final say, even over who was “elected” by the people), the cudgels immediately came out. The masses and their movement were subjected to intensifying oppression by state and semi-state actors across the Russian empire. Meanwhile the Tsar’s cabinet set about unwinding the toothless reforms, which had done their job. While it existed, the Duma was no more than a means to entangle communists in the imperial state and stall the workers’ movement.

However, the Bolsheviks did run candidates in the Duma, so then why did the Bolsheviks (and chief among them Lenin) argue in favor of and choose to participate in the Russian parliament? We must consider the particular historical circumstances which motivated and allowed this participation. For the Russian Proletariat, the pseudo-democratic Duma was a novelty, the seeming fruit of their revolution – surely it should be tried? Lenin and much of the party leadership were shrewd enough to see through the Tsarist ploy, but the developing common-mind of the Proletariat was not. Rather than alienating the Proletariat, the Bolsheviks committed to a public test of the new institution, so that the Proletariat could learn from the experience as the Bolsheviks pressed the Tsarist “democracy’s" inherent contradictions. It was a risky experiment, because the Bolsheviks themselves could have become ensnared and consumed by “democratic” opportunism. Even so, it was a close escape. In any such mingling the greater and more coherent will tend to subsume the smaller and less-defined. All could have been lost if revolutionary experience had not strengthened the Vanguard and the Proletarian common-mind enough to where the Proletariat could remember itself and get off the merry-go-round.

The reader must note similarities between the Tzarist ploy and the events in and following the George Floyd protests of 2020 where progressive potential was betrayed by opportunists for “reforms”, street signs, and a few painted crosswalks. (Liberal urban designers were sure to favor the only mural format that you tread upon for this “honor”.) Potentially revolutionary slogans were transmuted from “abolition” to “defunding” to silence – followed by new and unprecedented funding of those same law enforcement agencies they had just railed against. (Once again we see the limit of politics built on the idea that capital can be persuaded to lay down its cudgel voluntarily. Socialist victory doesn’t involve a charisma check against the capitalist class.)

It’s clear that at the present level of development, western communists could not attempt something like Lenin’s experiment today – indeed the opportunists are all too eager to see us submerge our still-unfired clay in the swift muddy river of opportunism. But when the vanguard fully develops in North America it is also unnecessary to repeat the experiment. Today’s Proletariat (even in its undeveloped condition) is already over-wearied by the tricks and schemes of bourgeois parliamentary or representative “democracy”. Even the opportunists have had to admit this reality: in present America, electoralist hope vests in the office of the Presidency. This is why vanity campaigns about the fantasy of installing a “socialist” unitary executive are now the main staple of opportunist fundraising. Which itself is unpopular with the majorty of the proletariat (mostly finding purchase in the “socialist” camps who belive themselves far too clever to be caught in such “silly traps”) as the main illusion is political fatalism and cynicism, which must be dismantled and proven as false as the Tsarist “democracy” was proven for our movement to succeed in North America.

As Lenin saw in his time, we must see again now. The Proletariat must become a thing unto itself. The communists must build the vehicle for the Proletariat’s self-realization: a Vanguard for the workers’ movement to pursue progress by building a new life for people, not by promising “bread and roses” with revolutionary slogans but by delivering food, housing, and peace to real people. To be successful, the workers’ movement must face the democratic socialists and all opportunists head on – the DSA, CPUSA, PSL, and the like – and drive them out of Proletarian territory. In this moment where the chain of left opportunism is weakest, we must act! Even now, the opportunists regroup in the face of Trump’s electoral victory, and their representatives attempt to cannibalize the Democratic party by releasing half-complete critiques of Kamala Harris as a political spectacle. Let AOC from central casting repeat the obvious while obscuring the necessary on TikTok, let the milky-eyed Sanders tiredly feign indignant surprise at the audacity of the bourgeoisie on YouTube while tweeting support for Elon Musk, let them have that fundraising apparatus playing at being a political movement called “democratic socialism”, but in the scramble let our chariot take the masses out from under them!

