Communist Party USA
Why should we be concerned with an eccentric Russian nationalist here in the United States? It seems almost conspiratorial, as if ideas and notions are driven by lone wolves and not social and historical forces. In Aleksandr Dugin’s case, he is elevated by virtue of our circumstances: capitalism in crisis and a burbling far-right movement. His rise accompanies a deepening demoralization among a section of the working class, particularly many youth, who, facing a lifetime of global climate crisis, see their electoral efforts end in disappointment. This is precisely the nature of a bourgeois democracy founded on slavery and genocide, a deeply conservative governmental apparatus that is lorded over by unelected Supreme Court judges and cops alike. The thwarting of the Bernie Sanders campaign by this apparatus dealt a severe blow to collective hopes and aspirations towards possibly reforming the system in a way that was more democratic. Increasingly, our working class sees diminishing value in continuing the attempt to win more space for democratic power. Despite a record number of uprisings across the country against police violence last year, police departments saw their budgets increase. Migrant children are still in cages at the border. Other issues that seem to powerfully mobilize our class — global warming, health care, labor and voting rights, infrastructure plans, student loan debt — crash into a seemingly intractable brick wall no matter which party our class supports in the general election. They ask themselves: is bourgeois democracy even worth defending at this point? The urgency of the issues seems overwhelming. Rightfully so, they want to see these issues and injustices resolved immediately. There is a growing number of people on the Left who, on becoming demoralized, begin to doubt their political orientation. They see either action or inaction. Some even see the January 6th fascist riots at the Capitol as an effort to overturn the bourgeois democratic process, and they become excited. They see history in motion and think it’s good news. They say that the worker is fed up with bourgeois democracy! What they want to put in its place is not perfect, but they imagine it could be negotiated on. Whatever this new system is, it must be better than liberalism, whatever that means to those who say it. However, the January 6th riots were not supported by the masses. This is self-evident in that the putsch, or attempted coup, did not succeed. But January 6th was surely a temperature check of how welcoming the waters might be. And make no doubt, it will continue to be a rallying point for the extreme right, and increasingly perhaps a wedge to introduce destructive ideas into our own ranks. Co-option of democratic struggles There is, first of all, a disagreement about democratic struggles: the fights against racism and sexism, for expansion of voting rights, and for the rights of women, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. From the point of view of a section on the Left, democratic struggle is not class struggle. Some leftists think this because capital has cynically adopted cosmetic forms of solidarity. This is manifest in corporate pride months, statements supporting the Black Lives Matter struggle, and the Cheryl Sandbergs of the world who believe that women’s problems might be solved by embracing capitalism and becoming the best manager one could be. Confusion arises because corporations appear to be on the side of the democratic struggle, using it to distract from what they consider to be color-blind, asexual class issues like power on the job, poverty, healthcare, infrastructure spending, etc. If we look under the hood of these supposedly apolitical…
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Lipstick on a pig: The attempts to prettify fascism