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Marx’s Severed Head

A flagrant misunderstanding of our revolutionary tradition has seen Marxism codified into a historical ideology; This error has enclosed historical-political and historical-economic (the realms of bourgeois science and allocation) speculations and passed them off as eternal truths. Instead of changing the world, the overwhelming majority of Marxists now seek only to interpret it, to identity objects as they currently exist. To commit what Marx himself considered pseudoscientific analysis in his own critique of political-economy. In essence: To end history in the age of liberalism.

Likewise, the Marxists constitute the most outwardly reactionary elements of the communist left. In the United States, their representatives spend their time sandwiched between parliamentary reformism, spectacular protesting, class collaboration, and chasing Anarchist shadows. Through building their Parties and organizations external to the movement of communisation itself, these mediators have warranted themselves a precious role in making revolution. This of course has come at the cost of revolution in practice. Their philosophy simply pools together transient clumps of activists, and/or divides the proletariat along liberal-bourgeois lines. Just like Bernstein and the bourgeois democrats sought the death of revolutionary social democracy, Marx’s own followers have sought his swift decapitation.

Thus, it becomes almost impossible for any communist -that is, any subject of capitalist alienation who is conscious of the real existing movement for communisation- to earnestly call themselves a Marxist. In order to properly address these issues with the relevant currents of such a diverse tradition, we will discuss the philosophical content of leading Marxists and their recent discrepancies in action. We speak of many tendencies here: The DSA’s concoction of reform and revolution, Leninist-inspired PSL, Leninist-role playing FRSO, and the Maoists and libertarian communists of varying cliques and tendencies. In these organizations we have analyzed and sometimes even collaborated with “Democratic Socialists”, “Orthodox Marxists”, “Marxist-Leninists”, “Marxist-Leninist-Maoists”, “Gonzaloites”, “Councilists”, and “Autonomists”. While there are various refutations of these historical tendencies, this article seeks to understand how they live and interact today.

Political Enthusiasm

Of any communist, it seems that the Marxist is always the most enthusiastic to engage in bourgeois politics. Outside of the Leftist Maoists and Gonzaloites (the more fringe of the general Marxist canon), each and every Marxist has tried and failed to penetrate this bourgeois apparatus. Whereas they conduct trench warfare and fight for mere inches on one another, this struggle is situated on a mountain of scraps. The DSA and Orthodox may be most guilty of this, but likewise Leninists cling to the illusion that running their programs in the realm of politics produces revolutionary potential in the platforming of demands. We emphasize that this cannot be any further from the truth. For example, glance around at how the Leninists, Trotskyists, and hardcore Stalinists hold their candles to the flame. Nowhere do any of these groups call for Communism, but for an enlightened welfare state and the virtue of Man. The very moment one limits their work to the scope of this bourgeois science, is the moment communism cannot possibly bear its own weight. Communism and liberalism are incompatible, and liberal ideas of moving the masses likewise. 

But what of the momentum of successful Marxist electoral campaigns today? Do they not present our best opportunities yet to connect to the masses? Simply put, no. The movements of Zohran and DSA’s allies represent the pinnacle of anyone from Bernstein to the Roosevelts to Mussolini. To be clear, we can have our own feelings regarding conditions potentially bettering for the proletariat. But whether a cookie or a crumb, Zohran, for example, has won his campaign due to the contradictions of capitalism propelling him forward. Of course New York City is unaffordable: Rent is infamously astronomical, food costs are rising still, and transport is not cheap. This is the real contradiction of capitalist life slowly grinding away at its own children, its inputs to production. This increases the feverish pitch of communisation, but also signals the loosening of the leash. With this comes the widening palate of the bourgeoisie and the befriending of the petit-bourgeoisie, possibly the most reactionary base in society. These groups will serve as allies to the political campaign in some respects, as many have done with charming Zohran. Demands for small businesses are even made in his own program! This contradiction is all fine, as it is only a contradiction in name: Together, the petit-bourgeoisie and social democrats are the true stopgaps to Communism. Historically these two have taken it on themselves to beat the life out of the communist movement, insofar as to turn around and ask their bourgeois masters for acceptance. This goes for any social democrat, from NYC to Minneapolis and so on.