Blossom of the Hundred Flowers∴

Illustration by Psy-1917∴

[proletnous]

A Lame Donkey and a Rattlesnake

A Marxist-Leninist Critique of Lifestyle Brand Politics

A previous piece (“Why Democrats Lose”) examined the Democrats’ individual error as an electoralist party, now however we should analyze the broader conditions of federal American politics which produced such an astonishing failure. The American state, as well as its federal parties (both the Republicans and Democrats among other minor parties later discussed), have been hollowed out by Monopoly Capital in their administrative and functional capacities and have been replaced by a system of political “lifestyle brands” profiteering to offset the decline of the rate of profit. A lifestyle brand commoditizes in unison the self-concept and group identity, reifying the self-concept and phantasmal group identity though aggregate accumulation of branded commodities and public displays of affiliation with the brand. The halest of bourgeois states become feeble and pale from epidemic Capital’s consumption; lifestyle brands are the white lead makeup and cinnebar rouge on the corpse.

A key milestone was in the early 2000s when David and Charles Koch, antiques of Monopoly Capital and lords of oil and logging (and owners of one of the largest private companies in the U.S.), had set up the NGO “Americans for Prosperity” which in the spring of 2009 seized on a viral clip of CNBC reporter Rick Santelli calling for a “Chicago Tea Party” and created a “Tea Party” Facebook page and begin organizing “Tea Party” events. Quickly after its “founding” the Tea Party would transform into one of the most identifiable brands in political marketing, despite the formation having no clear political ideology let alone an identifiable goal. Yellow rattlesnake stickers, “1776”-emblazoned apparel and yard signs requesting to see Obama’s birth certificate could be purchased and were often seen equipped by many middle-class Republicans.

The Tea Party was not the first lifestyle brand in American federal politics but it was one of the most dynamic, second only to the self-identified “Leftists” who later coalesced around Sanders prior to the first Trump election. Both Sanders’ 2016 and Obama’s 2008 campaigns had developed as low form lifestyle brands, but such brands are tied to the persona of a single politician and have a limited shelf life. (The “Trump” brand has a limited life expectancy for the same reason.) As such, the opportunists saw a model in the Tea Party and similar consumer identities and spawned the “Leftist” “Movement”, a consumer identity serving as an umbrella identity for a myriad of smaller “Leftist” consumer identities. The “Leftist” consumer identity predominantly exists in benign contradiction with the mainline Democratic brand identity, the “Blue” Democrats, and with revolving-door fascist trends, both of which “Leftism” depends on for engagement and promotional material.

Certainly, the Democratic Party has long been the American institution for the disorganization and isolation of movements with potential for historic progress, but in the Tea Party model they saw a new opportunity to monetize that process. The result has created the most prominent form of opportunism the Communist movement has suffered. In 2016, our movement was not equipped to deal with this development, causing the mass dispersal of advanced proletarians throughout the Democrats or other, smaller dead-end “Leftist” organizations (DSA, CPUSA, PSL, etc.). This sort of organization (or formation in many cases) is characterized by being dues or donations based without expecting or requiring members to engage in regular and frequent common activity, or exercise discretion or political discipline. Instead, they encourage members to self-identify with the party on social media and buy and display branded merchandise to show off in their regular social life, fully enmeshing the ego with the organization’s (or “tendencies”) lifestyle brand. This invariably leads members to primarily engage with reactionaries (liberals, social opportunists, fascists and all variations of the middle-class) to the exclusion of engaging with and fostering comradeship with the progressively potent masses. In this way, those with potential are transmuted into opportunist functionaries.

The political lifestyle brands not only impact social movements but also enter into a prolonged dialectical relationship with the state. This has lead to social media influencers replacing career elected officials and bureaucrats and banditizing the assets of the state. (It has always been true that liberal republics are staffed by careerists and opportunists seeking to enrich themselves, but the recent development has meant a transition from tolerable parasitism to total autolysis.) Apart from individual advantage for the opportunists, this development benefits the syndicates of Monopoly Capital (far beyond just Koch Industries) by reducing administrative burdens and regulation, and opening up new business opportunities in the form of lucrative contracts to supplement the lost functions of the state.

Because “influencer politics” impaired the functions of the legislative branch most severely early on, it has also accelerated the centralization of authority in the executive branch. Which means, for the American State, the presidential administration has increasingly more sway over a government with increasingly less effect over its functions and territory, decreasing the overall stability of both ­– the American state has become obsolete, now the weak link in the global system of Imperial-Capitalism. It is now propped up largely by investments from American national capital, and China, motivated by America's residual entanglement in the current world-economic system as a hub for aggregating international extraction of imperialism, and the distribution of commodities across North America (highways and freight).

