On Trump and the Election

The Left and the Fight Against Racial Oppression

(Letters)

30 November 2016

Dear Comrades,

Your statement that “Democrats paved the way for Trump” obfuscates the fact that most of what’s left of the American “Left” outside of the Democratic party just as much, and in important ways more so, paved the way for this psychopathic demagogue.

Most of the American “Left” long ago abandoned class-based internationalist politics for identity politics.

In other words, they abandoned an approach that recognizes the contradiction between the proletariate, whatever the color, gender, or sexual orientation of its individual members, and the bourgeoisie, whatever the color, gender, or sexual orientation of its individual members, as the major contradiction driving world history today, but that at the same time also recognizes the special oppression suffered by racial and sexual minorities, women, and other groups, and that seeks to address this special oppression in the context of resolving that major contradiction.

In the place of such a class-based internationalist approach, most of the American “Left” has adopted identity politics, an approach that denies or ignores the contradiction between the proletariate and the bourgeoisie and recognizes only the special oppression of racial and sexual minorities, women, and so forth. It explicitly or implicitly disavows any interest in white male workers, as the Maoists openly did long ago by declaring the American proletariate a part of the bourgeoisie. In its own way, the American fake “Left” declared white male workers “deplorables” long before Hillary Clinton did. Small wonder, then, that some of these white male workers (and not a few of their female counterparts, who didn’t have much to gain from bourgeois feminism, either) found their own identity politics in anti-black and anti-Hispanic racism and anti-Chinese protectionism, although I suspect that these attitudes, except perhaps for the last, are more prevalent among the declassed lumpenproletariate than the true proletariate. Small wonder, also, that even more of them turned to Trump, who ludicrously pretends to speak for them, when almost nobody else does, including the fake American “Left.”

The answer, of course, is not to pander to the base instincts of a potentially revolutionary class that however currently lacks a revolutionary class consciousness. The answer is to revitalize the class-based internationalist approach outlined above. The American “Left” would do well if it confronted its responsibility for the rise of Trump and considered what it has to offer to workers everywhere, whatever their other “identities,” and how to tear down any divisions that exist between them and build unity and solidarity among them, wherever they live, whoever they are, so that they recognize their common interest in tearing down capitalism and imperialism and replacing it with a world-wide egalitarian socialist society. I am afraid, though, that much of the American “Left” will instead drown its post-election blues in five-dollar lattes while bemoaning how American white workers have betrayed them, rather than the other way around.

With comradely greetings,
B.R.

WV replies: The crimes of “the American ‘Left’” are plenty, but they are of a different sort than B.R. suggests. He criticizes the reformists “outside of the Democratic party” for paving the way for Trump, “in important ways more so” than the Democrats. This obfuscates, to use his word, the role of the reformists. They seek to tie the working class to the Democratic Party—no less the class enemy of workers and the oppressed than the Republicans—and to the capitalist electoral system. The various reformist groups are united in their support, whether explicitly or implicitly, to Democratic Party lesser-evilism. The purpose of genuine socialists is to uproot the entire decaying system of American capitalism through the building of a workers party that will lead a socialist revolution.

B.R.’s central condemnation of “the American ‘Left’” is that it “long ago abandoned class-based internationalist politics for identity politics.” He complains that the reformist left denies or ignores class contradictions and “recognizes only the special oppression of racial and sexual minorities, women, and so forth.” In fact, the problem with the reformists is that their program cannot lead to the liberation either of black people and women or of the working class. Marxists recognize that the fight against racial and sexual oppression must be linked to the fight for the emancipation of the proletariat through socialist revolution.

The central enduring feature of American capitalism is the structural oppression of the black population as a race-color caste, the majority of which is forcibly segregated at the bottom of society. Obscuring the fundamental class division between the capitalists who own the means of production and the working class who must sell their labor power to survive, racism and white supremacy have served to bind white workers to their capitalist exploiters through the illusion of a commonality of interest based on skin color.

We reject “identity politics” not least because it is an obstacle to the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. At bottom, “identity politics” holds that each sector of the oppressed should organize separately against the particular oppression it faces. The reformist left’s promotion of “identity politics” is a reflection of its embrace of the Democratic Party and its constituency politics. Under this schema, the oppressed are told to vote for Democrats in exchange for ever-smaller crumbs, while bourgeois politicians play the struggles of the exploited and oppressed off against one another.

Shortly after the election, Bernie Sanders, a darling of the reformist left, made a point of declaring that the Democratic Party must “go beyond identity politics” if it is to address Trump’s white working-class voters. This was about winning back a constituency for the Democratic Party, while telling the oppressed to eat it in the name of boosting the fortunes of that party. B.R.’s letter echoes Sanders’ sentiment of going “beyond identity politics” by reducing special oppression to merely a subset of class exploitation.

B.R. misses the point about special oppression when he writes that it should merely be addressed “in the context of resolving that major contradiction” between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Black people, not only those who are workers, are oppressed as black people. The struggle for black freedom, while part of the struggle of the working class as a whole, is more than that struggle. The fight against racial oppression is in the vital material interest of the whole of the proletariat—including white and immigrant workers. The liberation of the multiracial proletariat from the bondage of wage slavery will never happen unless it takes up the cause of black liberation. Likewise, racial oppression will not be eliminated short of a socialist revolution that sweeps away capitalist rule.

This perspective requires a struggle to forge a new fighting leadership of the unions. The existing trade-union bureaucracy’s allegiance to capitalism and the profitability of its corporations has squandered the gains won through the militant battles of the working class—black, white and immigrant. The union bureaucrats’ legacy of betrayals and defeats resulting from their strategy of relying on Democrats helped clear the way for Trump to pose as a defender of workers. The protectionism promoted by the AFL-CIO tops helps breed anti-immigrant prejudices among workers. Indeed, the unvarnished xenophobia expressed by Trump and his “America first” protectionism is simply a stark reflection of the chauvinism that lies at the heart of the bureaucrats’ calls to “save American jobs” from foreign competition.

Karl Marx captured the truth about America when he wrote shortly after the Civil War: “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” Armed with this understanding, we fight to forge a revolutionary, multiracial workers party that, in the words of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, acts as “the tribune of the people,” championing the cause of all the exploited and oppressed in the fight for workers rule.