Editor’s Note: This is an article that acts a preliminary attack on the most reactionary element of the Current Communist Movement: the abandonment of Internationalism. Rather than being a deep dive into the issues, it serves as an introduction of sorts for an on-going series on Internationalism and the Mythology of Anti-Imperialism.

– L.V.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

• 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, K. Marx.

One does not have to go searching very hard before they encounter anti-Marxist and anti-Communist positions, that much is certain. Cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie is everywhere and nearly everyone has some kernel of liberalism wedged deep in their core. While we expect our class enemies to launch libelous campaigns against our doctrine, and for unconscious and under-educated workers to follow along, we don’t expect it from our “comrades”. An overwhelming number of self identified “Communists”, especially those who claim the title of “Marxist-Leninist”, parrot outright anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist, and quite frankly, anti-Communist positions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the current trend of “Multipolarity”.

First, before we can begin our discussions about multipolarity, we must look to the past. In the latter half of the 19th Century the Socialist movement was at its peak. Still fresh off the ideas of the late Marx and Engels, around Europe the phenomena of “Social Democracy” began to spread. In its first inception, Social Democracy was a genuinely revolutionary position, and this revolutionary fervor allowed for the burgeoning Social Democratic parties to court the favor of the growing Proletariat. No party, in this regard, was held in such high esteem as the German Social Democratic Party, or SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) for short. The SPD spent its time building revolutionary bases and workers clubs all while functioning as an illegal party. By the first decade of the 20th Century the SPD was the largest socialist party in Western Europe and looked to be the harbingers of a potential proletarian revolution.

However, this Social Democratic revolution would not happen, at least not in Germany and not by the SPD. Important to note is that the SPD held onto a firmly internationalist foreign policy, a policy that attracted many workers, both German and foreign. This internationalism would not last for very long however. With the advent of the first World War, the SPD unilaterally chose to vote in favor of war credits, that is to fund the current war raging across the European Continent.

As the European powers geared for war and set themselves up amongst their allies, there was a break in the worldwide socialist movement, the Second International. The then currently existing Social Democratic parties had split amongst themselves on whether to support the war on the side of their respective countries, or to reject the war and turn it into class war. Lenin sums up the internationalist perspective best:

“In short, the Manifesto defines all these as conflicts emanating from “capitalist imperialism”. Thus, the Manifesto very clearly recognises the predatory, imperialist, reactionary, slave-driving character of the present war, i.e., a character which makes the idea of defending the fatherland theoretical nonsense and a practical absurdity. The big sharks are fighting each other to gobble up other peoples’ “fatherlands”. The Manifesto draws the inevitable conclusions from undisputed historical facts: the war “cannot be justified on the slightest pretext of its being in the interest of the people”; it is being prepared “for the sake of the capitalists’ profits and the ambitions of dynasties”. It would be a “crime” for the workers to “shoot each other down”. That is what the Manifesto says.”

• Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International, V. Lenin.

Lenin was among the first to call out this opportunist and revisionist trend, correctly identifying those who supported the war as “Social Chauvinists”, or those who are “socialists in word, chauvinist in deeds” and would gladly help their country enslave another. This rising chauvinism abandoned the class struggle for the national struggle and replaced class warfare with class collaboration. It was in this break during the Second International that authentic Marxism could be developed, away from the rotting corpse that was Social Democracy. 

While not serving as a conclusive history, the narrative above shows us one of the first, major flaws: National Chauvinism. The American Communist movement is no stranger to national chauvinism, as evidenced by the Browderite takeover of the Communist Party, (Or frankly looking at any moment in American history) but while the national chauvinism towards the American state has significantly declined, a re-branded form has cropped up.

Polarity refers to how power and influence is distributed amongst the international community, with power either being unipolar or multipolar. Unipolarity is where there is a single ruling power, or a hegemon, of the world. Multipolarity is the inverse, where power is split up amongst several actors. Multipolarists state that the United States, backed by the E.U. and NATO, constitute the world hegemon and the world is currently a unipolar world. To fight this they say that the solution would be for the U.S. to be dethroned, or to at least have equal competition. A further understanding of multipolarity can only be complete with an understanding of “campism”.