With the executive branch becoming the axis of the entire federal system, what the remaining administrative Republican faction had done was to identify and pursue key points in the electoral chain of the current system (state governorships, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court). If Trump had failed to secure enough electoral votes, Republican governors of states that went for Harris could have withheld their electors until the deadline passed and the Republican controlled House would have to appoint the President, and the Republican-controlled Supreme Court was poised to legitimize the proceedings. With much of the American state being too hollowed out to avert this, the Democrats were given a choice: protest this play and break the phantasm of a functioning American state, or throw the election.

So, for 2024 we must consider the real possibility that beyond the usual tactic of electoral ransom and brinksmanship discussed in the previous piece, the Democrats intentionally tried to loose. That goes a long way to explaining why the Harris campaign (against the unanimous advice of its marketing consultants) went so far to “tank the brand” for her existing market segment, with public actions like bragging openly about inviting the Republican Party into her administration and putting forward the hated Liz Cheney. Since a lifestyle brand depends on alignment with its market segment’s self-concept, demobilizing that population by flouting the self-concept is as easy as mobilizing them by playing to its comfort. The absence in late 2024 of the once-formidable “KHive” is telling.

The way things worked out for the Democratic party was to delay the internal contradictions of America’s severe instability from becoming antagonistic contradictions while the Democrats were in office, to be left to be resolved during Trump’s term. In many ways, this would seem to be a familiar strategy from Democratic leadership, as when they have held power in the American state they have consistently managed to ensure its loss rather than be forced to use it (the most infamous example being when the Democrats “lost” congress after Obama’s 2008 election). This has a straightforward explanation: exercising political power for their “campaign issues” would attract a constituency with real expectations and less tolerance for being scammed.

This contradiction around the exercise of power was particularly acute in 2024 because the Supreme Court had just handed the executive near absolute power with their decision that a President cannot be prosecuted for acts performed in their official capacity. Had the contradictions following a contested election come to a head at the tail end of Biden’s administration, or during a subsequent Harris presidency, the Democratic President would be expected to use that power to deal with the compounding political and economic crises. As it was, Democrats got to spend their billion in donations and walk away as the underdog while delivering nothing. Their final act of incoherently blaming trans people, first nations, etc. was simply a smoke screen to distract from what they had just done in plain view and cover their escape from the responsibility of the Presidency.

With the Democrats’ social liberal exit scam completed, Republicans are now left holding the bag of destroying the remaining administrative capacity of the state so that they themselves are freed from delivering actual benefits for their own base. Only the newly ascendant national syndicates of Monopoly Capital benefit, but even there the benefit is short-lived, as this un-making of the administrative state will allow international hyper-extraction of the U.S. until either Russia (ha) or, more likely, the E.U. takes its place as the new legion for Imperial-Capitalism. (Some liberal and “Leftist” commentators suggest China is a contender in succeeding the U.S. as imperial hegemon, but if the People's Republic wanted to they would have years ago given their owning of a substantial share of America's debt!) The Republicans are now doomed to play resentful hospice nurse to a dying American Empire, holding onto the delusional hope of somehow raising an ascendant America from its cremated ashes (equal in absurdity to British nationalist hopes for a resurgent British Empire after Brexit).

The nature of the past twelve years in American federal politics has been foot dragging, trying to stave off change while extracting as much from constituents as possible. But, history progresses if the reactionaries like it or not; as they lined their pockets, decay rotted out the system from underneath them. Now all factions must be transmuted by the times: the Republicans to become more the party of Trump, the Democrats to a new form of opportunism (one should believe them when they speak of pivoting to appeal more to “moderate” Republicans), and we Communists must leave behind the opportunism of “Leftism” and the dead end husks of federalism, Americanism and electoralism. Opportunist parties (CPUSA, DSA, PSL, etc.) are the Gucci vs Versace of the rouge chic aspirational middle class; at this stage in development, trying to form a national party is wholly posturing, utter pretense, and ends in the same in lifestyle brand politics that leaves the international Communist movement in the East uninterested in our work. In the place of federal “Leftism” we must work exclusively with the proletariat in local and regional politics unconstrained by the boundaries of America’s provincial system. Each district one by one, each person bolt by bolt, shining metal machined together into the golden roaring locomotive of history – the vanguard party – racing down the tracks of today into tomorrow.