The rest of the bourgeoisie may fear Marxists in office, yet this is precisely because they fail to study Marx or his contemporaries. For them, a 2% raise in taxes is the culmination of the real movement, of communisation in final form. If they were truly aware of an imminent revolutionary threat, they would raise taxes on themselves tenfold. So we can laugh at their childishness, but turn our noses up at these theatric practices. The sad tale is that this is not a trend of Democratic Socialists, but again of the majority of contemporary Marxist organizations. They adopted Marx’s political opinions at the time of writing the first edition of the Manifesto (i.e. raising taxes), and subsequently left the theoretical model to rot. 

Of course, the language of bourgeois politics is more than holding a program to the light or partaking in an election to seek concessions. It is a violent strain of thought that has found its way in Marxist theorizing and understanding of the world (see our work on Multipolarity for a more complete analysis). Every Marxist is an allocator of an absurd-typically nationalist-bent. By allocation we mean to take existing capitalist relations and diagnose the problem at distribution, not production itself. In this Marxists use a political understanding to sharpen their weapons and shape their campaigns. They will be the first to ask for fairness for entire peripheral State apparatuses and mystifying their proletariat, for better trade deals, for more diplomacy, and representation. They will instruct themselves on class struggle through the lens of geopolitics and devil’s advocacy of a lesser bourgeoisie (BRICS). None of these questions have to do with making war with the international bourgeoisie, but strengthening alliances on the false premise that our only option is collaboration!

Economics & Allocation

If the favored action of the Marxist is political, the favored language is economic. If you handed them the world today, they would promptly re-allocate the existing system and leave its functioning as is. We have discussed this extensively but from the wider-reaching tendencies. Yet be it any flavor of Marxism, even councilists or autonomists, and this typically stands. How so?

This is all due to the understanding many Marxists have of history: As a process of linear development. The idea that progress is pushing inevitability, and that the cycles of history always push us to a new epoch of development, a higher plane. If the revered Stalin was to be correct, the capitalist mode of production can be utilized to push forward socialist production. If not Stalin but Pannekoek, and it is the workers who should directly observe their own misery through the implementation of workers’ calculated management. This still rests on measuring productivity and various schemes of increasing productivity through coercion. If not Stalin not Pannekoek but Negri, and it is the workers who both should find glory in their own identity as worker, and strive to have autonomy over their localized poverty. Similar to the councilists, this is ultimately a new form of management. A more palatable one? Of course. But revolution breaks here yet.

We say this, writing with affinity for the questions Pannekoek and Negri have raised as well as their contributions to the communist movement: To synthesize the communist movement as a movement to manage capitalism is an error, precisely because new management does not break capitalist socialization. Similar to the errors of Stalin, we can call these forms of developmentalism or stageism, two of the primary enemies of the communist movement yet two critical elements of the Marxist canon. Let us continue.

Developmentalists may hold the belief that history is a process of economic development, but they stretch this to include the claim that the modern capitalist economy simply requires a higher stage of development for socialism. This can typically be contextualized in the praise of China’s great “modernization” or any other supposed region which has not undergone “sufficient” development for socialism. Likewise, stageism simply implies the existence of unique and linear historical stages of development, furthering the claim that from feudalism to early capitalism to late capitalism, we will finally arrive at socialism. To contend with these ideas seriously is just as reasonable as to submit to the Abrahamic God. Regardless, we address them both with their very liberal birthmarks.

The Stalinists and their offspring are the most rugged of developmentalists, this is true. They assumed they could develop the Soviet Union into Communism, they were proved to be wrong, and their ideas bounced around the globe as they took root in the minds of peripheral bourgeoisies and intelligentsias. Seize a nation, nationalize as one pleases, and modernize to a new socialist age. Now China and “Dengism”, or “Maoist Thought” is the rage. Yet this is the same exact deficiency that was found in Stalin’s project: A belief in the progress of humanity through defined stages, and that progress was implied through modernizing. Meanwhile the Chinese bourgeoisie launches even more attacks on the proletariat, both domestic and international. All in the name of developmentalism, it has become apparent that increasing economic output and efficiency does not breed a working class revolution.