Campism is the notion that the world can be split up into competing “camps”, with the first camp being the U.S. and its allies and the second camp being those that wish to tear down American hegemony, such as Russia, Iran, and China. Campists posit that in order to lay siege against American Imperialism, the “First Camp”, we Communists must support the second camp. Without much thought this idea should be readily dismissed as an outright anti-Communist revision. 

While this idea can be waved aside as asinine by any genuine Marxist, some of the largest “Marxist-Leninist” parties in the U.S. seem to buy into drivel, such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These groups, along with many others, give support to any actor as long as they portray their actions as “Anti American”. That is how these groups can end up supporting anti-Communist regimes, such as: Assad’s Syria, Gaddafi’s Libya, and Putin’s Russia. Sometimes this campism shows itself as support for the “Actually Existing Socialist” state China as well, but unlike Putin and Assad at least China claims to be socialist. This crude form of geopolitics lends the Communist movement to embarrassment as they support regimes that either: would gladly kill us, or historically have killed Communists (such as Gaddafi and Khomeini). Multipolarists can only envision the world under the current bourgeois order, and seek to replace the existing Imperialists with a new coat of paint. Such that, multipolarity is simply a cover for inter-imperialist conflict, however, instead of a blind national chauvinism for one’s own country, it has been flipped where the revisionists uncritically support the enemy of one’s country. 

This idea also bears a striking resemblance to the anti-Marxist theory of Three Worlds spouted by Mao. Three Worlds Theory is the notion that the world is divided into 3 hemispheres of influence: the 1st world being the United States, Europe, and their allies, the 2nd world being the Soviet Union and their allies, and the 3rd world being the globally oppressed nations. It is assumed that China would be the global vanguard to pick up the pieces of the Communist movement and lead the oppressed victory. Three Worlds Theory is an utterly chauvinist viewpoint that places undue importance on the Chinese, allowing them to fulfill their own imperialist ambitions, all while denying the class struggle for the national struggle. Hoxha builds upon this idea in his Imperialism and the Revolution:

“The Chinese leadership takes no account of the fact that in the “third world” there are oppressed and oppressors, the proletariat and the enslaved, poverty-stricken and destitute peasantry, on the one hand, and the capitalists and landowners, who exploit and fleece the people, on the other.

To fail to point out this class situation in the so-called “third world”, to fail to point out the antagonisms which exist, means to revise Marxism-Leninism and defend capitalism. In the countries of the so-called “third world”, in general, the capitalist bourgeoisie is in power. This bourgeoisie exploits the country, exploits and oppresses the poor people in its own class interests, to make the largest possible profits for itself and to keep the people in perpetual slavery and misery.

In many countries of the “third world”, the governments in power are bourgeois, capitalist governments, of course, with differing political nuances. They are governments of the class hostile to the proletariat, the oppressed and poor peasantry, hostile to the revolution and liberation wars.

The bourgeoisie, which has state power in these countries, is protecting precisely that capitalist society which the proletariat in alliance with the poor strata of town and countryside, seeks to overthrow. It constitutes that upper class which, proceeding from its own narrow interests, is ready, at any moment, at any turn of events, to sell the wealth of the land and the underground assets of the country, the freedom, independence and sovereignty of the homeland, to foreign capitalism. This class, wherever it is in power, is opposed to the struggle and aspirations of the proletariat and its allies, the oppressed classes and strata.

Many of the states which the Chinese leadership includes in the “third world” are not opposed to American imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. To call such states “the main motive force of the revolution and the struggle against imperialism”, as Mao Tsetung advocates, is a glaring mistake that stands out like the Himalayas. There are other pseudo-Marxists, too, but they at least know how to hide and disguise themselves behind their bourgeois theories.“

Furthermore, the Chinese falsifiers completely disregard the proletariat of the 1st and 2nd worlds, who are allies in our cause of International Revolution. 