~ Quality of Concept∴ and Blossom of the Hundred Flowers∴ November 29, 2024

Illustration by Psy-1917∴

[proletnous]

Why Democrats Lose

A Marxist-Leninist Critique of the Democratic Party's political strategy

The four year loop ends/begins and once again the Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the electoral cycle. Admittedly, I am surprised the Democrats lost again to the same man after only eight years, but I am not shocked. In an echo of 2016, the Democratic incumbent was replaced by a former rival become functionary within their administration, a new candidate without an atom of charisma, to continue the ongoing halfhearted campaign against Donald Trump, specifically. His is the only wretched face not to change in the past twelve years.

This is an important fact in understanding the DNC and why it keeps losing.

Trump has become the primary antagonist in the Democratic psychodrama, performing the role of the Shadow of Americanism (from the Neo-Liberal faction’s Americanist perspective). He is the walking icon of the shape that every Blue Democrat, laboring under false consciousness, attempts to will themselves into not having the possibility of being. He is boorish, boisterous, and an unabashedly self-centered bandit for Imperialism, a dual Monopolist-Capitalist and politician, in many ways the modern Cecil Rhodes. Trump’s supporters follow suit in a mutually reinforced pattern with their representative, they make themselves more overtly Imperialistic.

Trump’s base, predominantly middle-class small shareholders and small business owners who are disenfranchised from macro American economics, have much to gain from a shaking (but not the actual sundering) of the American market and an obvious expansion of the United States’ imperial holding. They do not disguise their want to remove the current administration of big capital, the wholly synthesized syndicates of finance and industry, to replace the old guard with themselves as the new cast of financier-industrialist Capitalists and to throw open new markets through foreign intervention for the making of profit in Asia, Latin America and Africa. They support Trump because he seems to be what they wish to be, a Monopolist-Capitalist rising within Hegemony, and they support him for what he promises, to share with them the plunder of the world. So, Trump’s supporters become more emboldened in their Imperialism, which then makes them more resemble the shape of the Neo-Liberal Shadow-Self. Trump himself (like his middle-class followers) only aspires to the ranks of the grand Monopolist-Capitalists, but he can proclaim his affiliation with the likes of Elon Musk to further sell the image.

The True Blue Democrat also is an Imperialist and member of the middle-class, but one who is comfortable with the present management of the Imperial system. They, fundamentally, are a functioning part of the greater American market, and the world-Imperialist market. They are the reserve of the Imperial administrative caste. So by extension their interests are the interests of the United States and the current managers of world-Imperialism. But, just as any caste of Imperial administrators throughout time, their group-mind had to develop a self-concept to justify their domination and exploitation of the world to the self. Like their forerunners, the Democrats relied on the belief in a certain innate Liberal moral superiority that was likewise popular in the middle-classes of the old French, British, and German empires of the 19th and early 20th centuries. A virtuous self given permission to plunder, justified through the self-concept of being a person spreading an abstract enlightenment and freedom. “For who better would there be to properly guide the development and distribution of production and its profits then one so educated and caring?” they reason. With this excuse in reach, stealing from the world hand over fist can be rendered “sensible” or “reasonable.” The political careerists of the middle-class can get their Democratic ticket by appealing to such moralist “concerns” at home or abroad in the “poor countries” controlled by dictators and bandits in turn ruled by their libidinal appetites and greed. In these political ghosts, the imagined or real autocratic exploiters (when real, often installed by the U.S. in the first place), the Democrat encounters the Shadow of Americanism, for such figures are the fruit and embodiment of themselves, their representatives, and their imperialist economic life. So, when the Democrat sees Trump or, more properly, his supporters, they see their own hated Shadow-Self walking in the world and are filled with a real, genuine hatred. It is a hatred rooted in a repressed hatred of injustice, but transmuted by the act of projection into a hatred that licenses injustice (as shown by the prevalence of homophobia in anti-Trump propaganda).