The councilists and libertarian Marxists are more rigorous in their approach and earnest in class struggle. Recognizing the excesses of Russia’s bureaucratic nightmare, they have opted for a stage of Communism closer to the ground. But this is still yet a belief in a mostly linear transition and needless prolonging of capitalism, should it not last forevermore. The historical step “up” to toppling management and placing the workers at the seat is all too much similar to the Bolsheviks’ theses. They argue the workers’ liberation must be made through war with the bourgeoisie. We argue that war must be made with the entire mode of production, with the inputs of the mode of production-such as the workers, abolishing themselves as workers in immediacy. The mere fulfillment of capitalism’s contradiction without fomenting extra steps. These views are not reconcilable as long as workerism, Stalinism, or any “ism” clings to the real movement. 

We refer back to the introduction and implication that Marxists wish to “end history” in the age of liberalism here: They wish to imbue in the world the preceding Enlightenment notion that progress is not only necessary, but guaranteed. This is a thoughtful notion that attempts to make sense out of the history of humanity, but this does not make it less utopian. Stalin surmises the working masses will inevitably smash capitalism, Deng claims that the modern nation will give birth to true socialism; We cannot always be so sure. At every moment, our allegiance can only be with the working class and its immediate victory.

Marxists in Action

In our time and place, the Marxists are more likely to be at the services of the State than of the proletariat. Elections are one thing, peace-policing is another. At the advent of a wave of energy, they are in vests, hoping to quell the rage. It is their everlasting wish to bottle up the rage and save it for when they have prescribed it best fit. When this epoch never presents itself, they never admit defeat, but change the definition of success. These experiences are based on both Chicago’s Leninist-NGO marriage, the “Coalition Against the Trump Agenda”, and PSL’s own marches. These actions will draw anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people, feature platitudes of “fighting back” and “getting organized” before a masturbatory claim that these showings in themselves are a success. While these protests celebrated progressive culture in the downtown Loop, neighborhoods continued to be ravaged by federal agents. These bubble-like alternative realities are nauseating and deceptive. 

While these claims may feel too broad to be applicable to the many tendencies of Marxism, they are assurably in the nature of the dominant positions we are reviewing today. The Democratic Socialists, Orthodox, and Leninists are the first victims of their own ineptitude. Parroting Enlightenment ideals of progress and fairness, they have limited their own action to the accumulation of capital. While endearingly, the Maoists and Gonzaloites preach a gospel of “mass work”, they are still abject friends of accumulation and resolute nationalists, the basis of many an intellectual poverty. Their work thus consists of rousing “nationally-oppressed” communities on the basis of their identity or race, rather than from their potential to communise. They’ll next proceed with a push for civil rights for these nationalities on varying grounds. Likewise with the “less radical” variants of Marxism, they shoot themselves in the foot in a push for a fairer allocation of resources.

In a similar vein, the Marxists engage with trade unionism at an industrial level but only go so far as to jostle for the reins. In a city like Chicago, absolutely brimming with union activity (relative to the rest of the country), there is a completely compartmentalized trade union movement. Union representatives and ardent socialists meet with the bourgeoisie, haggle over the price of their members, and both will claim they have won a tremendous victory. Meanwhile the more critical Marxists devoid of hedge fund backing (see: PSL) will pine for a workers’ trade union movement. While romantic, this action is still the inverse of linear stageist philosophy and we cannot parse out a movement bent on reinforcing wage slavery. The workers do not yearn for work.

The many ways these groups act in relation to the proletariat is that of a teacher mistreating the learning of a student. By assuming the proletariat does not have the ability to abolish itself without canonised Marxist ideology, these revolutionaries dumb down, or altogether alter the most radical of the canon: The content of capitalism itself. For the proletariat, this places Communism on a political-economic-ideological mantle with liberalism, or conservative liberalism, of Democrats and Republicans. Something to be tried and tested within the confines of liberal democracy, and dispensed with after each experiment inevitably goes haywire. Instead of vying for the proletarian’s attention with a “new” ideological communism, perhaps we should just reject ideological communism in favor of Communism itself?