While it is wholly true that “during a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government”, it is also true that we must turn the inter-imperialist conflict that currently exists into class conflict and proletarian revolution. The matter stands that Lenin, and all of the revolutionaries during the early 20th Century, lived during an age of so-called “multipolarity”, and all it led to was World War and the slaughter of proletarians en masse. This is not to say that we should support a unipolar world, it is in fact the exact opposite. Communists should support a “nonpolar” world, or a world where there is no power divided amongst the international community, but is held collectively by the international proletariat.

Multipolarity and Campism are not new phenomena by any means, as previously said some of these ideas are strikingly similar to the anti-Marxist strain of “Maoist Third-Worldism”, but this most recent inception has a shocking origin. 

Aleksandr Dugin is Russian Philosopher, commonly cited as “Putin’s Brain”. Dugin himself was an active anti-Soviet dissident in the 80s, and was one of the leading figures of the National Bolshevik Party in the 90s. Dugin subscribes to an ideology called “Neo-Eurasianism”

“Eurasianism, in its broadest meaning, is a basic geopolitical term which seeks to understand the entire world from the historical and geographical point of view, excluding the Western sector of world civilization. It also attempts an understanding of the world from the military-strategic point of view, specifically in terms of those countries that do not approve of the expansionist policies of the United States and their NATO partners. In terms of culture, it desires the preservation and development of organic national, ethnic and religious traditions; and from the social point of view, it embraces all the various forms of economic life and efforts toward the “socially just society.”

• Eurasian Mission – An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism,               A. Dugin.

Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism is most certainly a variant of fascist ideology, even though he purports it to be the “Fourth Way” (Against Liberalism, Communism, and Fascism). Dugin repeatedly defends the stance of multipolarism: 

“The Eurasianists consequently defend the principle of multipolarity, standing against the project of unipolar globalism that is being imposed by the Atlanticists.”

• Eurasian Mission – An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism,               A. Dugin.

Multipolarity is so central to Dugin’s theses because it gives Russia the clearance to imperialize places such as Africa and the Middle East, all in an effort to combat “the West”. These ideas have a slim overlap with the Leninist conception of Imperialism, but it fails to hit the mark. Since the revisionists either fail to understand Lenin, or wholly reject his ideas, they readily cling to the crypto-fascist ideology of Eurasianism as a part of the revolutionary struggle, either tacitly or openly.

Groups in America have already adopted these positions. FRSO has adopted the false line of “Actually Existing Socialism” in their fervent support of the “Communist” Party of China. PSL works with RT (formerly Russia Today) together with Sputnik to produce online video content, as well as pushes for a multipolar world, specifically in places such as Africa where they support military juntas all in the name of “anti imperialism”. Perhaps the most brazen is the American “Communist” Party, who outright platforms Dugin and upholds him as a modern Marx.

Aligning with neo-fascist ideology, whether willing or not, presents no viable alternative for the working class. Historically, we already know what the outcome of multipolarity will be and that is World War. Wherever there exists competition amongst imperialists it will turn violent, if not catastrophic. 

The contemporary Communist movement is in an unfavorable position. Everywhere there are revisionists, opportunists, and falsifiers that seek to entrench themselves in our cause to defang the class struggle. While there are many rank and file members of these revisionists organizations that have unknowingly fallen prey to this line of thinking, they still parrot multipolarity and campism as an effective strategy for the liberation of the international proletariat, and it there that we must launch an ideological struggle against these tendencies. 

It may cause some concern that openly attacking these tendencies could cause friction in the already neutered Communist movement in America, but this is the most opportune time to do so. The American Communist movement is in a premature stage of development. As the conditions of Capitalism worsen and the contradictions heighten, more and more workers will be radicalized towards Marxism. We, as authentic Communists, must stand firm in our ideological commitment for the liberation of the International Proletariat and struggle against any and all forms that seek to derail the movement. During the First World War, Lenin could have sat back and not attacked the degenerated Social Democratic parties of the Second International in the interest of “not splitting the movement”, but he and the Bolsheviks chose to stand firm. It is in the same vein of thought that we must also stand firm and struggle, not to splinter the movement, but to foster its development free from all revisions. We cannot sit idly by as we watch so-called Communists repeat the same mistakes of our predecessors. We must struggle for an authentic Communist future!