As with anything dredged up from the deep subconscious, this visceral hatred is highly exploitable–and exploited it is, by the groups of Liberal careerists and their public facing politicians with few reservations about their place in Imperialism and the work they do for the world-Imperialist front. To the DNC, Trump and Trumpism has been a political godsend. Through their propaganda they can cast Trump and his supporters as a barbarian hoard coming to trample all the forces and structures of morality that prevent the great power of America from being used by beasts. Then, the Democratic Party casts itself as the David fighting back these modern Philistines and their Goliath. In the spectacular struggle against Trump, the Democratic administrators can be freed from nearly all responsibility of action to their base. They are freed to work openly with Republican factions aligned with the Capitalist-Monopolist syndicates that support the various DNC elements, to both pursue Imperialism and shore up the fraying American union. All neatly shielded by the rhetoric of “all against Trump!” Herein is the economic basis of the “Resistance Democrats,” a phenomenon quickly sprouted in the 2016 cycle and already being drafted up again for this one!

But, to really sell the race for the White House as the Valley of Elah, the Democrats must always be at the brink of loss before pulling out the slingshot, and unlike David, they cannot afford to decisively win. Which, as we have just witnessed again, is precarious. The DNC does not, in fact, “want to lose” as the popular slogan says. The victory of Trump is something they do wish to avoid, despite most appearances. He, as an entity, and the rhetoric he inspires, has a negative effect on the stability of American Imperialism. His brazenness about plunder, intervention, and saber rattling makes the subtle elements of the Imperial work more challenging. It is hard to convince American allies or client states about the benefit of alignment with America when the president can be expected to rescind any agreements and drop bombs on anyone at random personal whim. In addition, Trump’s economic collaboration with Russian Capital is an existential threat to American monopoly in the Middle-East and Europe as it empowers Russian Imperialists and the United States’ Imperial rival, the Russian Federation. But, the DNC’s current strategy is to play electoral Russian Roulette, and just like the first round in 2016 the Democrats pulled a hot chamber in 2024.

While the Blue Dog chases its tail, this leaves the question though of what the Communists should do with this state of affairs going forward. We should not delude ourselves that Democratic administrations would treat a serious Communist threat with the same polite magnanimity as they have open fascists. The fact that recent Republican and Democratic administrations alike treat purportedly Communist institutions and media with supreme toleration hints at the scope of the problem to be confronted. We should, as we should have done in 2016, throw out the opportunist organizations from our movement. We must throw out the self styled “Leftists” and vulgar “Anti-Fascists,” and throw out the opportunist pseudo-Marxists groups and figures who, in the style of the old “economist” Mensheviks, argue for backing the ascendancy of the Trump-supporting middle-class. Absolutely do away with the obsolete and fundamentally Americanist CPUSA and DSA. Every “Communist” organization with “of America” or “USA” in its name. The vulgar “Anti-Imperialist” parties that divert back into the American Spectacle by running presidential candidates, as though Imperialism were only a “bad habit” of America. All of them washed away in our Red Flood.

Communists do not have a pony in this race. The Working Class as a whole does not have a pony in this race. The Masses in North America already realize this, as shown by the decrease in both Democratic and Republican turnout, showing them to be more advanced in their understanding than many “Communists”! We must capitalize on this, and swiftly!

We are to confront head on the contradiction of Imperialism, intellectually and politically, and work for the weakening of each link in the chain of world-Imperialism. Communists must excuse ourselves from the phantasmic politics of Imperial administration. We cannot work with Trump’s supporters whether in or out of power; they are the most reactionary and backwards of the middle-class and their goal is simply their faction’s domination over the withering American empire. Nor can we work with the new “Resistance” Democrats or whatever champion they rally around in each new cycle. The stability of the American union and its Imperial holdings is their paramount goal, which is wholly anathema to us. It is the cause for their cries for “unity” and “bipartisanship”. Any who agitate for unity with either faction is a bold opportunist. We must escape the centripetal pull of false “unity” and separate ourselves to move with the Working Class.

Free from Liberal Shadows, we can, wide awake and clear eyed, observe our local polity and perform social diagnostics on it. We do not need to hate Trump; he is not our mirror darkly, evil goatee and all; he is simply an unmasked avatar of Imperialism. We do not need him as our beacon; we have our golden polestar in the reddening sky. He is merely our enemy, and so are his supporters in all forms, the plague-infested rats of Imperialism. The feckless DNC and the Liberals who keep letting these hyper-real losers win are no better. Indeed, the weak and waning middle-class, the dwellers in the shadow of the Bourgeoisie, are all scurrying vermin looking for the one ship that isn’t capsizing. For all of these we have no use for passionate feeling at all, simply cold iron contempt.