Dismembering Class Against the Wishes of Marxists

As per our work on the topic of ICE: Should the Marxists or other degenerations of liberalism triumph, we will be doomed to haggle over the price of our damnation. To scientifically allocate our share of life, our time of death, always evading the cause. 

The bourgeoisie is international, yet communisation is not a thought. It is a historical process inherent in our social tension now. This does not mean it is inevitable. Only the international working class, in a movement of abolishing itself, can fulfill this decisively. Thus, we say not “Long Live the Workers”, but “Abolish Work”. We seek to leave behind our miseries and sorrows in the Old World, to revolt and communise.

Refutations of Anarchism’s Value System

If not a historical Marxism, it is many a Communist’s pivot to Anarchism which can be just as troubling. To be transparent, we find ourselves sympathetic to Anarchism in the same way we might be of councilism or autonomism. We recognize its historical vindication in the errors of Marxism-Leninism, and especially with the rise of the Stalinists and Maoists. We recognize its place on the cutting edge of tactical approaches in America and worldwide, and its contributions as an ideology in imbuing these approaches with sufficient leverage to combat the State. Yet, when we recognize its relevance as a value system and historical ideology, we must also address its shortcomings. Like Marxists, Anarchists have fashioned-sometimes an even more obvious-historical ideology. Tracing back their rich heritage centuries, they also cling to the ideological burden that comes with these tactical innovations. We can refer to these as Anti-Authoritarianism, Freedom, Human Rights, Liberty, Justice, and so on. 

Most Anarchists remain committed to these values, and our intent is for these values to be dissected at once. We critique the usage of any value system for studying history. Even if we happen to agree that “authoritarianism” genuinely relates to something harmful, or deem it necessary to fight for a society with more “freedom” or “liberty”. These values are not eternal but transient manifestations of class society at a given time. What constitutes “Human Rights” at one point may be the right to conduct a diabolical chattel slavery, or have ownership over their spouse. Likewise, we must recognize that even if values were less malleable, they are not the movers of history. Rather it is the basis of class society, and the contradictions which lead to conflict, collapse, and revolution. Since some Anarchists do not seem necessarily interested in the observation of class society, they tend to roam about in declassed movements which treat each one as a human rather than a Marxist would a worker. This is ironically a closer conception to what a communised society could look like, but it forgets one thing: We are not yet occupants of a communist society. We recognize this philosophical slide as very much an equivalent to the Marxist’s stageist-utopian vision. 

Whereas many Anarchist-dominated movements are declassed, or void of class content, whereas we seek a violent abolition of class, or class movement to abolish classes. The former is subject to the most intense of bourgeois co-option: Our Anarchist friends know this well. Yet even still, the liberals successfully sink their teeth into the trove of values Anarchists offer. Where they mainly come to differ (the State), they still resemble themselves on the topics of liberty, human rights, and freedom. In a crowd you couldn’t pick these two out; If the liberal is feeling dangerous, they’ll even throw on the bloc to match. In the end the sea of reaction will split open to brutalize and detain the Anarchist, and the movement will be left in a repressed mess. 

It is not the fact that Anarchists have failed on which we rest our criticism: We are a historical tradition of failures. Rather, it is the basis of their activism which draws it out. On this basis they have made great analysis about the role of the State and coercion, and the necessity to do away with it at once. But because these were conducted on ideological lines, they could not see this for the half-baked equation that it is. Namely, the forces that have led to the rise of the State, and the forces that have taken part in its maintenance. They have left these forces unaddressed in popular movements where class struggle is most eminent. In practice, it shelves communism itself for a debate on moral righteousness amongst class enemies. 

We analyze these similarities between Marxists and Anarchists because they both fall along ideological lines. Yet what is needed is the embrace of communism, with the content of communism: Neither program or ideology will do. Tactically astute and more apt for confronting the State, Anarchist contributions cannot be overlooked. Yet as we must break free of the Marxists’ liberalism to revolt, we must of the Anarchists’ to communise.