It is time to shed the false consciousness of the skipping anthem on repeat. Let us now be free from the phantasm of the election cycle, the illusory four-year “loop”. While Democrats aspire to chase the same rabbit around the same track forever, our course is outward. The dialectic advances. The arc widens. Revolution is not a loop, it’s a spiral. Our footsteps are relentless. And with each circuit we build Revolution until it is victorious.

~Blossom of the Hundred Flowers∴ November 6, 2024

Illustration by Pillar of October∴

[proletnous]

Cosmos

Light of light! The vanguard sun, The people’s star rises! A revolution, A state, A torch, Shining across the cosmos! Waves touching every world, Illuminating every corner, Transforming every place. From blind chaos reality becomes the factory of life, The galaxies splendorous cities set to dance, Glittering across the sky. The universe a garden, The new communist person its gardener!

~ Psy-1917∴

[proletnous]

Revolutionary Rubido

The fire of proletarian struggle consumes me, Consumes the rot of solitary stasis. The slag of individualism leaves the inchoate collective. From the black soot of oneness we accrete, A searing heat fusing glass from base sand; New paths make new shapes. A shining star, a new form. We are golden, we are sanguine. From the black furnace Issues an incandescent alloy, The new communist person.

~ Psy-1917∴

[proletnous]

Crucible of the Collective

The Declaration of the Proletnous

1. From a Spark a Flame Will Flare Up

The contradictions of 2017 lead to both a bold renewal in the proletarian movement in each and every capitalist country and to the intensification of opportunist distortion of Communism by reaction. Where in 2017 reaction met an untrained western “left”, now in 2024 it must face a wiser communist movement trained by both its experience against stagnation, and educated on the historic fight won against opportunism by Leninism. So now, the spiral that had been creeping outwards to victory is racing outward; no longer will the Communist movement in imperialist countries join with the modern Kautskyites to “stabilize” the decay of any imperialist state, nor join with the vulgar “anti-Imperialists” who oppose Imperialism as only the “bad habit” of certain countries rather then the universalized final form of capitalism! We dispose ourselves wholesale of the democratic-socialists and the social-imperialists: the children of Gonzalo, Bookchin, Deluze, Mark Fisher, David Graber and Nick Land. We take our once vacant place beside the international proletariat on the front line in the battle against the world system of Imperial-Capitalism!

2. The Whirlwind

In a voice sung by the storm winds that span the world We tell you now that the Marxism-Leninism practiced By the brave vanguards of the proletariat Has raised its sanguine flag in the west. The block is broken. The pylons are shattered, never to be remade. The winds pass from east to west, and west to east. The supreme test abides in the whirlwind of gray storm clouds; A golden dawn awaits beyond.

3. Proletnous

Proletnous is the collective mind of the working class; Proletnost is the source of the Proletnous; and the collective Proletnous is the organization of the Proletnous’ development. We intend our Proletnous to be a lighthouse for advancement away from the opportunists’ perpetual game of musical chairs towards a process that brings benefit to the masses. We intend to publish new artistic and literary works that go beyond the dead and alienated knowledge of Marxism-Leninism peddled by reactionaries of all types to share a living understanding of Marxism-Leninism and the wisdom acquired through many mistakes in struggle, and we will keep trying to learn and express that learning until the proletariat is crowned in final victory.

4. The City Under the Star

White hot from the furnace Tomorrow is forged On a black anvil By the thousand-thousand hands Of a choir of industry. Quenched and hardened, Tomorrow rolls down The conveyor belt of history. Beam by beam, tower by tower, Soaring ever higher, A bright city is built. Red robed soldiers march in columns, Formations of all nations Merging towards the dawn. Under the golden sun Burning hearts and cool minds Lay the foundations of a new world, Of garden-factories, Of engineer-artists, Under the peoples’ risen Star.

Workers of the whole world unite; we have a world to win!

On the occasion of the 107th anniversary of Great October Socialist Revolution. November 17, 2024

Anew Coherency∴

Blossom of the Hundred Flowers∴

Overcome All Difficulties∴

Pillar of October∴

Psy-1917∴

Quality of Concept∴

Resolute Measures∴